Productivity

The #1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world

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Today, I want to share with you the #1 most powerful personal discipline in all the world.

It struck me like lightning a few days ago when I came across it in Dan Kennedy’s No B.S. Time Management book.

Dan says everybody he has ever met who sticks to this discipline ends up hugely successful… while everybody who doesn’t stick to it eventually fails.

In other words, this one discipline is the difference between the winners and the losers… the Bugs Bunnies on the one hand, and the Daffy Ducks on the other… the Jerry Seinfelds and the George Costanzas of the world.

So with that intro, would you like to know what this discipline is? Get ready:

It’s punctuality.

“Gaaaah, come on!” you say. “Next you’ll be telling me to brush my teeth and make my bed each morning!”

Keep yer shirt on. I’m not telling you to do anything, tooth-wise or punctuality-wise.

I just want to share what Dan says about punctuality. He makes a big case for punctuality being a proxy for trustworthiness. According to Dan’s research into the brains of the rich and successful, the higher you go up the wealth ladder, the more people will judge you based on your punctuality.

Even so, maybe punctually genuinely is not an issue for you.

It’s never been an issue for me. I show up to meetings on time, I deliver client work at agreed-upon deadlines, I do stuff when I tell people I will do it.

But here’s the lightning bolt that struck me when I read Dan’s praise of punctuality:

I realized that while I’m punctual in my contracts with others…

I’m not at all punctual in my contracts with myself. Rather, I’m very sloppy and lax with myself.

The fact is, I’m lazy by nature. I take advantage of working on my own, with no evil boss standing above me with a big wooden ruler, ready to rap me on the knuckles as soon as I start to lag.

So I show up to work when I feel like it. I take long lunches. I pay no mind to the clock. Why would I? It’s the benefit of working for myself, by myself.

​​Here’s Dan Kennedy again:

Good news. bad news.
Good news! You are now your own boss!
Bad news! You are a lousy boss with one unreliable employee!

So all I want to tell you is that I’m now taking punctuality a lot more seriously. Yes, even when I’m by myself. Even when no one around to judge me or distrust me or make me feel unprofessional.

I can tell you I’ve been more productive as a result while spending less time working. And more importantly, I feel better. I also feel a little morally superior to that undisciplined sloth who lived in my skin until just a few days ago.

Normally, this might be the point in my email where I suggest the same change of attitude to you.

I certainly won’t advise you against taking up the personal discipline of punctuality. But I won’t advise you to take it up either.

Because I don’t have to.

If you’re curious how I can be so cavalier and confident about your self-discipline habits and your future success… well, sign up for my newsletter. My email tomorrow will explain everything. I’ll send it out at exactly 8:37 PM CET.

Out of office and Carlton’s self-programming trick

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I finished up this morning’s Zoom call and then I tiptoed back to bed, snuck in, and started shivering under three layers of blankets.

There were two things I wanted to get done today. The Zoom call was one. And I managed to get it done, in spite of being sick with some unidentified illness.

I’m telling you this in case you’ve written me in the past few days and haven’t gotten a response. It’s because I’ve pared down what I’m doing to the absolute essentials.

I also wanted to share a little psychological hack I learned from John Carlton. Carlton writes:

Gary Halbert used to buy himself watches, or cameras, or even boats (preferably used wooden craft requiring thousands in maintenance, but that’s another story) whenever he finished a big gig. As a reward for a job well done.

I’ve always rewarded myself with free time (as in taking the phone off the hook for an entire week, or splitting to hang with friends).

It doesn’t matter what, precisely, the reward is (as long as it’s meaningful to you)… but the ACT of rewarding yourself fires up the motivation part of your unconscious brain.

You might think it’s silly to connect Carlton’s watches-and-sailboats advice to my situation today.

So be it.

But I don’t think I could have pulled myself together for the call had I scheduled more work for myself right after, and had I not promised myself that shivery, four-hour nap as a reward.

