Aug 07 2025
- Productivity
- Productivity
Articles about Productivity for freelancers
Long form content on Productivity for solopreneurs
FAQs from solopreneurs about Productivity
"I don’t know how to differentiate between important deep work, and shallow admin tasks?
I’d liked more examples of deep work because I don’t quite know how to differentiate yet (I’ll check out your article to see if I got more understanding)
I know coding and designing and systemising is deep work, but as a solopreneur that has to be do everything I’m not sure if working on my CRM or content creation would be shallow or deep(Edited)
thanks so
Deep work is not about the task itself,
Deep work is more about a pattern of working that is extremely focussed and proofed against distraction.
The tasks that go into the deep work block are your choice.
It should be your most important work that grows the business.
Shallow work is the opposite:
stuff that drains you, that maintains the business.
Here’s a few resources which might help you with that:
Goals to actions framework for freelancers
Deep-dive on building focus as a freelancer
examples of deep work from the past few days
- Condense Lifestyle design workshop
- Write Life by Design #45
- bug testing and feedback for Emerdentist
- rewrite welcome sequence for Life by Design
- Build reminder system for networking and outreach
- call back Hot enquiries
examples of shallow work from past few days:
- work through emails (daily)
- catch up with team
- minor website changes for client
- deal with support tickets
- book Subaru in for MOT
- — from Lauren-Ashley
- web designer
- Read full Q&A
"What’s your system for consistency?
I go on and on about consistency being key.
I’m pretty consistent about it 🥁😂
But the gurus are right about x1 thing:
Consistency IS key to growing a solo business…
IF you want to do it without burnout.
like most of us,
I’m easily distracted.
My daily world is full of shiny objects, hacks, distractions.
If you want to grow a 6 figure freelance business there’s a lot of stuff to do.
But the more you add to your plate,
the less you’ll get done and
The worse you’ll about it
The only strategy that works for me?
I’m easily distracted.
The only strategy that works for me?
↘️ Take a big project,
↘️ Break it into steps,
↘️ Turn steps into habits you can repeat daily
↘️ Put it into your daily schedule
↘️ Do daily, weekly and monthly reviews to make sure I’m on track
This keeps me working on the important things everyday,
Instead of whatever cr💩p comes up in my inbox
___
If you feel like you need to get better at consistency,
On Life by Design #26 I share x5 consistency systems for freelancers,
that helped me double my revenue every year for ten years..
- — from Bren Kinfa
- Brand designer
- Read full Q&A
"How do I prioritize my never ending todo list?
The key is to let go of the idea of getting everything done.
Draw an actual line on your list.
Everything below doesn’t get done.
Plan weekly.
Triage daily.
Read my full guide to how I manage my todo list without overwhelm.
- — from Priyesh
- WordPress Web Designer
- Read full Q&A
"What is the most effective time management secret you’ve used all your life
I used to be obsessed with productivity hacks.
Then I read 4000 weeks, you read it?
I’d also read The 80/20 principle
Here’s a 5 second summary of time management that goes beyond “productivity hacks”
The better you get at your job, the more things you’ll have to do.
You think by being more productive you’ll be able to complete tasks quicker and clear your plate.
But here’s the secret:
Tasks lead to tasks.
The more productive you are, the busier you get.
There will never be enough time to do all of them.
You need learn to focus,
and do only the 20% of stuff that makes a difference.
And get ok with letting the rest slide.
It’s easier said than done though hahaha
As a completionist myself, this is hard.
Welcome to the joys of solopreneurship.
Get in.
Do the important work.
Get out.
- — from Success Oluwanifemi
- Brand Identity Designer
- Read full Q&A
"how do you handle overthinking?
I’m a terrible overthinker.
Sometimes it’s a superpower, which helps you brainstorm ideas
But often it’s a crutch which has you cycling through the same problem over and over with no progress.
- If it doesn’t need actioned now, write it down in a braindump list. Your mind is designed to hold onto unfinished tasks. braindumping reduces mental overwhelm
- If it’s a relevant problem, then try to work through it.
- Pick a habitual task that requires a little thought with movement like mowing the grass or walking the dog
- Process the problem while you do that
- If mind wanders bring it back gently to the problem
- Write down any insights that occur for clarity. Writing helps your process and define your thoughts.
- Notice when you’re “stuck in a loop” covering the same thoights over and over. Jot it down and move to the next stage of the problem.
- At the end tidy up your notes into an action list with microsteps that you can do now or later.
- Store it in your second brain or personal knowledge system for Solopreneurs that you can access later, and let go of for now .
- — from edi
- Read full Q&A
Shorter articles about Productivity
How to come up with the purest ideas
The purest honey comes from the nectar of many plants.
Don’t just mix content, but mix mediums too:
Read, watch, discuss, create, draw, listen.
Try reading fiction and education content at the same time.
When we mix sources, and take in different kinds of information we cross pollinate ideas to create new, more original thoughts.
Lifting 2 buckets is often easier than 1
Its counterintuitive but sometimes doing MORE of something requires LESS energy.
Allow me to explain this throiugh a gardening anaology, which you can apply to your business, to get twice as much done with LESS effort.
today in the garden, I’d just had a lot of fun chainsawing a whisky barrel in half,
to build large planters which I now need filled with almost a ton of soil.
Normally I’m always on the lookout for the easiest option, the best tool…
The path was too twisty and tight for a wheelbarrow,
and I even tried building a ramp up the edge of the large planters so I could tip the soil right in.
But In the end, the rule of Occam’s razer applied:
The simplest solution was the best.
