I did this as my first foray into NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, which takes place every November. Now in its 11th year, NaNoWriMo has become a popular international event (despite the “Na” part of its name).

The goal is simple: write a 50,000 word novel from scratch in the month of November. 50,000 words because it’s a nice round number towards the lower end of the novel range. And November because the founders wanted to take advantage of the miserable weather.

You can start planning beforehand, but you can’t actually start writing until November 1st. Other than that, there aren’t really any hard rules, although they suggest that you don’t just write the same word 50,000 times. They say that if you think it’s a novel, they think it’s a novel.

This year, there are 170,000 participants, and about 15% of the participants will “win,” or reach the 50,000 word minimum by the end of the month. There are no points for character development or interesting plots; if you write 50,000 words, you win. The premise here is quantity over quality.

While that may sound crazy, the idea is that most aspiring novelists fail to write their novel, not because they’re not good enough, but because they just don’t get the words written. They have this saying: a bad draft can be revised into a great novel, but a blank page can’t be revised into anything other than a blank page. And surprisingly, some NaNoWriMo novels have become bestsellers.

I wasn’t sure if I could even finish, let alone do a decent job. But I love the finished product.

I haven’t officially “won” yet, because their site doesn’t let you verify your word count until November 25th. When you do, you get a printable certificate, an icon for your website, and inclusion in the winner’s list.

Will I do it again? Maybe not. I’m really glad I did it once, but I found it extremely stressful. But for those who want to, here are some tips.

1. Decide whether it’s worth it.

This is a big commitment that will take over your whole November. While you can back out at any time, it’s best to decide up front whether you really want to do it. If not, then don’t do it. If so, then don’t make excuses.

2. Turn off the TV, log out of Twitter.

There’s no time to lose, and you can’t afford distractions.

3. Join a support group.

NaNoWriMo offers a built-in community, with forums and ways to connect with local groups. I didn’t use these features, but they’re great for people who need to be in touch with other people who are going through it. I did enjoy the occasional pep talk emails though.

4. Know that you can do it.

I’ve heard people say that they can’t write a novel because they’re not a novelist. Well of course you’re not a novelist, if you haven’t written a novel yet! But after you write one, then you will be a novelist. So get started.

5. Do your planning and research ahead of time.

While I didn’t have much of an outline in my head before I started, I had some ideas. I also knew the main characters – their names, and a little bit about them. And the stuff I needed to research, I tried to do it before I started writing. Once the clock starts ticking, you want to just go full speed ahead.

6. Don’t worry too much about quality.

This was a tough one for me, because I tend to write very slowly, since I want to make sure everything works out just right. But I knew I didn’t have time for that here. I’ll need to go through my draft again to proofread it (I already noticed I accidentally brought a character back to life by using the wrong name). And I’m sure I introduced some inconsistencies by starting out one way, then changing my mind.

These things can all be taken care of later. That’s why they call it a rough draft. Rest assured that bookstores are filled with novels that are worse than yours will be.

7. Pace yourself.

50,000 words in 30 days is 1,667 words a day (that’s almost exactly the length of this blog post). But if you target the minimum, you have a problem when you fall short. I wrote 6,009 words the first day because I was excited to get started, but I knew that wasn’t sustainable. I decided to target 2,000 words a day, a goal I hit consistently, though I found it to be quite a lot.

By sticking to just over 2,000 words a day, I was on track to finish on time, without a big rush at the end. When I first saw that I could finish before Thanksgiving, and then saw that I could finish in three weeks, I ramped it up a bit. But only on three days did I write significantly more than 2,000 words.

8. Resist the urge to edit.

If you have a tiny little tweak to make, go ahead and do it now. But if it will take a while, just write a note to come back to it later. It will be hard enough just to write everything once, and there won’t be time to write everything twice.

9. Write the kind of novel you want to write.

Don’t think that your novel has to be the kind of thing high school kids would study in English class. Some parts of my novel are beyond ridiculous, but that’s the way I wanted to write. So you write the way you want to write.

