Bernie J Mitchell

Engaging People in coworking since 2010

12 Week Year

How To Slow Down To Speed Up Your Projects

by


So where were we?


Last week I was crying onto the page that the world did not know where it was going. Mainly, what’s also going on with my projects and plans.

You can read or listen to it here.

This week we stopped and looked where we are and rebooted with more focus and energy.

We had to slow down to speed up with our plans.

Personally, I had to remind myself where I’m going in the long term to connect with what is important right now.

My ‘Me Too’ movement


Thank you to all the people who emailed me. 

Your common theme of replies was like ‘me too’ or ‘I’m wobbly too’ or ‘confused too’ – it was good to acknowledge the mental strain. 

I thought the strain was because we don’t know where we are going in the world or could not get a haircut. 

But another mate thought it was because as a nation, the ‘lock-down holiday’ is over and we have to go back to work. 

How To Slow Down To Speed Up


1. We stopped and looked at the way we work and time-boxed stuff again. Scroll down for more on this.

2. I went back to all the vision stuff, five, ten and twenty-year vision. Then the goals I needed popped out by magic, I reconnected with where I am going.

3. Some of you emailing and saying ‘me too’ – it is always good to know you are not the only one thinking something, it gives permission for your next move for your plans. 

Getting anchored again 


I checked my 12 Week Year plan, and I went back to these two resources:

So Dan is living to 156, and I am happy to say out loud I’m living to 126. 

It means I have 80 something years left to: 

– Travel the world with my family. 

– To write books, blogs and tweets.

– Interview thousands of people for podcasts and articles.

– Eradicate racism. 

– Cook a lot of meals for people in our home. 

My son tells people his Dad is going to live to 126 – I am sure it scares them.

When I am 126, my son will be around 90 years old – I always picture us cooking a BBQ together in Tigre, Buenos Aires at that age – I love that image. 

I have a picture on my computer to remind me where I am going – you can see it here.

“I have a theme!”


Don’s course recommends having a life theme, I’d forgotten this part. 

I remembered I had one – it’s a bit like ‘your why’.

‘Find your voice and help others find theirs’ is my theme.

I got it from Stephen Covey’s 8th Habit book more than twelve years ago.

I remember talking to Julie Hall in a bar in Soho in late 2009, she’d recently watched a TED talk by a guy named Simon something. 

He was talking about ‘Start With Why‘ it had already got over FIFTY THOUSAND VIEWS – wow! 

Now it has 50 million – that is a lot of wow.

Don’t boil the ocean.


A bit of me wants to puke when people talk about their mission and meaning. 

There is only so much navel-gazing we can do before someone shows up and needs some work done. 

I’ve been part of workgroups over the years where I want to pull the pin on a hand grenade when people talk about values. 

And when I’m not in action, I get depressed, feel sorry for myself and start comparing myself to others. 

When I am in action, it is much more painful being in the moment, but stuff happens, even if it does not work, I still feel alive and learn. 

BTW – values are essential.


They are so essential we run ‘The Coworking Values podcast.’ 

It is the practical application of the coworking values in real life.

Simple little things like:

– Having a work culture where your staff want to stay and are not crying in the stairwell every day. 

– Where your business makes a profit but does not f@

– Don’t only show up when you want something.

– Are inclusive, accessible and anti-racist like >> this by Cobot.

– You are not the largest, biggest, longest or leading – you are helpful. 

– How to build a coworking space that serves the local community it is part of.

Simon says


To get back to Simon Sinek, but you have to know I am exhausted by Simon Sinek fanboys and girls these days. 

Everyone loves to rant about ‘the why’, but I’ve only met a small handful of people, like my mate Lena who put it into action for real. 

Simon made a point early on about people think they have to ‘screw people’ or ‘be tight’ to be good at business. 

He then gave examples of companies with a higher share value over thirty years. 

The higher share value companies had taken care of staff and kept them longer.

Everyone Always


What has become evident in COVID is a coworking or shared work-spaces that ONLY rents a desk are dead in the water. 

While the spaces with a close community are alive. 

One of the main challenges is keeping members connected, we don’t meet in the kitchen so much these days! 

