14 Simple Methods to Help Firewall Your Time

Your time is the most valuable commodity that you have. Don’t give it away.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

In the modern age we’ve managed to find hundreds of thousands of ways to use as much time as possible.

We’ve come to a point where people cannot slow down. When they do, it is uncomfortable for them to sit still.

It’s impossible for some people to dwell in the present moment, without fiddling with a distraction.

We think we need to be constantly connected. We think we need to answer every email as soon as it arrives or society will leave us behind.

We think we need to madly dash from the subway, to the coffee shop (red-eye please), to the office every single day, or someone will think we’re not valuable enough.

None of this is true. In fact, it’s becoming readily apparently that the people who decide to opt out of this system of constant stimulation are far more effective people than the ones who are constantly plugged into the matrix.

Right now, in this moment, we need to reclaim our time.

Some of the most effective people I know, such as Leo Babauta and Tim Ferriss, have realized that being constantly connected is counter productive. They’ve both written in great length in their books The Power of Less, and The 4 Hour Workweek [aff links], about how blockading your time can generate far more intrinsic worth than by not.

The reason for this is simple: if you’re constantly connected, you’re also constantly reacting. Every single request that comes in needs to be answered immediately. This means you’re dividing your time between the important projects you’re working on, and little stupid things that come in.

For instance, I may get two @evbogue requests on Twitter in the time I take to write this. They will be simple questions, or requests to promote things. If I answered all of these requests immediately, wouldn’t have written these last couple of paragraphs.

Alternatively, if I wait until an hour from now, my work on this story will be done. I’ll be able to answer 5 @evbogue tweets and any emails all at once.

Constantly flailing from one activity to the next is only making our lives less valuable.

Time is probably the most valuable asset that we have left in this world, and it is rightfully yours.

This is the moment to take a stand, regain our valuable time for yourself.

How to firewall your time: 14 ways to save your valuable time, so you can use it appropriately.

1, Set dedicated work hours. Many people let there work hours extend into every odd hour of the day. Freelance web workers, like myself can fall into this trap even easier than someone who works at an office. There’s always something else to do, and never enough time to do it all. Set specific times when you will work on work, and stick with them. For instance: today I’m working from 1pm-5pm. After that time, I’m going to go enjoy the lovely weather and read Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin.

2, Pretend you’re not here. Lock the door, don’t let anyone in. Hide under the desk. This is easier if you work from anywhere, or have your own office, but there are many ways to pretend you’re not here. Be creative!

3, Answer emails decisively. I write about this often. Don’t sit at your computer hitting the send/receive button over and over and over again. Work is not about how many emails you can reply to, it never has been. Work is about thinking about unique solutions to problems, unless you’re a widget maker, which many of us aren’t anymore because all of those jobs are in China now. You need dedicated time to work on solutions, you can’t do this if you’re constantly waiting for a new email to come in your box.

4, Make dedicated Twitter time. Just like email, stop hitting the update button on Twitter. Trust me, it does no one any good if you stay constantly up to date on the 50 140 character messages that flew into your box in the last 30 seconds. Actually, while I’m on this topic, don’t follow 50,345 people on Twitter. I can’t take people who do this seriously. There is no possible way they will ever see my Twitter messages if they’re following that many people. Follow 150 people max. Dunbar’s law applies to Twitter too. Follow people who interest you, unfollow people who don’t interest you. It’s that simple.

(If you want someone to follow you on Twitter, try retweeting a few of their stories. That’s usually the best way to get them interested in your own personal work. There are many ‘bots’ on Twitter, and it’s hard to tell who to follow sometimes.)

5, Refuse to put out fires. I wrote about this last week two. There will always be non-urgent work emergencies, but you aren’t the fire department. These fires usually drop onto your desk at 4:49pm, and can take hours to deal with. Most of the time these emergencies could have been dealt with before they became emergencies if someone had just got in touch before they spiraled out of control. Make it clear you don’t deal with these. When ‘emergencies’ come, unless they’re actual life or death situations (these don’t happen often, but recognize when they do.) Handle them just like an other work request. Don’t panic, just do the work. If it’s 5pm and you’re going home, it can wait until tomorrow.

6, Make yourself unavailable. Some people make themselves always available at the office, or online. This is a trap, because people expect that you will be available at all times if you usually are. A better approach is to avoid broadcasting when you’re online and when you’re not. This might mean keeping your office door shut, or always keep headphones on if you work in an open office. It might mean finding more time to work from home, so you can get important projects done.