10. Make decisions fast.

On the first page, I found myself in the midst of a huge internal debate over the brand of bourbon that the main character should be drinking. Realizing that there was absolutely no time for hesitation, I knew I had to just pick one and move on. This happened many times, so I got in the habit of deciding quickly, and reserving the right to change things later (the bourbon did change, in the end).

11. Be aware that some parts are much easier to write than others.

I found writing dialogue to be really cumbersome. I like writing what the characters say, but I hate figuring out how to say that they said it (i.e., “Blah blah blah,” he said in an accent reminiscent of the Swedish Chef on the Muppets, “blah blah blah blah blah.”)

But when I was writing exposition (the main character reflecting on the significance of various things), the words just flew by. So when I found myself writing fast, I kept following that train of thought as far as it would go. That would help pick up the slack when the words came like molasses flowing uphill.

12. Have a word count safety net.

I had one particular scene in mind that could be as long as I needed it to be, because two characters were just talking about stuff while waiting for something to happen. I was saving it for the end. I thought I’d write the rest of the book first, and after I was done, however short I was of 50,000 words, I’d get the rest from this scene. It could have been 20,000 words if it had to be. As it turned out, I didn’t need any extra words, but it was nice to know I had a safety net if I did.

13. Don’t necessarily do it in 21 days. Or even 30 days.

This kind of goes against the whole foundation of NaNoWriMo, but I think some people are better off not subjecting themselves to this time constraint. NaNoWriMo gives you 30 days to write 50,000 words, which is insane. I wrote 55,000 words in 21 days, which is even more insane.

Keep in mind that the time needed to write something increases more than proportionally with the word count. A 50,000 word novel takes much more than 50 times as long as a 1,000 word blog post. Writing a novel is a really big deal. If it’s going to drive you crazy to force yourself to do it in such a short period of time, then give yourself more time.

60 days would probably give you a comfortable yet fairly brisk pace for writing a 50,000 word novel. I wouldn’t stretch it out any longer than that though, or you might never finish. Get a decent draft done quickly, then revise it.

How many words in a novel?

By the way, for those of you wondering how long a novel has to be, The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Award gives these definitions:

Novel: 40,000+ words
Novella: 17,500-39,999 words
Novelette: 7,500-17,499 words
Short story: less than 7,500 words

NaNoWriMo sets the minimum word count at 50,000, a nice round number that’s big enough to be considered a novel. And while that word count is on the low end of the novel spectrum, there have been some great novels around that length. Personally, I find most novels far too long. When I read The Lord of the Rings, I remember wondering “are these damn hobbits ever going to stop singing?”

For reference, here are some well known works (some of them shorter than novel length), sorted by word count.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

It’s been about five months since I last wrote about Alex Fayle, the “Someday Syndrome” guy. For those who don’t know him, he specializes in helping people uncover hidden patterns so they can break their procrastination habit and start living the life they desire.

He’s taken his previous ebook off the market to update and expand it. But he’s also just released his new one: I’ll Get Around To It Someday: A Practical Guide To Getting Things Done.

In this new ebook, he gives us more insight into how to end the procrastination that makes us put our somedays off to, well, “someday.” When you learn how to kill the disinterest, inertia, and fear at the roots of procrastination, you can start making serious progress on what’s important to you.

If you ever find day after day going by, without taking steps towards your dreams, definitely check it out.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

Let’s say you drive to work at 40 mph, and come back at 60 mph. What was your average speed?

It’s natural to think your average speed was 50 mph, but it was actually 48 mph. It would be 50 mph if you spent the same amount of time at both speeds. But since you’re spending more time at 40 mph than you are at 60 mph, your average speed has to be less than 50 mph.

If you’re driving to the beach, you might try to hold steady at 60 mph. But you won’t be able to stay exactly at that speed. You’ll sometimes be going a little faster, and sometimes be going a little slower. Even if the fast periods perfectly cancel out the slow periods, your average speed will still be less than 60 mph.

If you use cruise control, you not only save effort and gas, you also save time. That’s what slow and steady (emphasis on the steady) does for you.

