Work Better

Introduction
“I work from home.”

For many, that probably elicits thoughts of sleeping late, taking business
calls sans pants, and sipping margaritas while filling out expense reports. It
always feels a little bit wrong, a little bit gauche, to try correcting someone
who thinks working independently is the best thing ever. It is great and it is
an awesome way to work — but it’s not all breakfast in bed and semi-
dressed shenanigans. Being an indie worker is hard.

Indie work, as I’m defining it for the purpose of this guide, is anyone who
doesn’t leave their house and go to a location owned by their employer,
surrounded by other people who work for that organization, to work.
Therefore, this includes telecommuters, most post-secondary students,
entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, freelancers, and contract workers. These can
range from full-time arrangements to part-time commitments, as well. Hell,
if you work a regular 9-to-5 job, but have a side business you run after
hours or on the weekends you’re an indie worker, too.

Indie workers have to deal with a handful of challenges that our 9-to-5
friends don’t even have to think about . A handful of potential stumbling
blocks include:

• The social isolation of not having coworkers on hand to ask questions

of, shoot the breeze, or share triumphs and tribulations.
• The lack of supervision from a boss regarding what you should be
working on each day.
• A lack of structure across all points of the day.
• No firm starting point of commute to signify the start of the work day.
• No firm stopping point or commute to signify the end of the work day.
• Increased barriers to communication with collaborators and clients.

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• Having to deal with administrative issues that you aren’t trained or

proficient in.
• Increased ambiguity regarding where the next client, paycheck, or
project is coming from.
• Distractions galore when working from home, coffee shops, libraries,
etc.
•
Obviously, not all of these apply to every indie worker — but you get the
idea.

The Knowledge Gap

Don’t feel too bad about yourself if you struggle with any of these. Not only
are they very common complaints when it comes to working independently,
think about your experience leading up to your indie work career. If you
experienced the same type of education I did (an above average public
American high school and an average state University) you probably didn’t
get much practice developing the skills you need to be successful at this
type of work. Schools do very little to prepare students for independent
careers. Nearly every aspect of how schools are run is a carryover from the
Industrial Revolution when the primary concern was teaching youngsters
how to be on time, stand in line, complete straightforward assignments and
generally follow the rules. I don’t remember very many projects with
extremely ill-defined guidelines, non-existent rubrics, teachers that changed
their mind about what success looks like halfway through a project, insane
deadlines, or the ability to manage myself and multiple projects at the same
time. Indie work requires all of that and more.

Getting Started
This guide is a brief taste of the missing curriculum for “getting good” at

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working independently. It covers mindsets, self-experimentation,

craftsmanship, flow, mindfulness, strengths-based work, values, process
and a smattering of miscellaneous tidbits to finish it off. I’ve strived to
reduce the fluff and get to the core lessons and take away points as quickly
as possible.

Assignments -- Do Them!
In order to get the most out of this guide try to work through all the
materials, videos, assignments, and take a look at all the extra resources in
each section. I’d also recommend starting a new text document right now
and completing all assignments within it. The types of activities you’re
going to be asked to do are the type that can be done again and again over
time (on a yearly or half-yearly schedule). It can be an enlightening
experience to see your answers evolve over time.

Let’s get on with the show, eh?

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Mindset
Before we begin the session, please click on this link and take the
accompanying survey (four minutes, tops).

I’ll wait.

Seriously, go ahead.

Ok, got it?

What did your results say? If you agreed more with the Fixed Mindset
statements, it means you tend to view intelligence and talent as inborn
traits. You believe you were born with a certain amount and it’s up to you to
do the best you can in the world with what you’ve got. There’s no way to
get any more. If you agreed more with the Growth Mindset statements, it
means you tend to view intelligence and talent as characteristics you can
improve and grow over time. You view them like any other muscle that gets
stronger with repeated use.

As you can imagine, one of these mindsets tends to be correlated with

much more positive outcomes — and I’m sure you can guess which one.

Growth Mindset
Psychologist Carol Dweck developed this conceptualization of Fixed and
Growth Mindset to help explain why some people are successful and
others are not. It also helps explain why some people seem to relish
difficult challenges while others deliberately take the path of least
resistance. People with Growth Mindsets tend to seek out challenging
situations and environments because it provides a proving ground for them
to test their intelligence, talent, and abilities. They often face failure (or what

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appears to be failure) but it doesn’t discourage them because they know by

placing themselves in difficult situations they are developing their abilities.

On the other hand, if you have a Fixed Mindset you are much more likely to
avoid difficult and challenging situations. A failure with a Fixed Mindset
reflects upon the identity of the individual. Failing is a critique of the person
because they believe there’s nothing they can do to increase their abilities.
They are who they are.

As an indie worker, you stand to potentially benefit even more from having
a Growth Mindset because of the unique challenges you face. Think of all
the challenges of indie work mentioned in the first section. If you are
excited by the prospect of tackling them one by one and can’t wait to learn
some more strategies to do so then it sounds like you have a very well
developed Growth Mindset. If, on the other hand, these challenges make
you anxious, then you probably stand to gain by developing a more robust
Growth Mindset.

The great news is that mindset appears to be flexible and changeable with
effort.

Changing Mindset
According to the research by Dweck and her colleagues, simply learning
about the two different mindsets is actually the first step in changing your
mindset. This is the basis of the software she developed to help school-
aged children change their mindset. The software taught the children facts
about their brains and that the brain actually changes based on how they
use it over time. This ties to the second component of changing your
mindset, learning about the plasticity of the brain. Essentially, our brain is
remarkably adept at changing itself to meet the challenges with which it’s

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presented. The more you use it the stronger it gets.

Finally, try to become aware of the self-talk you use when experiencing
stress and when you experience success. One of the ways Dweck has
found to develop children with Growth Mindsets is to always address their
effort, not the result of that effort, when praising or scolding. The point of
this is to not tie success or failure with the identity of the child but with the
effort put forth. We may no longer be children, but the same principle
applies. When you succeed it’s because you’ve worked hard to develop
your abilities that allow you to succeed. When you fail you have new data
about where to apply your personal development effort in the future.

Assignment
Think about the last “bad” thing that happened regarding your work. Maybe
it was negative feedback from a client, a failed product launch, or a
disappointing review from a supervisor. Write about how you reacted upon
experiencing this negative event. To what extent was it the reaction of
someone with a Growth Mindset? How could you have acted or perceived
the situation differently to view it as a learning opportunity?

Additional Resources
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
◦ Much of the information for this section was pulled from this
book. Dweck is the leading scholar doing work in the area of
growth and fixed mindset. This book is a great introduction to
the work she has led in this domain. It’s not purely theoretical
as she has several chapters dealing with how to apply the basic
knowledge her research has uncovered. Definitely worth a
read.

