Do you have a notebook or a list somewhere of some ideas that you thought were just amazing? Have you ever been out with friends one day and came out with a killer t-shirt idea? Or even worse have you made something and shared it with the only friend and then put it away to never be seen again.
I am one of those people who rarely ships but ends up collecting a bunch of ideas and concepts that I believe in. But, I don’t ship. I make excuses and blame the world. But, I don’t ship.
If you can relate to any one this. I want you to join me. April is going to be the month of the ship. There are 5 Sundays in April and the goal is to release something new each Sunday. The only rule is that you have to make one thing a week for the month of April. The size and scope of that thing are up to you. But, you just have to ship something. It can be anything you have been wanting to release or even want to relaunch.
If you want to work on one big idea this month. Break that out into pieces and try to hit a weekly milestone.
I recently just finished tracking my mood for 30 days. Any app that can change my thinking or change my behavior I am always up for trying. I like to see if they can help me break some bad habits or even introduce some new behaviors.
Today, I was trying a new app called The Five Minute Journal. The app started off as a physical product first as a notebook. The concept is to spend 5 minutes in the morning at night answering a few simple questions such as “I am grateful for..” and “What Would Make Today Great?” and then at night “3 Amazings Things That Happened” and “How could today have been better?”
Looking at the questions they seem very simple. Yet, I struggled a lot. I thought it was interesting that it took me awhile to answer these questions. The made me think and they made even a bit uncomfortable to think about. I am going to try this out for a month and see what happens. But, I feel like the results are going to be interesting.
Starting tomorrow, I am going to start a 5-week challenge to start to ship some of my ideas finally. As important as I think it is to make sure that we that we actually try to release our ideas onto the world. We also have to keep in my mind the fact of that matter that should this idea exist and who would benefit from them. I have been thinking about sales a lot and being able to make one of this challenge.
One of the best feelings that I have had in the last 6 months was selling a copy of a course that I made. Release and finishing a product was one thing. But, that validation of someone taking out their credit card and say yes to something that you make is second to none.
I keep this list handy with me when I am thinking about ideas.
Products Anyone Can Make
1. Book
2. White paper, research guide, compilation
3. Course/workshop
4. Screencast, video, or podcast/audio
But, tomorrow is day one of our challenge to make and ship your ideas. May just might be a challenge in sales.
Today, is going to be some prepare work for the challenge. Week 1 for me is going to be releasing a new ebook. I’ve had an idea for some short stories for months now. I haven’t been able to get this out the door. I have some work done on it so it is the perfect project for a short week. I had some people yesterday reach out to me asking what are some ideas of things they can ship.
So, if you want to get in on the challenge. For week 1, I would say to pick something that you have already started to work on or something that might just require blocking off a time. A few good examples would be starting a blog, setting up your computer to live stream on Twitch, sign up for Medium, deploy that unfitted website.
For week 2, let us go into that idea folder. If you have that one project that has been lingering around or an idea that seems to surface once a month. Let us start looking at that one. What is the smallest piece of that project that we can get live? Is it a landing page to start collecting emails, maybe it is finding design help to get the web app rolling.
The key is doing something small early and getting that momentum going for the week.
If you want to share your work and follow along with my progress leave your email here.
Do you have a notebook or a list somewhere of some ideas that you thought were just amazing? Have you ever been out with friends one day and came out with a killer t-shirt idea? Or even worse have you made something and shared it with the only friend and then put it away to never be seen again.
I am one of those people who rarely ships but ends up collecting a bunch of ideas and concepts that I believe in. But, I don’t ship. I make excuses and blame the world. But, I don’t ship.
If you can relate to any one this. I want you to join me. April is going to be the month of the ship. There are 5 Sundays in April and the goal is to release something new each Sunday. The only rule is that you have to make one thing a week for the month of April. The size and scope of that thing are up to you. But, you just have to ship something. It can be anything you have been wanting to release or even want to relaunch.
If you want to work on one big idea this month. Break that out into pieces and try to hit a weekly milestone.
One thing that I sometimes focus too much on is work/career and projects. These are some of the things that take up all of my brain power. Something keeps holding me back from getting the things that I want doing in life. I am making to many excuses and I want to try and find out what I want to accomplish.
This week I wanted to start it off with a concept called “The Artist Date.”
“The Artist Date is a weekly solo expedition to explore something that interests you.”
I just wanted to do something that would take a few hours off from the grind. Sometimes, I know we have to grind it out and we have to go all in. Sometimes we need that freedom and we need to take a walk or do something for ourselves. I want to make sure that I do this once a week. I felt great. I felt less anxious. I felt like I was ready to keep creating.