Their members are willing to support the coworking space as it navigates COVID. 

Changes to our work


Last week we were launching our Cowork.tools business. 

BTW the work we are doing is everything in Marketing Made Simple, which is a lot of attention to detail – which does make my head hurt. 

Every day felt like we were charging down the pitch to see where we would end up.

Then like Toyota – we stopped the assembly line. 

We took a morning to work out where we were, and we made a simple change. 

We time-boxed everything and made a backlog. 

It was that simple

We spent Friday morning allocating projects to the same day every week and ONLY working on them then. 

I’m sharing this because:


1. I already knew to do this, and so did everyone else. No one had brought it up, because we ‘did not have time for anything else’. 

2. I felt 1000% lighter – right away! I’d been mentally overloaded and confused for a couple of weeks.

3. It cleared the path. One reason I’m a fanboy of the 12 Week Year is that it ‘gives you permission’ to not think about something until it comes up in the plan. 

4 We committed to running our Nifty project board in a ‘Scrum‘ way and reviewing together every Friday morning. 

Read – Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

Weekly plan:


Monday is writing email newsletters day.

Tuesday is my website.

Wednesday is writing blogs and working on podcasts.

Thursday is Cowork.tools

Friday is London Coworking Assembly 

Know where you are going


As crazy and uncertain as the world is right now, narrowing down a few things on your projects and when you are going to work on them is essential. 

It is essential for your well being and mental health and your business.

If you need help, ask one of your friends or me to talk it through, you will feel better for it. 

Stay safe and be excellent to each other.

 

*When I link to products and services I often get a commission at no extra cost to you. 
I only ever link to things I use, trust and 100% recommend.

The Next Normal – Do We Just Get On With It?

by

How is ‘the next normal’ looking for you? 

As the lockdown rules change in the UK, how do you feel about the next few months? 

Are you stuck? 

What have you changed in your business model?

Are you sick of video calls yet? 

This week I want to share about how three months of COVID lockdown is working out for me. 

It feels like an ongoing mix of triumphs and confusion, sitting down to write this to you got me in super reflective mood. 

But I’m worried about something.

It does worry me how this will land with you, which makes me more than a little concerned about the order of the words I type.

The COVID crisis is working out in so many different ways for people, so if you’re in a tough time, I’m sorry if any of this seems futile. 

My positive business friends share phases like ‘never waste a good crisis’ and are looking for ways to support each other. 

Others are having to shut down because they can’t keep going. 

How tough is tough?

I’ve been on many calls where people share with me how they’ve shut their coworking space or lost their job.

Others are in a central London flat homeschooling three kids with both parents working at home and getting cabin fever.

It would be crap for me to say I understand how it is for everyone.

And you’d know right away that I’m making that up, but it at least gives me access to another perspective. 

My COVID experience has been hearing my wife’s day at work on one side and my coworking world on the other side.

Why is clapping the NHS not a good thing?

Because it undermines the poor working conditions, underfunding and low pay experienced by NHS workers. 

As many of you know, my wife is a family therapist who works in mental health.

You can watch this video of the ward where she works in Newham, London. 

Her team are getting more young people admitted than ever before. 

Meanwhile, everyone is out clapping, bashing pans and cheering on the NHS under the illusion we’re saluting the England football team in their darkest hour. 

The reality is we’re cheering NHS people for doing a high-risk job for crap pay and are in denial about how their day is. 

And a lot of people clapping (maybe even you) are furloughed on 80% pay, going to the beach or getting pissed in Soho.

To be clear about the clapping thing

This article here describes how we feel in our home – click here to read – I’m an NHS doctor – and I’ve had enough of people clapping for me.

We’re sure that when you clap the NHS, it is with the best intention. 

I’m not bitching about my wife’s pay packet, she is highly qualified, and her salary reflects this. 

Confused and stuck

What motivated me to write this is to share the confusion I had at setting 12 Week goals, even though my projects are more focused than ever. 

But next to NHS workers and people losing their jobs, businesses and struggling with family loss and mental health, well I felt like I’m whining. 

I spent a week walking around our home, forgetting what I was doing, having to read my task list three times in the morning before I got going. 