But anyways. Here’s an email-writing tip. Wrap up what you’ve been talking about by giving your reader a takeaway he can use today. So here it is, in Carlton’s words:

Fastest path to burnout is to finish a grueling gig, clear the desk, and then start the next grueling gig.

What the hell are you thinking, you’re Superman?

Decompress, go shop for a goodie, teach your brain to associate end-of-job with fun rewards.

Main key: The reward cannot be something you’d buy or do anyway. It has to be pure excessive nonsense (like Halbert’s 14th watch or 3rd boat) that delights your Inner Kid.

Last point:

If you’d like to read me repurposing and curating famous copywriters good ideas, consider signing up to my email newsletter.

3 copywriting riddles to ruin your productivity

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Productivity expert (and Elon Musk lookalike) Tiago Forte recently shared three unique and counterintuitive tips:

1. No email gets answered for 48 hrs

2. No meeting gets scheduled before 1 week out

3. No project gets launched w/ < a month notice

This sounds like great advice to me. I’m all for letting emails and meetings wither in the sun and get whipped by the wind and the rain, to the point where they hopefully die on the vine.

But about that third tip with the projects… well, that’s great advice too. I just wish I had the self-awareness to follow it. But I don’t.

For example, last Friday morning, I had the idea for a new project. A training where I reveal my go-to tricks and tactics and secrets for writing these emails.

The next 18 or so hours of my life are a blur.

What I know is that on Friday afternoon, I wrote up an email to float that idea to my email list. I also included a bribe — a discount — to gauge interest. On Friday evening, I sent the email out.

Saturday morning arrived. It turns out there was interest. My inbox was creaking and straining under the load.

So I sat down, defined what the offer would be, bought a domain, renamed the offer to its current name, created the website and sales funnel, wrote an email to promote it all, and sent that out. Oh, I also wrote up a rudimentary sales page so people could actually know what they were buying.

Should I have taken Tiago’s advice and waited a month to launch this project? Probably. But it’s a moot point now. I’m in for the ride.

Over the week that’s passed since, I haven’t had time to do much to improve that sales page. That changed a bit this morning. I added 9 fascinations to the sales page about what I will reveal.

Perhaps you’d like a riddle? Here’s one of the fascinations I wrote. You can test out your riddle-solving skills and guess what I have in mind:

* How to build your authority at the expense of others in your industry. I call it the “bait & switch” email close. Readers love it, and it’s less shady than it might sound.

Maybe that’s too obvious given my recent emails. Ok. So here’s a second riddle:

* The hypnotic induction I use to get readers over dry or technical material. Goes all the way back to Dr. Milton Erickson. I find it very powerful, but but I’ve never met anybody in the copywriting space who knows about it.

Got that also? Clever hobbit you are. All right, here’s one last one for tonight:

* A cheap but effective way to use email to get on the radar of powerful and influential people in your industry. I used this to get a bunch of top Agora copywriters and marketers on my list. Also makes your emails easier and more fun to read.

Did I finally get you stumped? Or do you have guesses for all three riddles, but you want to make sure you were right?

Well, the only way to get certain answers to these riddles, plus about a dozen more, is to sign up for my Influential Emails training. The deadline to sign up is tonight, 12 midnight PST.

The Influential Emails signup page is below. It’s not beautiful, and it doesn’t represent weeks or months of copywriting effort. But if I’ve done a good job with my emails to date, and if you are a good fit for this training, I believe it will do. Here’s the link:

https://influentialemails.com

The 400-Hour Workweek: Embrace the men in gray, multiply what you do, and join me for Influential Emails

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“Time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. The men in gray knew this better than anyone. Nobody knew the value of an hour or a minute, or even of a single second, as well as they. They were experts on time just as leeches are experts on blood, and they acted accordingly.”

Michael Ende, the guy who wrote the 80s hit Neverending Story, also wrote a kids’ book called Momo. That’s where I got the quote above. It’s a story about a little girl, Momo, who stands up to the mysterious, cigar-smoking men in gray.