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• Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life by

Martin Seligman
◦ Martin Seligman is considered one of the two “founding fathers”
of Positive Psychology. Prior to the founding of positive
psychology Seligman did work on the phenomenon of learned
helplessness. Borne from that research, he then embarked on a
research path that led to the opposite effect, learned optimism.
• The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How by
Daniel Coyle
◦ Coyle is not a scientist but he does a good job presenting the
science behind how skill is developed. The crux of the idea is
that success is largely driven by how individuals practice. If you
read this book and aren’t inspired to sit down and practice
whatever it is you’re trying to good at, I don’t know what to tell
you.
• Harvard Business Review - How You Can Benefit From All Your
Stress

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Self-Experimentation
One of the biggest shifts in my own mindset in the past couple years has
been understanding the power of the scientific method in personal
development. By way of a quick review, the scientific method is the process
by which scientists conduct experiments. It follows a process of question
formulation, hypothesis generation, experiment execution, data collection,
data analysis and is usually repeated many times. This same premise can,
and I think should, be used in personal development. Almost by definition,
most psychology research (even positive psychology research) is the result
of averages. Averages can only give you rough trends and patterns, at
best. When it comes to specific decisions about how to live my life, I prefer
to run my own data.

Many people have embraced this idea of data collection and self-identify as
the Quantified Self movement. In a nutshell, these people run mini-
experiments on themselves in order to better understand a myriad of
potential aspects of their lives. Some people do it to better understand how
their sleep and diet effect their energy levels, some do it to determine how
their level of exercise effects their work productivity, and there are literally
hundreds of other potential experiments to run.

All it requires to get started is some curiosity about some aspect of your
life, a plan to collect data, and a willingness to make behavioral changes for
short periods of time (the shortest experiments I’ve done are a week long
with the longest being a month). Examples of data sources include: an end-
of-day journal, an in-the-moment work log, an end-of-day survey, in-the-
moment surveys collected randomly throughout the day, time logs, a food
diary, etc. In addition to these more intrusive measures, there are more and
more pieces of technology that can collect data passively such as Fitbit,
Jawbone, Nike+, Melon, Rescue Time, and undoubtedly many more in the

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near and distant future.

An Example
For example, last summer I committed myself to what I called the Summer
Work Experiment. Each week I tried a different “style” of work while
collecting data on my objective productivity (thanks to Rescue Time) and
my subjective experience (thanks to an end of day journal and work log).
One week I stuck to a very strict Pomodoro Technique schedule, another
week I blocked myself from all distracting URLs during the work day, and
as I write this I’m currently in the middle of what I’m calling “Insanity
Week” (in which I work an insane number of hours to test my limits). The
process of trying each productivity style is opening my eyes to ways I can
adjust my normal day-to-day work routine to make it more productive and
enjoyable.

Do Your Own Experiment

To do your own experiment, follow this recipe:

1. Have a question about some aspect of your life. Examples include,

what is the best work style for me? How much sleep do I really need?
What happens if I don’t eat meat for awhile?
2. Come up with a hypothesis. Examples include; “Working in a strict
Pomodoro Technique style will allow me to be the most productive”; “I
actually only need seven and a half, not eight hours of sleep to be
fully operational”; “I will feel better and my grocery bill will be less.”
3. Based on your hypothesis, figure out what data you need to collect.
Examples include; productivity data from Rescue Time; a sleeping log
where you record how many hours you slept and an end-of-day
survey where you assess how you felt during the day; an expense log

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to track grocery expenditures and an end of day survey or diary to

assess how you physically feel.
4. Collect data while living life normally because you first need some
baseline data which you will compare your change in behavior to.
5. Make the behavioral change described in your hypothesis and collect
data for a set amount of time while trying to keep every other part of
your life as normal and routine as possible. You want any differences
you see in the data between the two time periods to be the result of
the behavioral change. While it’s nearly impossible to account for
every confounding variable, it makes sense to try to keep things as
routine as possible.
6. Analyze and compare your data. Are there any differences between
the two data collections? Do the data raise more questions than they
answer (a very common occurrence).
7. Repeat. Try something new. Collect more data. Compare.

Assignment
Pick a simple experiment to do for one week. What’s your question? What’s
your hypothesis? What data are you going to collect?

Additional Resources
• Technori - The Beginner’s Guide to Quantified Self (Plus, a List of the
Best Personal Data Tools Out There)
• Wikipedia - Quantified Self
• Wikipedia - Experience Sampling Method
• Reporter App
⁃ A great app (iOS) for collecting data on yourself throughout the
day.

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Craftsmanship
I’m fascinated by the idea of craftsmanship as an indie worker. When I
picture a craftsman I generally imagine a man with a mustache toiling away
on a piece of wood with an obscure tool and wood shavings piling around
his feet as he creates a beautiful rocking chair. Or a saddle. Or something
equally rustic. More generally, I think of the following things when it comes
to taking an interest in craftsmanship:

• Doing good work for the sake of doing good work.

• Knowing the right (and wrong) tools to use in a situation.
• Having a healthy respect for the condition of tools.
• Constantly striving to develop useful skills.
• Paying attention to detail.
• Being patient with the work.
• Showing up consistently to do the work day after day.

I suspect the vast majority of my readers don’t create many physical

objects in their day to day work. Most of us are knowledge workers, or
more simply, people who work with information. We sit at computers and
add our experience and knowledge to various existing bits of information or
create something new that is nonetheless ephemeral/digital. However, take
a look at that bulleted list again; there’s nothing in it that inherently
precludes independent workers from caring about the same thing. In fact, I
think anybody who truly cares about their work will have the same list of
interests.

I’d like to talk about two considerations that seem particularly relevant to
indie workers.

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Tools
For a craftsman, using a tool is like using a natural extension of the body.
There is no awareness of the tool as a separate entity that needs to be
wielded. The craftsman has so mastered the ability that all attention can be
moved from how to use the tool and placed squarely on using the tool.
Think about the tools you use on a daily basis. If an external observer
watched you work would they be struck by how naturally you use
everything at your fingertips? Can you whiz through your most used
programs using keyboard shortcuts only? Do you know the precise
situation to use each tool to the point where you don’t even have to think
about it?

For example, the tools I use for tracking my tasks and reference material
(Things and Evernote, respectively) have become such a part of my every
day workflow that I can immediately deal with incoming information without
breaking my mental state or taking my hands off the keyboard. I can call up
Things and input a next action with just a couple keystrokes, which allows
me to put my focus back on the task at hand. When I come across some
kind of reference material I’ll need in the future I can send it to Evernote
without having to think twice. Where could you do the same in your own
workflow?

Skill Development
As an indie worker you’re unlikely have anybody looking out for you when it
comes to updating and developing your skills. You don’t have a boss that’s
hoping to promote you to higher levels of responsibility. You don’t have a
human resources department to send you to workshops and seminars to
make you more valuable to the organization. Instead, it’s completely up to
you. The craftsman never settles for his current level of skill and is always

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looking to upgrade his skills. He seeks out difficult projects, asks advice
from master craftsmen, and systematically improves the way he works.

Luckily, we live in an age when education and skill development in areas

relevant to your profession can be had for nearly (or completely) free.
There are countless tutorials, walk throughs, courses, and classes for
nearly any kind of work. What skills do you need to push yourself to new
levels of ability and where can you get them? Fifteen minutes on Google
and YouTube will likely get you headed in the right direction.

A Few More Ideas

I don’t want this section to run too long so I’m going to simply list my
remaining ideas regarding the development of craftsmanship in indie work:

• Be consistent with how you work. Show up, daily.

