I aim for my writing on productivity to be inclusive and non-judgemental, so even neurodivergent people and those with chronic health issues can find something valuable in it.
My very early posts here tend to be less mature, and don’t necessarily reflect my current attitude. Still, there is lots of useful advice in them as well.
I truly believe everyone would benefit from taking a long break from social media at least once a year. In my many articles on this topic I gushed about the benefits of digital media sabbaticals, and my own experiences with increased mindfulness, focus, and productivity. So let’s talk about why people typically avoid trying a digital media detox. Read more...
Imagine there was one important thing that you could do that would result in better client satisfaction, higher productivity, attracting more ideal clients, more money, and less stress for you—would you do it? Who wouldn't, right? This magical-sounding method is designing your very own signature client process. In this article I’ll explain why I believe that any creative consultant would benefit from it, and how to get started if you don't have a process yet. Read more...
The greatest time-saving trick of all time that I’ve discovered is having everything written down and accessible wherever I go. There are so many things you could (and in my opinion, should) have written down, and this includes the brand style guide: a document containing your brand elements and assets, so you can review and share them with your team. Read more...
Working on long-term goals is hard. Our brains are not exactly wired for it—we carry biases that undermine our efforts to become successful at whatever we’ve chosen to do. If we want to achieve something bigger than we’ve ever accomplished before, we need to support ourselves better because willpower alone is not enough. Here are the methods I’ve used to overcome my own unproductive patterns and self-publish my book. Read more...
Last year I’ve updated my blog every single week without fail, despite all the client deadlines, long workdays, launches, teaching, traveling and conferences, vacations, burnout... It was quite an eventful year, and my blog kept on ticking like clockwork. Want to know how? Read more...
If you’re anything like me, you’re probably curious about what other creatives use to do their work and run their business. In this post I lay all the high-tech & low-tech tools and software that I use to run my creative graphic design business. Read more...
If you're anything like me, you've got too many projects you're working on in various stages of completion. There are many things you want to “get around to eventually” that you know would be helpful to your business. Contrary to popular opinion, success is not out of your reach because you don't know what to do. I know you do. There's something else at work here, and I'll tell you what it is. Read more...
Perfectionism is badmouthed on blogs and social media all the time. It's a modern boogeyman that incapacitates many creative people. But is there a good side to it? Here's how to use the benefits of perfectionism, without letting it paralyze your progress. Read more...
Good ideas are cheap – you hear a dozen new ideas every morning before breakfast as you’re scrolling through your newsfeed. They don’t change you. They don’t turn you into a better person. Positive change requires conscious effort. It requires you to think, implement, test and evaluate, and it requires you to make difficult decisions. Read more...
Productivity tips can only offer you so much. If blog posts could change your thought patterns and habits in an instant, I'd be a mix of Buddha and Neil Gaiman by now. We all know that if you want something to happen, you need to put in the work every day. It's so simple. For this reason I decided to tackle this topic from a different angle, one that is more geared toward understanding yourself and your reluctance to, you know, actually doing the friggin’ work. Read more...
You may be wondering what having a morning ritual has to do with fostering creative productivity. There is a connection, and I've found out through practice that a fulfilling morning ritual makes your whole day infinitely better. Read more...
I’ll tell you what this “super secret” tip is straight away: create first, consume later. That’s it. Simple. Not easy, though. If it were easy, more people would be doing it. I know I have a tough job of convincing you why this tip is so helpful and might radically transform your creative output. In the rest of this post, I’ll try to make my best case for it, and offer some ways you can put it into practice. Read more...
Information addiction can be a huge block to growing our business. If you see this as a problem in your own life, you may be wondering how you can deal with that. Here are some things that helped me, and I hope they’ll give you some ideas to try out. Read more...
How often do you go through an experience, and afterwards you think “Why did I get myself into this again? I’ve been through similar things so many times before, I’m supposed to know better by now.”
Falling for the same thing time after time doesn’t mean you’re stupid, or that you lack self-awareness – it just means you're not doing enough to remember what you already know. In this post, I offer some tips on how to do that. Read more...
No matter how wild, beautiful and free your creative work is, there are some things you need to do so your business could thrive that are just booooriiiiiiing. Maybe you postpone things that are essential to keeping your life and work running smoothly because you’re either intimidated by these tasks, or the very thought of doing them is exhausting. I wrote a bunch of ideas how you can approach your boring, tedious and fear-inducing tasks to make them slightly less terrifying and dull. Read more...
If I were to choose one secret weapon that helps my productivity more than any other, I'd have to say it's meditation. I know, it sounds weird to associate meditation – the epitome of non-doing – with productivity, which is all about doing, but if you think about it a little, it actually makes perfect sense. Meditation and action are polar opposites, but as with any opposites, one cannot exist without the other. We need the state of non-doing in order to be able to define doing, and vice versa. Meditation acts like a reset button on those thoughts, and enables me to get the most out of my time. Here are 5 ways meditation can boost your productivity. Read more...
You know how it goes. You come up with a brilliant idea for a project you want to bring to fruition. You break it down into phases and tasks, and create a foolproof action plan with deadlines when everything needs to get done by. And then weeks and months go by, and you're constantly running behind. You move things around and postpone them, and then postpone again and again. 'What the hell is wrong with me?!' you think to yourself, despairing. You have no clue why those Other People seem to have it all together and follow through on their goals. Life would be so much easier if you could just stick to your plan and do the things you wanted to do within the deadlines you set. Read more...
If you were to examine how you spend your time, you'd realize that a lot of it is wasted on activities that don't really bring you joy and fulfillment, but you're doing them over and over again because they became a habit. I'll show you how I make sure that when I sit down to do something for my work or personal projects, I stay focused. Learn the 5 ways you can create the ideal conditions for focus and creative flow. Read more...
In the start-up world people often present early concepts of their work because they don't want to put thousands of hours of work and boatloads of money into something that isn't even interesting or useful to other people. And what do most of us do? We wait until we build it — no actually, we wait until we perfect it — and then we show it to the world. Read more...
We usually imagine Resistance, or creative block, as a solid, heavy thing blocking our path. It's difficult to bypass and impossible to move or destroy. Sometimes we see it as a little nagging monster, riding on our backs the entire time, covering our eyes and generally causing mayhem. I propose a different visual that might feel less intimidating. Read more...
I can become your design fairy godmother and transform your brand from a frog into a prince.