And it’s one reason why you’re more productive when you do things at a steady pace, instead of slacking off and trying to make up for it later. It’s better to put your efforts on cruise control.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

If Paul Scheele, co-founder of Learning Strategies Corporation, had narrated the intro for The Six Million Dollar Man, it would have gone something like this:

“Steve Austin, average reader, a man barely above 200 words per minute. Gentlemen, we can retrain him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first PhotoReader. Steve Austin will be that PhotoReader. Better than he was before. Better, smarter, faster.”

OK, that was kinda cheesy, but PhotoReading really is like getting a bionic implant in your brain. They describe it as getting your reading done in the time you have, at the level of comprehension you need. Paul Scheele developed this system based on his extensive background in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), accelerated learning, and preconscious processing.

Traditional speed reading

Before we get into PhotoReading, let’s first talk about traditional speed reading. This is all about moving your eyes faster across the page. It’s not very complicated at all, and you can start doing it right now by following these tips.

1. Use your finger to keep your place on the page. If you lose your place now and then, you can waste a lot of time reading stuff you’ve already read. Keeping your finger moving also reminds you to keep your reading pace up, and frees up your mind to focus on reading instead of holding your place.

This is such a simple trick, but it’s amazingly effective.

2. Don’t subvocalize. This means that when you read a word, don’t sound it out in your head. Just see the word and your brain will know what it means.

Some people say that subvocalization aids comprehension. I don’t think it helps as much as they say, and anyway, it will stop you from reading much faster than you can imagine a voice in your head.

This is a tough habit to break completely, but it’s not too hard to make some progress if you try.

3. Use your peripheral vision. Moving your eyes all the way from one side of the page to the other makes them tired and slows you down. This is the reason that web pages today have fairly narrow columns, as opposed to web pages from the mid 90s that took up the full width of the screen.

But since you can read a word without focusing directly on it, you don’t need to move your eyes all the way back and forth. If you do that, you’re just wasting your peripheral vision on the margins.

Keep your eyes more to the middle of the page, and use your peripheral vision to read the first few and last few words on each line. (Thanks to Tim Ferriss for this speed reading tip.)

4. Kindle tip: press the “next page” button before you get to the end of the page. Probably the most common complaint I hear about the Amazon Kindle is that the page turning is too slow, despite it being 20% faster in the Kindle 2 than the Kindle 1.

I can only think that these people must be reading all the way to the last word on the page before pushing the button, so that fraction of a second seems like a long time. Instead of doing that, push the button a bit early, timing it so that the page turns right after you finish the last word.

OK, that’s basic speed reading for you. These tips alone will work wonders. For the average person, they will at least double your reading speed, easily.

Beyond just moving your eyes faster

But that’s not really enough, is it? You can only move your eyes so fast, and if you go too fast, your increased speed will come at the cost of reduced comprehension.

The average person reads at 220 wpm, and only 1% of all people can read at 400 wpm. How then, can PhotoReading catapult average readers far past the 1% level? Because it’s not based on moving your eyes faster across the page.

Time for a little reading comprehension test. Go ahead and read this paragraph:

“With hocked gems financing him, our hero bravely defied all scornful laughter that tried to prevent his scheme. ‘Your eyes deceive,’ he had said. ‘An egg, not a table, correctly typifies this unexplored planet.’ Now three sturdy sisters sought proof. Forging along, sometimes through calm vastness, yet more often very turbulent peaks and valleys, days became weeks as many doubters spread fearful rumors about the edge. At last from nowhere welcome winged creatures appeared, signifying momentous success.”

You probably think it makes no sense at all. That’s because you’re missing the context.

In 1971, Dooling and Lachman ran an experiment using this paragraph. Half the subjects read it without being given a title, and had very poor recall. But half the subjects were told that the title was “Christopher Columbus Discovering America,” and for them it made perfect sense.

How did you feel when you read that paragraph, not knowing what it was about? It probably wasn’t much fun. Now, what if you felt the same way as you plowed through an entire book, word by word? At best, you’d be wasting your time. At worst, you’d feel the dread of knowing you weren’t getting the information you need to pass your test or do well at your job.

If you were reading it in context, knowing up front that it was about Christopher Columbus, you would have understood “an egg, not a table” (the world being round, not flat), the three sturdy sisters seeking proof (the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria), the fearful rumors about the edge (falling off the end of the world), the welcome winged creatures (birds, indicating land was nearby), etc. You would have retained much more of it, and I’m sure you would have found it far more enjoyable to read.