The COVID lockdown and cabin fever was starting to hit me. 

Just get on with it.

I’ve read Viktor Frankl Man’s ‘Search for Meaning‘ and David Goggins Can’t Hurt Me, and both books have had a robust humanising effect on me.

Both books are people in extreme mental and physical situations, who find a way to make it, against all the odds. 

Last year I read the David Goggins book six times in four months when my Dad was ill and then died, on his 84th birthday!

Goggins helped me connect with my Dad’s death and experience grief rather than drama. 

Of course, you probably know the drama is often my preference, that is how good the Goggins book is. 

Purple haze and becoming unstuck

For two weeks, I’ve been in some haze, haemorrhaging energy and burning calories in my brain trying to work out my goals. 

It was a real issue, that is why I’m writing about it here. 

My three projects are: 

Cowork Tools, 

London Coworking Assembly 

my site 

I know where the revenue is coming from and what I’ve got to do to get there. 

Why is it so hard to write down a goal for each of these?

So that is what is up!

At the end of last week, it clicked where I’m stuck.

I was stuck because I don’t know what is going to happen.

Work and projects have a map, but I don’t know what is going to happen in the world. 

Of course, we never know what is going to happen, but now there is worldwide agreement ANYTHING could happen!

I mean we have a global pandemic, and the horror of colonialism, institutional racism and routine police brutality are a mainstream conversation – who thought that would ever happen?

#BLM

How July – December usually happen

July is the start of summer, and this year everything is on hold. 

We go to our family in Vigo, Spain in August. 

I have a birthday, and we come back then something happens.

School starts; something else happens. 

We do European Freelancers Week. 

I go to Coworking Europe and another Coworking retreat.

Then it is Christmas, so a trip to Poland, Argentina or Vigo to see family. 

But right now we’re staying home for the rest of 2020.

Now I know how to keep going.

Back when I was super depressed, I went to therapy every Tuesday afternoon in Stratford.  

About a year before we ended, I had a moment of realisation in my therapy session.

I was not depressed any more, but I did not know what else to do. 

My story, identity and even habit was ‘I’m depressed’ it was my narrative and operating system. 

The moment occurred for me like when Neo stands up in the Matrix. 

You know the part, Agent Smith shoots Neo like ten times, Neo dies, and Trinity kisses him. 

Neo then stands up, becomes present to his ability and stops the next round of bullets with his hand. 

The luxury of grief 

I was due to end therapy, and we had a winding down period, and then my Dad died, so we carried on for a few more months. 

Whenever I think back to last year, I wonder what would have happened to me if I did not have the luxury of the support and relationship of my therapist. 

That therapy was about grief and making sense of the future, not depression, self-loathing. 

We ended in January 2020, two weeks later, I went to Nashville to do the StoryBrand Guide training and hang out with my friends Maria and William. 

Maria’s son was my mate Matija, the co-founder of European Freelancers Week; he died of cancer aged 34 in 2018 while we were working on Freelancers Week. 

Matias is the guy sitting at the table in the header of all my social media profiles – he is still is a big deal for us. 

That’s all for this post – stay safe and be excellent to each other. 

Why Is The ’12-Week Year’ So Good? Here’s why!

by

Have you heard of the book ‘The 12-Week Year’?

No?

Oh wow! It’s so good!

But, why is the ‘12-Week Year‘ so good?

Well, you know when you have all these goals and ideas and need to get them in order? You want to make them happen. 

Your calendar is rolling around like a drunken sailor in a brothel with a credit card.

Your head is about to burst with possibility and inspiration.

And deep down inside, you know, you are going to struggle to make any other happen, even though you know it could.

Making it happen that is what the 12-Week Year helps you do.

In the ongoing spirit of ‘They Ask, You Answer‘ on this website, I’m going to show you a breakdown of how the ’12 Week Year’ book has worked for me. And I’m sure you’ll pick up something to get you going. 

Sidenote: we’re reading this book in our ‘StoryBrand Guides‘ book club and slack channel this month. I suddenly see a whole new range of in-person examples and applications. 

What you won’t find in the ’12-Week Year’ book.  