• Delight in the details. Find ways to delight your client/customer/
yourself.
• Find joy in the process.
• Develop communities of practice with other craftsmen.
• Care for your tools. Wipe down your computer/tablet. Run routine
maintenance. Don’t lose your pens.
• Keep your workbench (i.e. desk) clean and organized.

Assignments
1. Look up the keyboard shortcuts of your most commonly used apps.
Print them out and keep them by your computer. Spend five minutes
memorizing them. Challenge yourself to use them as much as
possible until they become second nature.
2. Look at one of your ongoing projects. Spend five minutes

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brainstorming ways you can approach it with an increased focus on

craftsmanship. What can you do to leave your mark on it in a positive
way? What can you do to delight your client?

Additional Resources
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the
Quest for Work You Love by Cal Newport
◦ Cal writes one of my favorite websites, Study Hacks. I really
admire his philosophy about how trying to find your passion is
actually kind of pointless. The best way to create a job you love
is to focus on developing skills. This book expands on his
philosophy in a very engaging way.
• The War of Art, Do the Work, and Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield
◦ All three of Steven’s books, especially The War of Art, should
be mandatory reading for all knowledge workers. Resistance
will try its best to keep you from creating and doing things you
really care about. Steven’s books are all about identifying and
conquering that Resistance so you can do more of what you
love.
• The Practicing Mind by Thomas Sterner
◦ Very few jobs have a true stopping point when it comes to what
you need to know or be able to do. There’s always room to
grow. To that end, it’s important to develop a perspective on
work as a practice. This book does a great job detailing the idea
of what it means to have a practicing mind and what that might
look like in doing your work.
• Delight is in the Details by Shawn Blanc
◦ “In the book, I talk about why the long-term success of our
products (and our reputations) depends heavily on us taking the

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time to think through and sweat the details. This book

encourages you to strive for excellence and resist the tendency
to settle on “good enough” work that leads to forgettable
products.”
• The Craftsmanship Channel on Vimeo
• Read & Trust Magazine - January 2013 - Craftsmanship
• Art of Manliness - Measure Twice, Cut Once: Applying the Ethos of
the Craftsman to Our Everyday Lives

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Flow
One of my professors and advisor, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, is renowned in
the positive psychology world for his work on “flow.” In a nutshell, flow
describes the state of optimal experience when you’re doing something and
feel completely at one with the activity, you lose track of time, and you look
back on the experience as highly enjoyable. If you’re an athlete, you may
recognize that description from the way you feel during a particularly good
game or match. If you’re an artist, you may have experienced something
similar when your painting is going remarkably well. Sports and art are two
obvious categories of activity that lend themselves to experiencing flow.
However, our work has the potential to do the same thing. In fact, the
research Csikszentmihalyi and others have done shows that people are
more likely to experience flow at work than they are during leisure time.

Experiencing flow at work means you become fully engaged with what
you’re working on. You work with a single-focus and are immune to
distractions on many different levels. You feel challenged and at the same
time completely capable of successfully navigating the work in front of you.
The work day seems to fly by as you interact with meaningful projects that
not only provide for your living, but challenge you to be a more complex
individual.

As an indie worker, you have more control over the characteristics of your
job than many more traditional workers do. Therefore, you may be able to
craft your work in such a way as to encourage yourself to experience flow
more often.

To begin, here are the six components of flow:

1. Intense and focused concentration on the present moment.

2. Merging of action and awareness.

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3. A loss of reflective self-consciousness.

4. A sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity.
5. A distortion of temporal experience.
6. Experience of the activity as intrinsically motivating.

When these six components are present together you have the makings of
a flow experience.

We know what the components of the experience are — so how do you go

about creating these components? According to the research, there are
three main conditions for flow. I’ll list them below, and then we’ll get into
each in further detail.

1. The activity in which you’re involved in must have clear goals.

2. The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback.
3. One must perceive a good balance between the perceived
challenges of the activity and the perceived skills.

With the basics of flow under our belts we will address specific ways you
can build and support these three conditions in your work.

1. Developing Clear Goals

Getting into flow requires a sense of progress. By having clear goals you
have something concrete to strive for and can determine whether you’re
heading in the right direction. Without clear goals you can feel like you’re
spinning your wheels. Without goals you can’t be sure you’re heading in the
right direction. Spinning your wheels and confusion about the direction in
which you’re heading are adequately distracting enough to preclude you
from getting truly lost in your work — from finding flow. Luckily, building
some goals into your day doesn’t have to be a difficult affair.

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Goals exist on multiple time levels. You can have goals for the next couple
minutes, for the day, for the week, month, and even for your entire life.
While it’s obviously useful to have a sense of the longer term goals and
desires so you can align your shorter term goals with your larger purpose,
it’s not absolutely crucial to finding flow in your work. Flow is a very
experiential condition. It exists here and now. Therefore, the most important
goals you need to have access to are short term. I’ve discovered that
having a couple daily goals is the most important level to experiencing flow
in my own work. When I take the time to figure out daily goals I’m much
more likely to find flow than if I don’t bother to figure them out ahead of
time.

I like to figure out my daily goals for the next day as my last productive
activity before shutting down for the day. I know my work day is finished
when I’ve laid out my three to five goals for tomorrow. I jot them on an
index card or leave them on my desktop in a text file and they’re the first
thing I see when I sit down the next day to get to work. I can measure
myself against those goals while I’m working and I can feel a sense of
progress as I work on them throughout the day.

Instead of making this lesson extra long, I'm going to break it into two parts.
Part two will be arriving in two days and in that lesson you'll be learning
about the other conditions of flow.

2. Getting Clear and Immediate Feedback

This may be the most abstract and difficult of the three conditions,
depending on the type of job you have. For some professions, feedback is
almost inherently built into the activity. For example, a pianist knows when
she hits a wrong note because it’s very easy to hear. The feedback of
playing a piece well is clearly audible. For a professional rock climber,

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every move she makes that results in her staying on the rock and not falling
is a form of feedback. However, many knowledge worker jobs are not
nearly as clear cut. How do you know if the report you’re writing is any
good? How do you know if you’re choosing the right words or using the
right tone? How do you know if the website you’re designing is going to be
effective when you’re in the midst of the nitty gritty aspects of creating it?

For these professions that don’t have the clarity of feedback that playing a
piano or climbing a mountain have the best way to experience feedback is
to constantly check in with yourself as you work. Is the work staying true to
the vision you have for it? How does it compare to similar assignments
you’ve done in the past? As a trained professional, does it please your
inner sense of what a good project is supposed to be like?

As you gain experience in your chosen field the sense of feedback you can
give yourself will become more refined over time. At the early stages, it may
be best to conceptualize clear feedback as broadly as possible. Is nobody
telling you the project is utter trash? Are people not running and screaming
away from you as you work on it? For now, that’ll do. Keep working toward
the goals you set before (see above) and developing your own inner sense
of what’s good and what isn’t.

3. Challenge/Skill Ratio
The final condition is the one which you have the most control over. To be
in flow, you cannot experience an activity as being far more challenging
than you can handle. In that case, you’d experience anxiety about not
being able to handle the situation and that is not conducive to losing
yourself in the moment. On the other hand, you cannot view an activity as
exhibiting challenges far below your skill level. In that case you’re just going
to be bored and, again, not experience flow. You’re shooting for a sweet

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spot in everything you do where your skills are being used to a high extent
to succeed in an activity that represents a high, yet manageable, level of
challenge.

