I haven’t been drinking, but I’m not quite thinking clearly either. Yesterday…
I wrote 771 words for the ‘Sitting On Goldmines‘ and 3 auto-responder emails for a client before 12PM. I then led 2 project planning conference calls, was interviewed for 2 podcasts, and spoke on a ‘Growth Hacking for Startups’ panel with one of the OG’s from Apple’s advertising team. Afterwards I dragged myself to party to see a friend who was in town from Brazil before sneaking away to sleep… for 5 hours.
Today, during a 9 hour in-house with a client, I cranked some deep house music from reddit and created advertising campaigns, style guides, and operational process to support the strategy I’d already outlined for the soon-to-launch publishing company. Founded, funded, and led by a 25-year-old (fellow Jew) who successfully exited his first two companies — they’re The New Yorker for the VICE generation.
“Exploratory journalism through the lens of the human psyche.”
I can’t share too much about the company quite yet, but when they go public on March 14th I’ll be detailing (as much as I can) how I’m taking them from stealth startup to mainstream media contender faster than my milk takes to spoil.
I’d love to say it’s a result of my brilliance, but the truth is that their product is fucking fantastic and my role is (as I see it) more of common sense and execution. Working with this team has been illuminating as in the last decade of playing in tech they are far and above the most well orchestrated machine I’ve encountered.
Before sitting to write this email in my pajamas at 8PM on a Friday night my aim was to communicate my simple method for dominating production and getting shit done, but as I see this email come together I’m flabbergasted this all happened in 2 days.
Atop all of that, I have 5 key thoughts notated and another 3 stories cached in my task list to be shared in later emails. I detail all of that to drive home this simple point:
You can do anything if you stop trying to do everything.
When I’m “on” and working… my phone is flipped screen down, my notifications are off, my noise canceling headphones are thumpin’, and I have a series of directives.
They say you should eat an elephant one bite at a time — I’ve never had elephant meat and I’d imagine it’s pretty gamey… still — you have to break big things down.
Complete one thing and move on to the next.
My one thing was, no matter what, write this email. I could have hit the traveling rings before sunset or accepted that cute girl’s invitation to join her at the bar (not the ‘button nose‘ girl, a different girl that’s far easier to turn down) but I didn’t because my highest priority directive was to keep my promise to send this email to you.
Take one step.