I came across this paragraph in a book that had nothing to do with PhotoReading, but I used it here as an example of why reading better isn’t just about moving your eyes faster. It’s about changing the way you read, using your brain the way it works best instead of plowing through the pages with brute force.

What PhotoReading is not

PhotoReading is really a fantastic system. First though, let me talk about what I think are the two biggest downsides. These aren’t really flaws, just limitations you should be aware of.

Whenever PhotoReading is mentioned, you often see a figure of 25,000 words per minute. This needs some clarification. PhotoReading is the name of the whole reading system, as well as one of the specific steps of that system.

The PhotoReading step involves flipping through the pages at a brisk but relaxed pace of about one page per second, not reading, but mentally photographing the pages at about 25,000 words per minute. But because the PhotoReading system involves other steps, your overall reading speed will be much lower. They say it will triple your reading speed, and I think that’s a perfectly fair estimate.

Your reading speed will vary from one book to the next because you have a lot of flexibility in how you apply the system, but tripling your reading speed is no big deal for a PhotoReader. In some cases, it will be much faster.

The other thing is that PhotoReading is not appropriate for all books. When reading a murder mystery, you might want to take your time soaking up every word, and you certainly don’t want to ruin the suspense by reading anything out of order. In that case, normal reading, or perhaps traditional speed reading, would be the way to go.

You would use PhotoReading when you want to extract information out of a book, when your intent is to learn something but not necessarily to enjoy the experience of a beautifully unfolding storyline. Most of us read both kinds of books, so we’d choose the best way to read based on what kind of book it is.

What PhotoReading is

One thing you always have to keep in mind is your goal in reading your book. Is your goal to consciously process every word? No. You might choose to do so, but reading every word is not your goal per se.

Your goal might be something like learning the advantages of the new cover sheets for the TPS reports, so you can decide whether to recommend using them in your department. Your goal will be completely different for each book, and be highly personalized based on what you already know, what you need to know, and how much time you have.

Whatever your goal is, the most efficient way to achieve it is almost certainly not to read every word. In fact, you’ll probably find that only 4% to 11% of the text carries the essential meaning for you.

I know it’s hard to accept that, because we’ve been trained to read every single word, but you can check this for yourself. One of the purposes of PhotoReading is to make it easy to find the parts of the text that are relevant for you, based on what you’re trying to get out of it.

PhotoReading involves a lot of things, and I can’t cover everything here. But one of the most important differences from normal reading is that you don’t just read every word from start to finish in one pass.

Instead, you make multiple passes though it. On each pass, you identify specifically what else you want to get out of the book, and whether it’s worth spending time on that. If so, you focus your efforts on going deeper into the parts you need.

With normal reading, you could read a whole book from cover to cover, only to find that it wasn’t worth reading. With PhotoReading, you improve your comprehension on each iteration, until you reach the point of diminishing returns.

If you read the 10% of the book that contains 90% of the value, why would you want to then read the remaining 90% just to get the other 10% out of it? In the same time it takes to get 100% out of one book, you could get 90% out of 10 books. The main thing PhotoReading does is let you find the most important parts, so you don’t have to read everything blindly.

Does it work?

The most controversial aspect is the PhotoReading step itself. This is the part of the system where you flip through the book, mentally photographing one page per second by looking at them in a certain way.

Paul Scheele acknowledges that you won’t have any conscious recollection of what you’ve mentally photographed. He says you’ve put the information in your inner mind, but you then need to bring it to the conscious mind using specific activation techniques.

I can’t say with any kind of scientific certainty whether the mental photographing works, because I’m not an expert in NLP, accelerated learning, or preconscious processing. I believe that it does, but I can’t prove it.

However, I know for sure that the PhotoReading system would let you read faster with better comprehension even if you skipped the actual PhotoReading step! (Not that you should, but you could.)