To begin tweaking your work to create a more ideal skill/challenge ratio you
need to start becoming aware of when you’re feeling bored and when
you’re feeling anxious. If a certain type of task or project is making you feel
bored it means your skill level far outweighs the challenge it presents. To
help make this a flow conducive activity, you need to make it more
challenging. Can you give yourself a constraint, push yourself to try
something different, or raise the challenge level in another way? For
example, checking email is something that didn’t require much skill.
However, to make it more flow inducing I decided to learn the keyboard
shortcuts of my email program and challenge myself to process my email
as quickly and efficiently as possible without ever touching the mouse, if
possible. This raised the challenge level and now when I check email I’m
more likely to find myself really getting into the activity.

On the other hand, if work is making you anxious in some way it means
your skill level is not high enough to match the challenge you’re
experiencing. There are two things you can do to make the activity more
enjoyable; you can raise your skill or you can lower the challenge. In most
cases, elevating your skill is the best way to go. As you gain new skills and
abilities you’ll be able to tackle more challenging and complex projects
while still finding them enjoyable and flow inducing. In some cases, though,
it’s best to lower the challenge. Perhaps you can get a deadline extension,
enlist some help, or reconfigure the project to drop the challenge down to a
more manageable level?

The Autotelic Personality

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The ultimate goal is to be able to find flow in nearly any situation by

tweaking these three conditions. In Csikszentmihalyi’s book he gives
examples of people finding flow in astoundingly difficult situations. By
minding these three conditions people can find optimal experience in
anything. They give you the tools to have control over the quality of your
attention at any time. With practice, you can take steps to create more flow
in every aspect of your life — especially your work.

Assignment
Write two-three sentences about how you can build each condition of flow
(Developing Clear Goals, Getting Clear and Immediate Feedback, and the
Challenge/Skill Ratio) into your work.

Additional Resources
• 99U - Not Too Hard, Not Too Easy: Finding Flow In Your Work
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi
◦ This is THE book. The one and only. When I read this book for
the first time I realized there was this thing called “positive
psychology” that I had been inadvertently studying and writing
about for years without really knowing it. I applied to graduate
school shortly thereafter. And now, here I am. Read this book if
you care about learning how to use your attention more wisely.

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Mindfulness
At it’s most basic level, the attention we have available to bring to bear on
anything is the raw material of what our lives are made. The first focus of
this section, flow, aimed at helping us improve the quality of attention we
bring to everything. The second focus of this section, mindfulness, extends
that aim. Mindfulness has potential spiritual or religious connotations that
I’m not going to focus on at all in this guide. By mindfulness, I simply mean
cultivating the ability to bring our attention and focus to the present moment
at any time. Additionally, the primary exercise for developing mindfulness is
meditation. Again, without any spiritual connotations, meditation can simply
be viewed as the single best exercise for cultivating the ability to be
mindful, to concentrate, and to bring a high level of attention to everything
you do. Like lifting weights for your mental abilities, meditation and
mindfulness can form the backbone of a very effective work life.

In my own experience, there are three main benefits I’ve gotten from
committing to developing mindfulness in my life and work.

Stress Reduction
Life as an indie worker can be fraught with stress. Between demanding
clients, having to manage yourself without much external structure, not
knowing where the next paycheck or project is coming from — stress is an
ever present companion. Numerous studies have supported the idea that
meditation and mindfulness in the workplace can help you deal with stress
better. Stress is always a consequence of allowing future concerns bleed
into your present awareness to an unhealthy extent. Regardless of the
pressure you’re feeling about a deadline or a difficult client you can mitigate
the stress you feel by brining your attention back to the moment. You may
have a terrible client and an insane deadline but in this moment, this

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specific moment, you’re simply breathing/typing/drawing/working.

Work Habits
Indie work is often incredibly unstructured. You have immense flexibility in
how you get your work done. While that’s an obvious plus for most people,
it can also make getting work done very difficult. Distractions, particularly of
the technological variety, are a pervasive part of our modern culture.
Learning how to put distraction in its place so you can bring the highest
level of attention to your work is vital to work success. For me, that has
been the biggest boon from a regular meditation practice. Meditation is the
single best way I have discovered to actively practice the ability to
concentrate and not let distractions affect me. If you want stronger arms
then you go to the gym and lift weights. If you want to develop a higher
level of concentration then you meditate. It’s as simple as that.

Stand Out From the Crowd

Since working distracted is becoming such a norm in our culture, those
people who can efficiently block out distractions and truly concentrate for
long periods of time are going to stick out from the crowd. One of my
favorite hobbies is reading biographies and taking notes on the habits of
the world’s most successful people. The only unifying factor I’ve found from
all the biographies I’ve read, including as wide array of individuals and
professions as you can imagine, is the ability to think deeply and intensely.
It’s profoundly disturbing to me that the only unifying factor I uncovered
among all high achieving people is also something that is being
systematically removed from our society. In the world of work, setting
yourself apart as someone who can focus deeply on the work at hand is a
characteristic that can serve you well.

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How to Develop Mindfulness

As I’m not a meditation teacher, I’m uncomfortable going into the nuts and
bolts of how to meditate. I can tell you two tips, however.

First, it doesn’t have to be any more complex than just sitting quietly and
trying to keep your attention on one thing, such as your breath. As your
attention wanders (and it will) gently bring it back to your breath. It’s as
simple as that. The second thing I can tell you is that the best book I’ve
ever read on mindfulness and meditation is free and a great place to start.
It’s called Mindfulness in Plain English and you can read it here.

Other ways you can systematically practice your mindfulness is to

periodically stop throughout your day and take several deep breaths.
Breathe deep through your nose and out through your mouth as you notice
the sensations around you. The feeling of sitting in the chair, your feet on
the floor, the sound of the fan in the other room and the smell of this
morning’s mug of coffee. Breathe deep and simply notice the sensations
around you. Then, get back to work.

Finally, practice single minded focus by committing to single-tasking

instead of multi-tasking. While working, try to use full screen mode as much
as possible. Turn off all notifications (emails, texts, even phone calls if you
can). Close programs that aren’t related to the specific item at hand. Work
only with the tools you need and let yourself get lost in the task. This is
likely to be difficult at first and something I like to do is set a timer for 25
minutes and commit to single-tasking for just that block of time. Then, I give
myself a break to check social media or be otherwise distracted. Anything
can be done for 25 minutes, including shutting off from the world and giving
your full attention to the work at hand.

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Assignment
Simply close your eyes for 60 seconds and breathe. Take a couple deep
breaths. Notice as the air fills your nostrils and your chest. Feel your
abdomen expand as you breathe in. At the natural end of the inhalation
notice the nearly imperceptible barrier between breathing in and breathing
out. Exhale through your nose and feel the breath as it hits your upper lip.
Feel yourself contract as the air leaves your body. Open your eyes. Get
back to work.