It is not a magic pill, silver bullet, app to save your life, productivity booster or lottery win. 

It is so dull that you may want to set fire to your chair, so you have something to talk about at parties.

Very soon you’ll be in a routine and life will be working, how cool is that?  

What is this 12-Week thing all about?

Michael and Brian, the authors, advocate organising and thinking about your year in a twelve-week chunk. 

Meaning that you set goals in chunks of twelve weeks, one quarter or ninety days – however, you like to think about it. 

They go against ‘annualised’ planning, where businesses set goals for the year, particularly sales and business growth goals. 

If you have ever worked in a company and have a sales goal to meet, it is incredible how you get it all done in the last week. 

It is like you never left university where you’d have six months to a year to produce a dissertation and do nothing for months. 

When you could see the deadline coming, you’d pull out all the stops to get the research done, and the paper written.

Michael and Brian make a strong case for planning in twelve-week chunks, so you are finishing hardcore goals every twelve weeks. 

It goes way deeper than dividing the whole year into four segments and kicking into cruise control. 

I’ve been studying and putting the ’12 Week Year’ book since June 2016 when I heard writer Pamela Wilson started to talk about it on Copyblogger.com.

Pamela then applied the ’12-Week Year’ to her book launch podcast with Jeff Goins called “Zero to Book.” 

The goal was for her to write her book in ’12-Weeks’ – the end product was Master Content Marketing. One of the clearest, practical and down to earth books on the topic. 

In 2018 the ’12-Week Year Field Guide’ arrived and I got into that too, while the £20 price for a book you write in might seem a bit steep it is a fantastic deal for getting your life on track.

Being able to leap ahead to write down answers questions like, ‘What is your intent for the next week?’ And filling in the blanks to clarify your visions for everything from six months to five years ahead is priceless. 

If you are part of the 90 Day Challenge with the Make Your Mark Community you’ll know what I mean. 

My 90 Day workbook is £20 and sits on my desk, keeping me thinking about what to write and when.

These workbooks are something you can take somewhere, like a cafe or a train and ONLY do that.  

How does the 12-Week Year Book Work? 

It is simple, really, you write down some stuff you like to happen. 

Mark a time in your calendar to do that stuff. 

When that time comes to do what you said you were going to do, you do it. 

But there is so much more to it, here are the profound changes, insights and events I’ve had so far. 

1. Stated intention vs actual intention

At the beginning of the book, Michael and Brian point out that nothing in here is new, the edge is that very few people do as much as they can. 

So when I read the part about stated intention verse actual intention, I agreed and did nothing. 

It took me about a year to realise how out of whack my ‘stated intention’ was with my ‘actual intention’. 

It was the equivalent of declaring ‘I want to and I’m going to lose weight and get healthy!’ 

Sadly when we look at your shopping basket, it has chocolate, pizza and ice cream in it, but the coke is diet! No diet coke is still shit. 

If your actual intention is to lose weight, you’d have a shopping trolley packed with fruit, veg and healthy protein.  

I know, but. 

No buts, and no I know buts! Ruthless as it sounds you are either doing it or not. 

It took me a while to work it out, I want to do a lot of things, but I have to work out precisely what I’m doing, and why. 

2. Are your daily actions in line with your vision? 

A lot of what I was doing back in 2016 was ‘getting by’ rather than ‘building towards‘. 

As a result of an early reading of the ’12-Week Year,’ I doubled down on becoming the best copywriter the world had ever known. 

Well, that did not go well! 

I LOVE writing, and I’m forever working at it, I write every day and read about writing every week. 

BUT I am crap at getting other peoples ideas and requirements onto a page and onto their website. This is a whole range of reasons from my skill level to doing things my way. 

What came from my painful career pursuit being able to teach other people to get ideas out of their head and onto their website. 

People are so scared of writing words and hitting publish, especially in a business and sales context. And I completely empathise with this. So I very quickly worked out how to guide people through this process to publish every week. 

Are the actions and tasks you do on day by day basis adding or taking away from where you want to be five years from now? 

If you don’t know where you’d like to start to think about it, no one knows where they’ll be or what will happen, but acting with an intention is what you are after here. 