Why? Because so much of the system makes sense without any leap of faith. Things like making multiple passes, having a clear purpose, taking an active approach to reading, prioritizing different parts of the material, recognizing core concepts, tailoring your approach to your specific goals, being in the right state of mind while reading, skipping text that is redundant or not relevant to you, mind mapping, associative memory techniques, utilizing a variety of reading styles, and more.

Some people try to discredit PhotoReading because they don’t accept that the subconscious mind can play an important role in reading. That’s certainly understandable, and I don’t really understand that part myself. However, these people are overlooking the many parts of the system that obviously work. Anything that the subconscious mind adds is icing on the cake.

My first real world test of the system happened when I was partway through the 9 CDs, when I went to the library. Normally I check out one book or maybe two. Any more than that, and there’s a big chance that I’ll get sidetracked by something else, and I won’t even start reading some of the books before the due date.

I just started browsing, and before I knew it, I had seven books in my hands. Seven? That was too much, and I thought I’d better put some back. But then I thought no, I’m going to see what happens. Using PhotoReading, I read three of those books later that same day. I breezed through the other four, and I went back for more. Yes, it works.

The verdict

The biggest drawback for me is that in some cases, I just don’t want to use PhotoReading for its intended purpose. That is, I really want to focus on every single word rather than extracting the information that’s important to me. Although when I hear myself saying that, it doesn’t seem to make much sense.

I think it’s tough to break the habit of reading every word, even when you know it doesn’t serve you. While you can use PhotoReading right away, they say you get better over time, and I’d guess that breaking this habit of over-reading is one of the things you get better at.

I’ve never been a scanner by nature, and when I have a good book, I really want to read it slowly. At the same time, I often read books that aren’t a work of art so much as a source of information.

For those books, it’s far better to get the information you need in a fraction of the time, so you can either read more books or have more time for other things. PhotoReading allows you the flexibility to vary your reading style to suit your needs, so I even use some of its techniques on the works of art.

I highly recommend the PhotoReading course, and I haven’t even remotely gone through all the material yet. The 9 CDs alone are terrific. I keep them in my car, and I’ve listened to them several times.

I don’t remember if I got the classic or deluxe version, but what I have also comes with a workbook, the books “PhotoReading” and “Natural Brilliance,” the 3 DVD set “PhotoReading Results Supercharger,” the “PhotoReading Activator” paraliminal CD, and the CD-ROM course “Clear Mind – Bright Future.” All of which I haven’t gotten to yet, and which are above and beyond the CDs that explain the whole system.

If you don’t have the money for it, I hope you got some good tips out of this anyway. But if you can afford the investment, PhotoReading will undoubtedly give a big boost to your reading speed, comprehension, and enjoyment. Try it risk-free, with their money-back guarantee. Of course, if you do, I’ll assume that you can just breeze through these 2,500 word posts.

Hunter Recommends:
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How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

Do you back up your computer files? Yeah, you know you should, but do you actually do it?

A couple of days ago, I was sitting on the couch, and my laptop was on the table to my right. I reached over and picked it up by grabbing the screen with my right hand. I’ve been doing this for four years with no problems, but this time I pinched too hard and the screen cracked.

I lost a big chunk of the display–the rightmost two inches, all the way from top to bottom. First I just thought I could live with it. Then the crack spread, and I had lost three inches on the right. That was pretty annoying.

Then the bottom started flickering. Colored horizontal lines started forming at the bottom and covered the task bar. Then they started rising, covering more and more of the display.

Not knowing when it would stop, I started copying files off my laptop as fast as I could. I couldn’t see the start button, but I managed to click it, open an Explorer window, and start zipping stuff.

It was nerve wracking, but it was also a little fun because it reminded me of an old arcade game called Noah’s Ark. As the water level rose from the bottom of the screen, you had to go find pairs of animals before they drowned. OK, it was more nerve wracking than fun.

The colored lines were soon halfway up the screen. I started FTPing stuff, hoping I could get it all out there before it was too late.

But soon enough, I had lost the whole screen. I found that if I moved the screen in either direction, the display would come back for a few seconds. I kept doing that so I could see enough to copy all the files.

My old computer was already dying anyway, so it was really time to get a new one. But what if I had lost important files? I had some backups, but Murphy’s Law says I wouldn’t have everything I needed.

