5-Bullet Monday #46 (23/11/2020)

Happy Monday!

Just a quick reminder:

All DanSilvestre.com products will be full price on Black Friday this year.

However:

• From now — Monday, they’re 30% off.
• Tuesday — Wednesday, 20%.
• Thursday, 10%.

As an email subscriber, you get 35% off until Monday. Today is the last day.

1. Productivity Course (Zero to Done) + Productivity Vault (is $346.95, get it today for $225.52) — Jump in here
2. Productivity Course (Zero to Done) (is $297, get it today for $193.05) Jump in here
3. Productivity Vault (is $49.95, get it today for $32.47): Jump in here

Thank you for being a subscriber — it’s an absolute privilege to occupy some space in your inbox.

If you already have access to everything, you can preorder my next masterclass “Beat Procrastination Using Your Personality” for $97 ($63.05 with your reader discount)
 

This week I published:

How to Design Your Life to Focus on the Most Important Things (Essentialism by Greg McKeown)
Essentialism shows a new way of thinking about productivity and life. It’s a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless.

Essentialism is not a way to do one more thing; it is a different way of doing everything. It’s living by design, not by default.

If want to get updates of future videos, please consider subscribing to the channel. It would mean the world to me ;)

13 Procrastination Tips to Make Progress on Your Tasks (Easy to Apply)
How to stop procrastinating? You’ve tried every single technique found on Google and still nothing. But there IS a way and the following procrastination tips will show you just that.

Today you’ll learn how to stop this vicious cycle.

If want to get updates on future articles, please follow me on Medium.

Right, on to the Medley ;)
 

Here is your weekly dose of “5-Bullet Monday,” a list of what I’m pondering and exploring.

What I’m pondering—
I have a hard time asking for money. Like a really hard time. I always feel like a car-salesman of sorts, trying to sell people snake-oil.

Obviously, that’s not so. It’s just my brain playing tricks. Just knowing you’ll receive this email and read that promo in the intro sends chills down my spine.

What if you get annoyed? What if you think I’ve “changed”? That I was good before but now “he’s only doing it for the money”?

And every time I do a promo email (which is not a lot, mind you, just a couple of times per year), I get dozens of “hate” emails. I would love to just say it doesn’t affect me. That I just shrug it off. That I don’t care.

But I do care.

And so I have a hard time asking for money.

Never mind I’ve been studying performance and productivity for the good part of the last 10 years. Never mind reading hundreds of books over the years. Or digesting dozens of content—videos, podcasts, articles, papers— every single week. 

I’m not complaining. Make no mistake: I do love what I do. I wake up every day excited to learn more and teach others. To help people. People Just like you.

I will continue to do it even if I don’t get paid. And that was definitely the case in the beginning (read: for a couple of years).

But…

This is also what I do full-time for a living. And I do believe I provide a lot of value. 99% of what I publish is free.

I believe my products are fairly priced. The Vault is more than 300+ productivity hacks that I’ve collected over a period of years. And Zero to Done? 10 years of productivity research distilled into 4 hours.

So I believe they are both valuable and fairly priced. But most people will never find them unless I bring it to their attention. I have to do some sort of “sales”. It’s either that or starve.

(Ok, that’s a bit too dramatic. What I mean is: I’ll probably have to move to something else or devote fewer hours to this project)

I would love to get to a point where I don’t have to do any “selling”. People will just find my products and contribute so I can help research.

Now: how does one do that?

I have gotten amazing help over the years from readers of this newsletter. So maybe you know the answer? Or perhaps you have some advice, suggestions, feedback?

Hit reply and let me know ;)

What I’m sketching—
My entire process for recording videos. I’m adding notes for each part of the process so I can understand how to get better.

Doing this is extremely helpful when starting out a new project (or learning a new skill).

Each new video goes through 5 steps:

1. Script (if needed)
2. Record
3. Edit
4. Publish
5. Promote

I put a clock and go to work on each step. If I have an idea on something I can improve on a specific step, I write it down. And then I use those notes when doing it all over again.

Think of it as a factory. My “factory” has 5 machines. So, first things first, what is my bottleneck? Remember, from “The Goal”:

“The system only moves as fast as the bottleneck. To increase the capacity is to increase the capacity of ONLY the bottlenecks.”

So right now my biggest bottleneck is step 3, editing. So all that matters (for now), is to get better (read: faster) at that step. If I can become faster at editing (without compromising quality), the entire process will run faster.

How do you become better?

By learning.

Pick books, watch videos, find articles. Find people that at one point had the same problem. Learn how they solved it. And get this information from multiple people so you get different angles. See what works and what doesn’t. And in the end, you’ll have crafted your own “playbook”.

But don’t stop there.

Now that you know how to solve this problem, share it with the world. Share with friends. And strangers. Help people and the universe will help you back.

This has worked for me. And it will work for you.

And the cherry on the cake of doing all of this?

You’ll also get better at learning.

So the next time you have to learn something new, you already know how to learn.

And that’s the sort of skill that changes your life.

What I’m reading—
I finished “Factfulness” by Hans Rosling. If you want to get a better fact-based view of the world, I highly recommend it. The book reveals the 10 instincts that distort our perspective.

I’m now reading “Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams” by Matthew Walker.

This is another book that I’ve been recommended by multiple people. But I’ve also seen some debate on how solid (or not) the scientific research used in the book actually is. I’ll give you my opinion when finished ;)

What I’m waiting for—
Apart from a few single purchases, I never bought a lot of stuff during any of the big sales periods. But this time around I’m intentionally waiting for Black Friday to upgrade my desk setup.

The purpose of this upgrade is two-fold:

1. To be more productive when working—writing, editing videos, publishing this newsletter, etc.
2. Make it easier to record videos for YouTube, shooting courses/masterclasses, and coaching calls

So apart from the expected upgrades—monitor, keyboard, mouse—I’m also getting other not-so-fancy stuff such as tripods or goo’ old cables ;)

I’ve been working with just my MacBook for the good part of the last 5 years. It has been great but it has become a little bit painful lately. And that’s exactly when you should (if you can) look into upgrading…

What needs upgrading on your desk setup? Hit reply and let me know.

Be more productive—
In my Productivity Vault, you can find 300+ proven productivity hacks. These are all the productivity hacks I’ve spent years collecting and testing.

Everything that works with simple step-by-step instructions on how to apply to your work and life.

Get immediate access by clicking here.

Please give me feedback on Twitter. Which bullet above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Please let me know. Just send a tweet to @dansilvestrecom and put #5BulletMonday at the end so I can find it.

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I try to make it one of the best emails you get each week, and I hope you’re enjoying it.

If you want to support the 5-Bullet Monday newsletter and my other writing, there are many ways you can do that here.

And should you come across anything interesting this week, send it my way. I love finding new things to read through members of this newsletter.

Have a great week ;)

Dan

P.s. don’t forget to subscribe to the channel ;)