3. Tracking and accountability over time is gold

Ok, so one of the most unattractive parts of this book of me was a requirement to track.   

Every week you need to track what happened, or what did not happen.

When I got more serious about tracking, I began to see where the pattern for a successful week lay. 

How come I planned and did not do what I said I’d do?

Where did all that time go? 

What is wrong with me?

I had a cosmic breakthrough on how to get more of what I wanted in my life. I am still working this out, but as I grew to understand this part,

Let me break that down for you.

There are many elements. I am looking to have present in my life and finding the combination to get them all in is tight. Like a total head fucks tight.

Tracking showed that the weeks when I went running I got more done, fantastic. 

When I let my health score drop everything else dropped, then I’d quickly slip down mentally and feel like a loser.

Running, as painfull and unattractive as it is, gets my head in a significantly better place. 

This all works for me as I run, read, be out in the park and have time on my own, better than a day in front of Netflix. 

How To Be More Productive (And Not Lose £191,553.45 Like Me)

by

Two Simple Productivity Tips.

In this post, I’ll share two things that have helped my productivity over the last few years, and they are NOT apps or gadgets.

Are you always wondering where your time goes?
Are you looking for an ‘edge’?

You can get helpful actionable direction like this in my ‘Sunday Scenario email‘ where I document my progress, triumphs and mistakes as a freelance consultant to the coworking industry.

It is super fun being a hands-on practitioner who is developing and working with everything I teach in workshops and uses with clients.

No theory here, the only action, which of course means a few cuts and bruises!

Back to our two productivity tips, they so are blazingly simple, so simple they might slip through your fingers and then you are back where you started.

If you have worked at either of these two below you will know the deep level of self-commitment you need to muster up to win, and when you start there is no stopping.

How To Be More Productive (And Not Lose £191,553.45 Like Me)

1. Stop That Shitty Self-Talk

First, stop beating yourself up. You must have read a pile of books where the topic of self-talk comes up.

The line is always something like, “would you talk to someone else the way you speak to yourself?“

Then there is the add on of, “what would you do if someone talked to your best friend the way you speak to yourself?”

For me, this falls into the ‘well, of course, I agree with that’, but it took me years to get it, and I am still working on it.

Back in my days of depression, most days had self-loathing on the agenda.

When I became aware of this, my self-talk and how it worked, I could see how I’d been operating in this way for years.

Talking crap to myself had become a habit; I was so skilled that it was on autopilot.

What a crappy skill to commit work on. All that time gone!

Now I did not start walking around saying beautiful things like ‘I’m a tiger’ to myself out loud.

But I did put a year’s worth of effort into nipping that crappy self-talk in the bud.

Own The Good Things You Do

Decide to own the good things you do.

Today two renowned industry experts gave me an in-person compliment.

Instead of downgrading myself with a joke, I said their acknowledgement means a lot.

They both are amazing people, and I’ve put a direct effort into the thing they complimented me on.

Jen Sincero’s book ‘You are a Badass‘ is a particularly entertaining way to get a grip on this aspect of life. I love her stuff!

This week check how many times you say a self-degrading throw-away comment.

Look out for things like ‘I’m so crap at that.’

Or ‘I don’t quite know what I am doing with this £2000 piece of equipment I brought to further my career.’

Yes, this is imposter syndrome.

We can go deeper into this another time; it is a favourite of mine in the Freelance Heroes group.

But I have zero time and energy for my imposter syndrome these days.

How do you know you have zero time, Bernie? Because I have RescueTime.

Where Did That Time Go?

Last week I clicked the button in my RescueTime app that tells me where I’ve spent time over the previous six years.

I track my ‘work time’ from 8 am – 6 pm Monday to Friday.

So the good news was I’ve spent two-thirds of my time on productive apps on my phone and computer.

But I have spent ONE THIRD on crap or ‘Total Distracting Time‘ as Rescue Time calls it.

Consider this the time I committed to working in, and instead, it became a ‘Total Distracting Time of 2,253h 57m

That’s three months, zero weeks, two days, 21 hours, 57 minutes, and 29 seconds.