Additional Resources
• Forbes - A Guide to Mindfulness at Work
• Mindfulness in Plain English (free book)
◦ This is the best introductory meditation book I’ve ever read. It
very clearly and simply explains what meditation is and how
you can get started. Highly, highly recommended.
• Focus by Leo Babauta (free book)
◦ Leo covers a lot of ground about learning how to focus in his
typically humble voice. While Mindfulness in Plain English will
teach you how to begin meditating, Focus will help you find
ways you can increase your ability to concentrate throughout
your day to day life.
• Insight Timer (iOS/Android)
◦ Insight Timer is a great app that is half meditation timer and
have social network of meditators. It will show you who is using
the app, in real-time, nearby and around the world. It can be a
powerful feeling to sit down and meditate knowing that
hundreds of other people are meditating with you at the same
time. There are also groups you can join based on shared
interests.

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Strengths
Arguably the biggest upside to being an indie worker is the amount of
flexibility and autonomy you have. You have control over the details of the
way you work, and if you’re on the entrepreneur end of the indie work
continuum, you have a lot of control over the actual content of your work,
too. All of this flexibility can be wasted, though. Without thinking carefully
about your strengths and values you may miss out on all the perks that are
associated with this inherent flexibility. Even more importantly, deriving
meaning from your work, ostensibly one of the most important aspects of
enjoying your work, is driven by an understanding of your values and
strengths.

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration

camp during World War II, was one of the first psychological professionals
to explicitly make the connection about how important a sense of meaning
in our lives is. He noticed that the prisoners who had a strong sense of
meaning in their life were the ones who had the best chance of surviving
the atrocities of the camps. The prisoners who lost their sense of meaning
very quickly lost their will to live. Meaning is obviously one of the most
important things we can cultivate in our lives and work. By using your
strengths and values you can make your work more meaningful.

We’re Doing Passion Wrong

“Just follow your passion.”

This is the oft-repeated advice about how to find meaning in your work.
Simple. Obvious, even. And also completely and utterly misleading.

Passion in work is not something that is simply uncovered after enough

alternatives are tried. Very rarely does someone have a clear cut passion

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that also lends itself to a productive and enjoyable work life. Instead,
passion needs to be cultivated and grown over time. The best way to do
that is to develop skills and expertise. With increased ability comes
increased passion for a type of work. With increased skill comes the ability
to interact with and solve more interesting, complex, and satisfying
problems. Using your strengths, the abilities and traits you’re naturally
inclined toward, can give you a leg up on unlocking the skills you need to
develop meaningful work.

One of the best tools I know for assessing and exploring your strengths is
known as the VIA Character Strengths Survey. It can be thought of as the
manual to help “diagnose” what is good in people. Whereas psychology
has done a pretty good job describing the symptoms of mental illness and
codifying them in the DSM V, doing the same thing for positive “symptoms”
is a relatively new endeavor. The VIA Character Strengths Handbook and
Survey are the result of psychologists systematically classifying and
measuring positive character traits. They eventually settled on 24 strengths
situated under six broad virtues. The broad virtues include; Wisdom and
Knowledge, Courage, Humanity, Justice, Temperance, and
Transcendence.

Since the classification system was built, a plethora of research has been
done in this area. A handful of the more exciting findings include:

• Employees who used four or more of their signature strengths had

more positive work experiences and work-as-a-calling than those who
expressed less than four (Harzer & Ruch, 2012).
• Among volunteer and paid workers, endorsing strengths is related to
meaning, but both endorsing AND deploying strengths is connected
to well-being (Littman-Ovadia & Steger, 2010).
• Character strengths use was connected with personal well-being and

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job satisfaction (Littman-Ovadia & Davidovitch, 2010).

• The pursuit of meaning and engagement are much more predictive of
life satisfaction than the pursuit of pleasure (Peterson, Park, &
Seligman, 2005).

Articulating your strengths, figuring out ways to use them in your work, and
then actually following through will probably do more for your job
satisfaction than almost anything else you can do.

Assignment

Take the VIA Character Strengths Survey (scroll to the bottom of the page
and until you see the "Get Started" link). It's kind of long but will give you
some very interesting information about your potential strengths. Once
you've finished it, brainstorm three ways you can utilize your top strengths
in your work next week.

Additional Resources
• Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath
◦ This is kind of like the Gallup organization’s version of the VIA
Character Strengths. This book comes with an access code that
allows you to take their assessment tool online. The book
breaks down the various strengths and explains what they
mean and how you might go about applying them.
• Go Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham
◦ This book is the logical follow-up to Strengthsfinder 2.0 It sets
out a six-week plan for using your top strengths to craft your job
to better allow you to use your strengths.
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

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◦ This book is an absolute classic. We read it in my Foundations

of Positive Psychology graduate seminar to lay the groundwork
for our discussion of meaning and values. Viktor Frankl was a
psychotherapist imprisoned by the Nazis in a concentration
camp during World War II. This book details his observations
regarding having meaning in your life and the important
ramifications it has. Moving and inspirational at the same time.
• Making it All Work by David Allen
◦ This is the third book written by Getting Things Done author
David Allen. Whereas GTD was a very tactical approach to
personal organization,Making It All Work comes at the question
of personal productivity from the other end. It focuses on the
higher altitude questions like, “Why are you on this planet?” and
“What’s your vision for the next 20 years?” While not as
engaging as GTD, I think it’s still a valuable book to read when
thinking about the topic of meaning, values, and strengths.

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Values
While the strengths I described in the last section are certainly important
and can provide valuable guidance in creating a more meaningful work life,
there is a deeper level of articulation we need to dig into; values. Your
values refer to the deepest beliefs you hold about the world around you and
who you want to be. Unfortunately, there’s no convenient questionnaire that
you can take that’ll spit your values back out to you. It’s a much messier
and more abstract process than honing in on your character strengths.
Before we get into that aspect, though, a few more words on why values
are important in the first place.

Every decision you make, whether you’re aware of it or not, is being

weighed against your values. When the vast majority of your decisions are
made without consciously thinking about what you value, that’s when
trouble starts to brew. That’s when you start to get the uneasy feeling that
something is out of whack. Moving in a direction of greater consciousness
when it comes to decisions in general, but specifically with our work, is
important. Again, like with the character strengths, as an indie worker you
may have more freedom than many when it comes to aligning your work
with your values. Before you can do that, however, you need to get clearer
on what your values are.

I use two different, and opposing methods, with my clients when it comes to
figuring out values. One could be considered “top down” while the other is
“bottom up.” I explain both below.

Top Down Approach

The top down approach starts with the big metaphysical questions and
filters down to the small realities of day to day life. This is the method that

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most coaches use with clients who are trying to figure out what their values
are. It’s a good one because it forces you to elevate your thinking and ask
yourself some tough questions. A handful of those questions might include:

• What motivates you?

• What do you truly care about?
• Who do you admire? What do you admire about them?
• What drives you crazy? What can you not stand for in the world
around you?
• Looking back on your life, what will you wish you had been more
courageous about?
• What do you want people to say about you when you’re gone?

Obviously these are some big and juicy questions. Reading through these
may have gotten you excited and filled you with energy. If so, I recommend
you start answering those questions in writing as soon as possible. After
you’ve finished answering those questions, read through your responses
and pull out the commonalities. What do you seem to refer to a lot? Distill
this list into the three to five values that resonate most deeply with you.

