If you read The Four Hour Work Week or any other tome on personal effectiveness, then you know this. It’s how you build up momentum for the rest of the day. It’s when you’re most energized and alert.

Write first, check email later, deal with bullshit last. Often, this works.

But sometimes it doesn’t.

Sometimes I stare at the screen and that blank son of a bitch stares right back. Silent, mocking, bright.

Or maybe I’ve already knocked out my usual few hundred words of garbage, but the real writing has refused to start. The engine is revving but the car is going nowhere.

My personal doomsday.

I’m stuck, I’m pissed, and I can’t get out.

Here’s what I do.

I back out, all the way. I remove my corpse from the bloody confines of whatever Writing imprisoned me and GTFO for a few minutes.

It’s called a retreat.

No, it’s not a defeat.

And in this moment of complete surrender, I refuse to feel bad about myself, because I’ve survived and I will attack once more, harder.

I keep that Writing out of my head for a long time. Usually a third or half a day.

I do this because I’m not a nihilist. Because a day of poor writing doesn’t feel good. Because there’s no use beating a dead horse.

And at that moment in time I don’t need negativity. I need to take down some other, lesser, easier tasks unrelated to the Writing. I need them because they give me momentum. They remind me that I’m a finisher.

They help me pick up speed.

So after a period of self-loathe, I feel good about the retreat because those little tasks give me a running start.

And some walls are easier to climb when you have a running start.

So when the writing doesn’t come, I back off and divert my attention. I start with baby steps and get up to a sprint. And then I try the Writing again at full speed, feeling good.

And if that doesn’t succeed, tomorrow is a great day for winners too.

But then 2 weeks after that I landed a real project… which led to another… and another… and now I (very luckily) have almost as much work flow as I can handle, without a real end in sight. Getting here, however, was vastly harder than I anticipated even with industry contacts and referrals.

Those 14 weeks felt mostly like failure, but taught me about victory. Victory comes to those who keep their heads down long enough. There’s copywriters who construct far superior copy to me. There’s SEO gurus who could take me to the House and back. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t get my piece of the pie and delight clients in the process.

If you keep your head down and push the odds to your favor as much as possible, good things are guaranteed to happen. Hit enough of the right networking events and interesting relationships develop. Research and call up enough role models and not only will some answer, but you’ll land the advice that flips the switch. How quickly this happens depends on how intelligently you work and adapt.

It’s slow execution, inability to adapt, and giving up that will kill your projects and ideas. Not skill, resources, or background.

This is the premise under which I sought to listen to mp3′s at a faster rate. Here‘s how I do it via Quicktime (bonus: script included for batching). Hark! Now it takes 40 minutes to listen to an hour long interview.

On this piece of notebook scrap are the goals I set for myself for 2008. This is the first time this has happened. 

I guess it’s the first time I took my life truly serious. 

It feels pretty good. I can see significant success, rally around what I’ve accomplished and reflect on the areas I came up short. 

Since approaching more areas of my life like I do marketing, I’ve realized a significant uptick in achievement and fulfillment.

We know that which gets measured, gets done, but do we embrace it as fully as we should? I’m making strides to do exactly that, in life and in business.

First, a caveat: this is targeted at those of us working alone for extended periods of time on something hard.

Chugging on a long, difficult project without anyone else to lean on requires sturdy mental armor and quick emotional footwork. My daily goal setting process is designed to be a key player in keeping my emotional energy and motivation high, even if times are tough.

Ok, let’s break this bitch down…

The Difference Between Daily Goals and Performance Goals (and Why “Daily Goals” do not Equal “Steps”)

Daily Goals

…are small, bite-sized pieces of work you need to (and most likely can) finish today. “Finish and submit client proposal” is a daily goal; so is “Email 5 new leads for a follow-up phone call.”

They’re small and measureable on purpose. At the end of the day, I can (without thinking) determine if each goal was achieved.

Additionally, decide on each one deliberately. Part of their purpose is to ensure I’m not only working hard, but working hard on tasks that matter. As I’ll touch on later, part of my motivation is derived from this.

Why not just call them “steps”? Because I want to level up.

It’s all in the psychology, and how to best trick myself.

Completing a “step,” as Alfredo rightfully said, is not something you generally celebrate. A goal is something you celebrate.

I don’t disagree: I don’t cheer after climbing 1 stair of the Batu Caves, but I feel pretty damn good when I get to the top.

If I thought of these tasks as steps, completing them clearly wouldn’t be very motivating.

But I’m not looking for ways to not motivate myself. I’m looking for ways to keep my energy and motivation high as a kite as I work by myself to get this business off the ground.

So I call them “goals,” because it feels good to hit a goal, especially when that goal matters.

As someone who derives energy from seeing goals completed, this provides positive reinforcement to keep at It.