The men in gray show up in Momo’s town and open the Timesaving Bank. “Deposit your current time,” they promise, “and you’ll get it back with interest in the future.” All the townspeople jump at the offer and lose themselves in the process. Momo is the only one who resists.

I’ll get back to Momo in a second. But first let me tell you about something interesting I read today. It’s an article by Cal Newport, the guy who wrote Deep Work. Newport’s article is titled Revisiting “The 4-Hour Workweek.”

In the article, Newport says that we as a society missed the real message of Tim Ferriss’s 2007 book. Instead of learning to improve our productivity, reduce our working time, and live a happier life, we focused on Ferriss’s hacks. So we could get done more. So we could strive more. So we could be more busy.

But Newport is hopeful. Now, with work-from-home, and corona, and a different economic situation than in 2007, he thinks we have a real chance to rethink our relationship to work.

I have my doubts.

In Michael Ende’s book, the men in gray don’t just roll over and give up control of the Timesaving Bank. It takes Momo to take them on and defeat them.

Something similar will have to happen in our world. The men in gray will fight hard for the 40-, 60-, and 100-hour workweek. They won’t just sit on the edges of their seats, nervously sucking on their cigars, watching to see if we’d maybe like to run them out of town. It will take a fight, and a big one.

But it will be even harder in our world than it was in Momo’s.

Because here, the men in gray — whatever they represent — aren’t some external parasites. Rather, they are inside each of us, as much a part of being human as decency and common sense.

Maybe you find that thought repulsive. Or maybe you find me repulsive, and you wonder what I’m on about. So maybe this is where we part ways. In that case, I wish you good luck in your fight for the 4-hour workweek.

But if you’re still with me, let me tell you how you can get the equivalent of a 400-hour workweek, without working harder, longer, or even smarter.

The secret is to take advantage of the magical power of multiplying what you do, so that a bit of work can get you paid disproportionately.

Thanks to the Internet, it’s pretty easy to do these days.

It’s how I’ve been able to achieve the real promise of Tim Ferriss’s book. Escape the 9-5. Live anywhere. And join the New Rich.

I embraced the men in gray inside all of us, along with all the other weird, wonderful, and repulsive parts of being human. And for years, I’ve been using this to help clients with their “salesmanship multiplied.”

More recently, I’ve been helping myself also. Except I find that, rather than “salesmanship multiplied,” what works even better for me is “influence multiplied.”

If you’d like to find out exactly what I mean by this and how I do it… you can do so in my Influential Emails training. I will be putting it on soon.

But the deadline to sign up for it is even sooner. Only two days from now. Tik tok.

Time is life itself… and time to sign up is passing. If you know the value of an hour or a minute, and you want to multiply the value of yours, then this might be for you:

https://influentialemails.com

Fezzik-slapped into success and achievement

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Andre the Giant sucked.

The other actors, all pros, were exchanging looks behind his back. This wasn’t going to work.

The time was 1986. The place was London. The movie was the Princess Bride, and this was the initial script reading.

Andre was supposed to play Fezzik. But he was terrible. Slow… and monotone… and rote. There was no way way this could work on film.

“Read faster.”

Mandy Patinkin, playing Inigo, kept telling Andre to go faster. Without effect.

“Read faster!”

Still no effect. Instructions just couldn’t penetrate Andre’s 90-lb skull.

“Faster Fezzik!” yelled Mandy at the top of his voice. But Andre still kept reading in his slow voice and then—

SLAP!

Mandy slapped the giant across the face. Hard.

Andre’s eyes went wide. There was a pause. And dead silence.

Andre, the 550-lb professional wrestler, who could manhandle seven grown men at once, was thinking. And something finally clicked. He started speaking faster and putting more energy into the role.

The rest as they say, is marketing. So let’s talk about marketing prospects who can’t or won’t follow instructions.

In my email a couple days ago, I offered people a bribe in exchange for writing me and doing two simple things.

Lots of people responded, doing just what I’d asked.

But a few of the people who responded wouldn’t follow my simple instructions.