Bottom Up Approach
If the list of questions I listed in the Top Down Approach don’t get you
going, then the Bottom Up Approach may work better for you. Instead of
starting with the huge metaphysical questions about purpose and meaning
in life the Bottom Up Approach starts at a very mundane and practical level.
By identifying the activities you already participate in and the behaviors you
already exhibit we can build up from there to figure out what your values
are. Read through the following list of questions and jot down some
answers to each question:

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• What are some activities that make you feel good when you partake
in them? What is it about them that makes you feel good?
• What people in your life seem to elicit the best from you? What is it
about these people that brings out the best in you?
• When do you feel the worst about yourself? What are you doing?
How are you behaving? What causes it?
• Describe a time that you were at your best. What was the scenario?
What did you do?

From here, the process is largely the same as with the Top Down
Approach. Notice commonalities among your answers and distill your list to
the three to five values that resonate most deeply with you.

If you’re really struggling with the exercise, it can be helpful to see a list of
values to get your mind moving in the right direction. Here is my favorite
list.

Values Describe What and How

Focusing on strengths and values in your work can imbue it with meaning.
You’ll know you’re doing work that caters to what you care about the most
and what you’re naturally best at. I’d like to make one final point before we
wrap up this section though. I know that not every indie worker is a self-
made entrepreneur working on projects that are deeply meaningful and the
pinnacle of what they want to be doing professionally. Sometimes an indie
work job is still just a job. I get that. I understand that it can be hard to align
the work you’re doing with your values if you’re committed to doing
something not particularly meaningful because other people are relying on
you (like a family, for instance).

That’s perfectly okay. In fact, I think perhaps the most powerful use for

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strengths and values is not in the what of work but the how of work. Even if
you don’t find your work meaningful or connected to your values, the way
you execute the work and the way you comport yourself as a professional
can be done in alignment with your values and meaning. Look at your list of
values and think about how somebody who is living those values to the
fullest extent would approach their work. What would they do in terms of
professional/personal development? What would they do in terms of
professionalism?

Assignment
Choose either the Top Down or Bottom Up approach and work through the
process. Once you've done so, describe one way you can change the way
you currently work to better align with one or more of your values.

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Work as a Process
Viewing work as a process is focusing on the how and why of the work
you’re doing and not the specific outcomes. It asks whether the way you’re
going about your work is as efficient and productive as it could be. It shifts
work from a monolithic and static concept to one that can change over
time. This is vital for the indie worker because the lack of structure of your
work reality means there is less that you can take for granted each day.
When you have a “normal” job you can take for granted that you’ll get to the
office and (hopefully) leave at roughly the same time. You can take for
granted which coworkers sit by you each day and that their personalities
are largely the same day after day (as personalities are). You can take for
granted that you’ll have a boss or supervisor clarifying and assigning you
work, or, at the very least, looking at the work you’re doing. You can even
take for granted things as simple as the fact that your desk will probably still
be the way you left it when you come in the next day. For an indie worker,
some, or all, of these realities cannot be taken for granted. Therefore, the
process of doing work has to be consciously thought about and refined.

Perception is Paramount
In psychology, everything comes back to perception. Whatever objective
reality presents us, it’s our perception of the situation that dictates our
behavior and thoughts. The way we think about our work is no exception. If
we perceive the act of working as something we have control over, and
therefore can change it to fit our preferences, then you’re likely to have a
much more positive outlook on it overall. If work is something that’s viewed
as an unchangeable block — “work” — with no nuance or fluidity or control,
then I doubt the idea of it is very exciting to you.

I know I promised this section was going to be concrete and tactical. It is, I

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promise. But first we have to be on the same page with one very simple.
Important, multi-part assumption:

Work is a process. Processes can be altered. Not thinking about your

process doesn’t mean you don’t have one — it means you aren’t the one in
control.

Making the Process Work For You

There is a big difference between task management and time
management. Time management deals with calendars, appointments,
meetings, errands, and anything that requires you to do something or be
somewhere at a specific time. Task management deals with projects, next
actions, responsibilities, commitments, and future desires. For the
purposes of this lesson, we’re going to focus on task management.

There are a myriad of task management systems and philosophies in the

world right now. Everybody seems to have something different that works
for them. If you are already doing something that works for you, awesome.
Hopefully you can get some little tips and strategies from the next two
sections and adopt them into whatever you’re already doing. However, if
you don’t have a task management system or are unhappy with what
you’re currently doing, then I’m going to recommend you do something
similar to what I do.

I owe a huge debt to David Allen and his book, Getting Things Done: The
Art of Stress-Free Productivity, for where I am today. Without a doubt,
reading this book and adopting this system into my life utterly changed the
way I think and execute my work. My first piece of (admittedly lame)
productivity advice is always, “Read Getting Things Done by David Allen.”

It would be kind of weak if I left this section at that, so I’ll go ahead and give

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you the system in a nutshell. Obviously, David goes into much more detail
in the book but this is what I think it’s all about:

1. Your brain is awesome at being creative and working on problems. It

sucks at remembering to do things.
2. Get everything you need to do (projects and tasks) out of your head
and into an external system you trust.
3. Ensure that every project has one concrete next action step figured
out and written down.
4. Regularly (once a week) review your entire system to make sure your
project list and next action steps are up to date.

That’s it.

Regardless of the details of your specific task management system, there

are a couple of basics it should provide you:

1. Peace of mind about what you need to work on.

2. Clarity about what the next steps for any long term project are.
3. An understanding of what you’re committed to so you can make
intelligent decisions about future opportunities.

Assignment
If you can't clearly and quickly answer these questions, your system for
handling information needs improvement:

• Your doctor just called asking to change the time of your appointment
tomorrow. What do you do?
• You just received an email that's going to require longer than 2
minutes to respond to. What do you do?
• You just had a great idea for a project unrelated to the one you're
working on. What do you do?

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• Can you find the email your team member sent approximately four
weeks ago with the new login code? Even better, what did you do
when you originally got that email that will prevent you from having to
look it up again?

Assess your productivity system for weak points. What aspect of it needs to
be improved?

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Picking Up the Loose Ends

Perhaps the most obvious aspect of being an indie worker is the flexibility
in terms of where you actually do your work. By definition you don’t go into
a central location to work with your fellow coworkers who work for the same
company. So where do you work? In a fully decked-out home office? At the
kitchen table? At the local library? Coffee shops? A local coworking space?
The possibilities really are endless.

I think our environment has a huge impact on how we feel about ourselves
and our work. In my research on coworking spaces, one of the most
commonly cited reasons for members joining is the desire to just be around
other people. Social isolation can be a big part of being an indie worker. On
the other hand, some indie workers absolutely thrive in a home office
where they work in complete solitude. Developing the right workspace for
yourself is an effort that requires immense self knowledge. You have to
combine the demands of the task at hand with the demands of your own
unique personality. How do you navigate those waters?

I have a couple ideas in terms of general advice for creating your optimal
workspace.