(Plus, when I complete these important chunks of work, it’s concrete proof I’m doing all I can to take this business to the next mythological level. This helps me review how effectively I’m spending my time–but that’s a different discussion.)

But daily goals aren’t the only, nor necessarily the most important source of motivation. Enter:

Performance Goals

These big cats relate to the results of your daily goals.

“Write this client a sales letter that converts at 7%” and “Hit $500,000 in revenue this month” are performance goals. They are also, hopefully, extremely audacious as well as directly translatable to your overall success metrics.

In the system I’ve constructed, completing my daily goals won’t make my business succeed. But hitting my performance goals means my business is exceeding.

And this brings up a crux you better understand if it’s going to be at all worthwhile: how to measure both kinds of goals, as well as what exactly it is they’re measuring…

Analyzing Accomplishment vs Analyzing Performance: Keeping Thy Head out of Thy Ass

When measuring the ultimate success of my effort, I look to my performance goals. My business is not growing if I’m not hitting these goals. If I don’t hit them, I’m not performing very well.

When measuring my output and how effectively I’m spending my time, I review the daily goals. If I’m not hitting my daily goals, I’m not sure where exactly my time is going (or I will be displeased with where my time is going). If I don’t hit these, I’m not accomplishing anything.

So they’re 2 different measurements for 2 different things. Hit the daily goal and you ran the mile; hit the performance goal and you ran it sufficiently fast. One leads in to the other.

How I Came to Use Daily Goals… a.k.a. Can Motivation Be Taught and Ingrained?

This whole system boils down to a key desire of mine: I don’t want to operate at 99% if I can operate at 100%. 

I want to take the thought out of as many process-based decisions as possible. I want to be as effective as possible. I also don’t want to get stuck in motivational ruts while facing inevitable adversity.

So, for now, we have two key ingredients that I want maxed the hell out: motivation and focus.

Maxing out is all about The Moment.

The completion of a sales letter is followed by 2 of the most crucial seconds of the day, where I ask, “What now?” It’s 2pm, I’m every so slightly thirsty (enough to justify standing up to refill), and I don’t have a task. What now?

I don’t want to have to think about that answer. If I think, I lose.

If I’m forced to think and happen to be in a moment of weakness, nomadlife is loading before I can stop my fingers from control+T’ing their way to a new tab.

So I decided to take the thought process out of the game and never again risk a moment of weakness.

Enter the daily goals. Hand crafted on a bright yellow post-it.

What now? Look to the post-it. That’s my guide, my savior, my treasure map. Cross out that item I just completed (with a silent “fuck yeah” adorned) and slide my gaze 2 centimeters lower to Next Item.

Instantly, I know the answer to “What now?” Crisis averted, focus maintained.

Secondly, as I said earlier, concentrated self-reflection revealed that I am personally motivated by the act of completion. I decided this is worth leveraging, so designed this system to play off that personality trait. One can never have too much motivation, especially when on a solo entrepreneurial journey.

Milk It for Good

This system may or may not work for you.

It was created based on my own self analyzation and what gets my engine revving full speed. It was also meant to help battle those 2-second Moments where I decide whether to stay focused or load a new tab and lose my mental momentum.

Your mileage may vary, but so far mine has been pretty hybrid good.

I’d (usually) study hard a night or two before, but when success was supremely crucial, I always blocked out extra time the morning before the test for 1 more run through. For me, this was stunningly successful, and worth the blurry eyes and anvil-feeling head. Should’ve used it more in college.

It took me a while to realize the obvious: mornings are my most creative and otherwise mentally powerful part of the day.

Each person has, and should probably determine, their own rhythm through the day. Playing to your individual rhythm is a key path to your most efficient and successful output.

During my initial copywriting days at MindValley, I found myself dragging on my 1st major assignment and couldn’t figure out why. The reason, I eventually discovered, was the early hours I “wasted” on studying.

I was so intent on success I took a literal interpretation of the “study – apply” philosophy. 

Bad move.

I was INputting during my best OUTputting hours. 

Instead of studying for 1+ hours in the morning and writing in the afternoon, I switched it around. I’d study at night and write down crucial notes to review the next morning. Doing it this way, I still began the day with ideas, but did so in 15 minutes versus 60 – 75.

And I had my best hours to do my most bottom-line critical work. I made sure meetings were after lunch, when my creative output starts to drop.

As a result, I set a new revenue record for my project that month.

Have you thought about your optimal schedule? How can you most quickly fire up your mental magic? What needs to be done the night before to get started quickly the next day?

Just like knowing who to learn from when, I think knowing what to do when is one of the separations between those that succeed and those that struggle.

In college, I tried to read many of the classic business books.  I could never finish them.

Late last year as I was getting our new Hookah site and sales copy off the ground, I ripped through Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing and Ben Mack’s Think Two Products ahead, followed shortly by Tim Feriss’ Four Hour Work Week.

I was riveted, and every day scrambled home from the day job to knock out another 8 hours on my own business. 