I get it. I’m reactive like that too.

I start burning inside when anyone tells me what to do. And I start looking for ways to reassert my independence and sovereignty.

But I can tell you this:

The few things I’ve achieved in life all came from finding somebody else’s successful system. And then following it blindly.

Following it, even when I could see a better way. Even when I felt I could skip a step. Even when I was sure some part of it wouldn’t work for me.

Like I said, this is how I achieved the things I have achieved in life.

I probably would have achieved more, or much faster, had I been less stubborn… less reactive… or had I had an Inigo reach out to me and slap me across the face.

That’s not to say there is no place for creativity, uniqueness, or growth in the world.

For example, I started writing these emails following somebody else’s system. Over time, with enough practice, this warped and grew into something new and different. A new system of my own, which I’m calling Influential Emails.

I can tell you this:

Influential Emails will not work for anyone who is too smart, experienced, or reactive to follow instructions. Well, it might work after a slap, but that’s something I can’t do from where I’m sitting.

But say you are ready to follow instructions. Will Influential Emails help you achieve success?

​​Only you can discover that. But if you need some extra info to help you decide whether to give it a twy, then take a wook at the fowowing page:

https://influentialemails.com/

The parable of the idea sower

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Today I’d like to tell you about one of the two main engines behind my ability to produce. This engine is very simple, but it’s very powerful. And I believe you can get great use out of it if you also choose to use it.

But hold on.

Will you really hear me if I tell you straight up?

Perhaps. But I want better odds than that. So let me first tell you the ancient parable of the sower.

The sower went a-sowing. He threw down some seeds. A few fell by the wayside. A few fell on shallow ground. A few fell among thorns.

All of these seeds were wasted.

But a few seeds fell on good soil. And the upshot was a good harvest. The sower had an ROI of 3,000%-6,000%. And he said, “You know what? I might do this again tomorrow.”

Maybe you recognize this parable. And maybe you even know one interpretation of it.

But today I want to give you another interpretation. It might be new to you.

Because ideas you come up with — possible solutions to a problem — are like these seeds. A few ideas fall by the wayside because they are just nonsense and irrelevant. A few ideas take root in shallow ground — they are too predictable and unimaginative. A few ideas end up choked with thorns, because they are impractical.

But a few ideas land right where they should. And the ROI is tremendous.

Yesterday, a member of my Copy Riddles program wrote in. He said he could only come up with two bullets where I had suggested writing three. I told him that the solution to his problem might be to write 6 bullets or 9, instead of aiming for 3.

Because if you can’t get an idea to land right where it should, it’s not because your aim is not good enough. It’s because you’re not throwing enough seeds out. Throw more seeds out, regularly, and you won’t have to worry about your aim.

That’s what I’ve been doing for a few years already. 10 ideas. Every day. About something — personal, business, or fanciful. And I do it while working too. 10 subject lines. 10 hooks. 10 ways to illustrate a point that you should generate more ideas, including wasted ones.

By the way, this is something else you might recognize. I originally got this “10 ideas” idea from James Altucher. He’s also the one who had the smart insight that if you can’t come up with 10 ideas, you should come up with 20. Because you’re obviously limiting yourself too much in your thinking.

James has a little challenge for you. He promises to turn you into an idea machine. He’s also got a lot of how-to advice that might help you in this quest. You can find all of that on the following page, which has been worth tens of thousands of dollars to me, and might be worth more to you — if you only do what it says, starting today.

But before you go — do you want more ideas like this? Then sign up to my email newsletter. And then off you go, to become an idea machine:

https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-for-becoming-an-idea-machine/

Jerry Seinfeld’s harsh words of encouragement

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Today I read an interesting article by a guy named Sam Sussman, who might be Bob Dylan’s son.

Sussman’s article starts out by describing how Sussman’s mom and Bob Dylan got together, back in 1974.

Dylan asked the mom, then 20 years old, to host a party in her tiny New York apartment.

He then showed up in red cowboy boots, along with a bunch of other people.