Everything worked out fine, but take this as a reminder to back up your stuff. If your computer died today, would you be OK?

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

Anytime you need a throwaway email address that you’re only going to use once, Mailinator can provide one. That saves you from having to opt in to a list, when you just want to get the free download.

It’s very easy to use. Go to mailinator.com. You can make up any email address you want, but I just use a random one. On the left side below “Can’t think up an address,” they’ll have a link to a random address. Right now it says jrcvdgesgazwa@mailinator.com. Click that link and it takes you to the inbox for jrcvdgesgazwa@mailinator.com. The account is automatically created, and you don’t need to sign up for anything.

Now, when you want to download a free report and you need to give them an email address, you just give them jrcvdgesgazwa@mailinator.com. Then when you refresh the Mailinator page, you’ll see you have an email with a link to your free report. Meanwhile, your real email address remains free of spam. jrcvdgesgazwa@mailinator.com might get spam, but it doesn’t matter because you’ll never use that address again.

But you only need this when dealing with a potential spammer!

Mailinator is very useful when you don’t know who you’re dealing with, and you don’t know what they’ll use your email address for. But there are plenty of legitimate email lists out there that don’t spam you. They may offer a free report as a sweetener, but the list itself delivers value, not just sales pitches.

I tend to trust real people a lot more than faceless companies. If you know a person, and they’re offering a free ebook, in exchange for your email address, and they tell you what they’re going to email you, that’s probably fine. I’d be likely to opt in, if I know this person and I like their work.

Many people with legitimate mailing lists use AWeber, which has a very strict anti-spam policy and guarantees that you can opt out at any time. I’m never afraid to give my real email address to AWeber, and that’s what I use for my own newsletter. Besides, AWeber is smart enough to know about Mailinator, so they won’t let you use mailinator.com addresses.

To see if a mailing list is run through AWeber, just click the submit button without entering your name or email address. You’ll get an error of course, but you can see if it’s an AWeber error. If so, you can click the back button and enter your info. I’m sure there are other services with strict anti-spam policies, but I don’t know who they are.

Mailinator will set you free! Go forth and download free reports with reckless abandon!

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

Back in June I read the first chapter of Dave Navarro’s What’s Holding You Back? Beat The Seven Success Killers That Everyone Struggles With. (You get this chapter for free when you subscribe to his blog, Rock Your Day.)

I really liked it, so I bought the full version. And then I forgot about it for five months. One day I realized that what’s holding me back could be that I hadn’t read What’s Holding You Back, so I set aside some time to read it.

First of all, Dave is nuts to sell this for only $12.95. Maybe he lost a bet or something, I don’t know. But this is a good deal.

This is the kind of ebook where you have to be willing to do the exercises to get the most out of it. And there are LOTS of exercises. It’s sort of like having your own productivity coach, only in book form.

I’m not so good at giving compassionate advice. If someone says they’re trying to save money but they keep spending their whole paycheck by the end of the month, I’ll just say, “Well, stop doing that. What’s the problem?” But instead of just telling you what to do, Dave shows you how to figure out specifically where you’re having problems, and how to get through them in a way that makes sense for you.

It’s 172 pages, but it’s not as long as it sounds. He put in wide margins for taking notes, and there’s an appendix with another copy of all the worksheets in one place for handy reference. One thing I should say is that I found the sample chapter to be the best one, but we all have different opinions.

Anyway, since the first chapter is available for free, you might as well subscribe to Rock Your Day to get it. And then if you like it, you can buy the full version of What’s Holding You Back? Beat The Seven Success Killers That Everyone Struggles With for just $12.95. Seriously Dave, raise the price!

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

I just read the simple productivity ebook Todoodlist by Nick Cernis, and it’s a rare pleasure to be able to recommend an ebook so unequivocally. 97 pages but an easy read, it’s worth the $14 price just for the entertainment value alone. In particular, the “7 fun essays exploring our complex lives, including Zen Kitten in a Box and Parrots in Space” had me cracking up. Nick does a great job poking fun at how needlessly complex our lives have become.