Here are a few Artist Dates that I want to try.
1. Take a walk on a nature trail. Take your camera.
3. Choose a fantasy mentor. Take time to read their books, watch their videos, learn about their life as an artist. Let them inspire you.
3. Write A Poem
4. Take A Road Trip
5. Mediate in a Field
Currently, I am sitting in my living room and I am watching someone use a headset. It was funny for about 10 seconds watching them bumping around. But, I can’t help but want to either see a stream of what they are seeing or get in the experience with them.
I was listening to some people who I admire greatly. They said that they thought that VR is going to be a large flop because it is AntiSocial. It is a very solo experience. It is nothing something you would invite a bunch of people over to your house to use.
The real test is going to be how good can mobile VR get. I have used some Daydream apps and I think that if that experience keeps getting better with future releases. I can see people keeping a couple of headsets around the house. Plus, if there is a way for a multiplayer gamer or syncing a Netflix stream to together. The experiences can get intense and be something that is going to be a thing we want to share and even be in the same room.
I published an ebook on the Kindle store this week. I was just messing around with formatting and options. I was curious to go through all of the steps and see what it would take to get something in the store. I have a lot of writing that has never seen the light of day and I bundled up something that I had laying around and I wanted to see. I wanted to do the whole process. I thought that by going through the steps it would take some of the mystique out of it and I can see that I should continue with an idea that I had for an ebook.
I played with all the setting and wrote my name in the author field and I did all the stuff. Then I hit a button and I was hoping to just save it as a draft but I ended up publishing it for review by Amazon. I was terrified when I found out what I have done. I looked for ways to cancel and bring the book back into the dark corners of my brain. I looked and I looked. But, to no avail, the red pending was still on my screen. I walked away thinking that I would just remove it once it would go live and nobody would see it.
Then, I started to think about it and I got excited. I got excited that one of the things from my goals list would be done. I ended up starting to rewrite some chapters and pieces of content. I find myself wanted to tell people about it. “Hey, I Did I thing..”
I know it was not my best work. I am almost embarrassed by it. But, I feel like hitting submits take some of the stigmas out of doing it in the first place. You never love the first go at anything. You make mistakes, you forget things and you learn along the way.
Sometimes you just have to fucking ship something. Here it is in all its weird glory! https://goo.gl/ZTcLZK
I published an ebook on the Kindle store this week. I was just messing around with formatting and options. I was curious to go through all of the steps and see what it would take to get something in the store. I have a lot of writing that has never seen the light of day and I bundled up something that I had laying around and I wanted to see. I wanted to do the whole process. I thought that by going through the steps it would take some of the mystique out of it and I can see that I should continue with an idea that I had for an ebook.
I played with all the setting and wrote my name in the author field and I did all the stuff. Then I hit a button and I was hoping to just save it as a draft but I ended up publishing it for review by Amazon. I was terrified when I found out what I have done. I looked for ways to cancel and bring the book back into the dark corners of my brain. I looked and I looked. But, to no avail, the red pending was still on my screen. I walked away thinking that I would just remove it once it would go live and nobody would see it.
Then, I started to think about it and I got excited. I got excited that one of the things from my goals list would be done. I ended up starting to rewrite some chapters and pieces of content. I find myself wanted to tell people about it. “Hey, I Did I thing..”
I know it was not my best work. I am almost embarrassed by it. But, I feel like hitting submits take some of the stigmas out of doing it in the first place. You never love the first go at anything. You make mistakes, you forget things and you learn along the way.
Sometimes you just have to fucking ship something. Here it is in all its weird glory!
This Is Yesterday
I feel like lately, I just hadn’t been myself. Something was just off and I wasn’t sure why. There was not a lot going on in life and I couldn’t pinpoint anything. I tried all the usual tricks just to shake out of it.
I was watching a video on a writing class and the instructor had an assignment to find a song from when you were 13. I stopped the video right there. Started hunting thought Spotify and I put on the album that I played so much I broke three times and still own three copies of this.
Then, I sat with my headphones on and I just listened to the whole album. I feel like I had not done this since 2008. I listened and it really took me back to those teenage years. A rush of memories came back that I had not thought about in a long time. It was a profound experience as this was an activity I used to do all the time.
Then, I heard the lyrics that got me through my teenage years. The line that made me feel ok. That got me through most tough moments in life. It made me feel ok to be me.
“I Know I Believe In Nothing But It Is My Nothing”