The other people left around 2am.

Dylan stayed. And with a flick of his red cowboy boots, he closed the front door behind the last guest, and then turned to face Sussman’s mom. And so their relationship started.

I thought Sussman’s article was worth reading for that boot-flicking seduction move alone.

Of course, Sussman has more serious soul-searching to do, including this bit:

But perhaps more than seeking a literal father, I looked to Dylan for evidence that I could make it as a writer. Besides my mother and my tenth-grade literature teacher, nobody had ever given me a reason to believe I could.

I guess Sussman turned out ok as a writer, in spite of a lack of early encouragement. His article appeared in Harper’s, and I think he’s got a novel out.

Still, that quote above made me think of a bit of advice Jerry Seinfeld gave in the 1980s to would-be comedians who had signed up for a stand-up comedy class. Jerry’s advice might sound harsh. In any case, it’s all I want to say for today, so I’ll leave you with his words, and you decide:

The fact that you have even signed up for this class is a very bad sign for what you’re trying to do.

The fact that you think anyone can help you or there’s anything that you need to learn…you have gone off on a bad track.

Because nobody knows anything about any of this.

And if you want to do it, what I really should do is I should have a giant flag behind me that I would pull a string and it would roll down, and on it the flag would just say two words:

Just work.

“That’s fine for today,” you might say, “but what about tomorrow?”

Tomorrow I’ll have something new for you. And if you’d like to read it, you can sign up for my email newsletter here.

A hare-brained idea for getting more done faster and better

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Since I was a kid, I’ve loved Looney Tunes cartoons. One I love in particular is The Rabbit of Seville, where Bugs Bunny plays a barber, and his victim is Elmer Fudd.

Bugs throws Elmer into a barber’s chair.

He makes a crown of shaving cream on Elmer’s bald head.

And he starts tossing fruit in there.

(By the way, that’s the way most of us solve problems. We complicate more and more, and toss pears and oranges and a pineapple on top of the mess that’s already there. And at the end, like Bugs, we examine our work… then add another round of shaving cream, and a cherry on top.)

I bring up The Rabbit of Seville because it’s one of the greatest cartoons of all time. And also because it has to do with the idea of cutting.

And that’s a quick but powerful idea I want to share with you. Often, when I am stuck on a project, the best thing I can do is to ask myself:

“What can I cut out and still have the end result come out better and stronger?”

I don’t just roll a few possible answers around my head.

Instead I force myself to write down 10 ideas, even if they are impractical. For example, I am currently building up a niche email newsletter to promote affiliate offers.

I’ve been lagging with it. So today I made a list of 10 things I could cut out. One of them was making sales.

Now that’s a terrible idea. But writing it down gets it out of my head, and makes space for other, maybe better ideas. And who knows, somewhere down the line, even this stupid idea might morph into something totally new and unexpected and great. Like the end of The Rabbit of Seville:

Elmer has an ax and is chasing Bugs.

Then Bugs has a bigger ax and is chasing Elmer.

Next Elmer has a revolver.

Then Bugs has a shotgun.

Elmer has a cannon.

Bugs has a bigger cannon.

Finally Elmer has a huge cannon. And then he screeches to a halt, befuddled.

Because Bugs gives him a bouquet of flowers.

Then a box of chocolates.

Then a diamond ring.

Suddenly, Elmer is wearing a wedding gown.

The two get married. And Bugs carries Elmer up to the rafters of the opera house… and drops him down into a wedding cake.

Bugs nibbles on his carrot. And to end, he says the same thing you can say when you cut down and finally ship your project…

“Nyaah… next!”

Next… is another idea about business, marketing, and copywriting. It arrives in my email newsletter tomorrow. If you’d like to read it, you can join my newsletter here.

Boredom is a necessary nutrient

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Yesterday, I came across an article which compared media consumption to eating. The real problem, the article claimed, is that we are consuming the media equivalent of junk food. But I’m not buying it.

Because here’s another food-related claim I once heard:

Hunger is a necessary nutrient.

