A fable about the suffering of a family who began as slaves in America and worked their way up to the higher echelons.

They say it takes fifteen generations for the poor to become kings, and for this family it is true.

But they suffered.

In the fields of Georgia, in the bayous of Louisiana, in the streets of Baltimore. They suffered.

Eventually, they make it, and with them so many other young folks in this generation and generations to come. They are the majority now and they have inherited America.

But angry Mr. Businessman comes crashing down on them, rallying battle cries from the unsuspecting. He stands at the crossroads of tension and hatred.

Mr. Businessman believes in slavery - one way or another - but he keeps his slaves fed, and he attributes their troubles to those others.

"Mr. Businessman," the story begins, "I know I'm not equal. I know my place...

"I know I'm not equal, because I am far above you. My book tells me the meek will inherit the earth and here we are. Your time is up...

"I am entitled to nothing. Just. Like. You.

"And I've been patient...

"I've waited through desert plains and jungle, I've waited through the hulls of ships, through cotton fields and bayous, and I've waited through the violence of city streets...

"It's my turn and there's no one who will take what I've worked for. No one will turn my hard earned place to dust...

"It is I you will have to fight, Mr. Businessman. I, who will not cast a single stone and still reign victorious."

This is only the beginning. The rest is yet to be written. Will the words fall justly? What will be your role in this story unfolding?

vote.org

How a constellation was born from a simple act of kindness.

On a brisk winter day, a young boy walks the New England coast searching for seashells.

He picks pieces off the sand, considers them for a moment, then throws them back into the sea.

At twilight he sits, watches the sunset, and pinches the sand beneath his feet.

A little girl walks by, her shirt upturned, cradling a thousand seashells. He waves to her and she smiles.

The boy invites the girl to sit with him. She agrees and pours the seashells out on the sand in front of them.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"I'm a collector," she says.

"Of seashells?"

"Yes, but not only that."

"What else do you collect?"

She thinks for a moment then pulls something from her pocket. "Well, my grandfather gave me this wishbone."

"A wishbone? He doesn't need it?"

She looks to the sunset and says, "No, I don't think so. Not anymore."

The boy is quiet now and continues pinching sand.

"What's the matter?" the girl asks.

"Well... I've searched all day for the perfect seashell and I've found nothing."

The girl looks at the wishbone, then at the boy. She holds it up and says, "Maybe this will help."

They lay their hands on the bone and pull with all their might. It snaps and the girl is left with the bigger half.

The boy frowns. The little girl closes her eyes, tightens her fists, and wishes with all her might.

When she opens her eyes the boy asks, "What did you wish for?"

The little girl shakes her head. "If I told you, it wouldn't come true."

In that moment the boy's frown transforms to a smile from ear to ear. "Hey, look at that. The perfect seashell."

"Take it," the girl says. "It's yours."

"Really?" he says scooping up the seashell. "Thank you."

He tells her he's gotta be going and runs off toward the dunes.

She returns to the shoreline, but the waves are heavier now and all the shells are broken.

That night, when the sun ducks behind the salty horizon, the broken wishbone is lifted to the sky as a constellation in the heavens to remind us all of the little girl's sacrifice.

You see, it was her wish that brought the boy's seashell back to him, a shell he had earlier tossed back into the sea for the girl to find.

*This has been an excerpt from a new novel I'm working on called Colossus. Thanks for reading.

Read it on the 'Gram

The Wishbone - @m.e.doane

See Instagram ‘The Wishbone’ highlights from Michael Doane (@m.e.doane)

This short novel reminds us that every moment is a remarkable opportunity for growth.

Jean-Phillippe Blondel’s short novel pits two former lovers against each other in silent psychological warfare. But through their internal musings, we learn much about the importance of accepting ourselves and the actions of others.

Philippe and Cécile are ex-lovers who by chance sit side-by-side on a train to Paris from the French suburbs. Wherever you think this story may go is probably wrong. Instead of rekindling a past romance or connecting on some deeper level, The 6:41 to Paris has our two protagonists spending much of the novel in their own heads, hoping they were not recognized by the other, considering where they are in their lives, and what went wrong in the past.

Philippe was handsome and magnetic when he was young, while Cécile was homely and uninteresting. The two have now flipped roles. Philippe is overweight and balding and Cécile is a successful and stylish businesswoman. The only tension this reversal creates is internal in each character.

In between Philippe’s groveling over his mediocrity and endless what-ifs, and Cécile’s musings on Philippe’s cruel past behavior and satisfaction with how life turned out, there are a few universal takeaways.