If I billed that at a modest £85 an hour that means I’ve spunked £191,553.45

Ouch!

Which is the price of a brand new Lamborghini 4×4 SUV, if that’s how you like to impress your mates.

Photo by Adrian Dorobantu from Pexels

The Compound Effect and £191,553.45

How would you feel if you worked out you spent £191,553.45 worth of time on fucking Facebook and not being productive at all?

Don’t worry kids I’m ok; I’m rereading the Compound Effect book.

Darren, the author, points out not to get upset when you discover the compound effect working against you.

This insight gives you a stable place to work from; you can stop this dead and reverse it.

2. Know What Work You Are Going To Do

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Henry Ford

The way most quotes get used on the internet makes me want to rip my knee caps off and use them as a blindfold.

In the ‘12 Week Year‘ book, every chapter starts with a quote.

I’ve listened to that book enough times the quotes are ingrained to my prefrontal cortex.

This one by Henry Ford hurts a lot. I do so love talking about what I’m going to do, and then not doing it.

So I stopped that.

Talking about what you are going to do is well-meaning hot air, fluff and no one cares, not even you. 

Most of the time, it is a time-sucking attempt to convince ourselves of something.

Your actions speak louder than words, especially for yourself.

Building A Solid Process.

This process you read about every week has got me to see how much I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Example, I know I’m going to write, but I don’t know what I’m going to write in a work session.

Last week when I emailed you I knew I was going to write this to you this week.

So it has taken me 25 minutes to write this. It will need some editing in Grammarly and Hemingway Editor App, and then I’m good to go.

In the Make Your Mark 90 Day Challenge we have a workbook, so I’m planning all my content ahead of time.

It is not easy, but it is 100% worth the effort and saves time.

Of course, you can do this on your own, but working with a group of people skyrockets your productivity.

Write More By Knowing What You Are Going To Write

If you are a writer and need to pay attention to this type of thing, read 2k – 10K by Rachel Aaron.

In her book, Rachel documents how she had to change her work pattern after becoming a mother.

Rachel had four hours a day to sit down and write.

The four hours was the ONLY time she had so she had to work out ahead what that writing would be when she got in the chair.

By working this way, she rebuilt her ability to reach ten thousand words a day.

The Pain Of Change

January has been painful for me, but don’t cry for me, Argentina.

Paying detailed attention to the gaps in my delivery and workflow is helpful.

But change is painful and inconvenient; I’m such a sucker for short term reward.

I can fix things ‘on the fly’ because of my constant ‘learn and do, learn and do’ over the last decade.

An important chapter for you in the 12 Week Year‘ book is the one about the ‘Pain of Change and the valley of despair when it comes to goals. 

It talks about ‘The Emotional Cycle of Change’ or said another way, it will go great, then go shit and you’ll want to give up.

But when you don’t give up you’ll get to the part where it all goes well and you get stronger and happier. 

Most people quit when it gets a bit shit. 

For example, as soon as I got to Lyon last week, I went for a 4.5-mile run before I even had a chance of not doing it.

It was cold, wet and in the end, exhilarating, and it was one more tiny compound effect act that kept me in the game.

How To Get Big Changes In Just 12 Weeks

by

Big Changes

So I have been around a lot of change over the last few weeks, in those few weeks I have been looking for a way to deal with it all.

Or instead, accept it and work out what to do with it, change happens all the time, and I’ve got better and working out how to harness the energy and indecision that comes with it.

It still affects me, but I can recognise the different types of emotions and energy coming towards me and either discard them or embrace them.

This time I stalled out for about a week and then I was able to get back on the horse, rather than whine. Of course, whining is way easier to do

I thought I’d tie up how I skipped whining and got into action in this post, change and uncertainty have been complete showstoppers for me in the past, now I am winning.

End Of An Era

The most significant change was the closing of @Work Hubs the coworking space I have worked at alongside my freelance practice for the last three years, but more on that later, the message here is what I did with the time.

Luckily the end of @Work Hubs coincided exactly with the fantastic weather we are having here in the UK and the start of the 90 Day challenge in Content Marketing Academy community of which I am a member.