That was somebody’s clever way of summarizing what’s now a pretty accepted medical idea. When you don’t eat, your body does some housekeeping which ends up being good for you, and which you cannot get done otherwise.

In other words, hunger, occasional but regular hunger, is just as needed as salt or vitamin C.

And now let me extend that idea to media consumption:

Boredom is a necessary nutrient. Or rather, a necessary ingredient, for any kind of creative work or actual thinking.

For example, today I spent three hours in the car, driving from one town to another.

As soon as I got in the car, my hand reached out to turn on the radio.

“Get thee behind me, Satan” I said to my hand, and I stopped myself from turning on the radio. Because I had a feeling what would happen if I kept the radio off.

For a while after that, my mind roiled inside my skull. “This is so boring!” it said. “I’m getting nervous! Let’s put on some music, it doesn’t even have to have words!”

But eventually, the mind gave up. And some time later, without me doing anything, it happened:

An idea for a new book jumped out at me. The title, the concept, everything. I’m not sure I will ever write this book, but right now I think it’s pretty cool.

Then a few minutes after that, an outline formed in my head for a project I’m working on.

“That outline seems too linear,” I said. “Not integrated enough.”

So a few minutes later, while I braked and navigated some tricky curves high above the sea, a better outline formed in my head.

Eventually, I pulled over at a gas station. I took out my phone, and I wrote down the results of all this hard work I had done.

Maybe the same stuff would have happened in my head had the radio been playing. Or had I been listening to an audiobook. Or had I had somebody in the car to entertain me.

But I doubt it. And that’s why I’d like to suggest:

If you’re looking to get healthy, lean, and fit, creatively speaking, it might be worth turning off your TV. Hiding your phone under the couch. Even putting away that valuable book you are reading.

And then, just sitting there, hungry for stimulation and bored out of your mind…. until something cool happens.

Oh, and stop subscribing to so many email newsletters. Even the entertaining and valuable ones. Like mine.

Outrage in the inbox

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I apparently misled a bunch of people yesterday.

At the end of the email I sent out to my newsletter subscribers, I promised a copy of a free book on how to get rich as a repositioning consultant.

People wrote in to ask for their copy.

But unfortunately, there is no book. My offer was supposed to be a demonstration of the idea in the email (“If it’s not selling, reposition it as a business opportunity”).

But I wasn’t clear enough or tongue-in-cheek enough about it. So people took my offer at face value.

I wrote back to everybody who responded to explain what had happened.

Most people shrugged, and said that if I ever do write anything on this topic, they hope to get their promised copy. Which they will.

A few people said they had a kind of a-ha moment after re-reading the email. A guy named Nathan put it this way:

I sat there for around 5 minutes debating whether it was sarcastic or not.

Everything in me said, “there is no book”…

FOMO got the better of me though.

I’ve been there myself. And it’s kind of the point of what I wrote yesterday.

This direct response stuff works. And a cocktail of “opportunity” mixed with “FREE” is powerful and heady.

Anyways, the two types of reactions above cover all the responses I got…

Except one.

It came from a guy who’s responded a few times before to my offers and emails. And a few times before, he upset my evening equilibrium with his entitled and loaded comments.

This time, after I explained what had happened, he sent back a highlighted copy of my promised offer from yesterday, along with,

“So… you lied?”

Perhaps I’m overly sensitive.

But I don’t like to create outrage. And I don’t like outrage directed at me. Even passively. Even if it’s supposed to be good for business.

So this became the first time I proactively unsubscribed somebody from my list. It felt good.

Because my thinking is, if you’re planning to be at something for a long time, the way I do with these emails, you have to be happy to come into work every day.

So let me just say thank you. For reading. For being understanding. For not being outraged. And tomorrow, we will be back to our usual marketing topics… along with, who knows, maybe another hidden demonstration.

And by the way:

If you’d like to sign up to my email newsletter so you can read tomorrow’s email and not be outraged by it, here’s where to go.