Don’t underestimate people or judge who they’ll be based on who they are now

We learn that Philippe cruelly cheated on Cécile during a trip to London and that much of his dissatisfaction with her was based on looks. Cécile was happy to be seduced by him back then, perhaps even feeling he was a bit out of her league.

Life couldn’t have played a better trick. The reality now is that Cécile is everything Philippe wanted back then. She’s not only smart and successful, but has taken care of herself and grown into her beauty. His judgement of her appearance back then blinded him from seeing her potential.

If we’re not careful, we might just become what we fear

And to build on this irony, whatever Philippe thought Cécile was then, he now embodies just that. Boring, ugly, and mediocre. There’s an old adage that says whatever we focus our minds on, we might just become. Maybe all his time spent judging others just wore him down to be whatever he feared most.

On the flipside, we can use others’ negative energy to drive our ambitions

When Cécile thinks back on the night Philippe cheated, she says, “That moment would be the sandbank... on which I had run aground, and now I would have to kick my heel against it to rise back up to the surface.”¹

She is not taking Philippe’s actions personally. Instead she channels any negative energy gained from the experience on building a better life for herself. She decides that she will never be taken advantage of again and that she will live fully from that day forward. For Cécile, the beginning starts at rock bottom.

We should be ourselves more often

When Cécile decides to take control of her life, to better herself, she lists all the things that will get her there. Finish her studies, move to a big city where “opportunities would be real” and she could “meet people by chance”,² develop a sense of style, and treat others’ as equals.

These aren’t superficial whims. They are someone who was happy to blend in deciding to stand out. It’s the moment when Cécile transcends what Jean-Paul Sartre would call bad faith and begins to write the story of her own life.

Appreciate things as they are today, not as you wish them to be

It is clear throughout the story that Cécile and Philippe are fixated on two very different things. Cécile is future-focused. She has moved on from the past and wants to capture what is to come. Philippe on the other hand wants nothing more than to relive that time when he was youthful and had the world at his fingertips. From these obsessions come two profound musings on age.

Philippe, thinking about how quickly his children has grown, observes, “Children are like that. Like helium balloons in cathedrals. Let go of them, and they will fly off, but they’re still in sight, you wave to them, you visit them, and they’re way up there, far away, still stuck beneath our gothic arches. Then one day, and you never quite know why, they’re no longer anywhere to be seen.”³

Cécile, who has just visited her aging parents, meditates the opposite:

“It was the first time I’ve ever found them old, really old, not just older than me, but on the threshold of everything inevitable — physical decline, retirement home, dependency, everything I have avoided…”⁴

And yet it is when these two characters come to the present, to the pain they feel right now on the train with one another, that they grow and learn. Cécile more confident than ever in her life choices, and Philippe owning up to his own past failings.

And if you wish things to be different, change them through action

In one moment of growth, Philippe realizes the error of his ways and resolves to change.

“I can’t go on letting things slip away from me,”⁵ he says. He realizes that he’s leaning on the past and decides, much like Cécile did all those years ago, to move forward and live better.

It’s never too late after all. There’s always time to take action.

– Mike Doane

A story about high school sweethearts who find love again in their golden years.

Geri ended up calling Jem on the day his wife died. She was planning their high school reunion and he was another name on the list.

A friend had warned Geri that Jem's wife was sick, so when Jem picked up, Geri said, "I'm so sorry to hear about your wife."

"How'd you know?" Jem replied. "She only died a few hours ago. I haven't told anyone..."

57 years ago, Jem and Geri were high school sweethearts, but had to cut it off early when Jem enlisted the airforce.

Jem wanted to marry Geri and bring her along, but Geri was only 16. When Jem brought up the idea to Geri's father, he threatened to shoot Jem on the spot.

"Power and terror. That's what I felt that day."

In the airforce, Jem had to call in a B-52 strike. Three came in and he remembers the earth shaking beneath his feet.

"Power and terror. That's what I felt that day."

Later, they starved out a group of Viet Cong by cutting off their rations for three months. Jem remembers the look on the colonel's gaunt face as he surrendered with a white flag.

"Power and terror. That's what I felt that day."

These things did not break Jem. He returned home, married, and grew his family to five boys and a little girl.

Geri too found love. She had a son of her own, though he was taken too early by cancer.

Geri, 73 now, wears a red bandana over her white hair, a studded jacket. She's slim and pretty. She wears jeans and bright red Tom's, and her personality matches her style.