7, Always take a day to respond to everything. Make people assume it will take a day or two for you to get back with a request. You can always give a better response to a question or a problem if you have time to consider it. Make a commitment to not respond to requests for at least a day. Make your response incredibly valuable to your client, colleague, etc. This doesn’t mean that you should procrastinate, it’s just a way to consciously slow down the work cycle, so that everyone does better work.

8, Select two primary modes of communication. Make a choice as to which applications you’ll use to communicate with online. There are so many communications platforms available, and it’s incredibly important to select only two that you actually use. I use gmail and twitter. I do use Facebook, but it forwards everything I receive there to my gmail. I don’t check my Facebook, constantly, I don’t check my Wave constantly. Think about which communications platforms you use, and consider how to opt out of some. If you have three email addresses, (your Yahoo, your Gmail, your AOL) consider consolidating them into one email. Most of these services will forward, but if they don’t set up an auto-reply that informs people who email you that you no longer check this email and they should email you a the correct address.

9, Don’t use instant message. Always-on instant messaging is the ultimate enemy of firewalling your time. People expect an instant response to an instant message, and will usually become frustrated if you leave your instant messaging on but do not reply. Just don’t use AIM, Facebook chat, Gchat, etc. If you need to communicate with someone in real time, consider using one of these services on Invisible mode, and contact the person you’re working with.

10, Let the phone go to voicemail. When the phone rings, 9 out of 10 times you have no idea what the person on the other end wants from you. It’s good policy to let the message go to voicemail, and listen to the message. Let it compost in your brain for a bit and then give them a call back. This will give you time to consider a proper response to the problem, and not act in a reactionary manner. Respond once you’ve finished whatever you’re working on. Again, I’m not advocating procrastination, just having the ability to respond decisively.

11, Hire an assistant (or an Intern). In this economy, it’s pretty easy to find someone who can be your first line of defense. Timothy Ferris has an entire chapter in his book about outsourcing all of your boring tasks to India, maybe this can work for you. I don’t personally have anyone working for me, but I also have a very manageable workload. If you find yourself either doing a lot of remedial tasks that don’t challenge you, it can a good idea to hire someone to do them for you. Obviously, this only works if these tasks produce more value for your business than the assistant costs. If they don’t, consider whether it is necessary for you to complete them at all.

12, Take a timeout. Go for a walk in the park. Take an hour lunch break. There are a million ways you can disconnect, and I feel strongly that you should do this more than you are now. Leave your cellphone at home. Take a moment and think about your favorite way to take a break, and then find a way to implement it.

13, Take your work out of the office. If you can’t get any work done in the office, consider doing it at a coffeeshop or at home. This obviously depends a lot on the type of work that you do, and the freedom that you have to do it. I often find that a change of location can increase my productivity.

14, Only read information that contributes value. Unsubscribe from everything that is boring or you don’t have time to read. Many people subscribe to entirely too many blogs and other methods of incoming communication. Information is so accessible in this day in age, I promise you that you won’t run out. Consider each and every blog feed that you’re subscribed to, does it contribute value to your life? If you’re just reading it because you always have, maybe consider unsubscribing to these blogs. I used to check the front page of the New York Times constantly, just out of habit. I eventually realized that this wasn’t helping me. The news would still be there tomorrow, you don’t have to constantly stay up to date. Which blogs are you subscribed out of obligation instead of usefulness?

I hope you found these methods to firewall your time helpful. How do you firewall your time?

I’ve introduced a new share box below, with twitter and facebook share buttons.

I hope you’ll use it, because the sharing is incredibly important for independent content like my own.

Your single click takes less than 10 seconds, and can help my story be read by hundreds of people.

Thank you for your help, it means so much.





The Solitary Minimalist Journey

You can’t make anyone but yourself become minimalist.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

Over the last couple of months I’ve received a number of comments and tweets from people who want to share their minimalist ambitions with their spouse or their entire family.

Some were so enthusiastic, they wanted to make all of their friends minimalists too!

This is great, I love that people are so enthusiastic.

However, the idea of making other people minimalist is a difficult question.

Many people relate to objects differently. I’ve met people who live with nothing, and are perfectly content. I’ve met people who would kill themselves if they lost everything — even if this would inevitably lead to them being freer.