I pondered what had made the difference. Why couldn’t I finish anything in college, yet rip through these three books in mere days?

In college, I wasn’t learning the right things, from the right people, at the right time. Tom Peters and Good to Great were best-sellers sure, but is that what a college student in a start-up should read?

I didn’t need to know how to keep a team happy; I didn’t have one.

And how to manage change? Every day is a change for a start-up with one product.

What I needed was how to best build and sell shitloads of product to a receptive community that trusts me with their money.

My learning in those early day had been completely untargeted. But once I found relevant material and teachers, I devoured the knowledge at light speed. It inspired and drove me to achieve more, work longer, and feel better about what I was doing.

Best seller lists and classic authors are great sometimes, but finding the right authors at the right time is critical all the time.

This relates to lesson #3 of Monday’s lessons and might stem from my natural fear of comfort.

The final moment of your day should never conclude without one of these 2 thoughts striking your mind:

• Damn that was awesome
• Damn that sucked ass

A dark, heavy cloud rolls through my conscious any time I realize I’m passing the day without feeling.

Feeling, not just ho-hum feeling, is what gives us energy, spice, zest, and spunk. It drives us to achieve, to persevere, and to try with everything we’ve got. This is why you hear of CEO’s who master the violin, or chess champions who become renowned consultants; energy begets energy.

They mastered one domain, and that contagious energy inspired similar dedication to their next endeavor.

When seated amidst storytellers at a watering hole, the people with the most life stories, whether good or bad, always seem happiest. They’re conciously living every single moment, making it theirs, and not just letting it slip by undetected.

Weed was created to numb your senses and let the moments creep by. But that doesn’t mean you have to live your life that way.

As my last week closes, each night I’m going to try to capture some of the key personal and professional learnings over this past year.

You might find them useful.

Lesson #1 No matter how exciting, work is not a viable long-term OR short-term source of happiness.

I came here with the express intent of absorbing as much internet marketing knowledge as possible, and managed to maintain significant dedication for nearly my entire time here, studying everything from SEO Book to copywriting to AdWords optimization.

Moderation is not a strong suit of mine.

It was delicious and delightful… but ultimately not very fulfilling. Even on the time scale of just 1 year, I have already felt the effects of an unbalanced dedication to just one aspect of life. I don’t have the social network, athletic participation, or intellectual exercise that I desire and feel the negative effects every day not.

Coming here with such a narrowly focused goal-set was probably a primary cause. Follow what you love in all aspects of your life; not just one. Excelling in one area shouldn’t beget significant sacrifice in the others, else you may consider alternative aspirations.

Lesson #2 Each leader must define their Context and exactly what a “best” teammate looks like.

The conventional definition of “best” is dangerous.

It misleads leaders into building the wrong teams. It misleads contributors into joining the wrong teams.

I’ve seen extremely intelligent, capable players come onto a team and struggle to reach their full potential because neither leader nor follower had clearly defined what “best possible choice” meant to them.

When you’re building a team, you need to figure out what “best” means in your exact context. My “best fit” and your “best fit” could result in totally different team compositions, with neither absolutely superior because the contexts are different:

1. My team is salesman and needs gunslingers. Yours is a research arm and needs analytical gurus.
2. I’m organizing a mitzvah and need quick, street-smart problem-solvers. You’re mediating a union strike and need empathetic negotiators.
3. You get the idea.

I’ve discovered that sometimes the “best” person for your team would get labeled an utter failure under conventional definitions of “best.” But conventional definitions don’t take context into consideration… like you now are.

Lesson #3 Complacency resides in everyday decisions.

This relates to #1 up stairs. Truly changing your life or lifestyle is all about the small decisions.

Going green seems cool, but can I commit to rolling to work on my own feet versus a taxi?

Push the hard workout or take the meandering stroll through a few machines?

Skinny dipping or watch on the deck?

I can think of numerous times where, instead of existing where I could ACT, I delayed making a significant choice until some future date or event. It resulted in the decision getting ever more hyped in my mind until I blew it way out of proportion.

It became a source of drain instead of a rallying source of inspiration.

It goes without saying: small victories are easier. Had I focused on the small stuff, they would have added up into many of those end goals I’d envisioned.

Example. As I said, for some periods here, I didn’t have the intellectual exercise I desired. Instead of inviting someone to dinner to explore their interest in such discussions, I kept resigning to the fact that such a devoid even existed. I was framing it as “needing another intellectual masturbater” versus “what step can I take right NOW to solve this.”

I think we often overhype and mis-frame decisions in our mind. Break it down to

• a daily decision that can become habit or
• one you can make right now

… And I’ve found it becomes much more manageable and exciting.

Summarizing my past year of learning would have been a here-to-fore unheard of literary accomplishment on my part. Instead, I’m chunking it by day and already on the path to success. It also means I’ll continue this tomorrow.