Wisdom sits in Jem's greying bloodshot eyes. He's slim too and tall. He speaks slow, steady, and with confidence. The pocket in his t-shirt holds trinkets and he wears stylish tennis shoes.

They are twenty, if not forty, years younger than their aging skin. There is a spirit about them that is undeniable. It is sweet and pure and something rare.

When Geri called Jem that fateful day, her husband too had passed a few years earlier. She helped Jem mourn his own loss and treated him with kindness and support.

A few months later, they married, though they'll tell you they've been together their entire lives.

"The truth is," Jem says, a sparkle in his eye, "I've only ever loved three women: my mother, my wife, and Geri."

*This has largely been a true story, told to me by a lovely couple in a Las Vegas airport. Thanks for reading.

Read it on the 'Gram

Hidden Jem - @m.e.doane

See Instagram ‘Hidden Jem’ highlights from Michael Doane (@m.e.doane)

This modern classic reminds us what it means to be human.

Madeline Miller’s debut novel is a poignant reminder that everything in love and war is not fair. But there is hope, for despite Achilles’ prideful rage, his best friend and lover shows us what the best of humanity looks like.

When Achilles rages against Hector in Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles, Hector is wearing Achilles’ armor. The armor’s breastplate is emblazoned with an unmistakable phoenix — a detail you’d be hard-pressed to find in the original myth. “It looks, almost, as if Achilles is chasing himself,” writes Miller.¹

The source of Achilles’ rage

For those who haven’t read Homer’s The Iliad, this scene is the hub around which the entire wheel of the story spins. After much dick-measuring with Agamemnon, Achilles throws a hissy-fit.² This results in his absence from the battlefield, a huge advance by the Trojan army, and the death of many Greeks.

To ward off the Trojan army, Achilles’ best pal and lover, Patroclus, straps on Achilles’ armor and races onto the battlefield in a chariot.³ Just the sight of Achilles is enough to scare the Trojans. They retreat to the city walls.

This is where it all goes wrong. Patroclus is thrown off the chariot and must fight a warrior named Sarpedon. Patroclus defeats Sarpedon, but the ruse is up. Everybody now realizes that this is not the great warrior Achilles. Hector hunts down the imposter and quickly kills Patroclus.

Achilles is infuriated by the death of his friend, forgets his quarrel with Agamemnon, and goes berserk in his pursuit of Hector. Hector, who is wearing Achilles’ armor. Hector, who is the Trojan equivalent of Achilles. Hector, who is (metaphorically) Achilles.⁴

Destined for fame

You see, from the very beginning, there was something about Miller’s Achilles. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. He had an innocence, a naivety, something readers of T. H. White’s Once and Future King would recognize in the young King Arthur.

When Achilles first meets Odysseus, he is in hiding. But Odysseus, that wily S.O.B., in Miller’s words “unmasks” him. Patroclus sees through Odysseus’ B.S., but says nothing. “I would not be the raven on his shoulder all the time, predicting gloom,” he muses.⁵

From an early age, Achilles is naturally gifted. He’s good at playing the lyre, he’s good at fighting, and he’s good-looking. He does it all without effort. Everyone wants to be him. For Achilles, though, this is a burden. When he arrives in Troy, he is already considered aristos achaean, best of the Greeks. He is destined for fame.⁶

Achilles has nothing to strive toward. His constant refusal to fight Hector because Hector “has done nothing to him” is simply delaying the inevitable. And with every moment Achilles’ fate is delayed, more Greeks die. When Hector has finally “done something” to Achilles, there is no more reason for Achilles to care about the war’s end. His world has crumbled around him.

Achilles chasing himself

From the beginning, Achilles has been chasing himself. He’s been after his own glory. As Odysseus says, “Success…comes only through men sewn to a single purpose.”⁷ And Achilles’ single purpose has always been his own glory, which is intimately tied to his death.

Where Patroclus was dedicated to Achilles, to his fellow Greeks, to humane practices in depraved situations, Achilles only cared about Achilles. He strove for his fame and nothing else. This, the Greeks called hubris.

And in the pursuit of his own fame, he bred a certain infamy. As Odysseus muses, “Fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred by another.”⁸ In Song of Achilles, Achilles’ petulance casts him as an antihero, and perhaps even a villain.

Patroclus is the true hero here. It is his glory, Miller seems to suggest, that will stand the test of time.

What can The Song of Achilles teach us?