I’m not into all the complicated productivity systems like GTD (which I haven’t read yet, but I probably will someday). I’m also not into high-tech stuff, except at work (where I don’t mind spending hours on overly complicated things). I like keeping things simple, and Nick is totally on board with that, having abandoned his PDA three years ago in favor of simpler methods. He offers 5 terrific productivity solutions using good old pencil and paper. (Actually, I’ve always greatly preferred pens to pencils, but he says pens are OK if they work for you.)

I can’t really get into any specifics, because these solutions are so simple that even a summary would give away too much. But although they’re simple, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re not using all 5 of them. In fact, I was only using one of them already. 2 of them aren’t for me, but the other 2 I’ll start using today.

Nick also describes a simple 5-step system for reducing complexity in your life. I found this part good but less original than his 5 productivity solutions, since we saw similar things in “The Four-Hour Workweek.”

There is an affiliate program paying 50%, and a 30 day no-quibble money-back guarantee. If you’re looking for good entertainment and simple productivity, look no further than Todoodlist. In fact, it’s going on the Resources page.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

When we talk about bang for the buck, “buck” can refer literally to dollars, but in general it means whatever resources or effort you put into something. “Bang” refers to whatever you get out of it: money, blog subscribers, friends, satisfaction, etc. And return on investment, or ROI, is just a fancy term for “bang for the buck.”

At the heart of The 4-Hour Workweek is the ability to do more with less. Making a full time income in 4 hours a week is better than making double the income in 40 hours a week. While very few people will be able to actually generate a decent income in only 4 hours a week, everyone will have their moments where they get a lot of bang for the buck.

Here are some of the actions I took with this blog that yielded a high return on investment:

- The Automatic Blog Post Rehasher took me a couple of days to create. The concept was pretty easy to come up with, and writing the code wasn’t bad. The main cost was the time it took to mindlessly copy and reformat all the text from the blogs to rehash.

When Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz discovered it, she wrote a post about it, and the traffic started coming in. It got 28 diggs, which isn’t a lot in absolute terms, but relative to the size of my blog it would be equivalent to Zen Habits getting 62,000 diggs. It instantly took me from about 20 subscribers to 44.

- One day the idea for The Zen of Blogging just came to me suddenly, and I wrote it in my head in about an hour. It took me a day to write the first draft. I don’t remember exactly how many hours it took, but it was less time than it’s taken me to write some of my posts. Three more days for editing, and it was done. This ebook later became the biggest factor in taking me from 44 to 205 subscribers.

- Revolution Money Exchange was the best financial return on investment I’ve had so far with this blog. By signing up for this PayPal competitor, I received a $25 signup bonus, received a $10 referral bonus for signing up one person, made $10 for the person who referred me, and made $25 for the person I referred. $35 for me and $35 for other people, for a few minutes of effort.

You might say that $35 isn’t much money, and you’re right…it’s not. But the point is that it’s $35 for such a small effort. As an hourly rate, it’s extremely high. Plus, the money for something like this is scalable with the number of subscribers I have. I think I had 84 subscribers at the time, so let’s assume a 1 in 84 conversion ratio. With 840 subscribers, I would have made $100 in referral bonuses. With 8,400 subscribers, I would have made $1,000 in referral bonuses. Just for a few minutes of effort.

(I just found out that the previous 4/15/08 deadline for receiving the $25 signup bonus has been extended to 5/15/08, so there’s still time if you want to get in on Revolution Money Exchange.)

How can we identify which actions will yield a high return on investment? I wish I knew for sure. We’d be a lot more effective if we could consistently pursue the high-ROI opportunities while ignoring the low-ROI opportunities.

Anything that says what we’re all thinking (e.g., the Automatic Blog Post Rehasher), anything that’s very different from its competitors (e.g., The Zen of Blogging), and anything that offers guaranteed money for little effort (Revolution Money Exchange) has a chance of paying off big. Anything that’s bold, risky, or efficient has a chance. Of course, ideas often don’t work out as we’d hoped. But when a fresh idea comes to you, or something interesting presents itself, if it seems like it could work, it’s usually a good idea to run with it.