It proved easier to simply lift buckets full of soil instead.
But here’s where it gets interesting:
What I noticed was that it’s physically easier to carry 2 full buckets of heavy soil,
Than it is to carry 1 bucket at a time.
2 buckets is, of course, more efficient:
I had to walk the distance from the bags of soil to the planters each time.
So it requires the same walking time to deliver X2 the amount of soil.
You’ll see this in business a lot.
Your smaller projects require the same amount of admin as projects which bill for X2 as much.
But I’m not talking about efficiency…
I mean physically easier.
Somehow X2 buckets needs less muscle power. Less energy.
My theory on this…
If you carry one bucket you have to use your abs and muscle power to awkwardly counteract the sideways pull of the bucket, which sites awkwardly outside your centre of balance.
But with 2 buckets the weight counteracts the other,
And the only effort is the vertical weight of the bucket.
And each arm can apply the same upwards power to each bucket with no extra effort.
In other words, the work is balanced.
One bucket balances the other,
and provides better lifting form.
But how is this relevant to running a solo business?
In lots of ways:
Raising your prices simultaneously increases your profit and attracts better clients, who require less admin.
(Low price clients are famously more work).
Which means you typically earn more money for less overall work.
How I’m applying this to my own business?
I’m bulk and batch processing my tasks.
Don’t write one social post at a time
I answer multiple emails in one go.
I focus on doing lots of one similar task at a time
I theme my days.
This is not the 1st time the humble bucket has led me to wisdom.
Here’s one more lesson in using leverage to build the life you want.
P.s here’s the planters:
A mutilplier for life
Your daily routine is a multiplier.
Bad habits = chaotic life
A good day = a good life
Your “life” is the foundation you build you business on
So design your routine,
Stick to it every day.
A good routine is how you live a good life
You either get better or you get worse
- “I shouldn’t have to do this, this is Xs fault”
- “If X hadn’t happened I’d have more money”
- “If I had only done Y then I’d have more time right now”
We all have thoughts like these.
But every obstacle is an opportunity to take responsibility, to learn, to harden yourself, to expand your mind, to create a good story for later.
Your behaviours are a series of habits.
carving a familiar groove into your brain,
like water running downhill.
You either become better at tackling your problems…
or better at procrastinating on important tasks.
Each time you make a choice you are reinforcing a habit.
Use momentum to beat the hump
There is a point in any project or endeavour,
Where you make quick gains at the start,
you feel like you’re winning,
then suddenly you hit the hump.
This is where most people give up.
It’s like driving a car:
easy to get to 30 mph.
just a little bit harder to get to 60mph
much harder to get to 70mph
Success is doing the same things up to the point where you lose momentum, then carry on.
Carrying on until the next paradigm shift or breakthrough
every long term project has multiple humps.
at this point shiny object syndrome normally kicks in and you move onto something else and start again.
Realign with your goals
stay to the path
Use consistency to beat the hump
Build a second brain + AI + VR = A sci-fi dystopia?
Second brains + AI +VR = a dystopian sci-fi novel?
I recently read “Build a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte and science-fiction “Neuromancer” by William Gibson.
People like Hormozi have published so much content online that you can use Chat GPT to mimic his writing style, philosophy and thoughts.
The second brain of Hormozi’s thoughts is a collection of his life philosophy, his insights, his systems, his operating methods, his strategies and tactics, even his voice and wording.
So if the AI avatar of Hormozi is indistinguishable from the person Hormozi, then what is real?
does it even matter?
As we publish we are all building a profile of our own thoughts which AI can disseminate into an AI avatar.
It’s not far fetched to imagine that eventually we will have AI avatars of ourselves to do our bidding…
(if you can afford it, of course! 🤣)
Is it unrealistic to think that instead of paid consultations,
Our audience could prompt our online database of wisdom for their own benefit.
eventually we will offer paid access to our second brains?
or even paid access to our AI avatars as chatbots?
Just now access to our second brain would provide little value:
Knowledge by itself is useless.
But knowledge distilled through our own experience and philosophy becomes something far more valuable:
Wisdom!
Then consider further how we use our second brains to work in teams:
Tiago Forte talks about the magic point where your body of works becomes more than the sum of its parts, more than yourself.
We see teams coming together and contributing to the the second brain.
imagine a future where small groups of like-minded people come together and operate from collective second brains to achieve a specific purpose,
or even to build their own collective AI avatar to act as a representative for their collective thoughts and views…
A hive-mind, or “nation of many”.
Within this hive-mind a group could feasibly filter information to share and build their own version of reality
Let’s take that further.
Gibson famously coined the whole “cyberpunk” movement in his “Neuromancer” novels.
He envisioned a dystopian version of the internet, long before the internet was even a concept.
The attention economy, the abuse of big data, and many of his other predictions about the internet age were creepily accurate….
But in Neuromancer people had to “plug in” to use the net, just like in the Matrix.
With emerging tech like VR and AR this is now becoming increasingly recognisable.
So when we combine the possible future trajectories of second brains, VR and AI,
Will we all be living with groups of likeminded people in collective, self-determined realities?
We already live an age of ‘blurred reality’:
come election time, what you see on your feeds does not reflect the same reality that I see.
We are served a subjective reality depending on our own preferences and viewpoints.
People have always organised, and segregated, themselves by arbitrary labels.
Religion, Race, Class, Politics, Personality type etc.
Here we now have a new potential divide, where people draw new borders depending on the reality they choose to immerse themselves in.
I’m going to nip off this thought trail here as it has no practical value to anything I’m doing.
interesting though….
More topics for solopreneurs
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