Reducing Friction
Your workspace should have the tools you need easily accessible. Having
to get up and walk across the room to perform a routine task that you do
fifty times a day may be causing interruptions that are making it difficult to
really get into the flow of your work (or it may be providing you a welcome
break through the day — it’s up to you to figure out which). A master
craftsman working in his or her workshop knows where every tool is kept
and can probably find it with eyes closed. A master sailor keeps her ship in

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pristine condition (shipshape condition, even) because when the weather

turns dangerous the last thing she can afford is wondering where she kept
the backup of something important. Your workspace should not cause
friction in the execution of your work. Friction is any time you find yourself
being yanked out of the mental space of completing the work to solve a
related, but overall unimportant, problem.

Awareness of Environmental Need

Does the task at hand require your environment to fall away from your
consciousness so you can fully invest in the work (perhaps while writing
something difficult)? Or, does the task at hand require input from the
environment around you (such as brainstorming and creative problem
solving)? When you’ve determined what the task at hand demands from
the environment, can you make the changes to respect that? Music,
temperature, presence of other people, windows open or closed — you
have more control over how you work than you may realize. Certain
conditions match up better with certain kinds of work. It’s silly to think that
everything you do in your job, from administrative tasks, to brainstorming,
to deep writing or creating, is optimally done in the exact same
environment. Get creative, get curious, and mold your environment to your
specific needs.

Less is More
I’m a huge fan of minimalism. Not because I think the aesthetic is
particularly interesting or beautiful (although it can be). I think erring on the
side of minimalism in our work environments allows us to more easily train
our attention on the tasks at hand. Visual distractions can be just as
distracting as a phone call or an incoming text message. Therefore, I prefer
to identify what my most crucial tools are and then remove everything else

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from my visual field. Just me and my work. Another interesting tidbit from
the realm of the psychology of success has to do with the subconscious
cues we send ourselves. In The Talent Code Daniel Coyle makes the
observation that the sports clubs around the world that produce the
greatest number of world class athletes, talent hotbeds, often are decrepit,
junky, and in disrepair. The athletes in these environments are not
surrounded by cues that they’ve “made it” and therefore they are constantly
pushing themselves to be better. I don’t think this has ever been studied in
a work context, but I like applying that idea to my workspace as well. When
it’s just me and my most basic tools working together I’m not
subconsciously telling myself I’ve “made it” in any sort of capacity. It pushes
me to keep creating, to keep working, and to keep improving myself.
Perhaps this concept will help your own work process as well?

The Weekly Review

One of the most important aspects of the GTD task management system is
something David Allen calls the Weekly Review. Whether you’re following
GTD or not, doing some sort of weekly review is vital for all indie workers.
There is nothing I’ve done in the past four years that has had a bigger
impact on my life than sitting down once a week and doing a complete
review of my task management system. Here’s why:

Front End Decision Making

When you sit down to work there’s often a very small difference between
having enough energy to have a productive day and not having enough
energy to muster together some kind of productivity. When it’s time to work
it’s time to work and not figure out what your work is. Working and figuring
out your work are two completely different tasks that should be done at
different times. Back in the day, it was obvious what your work was. You’d

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show up at the factory and it would be there sitting for you. Even as a
knowledge worker for an organization, a lot of the time your work is pretty
well-defined. For many indie workers, though, the work is almost never
well-defined. You have a lot of amorphous projects and intentions but you
can’t do a project. You have to figure out what the actual next step is (or as
David Allen calls it, the next action). In your weekly review you go through
all your projects and give yourself next actions so when you sit down to
work in the upcoming week the work has already been defined and you can
just do.

Better Decision Making

I love my weekly review because it lets me be stupid and happy for seven
days at a time. I know that during my last weekly review I thought about all
the work I had committed to, my values and strengths, my goals and my
vision, and took each of them into consideration as I figured out my
upcoming week of work. With all of that completed, I have a list of doable
and concrete next actions that I can just power through for the remainder of
the week. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m on the right path or doing
the “right” thing because I trust I thought about that in my last weekly
review and will think about it again in seven days or less.

Less Fires, More Awesome

Doing a weekly review prevents you from having to deal with last second
explosions of panic when deadlines are forgotten or seemingly random
(although, probably foreseeable if you had bothered to look) problems
emerge. Part of your weekly review is looking at your upcoming calendar,
your job responsibilities, long term projects, etc. And making sure you’re
setting yourself up with enough time to finish everything. Less panic equals

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less stress. Less stress means you’ll probably like your job a lot more.

How to Do a Weekly Review

The basics of a weekly review are incredibly simple:

1. Gather all pieces of information, input, reminders, things you have to

do, etc into as few “buckets” as possible. Gather the emails you need
to respond to, the pieces of paper sitting in your physical inbox, text
messages, voicemails — everything.
2. One by one, process each piece of information. If it’s doable in two
minutes or less, do it now. If it’s reference material you might need
later, put in a filing system. If it’s something you need to do but it will
take longer than two minutes, put it in your task management system.
If it’s something you can delegate, send it to the person who can do it
and put a marker in your task management system. If it’s trash, trash
it.
3. Go through your task management system and make sure every
project has at least one concrete and doable next action.
4. Clear out completed or no longer projects and next actions.
5. Look at your upcoming week in terms of appointments and due dates
and set some general goals for each day.
6. Do your work for seven days without worrying too much about
anything other than doing the work. Then, do another review.

A couple things to keep in mind when doing your weekly review:

1. Commit to a specific time each week to do your review. I do mine on

Friday afternoon but up until a few weeks ago always did it on
Sunday afternoon. It doesn’t matter when you decide to do it, just
commit to whatever decision you make (and you can always change

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it later like I did if it turns out to not be the optimal time).

2. Create a checklist for your review. Constantly tweak it as you improve
your process. Here’s mine. I’m constantly tweaking it to make sure it
meets my needs.
3. Figure out what works for you. The ultimate goal of any review is to
know your task management system is up to date so you don’t have
to worry about it. Whatever it takes to get you to that point, do it. It’s
worth the time investment.

Monthly and Yearly Reviews

You can go through the same basic process with different goals in mind on
a monthly and yearly basis as well. Instead of dealing with the nitty gritty
details like during a weekly review, in a monthly or yearly review you can
check in with the higher level questions regarding values, visions, goals,
etc. To get started, here’s the template I use for my monthly review. Again,
it’s highly customized to the way I work and the tools I use, but it might give
you some ideas about how you can structure your own.

A Few Final Ideas

The process of work fascinates me. I could write about it all day.
Unfortunately, there’s only so much I can cram into one guide. To round out
this section, I’d like to share a handful of bite-sized considerations for
improving your work process as an indie worker.

Ubiquitous Capture
There’s no excuse to ever lose a good idea (or even just an urgent one) to
the ether of forgetfulness. Get in the habit of writing down ideas and
thoughts as they happen. Awhile back I got into the habit of carrying a small
notebook in my back left pocket and a pen in my front pocket. Nowadays,

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since I always have my smartphone on my I make sure a note taking app is

on my front page and just a tap away. I’ve found that people always agree
with me in principle but actually starting the habit is hard. The tricky thing
about having a great idea is that you think it’ll be impossible to forget
because it’s just so great. But you inevitably always will. Write it down and
get it into your task management system so you can actually do something
with it in the future.