Many people still subscribe to the (antiquated, in my opinion) mentality that we are what we own. It’s can be hard to change these minds.

So, here’s my suggestion:

Don’t worry about the other people. You can’t force them to be minimalists.

Instead, set a good example with yourself.

Adopt a 30 day rule for your stuff, get rid of all your stuff and start to live with 100 things.

Don’t bother your boyfriend about his pile of dusty CDs. Focus all of that effort you’re directing at another person into freeing your own life.

Lead by example.

Show the people who you wish were less attached to their stuff how free you’ve made your own life.

Consider starting a blog documenting your progress becoming a minimalist. This can only help communicate your intentions. Join a growing community of amazing bloggers writing about being minimalist.

With any luck your partner, your kids, and your friends will start to embrace the idea of lessening their connection to their material possessions, and begin to adopt a freer lifestyle.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this post, consider receiving free updates via email or RSS.





46 Ways to Let Go (of stuff, and other things)

The hardest element in any relationship is having the ability to let it go when it ends.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

It’s incredibly hard to let go. I know so many people who have so much trouble with letting go that they have houses full of stuff they haven’t used in ten years. They’ve stayed in a job they don’t enjoy, just because. Or they keep crying over relationships that ended months ago.

It’s difficult to say goodbye.

This article is mostly about stuff, but this can apply to people and places and jobs that left us a tiny bit scarred.

It takes courage to stop dwelling and move to new terrain.

Forty five things in a box in a closet you haven’t touched in five years is one thing you might need to let go. Hanging out with those friends who always get you into trouble is another. Driving a car just because you always have can be something you can let go as well. Maybe you need to let go a snack food.

It takes courage to give something up, I understand that. Trust me, I’ve had plenty of my own personal battles with letting go of people, places and things. I imagine most people have.

One of the traits that most successful people share is the ability to know when to move on.

Because this is a problem that all of us face, I’ve taken time to prepare a list of 46 ways to let go of the old. I’m sure I left something out. I’m sure most of these won’t work for everyone. However, maybe one or two of these will stick and help you let go of something.

…this way you can make room for the new.

46 ways you can let go.

  1. Throw it away.
  2. Give it away.
  3. Recycle it.
  4. Tell it to go home.
  5. Make a list of things you’d rather have, or be doing.
  6. Don’t let yourself see it for a month.
  7. Don’t keep anything you don’t use or see at least once a month.
  8. Make a diagram of everywhere you spend your time.
  9. Eliminate time suckers.
  10. Trade one thing or activity for another that you like better.
  11. Throw it into the ocean (if it won’t hurt the fish).
  12. Break it.
  13. Tell someone to take it away.
  14. Sell it to someone who needs it.
  15. Turn it into artwork.
  16. Display it at an art gallery.
  17. Get a second opinion.
  18. Limit yourself to 100 things.
  19. Burn it on your roof or backyard.
  20. Tell it you love it, but you can’t be together.
  21. It’s you, it’s me.
  22. Throw a party and tell everyone to take something home with them.
  23. Bury it in the backyard so an archeologist can dig it up in 2000 years and think it’s more important than it actually is.
  24. Give it to your mom.
  25. Reinvent it as something new and interesting.
  26. Email a picture of it to me and ask if it’s worth keeping (my answer is usually no.)
  27. Acknowledge that it’s hurting you.
  28. Think about what ultimate freedom means to you.
  29. Contemplate your minimalist destination.
  30. Give it to someone who has nothing.
  31. Put it in an outbox.
  32. Bury it on the side of a mountain and tell no one.
  33. Leave it on the subway.
  34. Take a picture of it.
  35. Post that picture on craigslist.
  36. Drop it off the side of a building at night, and then clean it up first thing in the morning.
  37. Destroy it and hang it from the ceiling.
  38. Mail to to a random person in the phone book.
  39. Sell it and donate the money to a cause that you believe in.
  40. Leave it in a box on your doorstep, with a sign that says ‘free’.
  41. Take a vacation from it all.
  42. Stay at a friend’s house for a week.
  43. Take it to your recycling center free box.
  44. Tweet #minimalist and ask if you should keep it.
  45. Move somewhere you’ve always wanted to live.
  46. Take only a backpack.

What do you need to let go? Let me and many remarkable readers of Far Beyond The Stars know in the comments!

