Even turtles can fly.
I just wrote a short ebook about time management.
You can fill out the form over there to the right to grab a copy for yourself. And I believe a version of that form should magically manifest on this page any second now.
But between you and me, the whole subject of time management makes me a bit crazy. Measurements of time are pretty arbitrary to begin with. The whole hours and minutes thing is really just a way for two people to get to the same place at the same, uh, time. And that’s fine.
But it takes serious hubris to think you can manage time. If you buy into the whole time concept, you know that clocks tick and Earths turn with or without our intervention.
And it takes really serious hubris to tell other people how they should manage time. Before I wrote my little gem I looked at a bunch of books on the subject. Oh, lordy. The Oprah-ready clichés. The “now let’s get ourselves organized” systems. Systems! One system told me to create a time journal. Say what? Take the time to write about the time I just wasted? What a waste of time!
Sure, I found good stuff in every book, really helpful chestnuts like “Don’t procrastinate.” All dragged out over the very time-consuming course of 300+ pages.
Mine’s 28 pages with a lot of white space.
In the end, I fell back on my own experience along with advice I’ve gleaned from a cadre of really successful entrepreneurs.
See, I’ve been on an eye-opening journey the last few years, learning about Internet marketing from supersuccessful dudes like Chris Farrell, James Schramko, Yanik Silver, Jeff Johnson, and Eben Pagan, and copywriting from John Carlton and Robert Gibson.
These guys make most freelance writers I know look like distracted slackers—and the freelance writers I know are a hard-working bunch.
But times have changed, in case you hadn’t noticed. Writers can’t just trundle off on an assignment, write it up, move on to the next one, and call it a living. The pitch-and-pray model of freelance journalism is dead. We can either starve while we wait for overworked editors to ignore our pitches, or take matters into our own hands.
That’s what this blog and my little ebook are all about.
We’re entrepreneurs now. We’re small businesses.
We need to learn about focus, audacity, and vision from entrepreneurs who parlay those traits into big bucks.
We need to embrace new technologies—notice that my latest projects are an app and a Kindle book.
We need to learn how to market our work. No, not “brand” ourselves. We need to market and sell stuff.
And if we think of ourselves as artists, fine. I appreciate that writerly measure of pride. But I’ll end this post just as I end my ebook—with a quote from Steve Jobs:
“Real artists ship.”