Embrace Lists
To do lists and project lists are important. However, I’ve found some of my
most rewarding lists to be things like Places to Go, Movies to Watch, Board
Games to Try, and Music to Check Out. When something along those lines
pops into your head throughout the day, capture it (see above) and then put
it on the proper list. Once a month or once every couple months, check out
your lists and pick out some new and exciting things to do. You probably
deal with a ton of information on a daily basis, why not make it work for you
a little bit?

Schedule Personal Development Time

As an indie worker, the cruel truth is that there probably isn’t anybody who
cares about your personal growth and professional development. Harsh,
but true. Therefore, you have to explicitly make time to develop your skills
and abilities. Figure out where you’re lacking or where your industry is
heading and make plans to acquire the skills you need to stay, or become
increasingly, relevant. You can also use this time to learn more about your
tools and systematically examine if there is anything better you could be
using.

Consistency

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Motivation is a cruel mistress. When you have it, everything seems great
and you likely don’t have a care in the world. When you don’t have it,
everything seems harder and much more pointless. Cherish the days you
wake up with motivation and utilize them to the best of your ability.
However, try striving for such consistency in your work process that
motivation becomes largely irrelevant. Some days you’ll feel awesome
about your work. Some days you won’t. Either way, you’re showing up and
getting it done.

Take Leisure Seriously

It can be very easy to let work spill over all boundaries of rationality and
overtake your life as an indie worker. Work often expands to fill the space
allotted to it and without careful boundaries, or at least conscious decisions,
the space you give your work could become nearly limitless. Try to
counteract this by being as conscious and deliberate about taking time off
and rejuvenating as you do buckling down and getting your work done.
Much of the time, the quality of your work is directly capped or multiplied by
the quality (or lack thereof) of your leisure.

Assignment
Schedule a time to do a weekly review in the next couple of days. Look at
my template and make changes to it in preparation for your own review.

Assess your main workspace. What is within arms reach that doesn’t need
to be? What isn’t within arms reach that should be? What would happen if
you drastically reduced the number of “things” around you? Is it worth a
one week or one month experiment? Put things in a box and only retrieve
them if you need them. After a couple months, anything that’s still in the
box can likely be donated/recycled/thrown away.

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Additional Resources
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David
Allen
◦ This is the other book (along with Flow) that I credit with
completely changing the way I work and live. It’s so much more
than just making lists and getting things out of your head.
Adopting GTD will help you operate on a completely different
level when it comes to making work that matters and enjoying
your life.
• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, is the
Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Tony Schwartz
and Jim Loehr
◦ This book left a lasting impact on me. It made me realize I
needed to stop thinking about the way I work in terms of total
hours worked, but as a series of sprints that allow me to work at
full capacity before mindfully renewing my energy and sprinting
forward again. There’s a lot to be learned from this book for
somebody who has a lot of control over the way they work (ie
you).
• Evernote - (Mac/PC)
◦ This is the software I use as a digital filing cabinet. Anything I
may need to reference in the future and all documents related
to ongoing projects live here. I pay for the Premium version, but
the free version is awesome, too. It’s a super flexible piece of
software (see The Secret Weapon below) so it’s likely you can
find a way to use it productively.
• Things - (Mac)
◦ This is the software I use for task management. I keep track of
all my ongoing projects and the tasks I need to complete to

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finish them in here. It has a great quick entry activated by a

keyboard shortcut which I use numerous times every day to get
quick thoughts out of my head and into my system. When I’m
away from my computer I use the iOS app to check my tasks
and record new things to do. The iOS app and the OS X
program sync so I can trust that whatever version I’m looking at
has the most up to date information.
• The Secret Weapon
◦ This is a great resource for those people who want to learn how
to use Evernote as a task management system in the GTD
philosophy. While I use Evernote as a reference system, it can
definitely be used as a task management system, too. These
video walkthroughs will help you set up your system.
• 43 Folders
◦ While no longer actively updated, 43 folders has a ton of great
resources about improving your personal productivity and using
a GTD system.
• 99U
◦ The site’s tagline says it all — It’s not about ideas. It’s about
making ideas happen. Tons of great articles to get you thinking
about your personal productivity and approach to getting work
done.
• My weekly review template
◦ This is my highly tailored and personal weekly review template.
I’ve constantly tweaked it over the past year and a half to reflect
the way I use my tools and for my specific workflow. Use it as a
template to start your own checklist.
• Trigger list
◦ This trigger list is very helpful when trying to complete a mental
RAM dump. Work through all the questions to make sure you

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get all nagging open loops out of your head and into your
system.

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Conclusion
I know we covered a lot of ground in this guide and I hope you’re feeling
exhilarated by all the information and not overwhelmed. If you are,
hopefully these three takeaway points will distill everything down into a
digestible chunk.

Stay Curious
Nobody is going to be looking over your shoulder and telling you what you
should be learning to move forward in your chosen career. It’s completely
up to you. By keeping your mind open you can always be on the lookout for
new learning opportunities. By committing to a practice of self-
experimentation you can figure out what self help advice works for you and
what doesn’t. You can figure out what style of work works best for you in
what kind of situation. You can constantly tweak your process based on
your observations of the world and people around you. Tied to your Growth
Mindset, you will always be on an upward trajectory.

Align Your Strengths and Values

Everybody has certain positive traits that are more pronounced than in
others. By working through the VIA questionnaire you worked to identify
what character strengths you feature. Figure out ways to use those
strengths in the work you do every day. You likely have a myriad of
opportunities to use your strengths to better inform how you work. In the
same vein, work to become as clear as possible in your values and let
them guide the hundreds of decisions you make every day. On the one
hand you can use them to try to create the most meaningful and personally
relevant work. On the other hand, you can use them to inform the way you

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work everyday, regardless of how you feel about the task.

Constant Practice, Constant Improvement

Your work is a process. Every day you have an opportunity to wipe the
slate clean and start anew. Procrastinated all day yesterday? Wipe the
slate and redouble your focus today. Unhappy with how a client interaction
went yesterday? Learn from the opportunity and tweak your approach
today. The beautiful thing about viewing your work as a process is that a
process is inherently fluid. Processes implies movement. As an indie
worker you have a prime opportunity to never become one of those people
who seems completely stuck in their career. You have the freedom and the
ability to change how you work, to tweak the type of work you do, and to
constantly challenge yourself with the decisions you make every day.

A Final Offer: Coaching

It has been an absolute pleasure to create this guide. As a token of my
appreciation I’d like to offer you 10% off my posted coaching rates for
the rest of your life. All you have to do is tell me you downloaded the
guide and I’ll automatically reduce the price of any coaching sessions
you purchase.

I hope the blog at The Workologist continues to be of value to you and if

you’re interested in learning more about conscious living, work, and
personal development I encourage you to devour the archive on the
website and reach out to me if you ever have any questions.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

If you enjoyed the guide and feel like you learned something, please tell

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your friends about it. I’m putting myself through graduate school on the
back of my own indie work efforts so any help you can give me is very
graciously appreciated. Thank you for your time, attention, and
consideration of my ideas and writing. I hope you learned something and
good luck with all your future work!

Sam Spurlin

theworkologist.com
@theworkologist
[email protected]

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