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” -Lao Tzu

Just in case you’re not following me on Twitter, you might have missed this! Yesterday I wrote a guest post at Naomi Seldin’s blog Simpler Living: 6 Simple Ways to Eat More Healthfully. Give it a read if you’re interested in some simple food tips.





How to Focus on the Important

Success often comes down to priorities, why have only a few of us decided we have them?

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter

I asked many people over new years what they would like to do in ten years. I got a lot of ‘I don’t know…’ answers.

I know one woman who wants to move to France. She’s wanted to move there for a number of years. I asked her if she would make it there by 2020, and she wasn’t sure if that was enough time. She’ll be nearly 60 in 2020.

I told her she could do it in less than a year.

Why not just go to France, if that’s where you want to be?

Many people spend so much time talking about what they wish they had the will power to achieve. If these people spent half as long talking and more time doing the work to get them to their goal every single day, eventually they might just get there.

Achieving your goals ultimately comes down to focusing on your priorities. However, many people seek simply to avoid setting them.

Instead of starting a business, a person continues to work at Starbucks.

Instead of traveling the world, a person buys an SUV.

It’s also important to realize when you have handicapped yourself by using a ‘when this happens, then I’ll do this.’ statement. Like, ‘if only I had a million dollars, I’d start my own business and travel the world!’

Realistically you’ll never earn a million dollars, so you’ll never achieve your dream.

My biggest goal right now is to support myself by writing this blog. This naturally means that my daily focus is writing incredibly valuable articles for this blog.

It is absolutely essential that you take a moment and think about what your ultimate goal is, in this moment, and prioritize it. Make this single goal the most important activity of every day. — Even if you are working at Starbucks, your day doesn’t revolve around Starbucks. It’s just where you go to work, but meanwhile your brain is thinking about photography.

How to focus on your priorities to achieve greater success.

  1. Select one overall priority that you care about intrinsically.
  2. Break down the priority into manageable steps that are actionable.
  3. Spend at least an hour (more if you can) every day working towards it.
  4. Be accountable. Tell everyone you’re moving to France by 2011.
  5. Map your progress in the short term and what you’ve achieved in the longer term.
  6. Reward yourself when you’ve made sufficient progress.

It’s okay to have other interests, but only give yourself one priority.

Now, there’s no reason why you can’t have multiple interests (minor priorities) at any one time, but I think it’s important to just focus on one over-arching priority. If you have seventeen priorities it’s really hard to find the time to do one thing every day to further them.

Jane, left a comment a few days ago listing her many priorities: writing, photography, web design, and teaching.

She recognized that she couldn’t focus on all of them at once, and she is totally right. You can’t master all of these things at one time. I recommended that she pick one to work towards mastering, before investing too much time in the others.

But it is also worth noting that she can be all of these things that she listed.

In fact, all of these skills compliment each other in significant ways. A web designer/photographer/writer/teacher is a very different professional than just a photographer. A photographer who cannot write will have difficulty communicating with her subjects and gathering contacts. If she cannot design a website, she will have to pay a web designer to put her work online. Teaching photography is one of the best ways a photographer can network with clients and other photographers.

Priorities change over time.

At various times in my own life I’ve invested thousands of hours in the very same skills Jane listed. Earlier in my life (probably between the ages of 12-16) I wanted to be a web designer, so I built many websites. Later I choose to concentrate on photography (18-23), so I spent thousands of hours taking photos. This eventually led to a job as a photo editor (21-24) where I spent thousands more hours making photos look brilliant on stories which were published on websites.

It’s perfectly acceptable to shift your priorities, and I think it’s only natural that they will change over time.

We are human beings, not robots, and our interests morph as we achieve various levels of skill. If you force yourself to stick with one path, when you really want to change it, then you’ll end up being incredibly unhappy.

Let the other priorities become less important until you’ve attained some level of mastery in the first.

I’ve spent many years with maintaining writing as passive activity, while I was focusing on art directing and photography.

I didn’t stress about writing. I still wrote as often as possible, but not on a schedule. Two summers ago I filled two Moleskins with a novel, without even making it a priority. That novel still isn’t a priority, but it was a big passive step towards being a better writer, as I was focusing on larger priorities.

Now that writing is my ultimate focus, all of that passive work behind the scenes has come to the forefront. The pieces are fitting together, and the results I’m seeing are extraordinary.

