I increasingly believe that the only successful approach to productivity is treating yourself like an addict

If you want to stop drinking alcohol, don't keep it in the house 🙅

Here's how I keep myself productive:

1. Clean Out The Cupboards 📱

I use iOS Screen Time to block all social media, news, and yes, EMAIL, from my phone.

I also remove the ability to install new apps.

My wife set the code, so I don't have any easy way to get around it.

2. Add Guiderails 🚆

On my Mac, I have an automation that quits all apps each morning before I get to work and pulls up OmniFocus on the screen, so it's always the first thing I see when I open my computer and can't go down a rabbit trail.

3. Reduce Dopamine Hits 🥱

I use to spend my entire day in my inbox.

As I'd send emails, new ones would stream in constantly, and before I'd know it I'd spent 4-5 hours just responding to emails instead of moving important projects or individual work forward.

I setup @Mailman_HQ, a Gmail plug-in @mohitmamoria and I built, to only deliver email once in the morning and once in the early afternoon, and to automatically batch any emails from anyone I hadn't emailed with before at 7AM...

This is a story about how I lost $10,000,000 by doing something stupid.

Ten. Million. Dollars.

Literally up in smoke. Money bonfire.

That’s enough to retire with $250,000+ in annual income.

Here’s what happened…

In 2009, @metalab was a small but profitable agency.

The business was making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in annual profit and I was trying to figure out how to invest the profits.

Agencies can be great businesses, but they are HARD.

You lose clients at random, your pipeline dries up on a dime. It’s feast or famine and unpredictable.

I kept reading about what @dhh and @jasonfried were doing with Basecamp, building software for themselves then selling monthly access to

This was a relatively new concept back in those days, and it seemed like they were living the dream. I had a business crush.

The model they used for Basecamp was:

1. Build great software that scratched their own itch (project management)

2. Assume others have this problem

3. Charge a monthly recurring amount to give them access (SaaS)

4. Focus on organic growth via product improvement and public writing

5. Spend less than they make

6. Profit

There is one book I recommend more than any other, and I'm ashamed to share the name...

I swear to god, this is an incredible, well-written, thoughtful book.

It's called 'How To Get Rich' 🤦‍♂️

It was written by a magazine publishing magnate named Felix Dennis in 2008...

Ignore the title. Seriously. It's great.

He is a character. In the 90's he blew $100MM+ on alcohol and crack cocaine, then become a full-time poet in the early 2000's.

It encompasses most of the important lessons of starting and operating a large business.

Here's a few bits:

Fish where the fish are:

“If you wish to become rich, look carefully about you at the prevailing industries where wealth appears to be gravitating. THEN GO TO WHERE THE MONEY IS!”

Hire smart people and leave them to it:

“When you come across real talent, it is worth allowing them to create the structure. In nine cases out of ten, by inviting them to take responsibility and control for a new venture, you will motivate them to do great things.”

Delegate:

“If you want to get rich, then learn to delegate. Don’t learn to pretend to delegate. Delegation is not only a powerful tool, it is the only way to maximise and truly incentivise your most precious asset – the people who work for you."