Most likely, you’ll have to take a lot of low-ROI actions in order to find a few high-ROI actions. But if you keep your eyes open, you’ll see chances to make it big.

I’d like to hear your thoughts. How can you tell what actions have a good chance of providing you with a high return on investment? Or what are some things you’ve done that resulted in big rewards for little effort?

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It

“Persistence isn’t using the same tactics over and over. That’s just annoying. Persistence is having the same goal over and over.” – Seth Godin

(I hate to quote someone’s entire post, but I guess it’s OK if the post is only 21 words.)

Many things require persistence. We’re usually not good at something the first time we try it, and as we all know, practice makes perfect (or if you prefer, practice makes for improvement).

Persistence gets tricky when other people are involved. Someone often won’t do something the first time we ask. That’s why commercials have to run more than once. It’s hard to get someone’s attention, get them interested in doing what we want them to do, have them make time to do it, etc. So we often have to ask more than once.

But how do you ask more than once? Do you just say the same thing over and over again? After all, it eventually worked for Bart and Lisa Simpson with their “Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore? Will you take us to Mount Splashmore?”

But using the same tactics over and over can get very annoying. Even if it somehow works the first time, you’re likely to burn bridges in the process, and then it won’t work a second time. Is there a better way of being persistent when asking others for help?

When I wrote The Zen of Blogging, it was well received by those who read it, but with only 20 subscribers, I knew I wasn’t going to get it in front of many people by just posting it to my blog.

On the other hand, if I could get it in front of Darren Rowse of ProBlogger, I thought there was a good chance he’d write a post about it (after all, it’s relevant to his audience). And then I’d get a flood of highly targeted traffic, people interested in blogging, referred by someone who has a reputation as a blogging expert. It was the best promotional opportunity I could hope for.

But how could I grab Darren’s attention? How do you get noticed by someone who gets a thousand emails per second when they don’t know who you are?

First, I left some comments on his blog. While busy bloggers don’t respond to many comments, they probably read most if not all of them. I wanted Darren to see my name and know me as someone who leaves decent comments. This would hopefully make it more likely that he would read the email I was going to send him.

And then I ran into a serious obstacle. Darren wrote a post saying he was going out of town. He wasn’t going to be reachable when my ebook was released.

But another opportunity presented itself. Darren gave an open invitation for guest bloggers to help him keep up the posting while he was gone. If I could have a guest post published, I could put a link to my ebook at the bottom of the post. But the competition was fierce, and my post wasn’t chosen (at least not at the time; it could possibly be chosen down the road).

When I released my ebook, I emailed Darren even though I knew he wasn’t around. I quickly introduced myself, said I knew he was gone but I wanted to tell him about my ebook, and then, most importantly, I told him why he should care. Just a couple of sentences explaining why I thought my ebook would interest him personally, and why it would interest his readers.

When I didn’t get a response, that’s where many people would either (1) give up, or (2) keep emailing him to ask “Did you read my ebook yet? What about now? What about now?” I didn’t want to give up, but I knew that emailing him over and over would just be annoying. So I decided that now just wasn’t the time, and I’d come back to him later. (Some people would have emailed him again after a few days, which I think would have been OK, but I chose not to.)

I saw an opportunity when Darren posted that he had just gotten some help with cleaning up his email inbox from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. Leo helped him develop a system for dealing with the massive pile of emails he already had (most likely deleting them), and for managing his future emails more efficiently. Darren said he was sorry if he hadn’t gotten back to anyone, but he invited people to resend any emails he might have missed before “the great email culling of 2008.”

So I just emailed him again, saying I was taking him up on his offer to resend emails he might have missed. I told him about my ebook, and now I had some good testimonials to include to get him interested. He wrote back to confirm he got my email, and had added my ebook to his longish list of things to check out. A couple of days later, he posted about it, the traffic starting pouring in, and I had one of my biggest breakthroughs as a blogger.

This happened not because I used the same tactics over and over, but because I had the same goal over and over.

Hunter Recommends:
Greatness Without Genies: The Law of Attraction for Realists
How to Be Rich And Happy: Whatever You Want, Whenever You Want
How to Finally Find What You Love to Do And Get Paid For Doing It