We’ll start with the 90 Day Challenge, the goal is to commit to producing a consistent amount of content every week for 90 days, this could be a post every day or a podcast every week, but you have to keep up the delivery.

Every week there is a group call where Chris from the CMA gives feedback on how the group are doing.

My first one was a car crash, my second one better and this one I am going to break through the sound barrier.

I produce a lot of content but keeping going all the time is a massive challenge for me, it is also what we talk about in London Bloggers Meet Up and Write Club most of the time.

I mean, how hard can it be? Open a google doc and write something and put it online.

Ever since I published my first blog in 2006 on Blogger I have had this wild fantasy of posting a lot of content; I love it, I mean I LOVE it.

I am crap at writing for other people, but I am great at their strategy, story and making connections between posts and projects.

BTW this is my favourite blog post ever; it is about when I cut the top off of my finger at a restaurant.

More Everything With 90 Days Of Massive Action

Then I got the video below from Jeff in an email; I signed up for Jeff’s Google Analytics course when it came through as a deal on App Sumo.

I have never known where to look for how to get the most out of Google Analytics.

I’ve been following Avinash’s blog since 2009 and get it, but I have would never dare claim about what to do with it.

Which, when you have chosen a path based around making content to make websites rock you kind of need to have a more profound grasp.

Jeff’s analytics course is easing me through the Google beast, don’t ask me anything yet I am still getting a grip on it!

How To Get Big Changes In Just 12 Weeks? More Of Everything

Here Jeff describes how many “more everything” happened after his team produced 90 videos, emails and blog posts in 90 days, of course, there was growth, but the best thing he got was motivation and pace.

At the end of the video, he talks about how it takes him three hours to make a 20-minute video nowadays, not a week.

I have this pace with podcasting, but not with blogging and that my friend is where we are going in the next 90 days.

How You Going To Do That?

Sorry to make this sound way more comfortable than it is, so forgive me for simplifying the whole thing, it has taken years to get here, and it always pissed me off when someone would write a post and say something like ‘it’s just a change of mindset and more green tea.’

You have to make your ‘own’ system, this I read about in Scott’s 2011 book Making Ideas Happen, and I have been tweaking my system ever since, there are about 100 other books, but the one I’d recommend is 12 Week year.

I’ve been following this for around three years now and have read it and read it and read it and then reread it.

We even started a meet up based around 12 Week Year called Not So Manic Monday, which will be back after the summer in September.

In the meantime, my friend Karen and I have a call every Monday to keep each other on track.

We have our goals and report back to each other on where we are and what the breakdowns are and what the intention is for the next week.

I Still Don’t Know What I Am Doing

What I found surprising is that I struggled to articulate what my intention was for the 12 weeks and what I had to do for the next week.

I get ready to go and then don’t know where I am going.

Committing to the “12 Week Year” forced me to write down and say what I am going to do every week.

I even swapped project tools to make sure I had no room for hiding, also though I am a fan of Zenkit and Kanban boards.

But I went back to Todoist because it syncs with Exist App and tracks EVERYTHING I do so I know where I am slacking off.

Exist App connects to Gmail, Fitbit, Rescue Time, Apple health and even Twitter to let me know the combination of habits to have a good day.

When Karen and I have our call, I can report back from the Todoist Karma counter and also see what is happening in Exist App.

How To Kill Writers Block And Thrive1

Planning And Execution

Another significant change for work this year has been committing deeply to Coschedule again for planning content.

Coschedule it is a content app that works online and sits inside your WordPress website.

From here you can organise, write and publish blogs, Mailchimp emails and all your social media.

I still highly recommend tools like Mindmeister and Zenkit for project planning and execution, but the edge that Coschdule has over these tools for website content is that you are planning your work and working your plan in the same app.

In this current ‘12 Week Year,’ one of my core goals is to get super fast at creating and shipping blogs, podcasts and emails.

That means fine-tuning the processes for Ouishare Radio which my partner in crime Trevor is particularly impressive at.

On my site I need to get sharper at getting ideas from my head to my website like the post you are reading now, this was where Jeff’s video touched a nerve for me.

We’ll be deep diving into “How To Kill Writers Block And Thrive” next week at London Bloggers Meet Up at The Studio in Camden, the new home for all our coworking and Ouishare London antics.