What are your priorities? How are you working towards them?

If you enjoyed this article, please retweet it on Twitter or share it on Facebook. It only takes ten seconds, and that little action opens up my blog to a whole new world of readers. Thank you for your help.





The Minimalist Path to Overnight Success

How to work towards a job you can believe in.

Written by Everett Bogue | Follow me on Twitter.

I’ve been writing exclusively about The Minimalist Workweek for the last couple of days. If you haven’t read these articles already, I definitely suggest that you do. On Monday I listed 21 ways to live a more minimalist workweek, on Wednesday Dave Damron taught us how to organize our drawers.

Today I’ve written a short article which I hope will help you deal with a subject that many of us face every day…

How do you work towards a job or career that you can really believe in?

An incredible amount of people are forced to work jobs that are slowly killing their souls. Nothing is worse than waking up every morning dreading the 8 to 10 hours you have to spend working a job that you hate.

We exist in a time when starting your own business has never been easier. Twitter and Facebook have made connecting with people instantaneous and free.

Now is the time to make the change in our lives and be able to do a job that really excites us.

It’s time to stop waiting, and cash in on your innate talent.

How to seize this moment and pursue your dreams now.

  1. Just quit. If you hate your job, and you have some money in the bank, just quit. Trust me, you will find a way to survive. If you don’t, there is always food stamps. This is harder for people who have to support other people, and I acknowledge that. But, if you’re young and not in too much debt, just get out and start having an adventure.
  2. Work on your passion from 7pm-2am. Maybe you can’t quit right now, but there are more than enough hours in the day to work towards your goals. Turn off the television and start making your dream come true. It’s easy to get into the habit of coming home from work and just sitting on the couch. Don’t let yourself fall into this trap, if you really want to make meaningful changes in your life, you need to force yourself to do some hard work on your actual goals.
  3. Make one small meaningful step per day. Put aside an hour to make a tiny contribution to your new career goals. If you write one 1500 word blog post a day about the field you want to enter, by the end of a year you will have written 546,000 words. That’s a couple of books worth of writing. If you write about what you want to become every day for a year, there’s no way you can’t become an expert on the subject.
  4. Spend ten hours a week trying to automate income. There are many ways to automate income these days. Start selling a product online, and give people who help you sell it 50% commission. Write a blog every day and use sell someone else’s product via affiliate services. These are some of the ways that I automate my income, but there are many more. A good resource on income automation is Timothy Ferris’s The 4 Hour Workweek.
  5. Learn everything you can about your passion. When I first quit my job in July, I had no idea what I was doing. I flew to Portland, and started doing yoga every day, but I also started reading every day. Over the course of 2 weeks I read every important book on business and marketing in Powell’s. Think about how you can max-out the knowledge you have on a particular subject. There’s no reason why you can’t be an expert in the career you want to pursue, so read every book on it now. You’ll be surprised how many ideas and plans can result from simply reading.
  6. Go back to school. Education is priceless, it also can be a great transition point. Apply to grad school, or go to college for the first time. Yes, it might be challenging, yes you might get into a ton of debt. The price you pay will pay back boatloads with the ideas and people that you will meet in the field you wish to pursue.
  7. Practice makes perfect. Malcolm Gladwell noted in Outliers that you need at least 10,000 hours to become a master. What can do you do to get in your 10,000 hours of practice in on your passion? –I might have read the entire business and marketing section at Powell’s in two weeks, but I’ve been publishing on the internet since I was twelve years old. This is a HUGE advantage over people who have just started. How can you leverage your existing experience in your new career?
  8. Work for free. The modern economy (especially on the web) rewards people who give their work away for free. Think of ways that you can give to people. Are you an excellent writer? Consider writing a profile on one remarkable person a week, to help them get exposure. Do you want to build cars? Maybe you can help your friends and family maintain theirs for free. Do you want to be a chef? Have one person over for dinner every night for a year, by the end of that year you’ll have at least 300 clients for your restaurant. It’s so important to give as much as you can as you’re building skills and a reputation. When I was becoming a photographer I shot thousands of free photographs for people, this gave me the experience I needed to shoot good photos, and later people came back to me with paying gigs.

Hopefully one of these ideas will help you achieve your dreams.

If you can think of more ways to follow your passion, I’d love if you could share them in the comments.