RSVP for the Meet Up here 

Photo by Peder Cho on Unsplash

Find Your Voice, My Plan For The Next 12 Months

by

In this post, I’m going to share with you the next 12 months of my podcast plan for my website, before I am even ready to go.

Even just writing that hurts.

The next 12 months are about “how to find your voice” something I have been procrastinating on for years.

Leading with a “find your voice” topic is hard for me.  

I always think I should have ‘found my voice’ before talking about how you might find yours.

But both of those are wrong.

Building The Plane

All the people I deeply admire and listen to are the people building the plane as it is taking off.

All the people who look like they have it together 24/7 just arouse suspicion in me.

Are You Qualified For This Bernie?

I’m not, but I am ready to learn as I go.

After thinking about it I decided I don’t need to be qualified for anything.

I know how to write, podcast and ask questions.

Besides no one has accused me of not knowing what I am doing for a few days now.

People I collaborate with always question what I say and do, but a healthy and active part of our work together, in a seek first to understand and then to be understood kinda way.

I’m embracing the role I learnt from the online learning platform Fizzle of being a ‘leading learner’.

This way of sharing is about ‘documenting the process’ for people a few inches behind you in their journey.  

I Am Good At That

If you were walking around @WorkHubs I’d be falling over myself to show you how I am working it out as I go along and help you too.

That is the essence of what happens at Not So Manic Monday, Art Club, Write Club, Blog Club.

These are the Meetups we do weekly for people who write, are freelancers or are looking to try and flex a new creative muscle.

10 Years To Be An Overnight Success

So here is what I have been dicking around on for a decade, and even more so in the last few now few months.

I read a lot these days after I left school I hardly read at all.

When I studied catering at Vincent Square in London we hardly had to read anything.

Years later when I went to Uni I had the first dyslexia test of my life and then started to learn how to read – slowly.

Then I found audible.com, well my #supercoolwife found audible, and I was off.

I read a book a week and then read summaries of those books in Blinkist, so I know a group of books significantly well.

Where Has That Got Me?

While I don’t have a private jet on 24-hour standby, I do have extraordinarily beautiful relationships with #Babybernie, Supercoolwife and people around me.

Over the last 12 years, I have read myself out of depression, drink, drugs, self-loathing and dyslexia.

Reading has enabled me to work out how I learn, something that school never managed to do.

Reading non-stop has given me the confidence to be happy to not fit in or be obedient.

It has caused a seismic shift in my natural curiosity.

I am now beautifully comfortable asking people awkward questions and being quiet while they think of an answer.

Talking Of Awkward Questions, What Kept You?

I have been sitting on a podcast idea for ever, and I can’t say why I have not shipped it other than I have to change the text in iTunes and maybe not everyone will like it.

OK, here we go.

On February 5th, 2008 I first read 8th Habit by Covey and have never stopped reading it.

Out of everything I have this is the book I read the most.

It has signposted me to other books, most notably Cluetrain, Built To Last, Victor Frankel and seek first to understand.

The list of topics, connections and application goes on for ever.

I have watched how what Covey talks about in the 8th Habit has unfolded in the both the World and my own life.

Boys Search For Meaning

Over 2017 has my head has come back together I’ve got an impatient urge to make meaning of the what is around me.

That search for meaning needs to happen alongside everything else that is going on right now.

As much as I’d like to, I just don’t have the lifestyle to go and sit on a mountain and work it out.

I have to and want to work it out in my early mornings, in the words, conversations and workshops that make up my week.

So for the next year, I am going to work through the book and find people who I think can poke the box with me.

I am petrified I have spent ten years thinking this would be a good idea, and I’ll find out it sucks, and I suck.

So be it.

But from everything else I have done shit, I always learn from those things and bounce back.

I had to find out how to bounce back, which I learnt from this book too.

So that’s my Plan For The Next 12 Months – Find Your Voice and I’ll be able to find mine too!

One more thing… a little shout out to Colin Gray and Chris Marr for a couple of chats that helped me get my head out my arse 😉

Photo by neil godding on Unsplash