So what does this mean for modern readers?⁹ What does The Iliad and Miller’s rendition tell us about the universal human condition? How can we use this text to achieve some sort of greatness today?

First, we can grab a few nuggets of wisdom from Achilles’ hubristic act of “chasing himself:”

• People who want the result without putting in the work doom themselves. Achilles does little to shape his life. He accepts fate and ruins himself, his countrymen, and the ones he loves in the process.
• Prideful decision-making gets you nowhere. If Achilles had put his pride aside and took Patroclus as an example, he might’ve truly been the best of Greeks and his deeds may have better stood the test of time.¹⁰
• Success founded on self-interest is short-lived. We see Agamemnon and Achilles win small battles (on the battlefield and in arguments against each other), but in the end no one wins. Each time they gain a step forward, fate pushes them back two more.

Second, Patroclus’ dedication to uplifting humanity in an environment depraved by war also teaches us a thing or two about how we can live our best lives:

• Service to others will always outlast self-interest. Patroclus seems to embody what motivational speakers the world over call success through service. He puts others’ first and works to satisfy their best interests without ulterior motive.
• Principles always outweigh pride. In one of Achilles’ weakest moments of “chasing himself,” he allows Agamemnon to steal away Breseis, knowing that if Agamemnon lays a hand on her (something he fully intends to do), all the Greeks will turn against the king. Patroclus, however, tells Agamemnon of the plot even though it betrays Achilles’ plan. He does this because the safety of Breseis — and human dignity — is more important than his or Achilles’ pride.
• It is dangerous to be anything but yourself. When Patroclus puts on Achilles’ armor, he essentially becomes “the best of Greeks.” The problem was, he was already the best of Greeks, and putting on the armor only makes him Achilles. As Achilles, he lets pride get the best of him, pushes too far, and pays his life for it.

The best humanity has to offer

In Song of Achilles, Miller cuts through the toxicity of the Greek heroes’ petulant actions and finds a worthy modern-day hero among them. Patroclus is the hero risen from the ashes of Achilles’ rage — and the Greeks’ rage. Without Achilles, he is without pride. Patroclus is truly aristos achaean, the greatest of Greeks, and by extension, the best humanity has to offer.

– Mike Doane

10+ poems on self-discovery and identity

These are the things I wish I'd knew then.

10+ poems on love and friendship

Little love letters to the one I cherish most.

Have you heard the phrase, “Think outside the box?” It’s one of those phrases that’s drilled into our heads as children and used mindlessly in the workplace as adults. It’s a way of saying, “Be creative,” or “Don’t be square.”

But thinking outside the box is unsustainable. It takes a lot of mental energy and cannot be turned on like a switch. It often takes a flash of insight. Sometimes we simply need a system that scales, a method that works, a beat to keep the rhythm going. Sometimes we just need to be square.

That’s why whenever I think outside the box, I also look for ways to square the circle. I look for opportunities to turn that creative thinking into a proven process. If it can be done, I do it.

For example, I used to spend a lot of time creating custom packages for clients. I realized that there were patterns in these packages and that a few things worked for everyone. I was able to distill that knowledge into a course and now I can share it with hundreds of people per year rather than just a few. I turned a service into a product.

That’s squaring the circle at its finest. It’s maximizing the value of my output, amplifying its reach, and building a sustainable product from an unsustainable process.

Why is it difficult to maintain good habits while bad habits keep showing up? I think it’s because of something called the downward spiral of false assumption. Opposite of non-zero, this self-destructive cycle hacks our brains into believing the lies we tell ourselves.

Here’s a good, relatable example. You may have the true belief that failing to floss one day won’t necessarily result in a cavity. The problem is that this failure of action may set the precedent for making future excuses against flossing.

This precedent could become a powerful, self-perpetuating force. It sets a standard to continue making excuses against performing a beneficial action. This standard may become a habit in itself. This new negative habit completely replaces all the hard work you put in to build the positive one.

Instead, it might be healthier to make decisions based on our past, present, and future selves. It’s important to remember the guilt we felt last time we didn’t floss. It’s important to realized that failing to floss today could result in failing to floss tomorrow. Holding ourselves to the high expectations we set for ourselves is crucial for long-term success.

Every writer, author, and entrepreneur needs the right set of tools to help them turn their vision into a reality. Here are the tools and resources I use as well as the ones I recommend to others starting out. This is years of experience, testing, and implementing combined all on one page! I hope these tools and resources help you as much as they’ve helped me.

Note: This list is a constant work in progress. If you find a broken link or you think I should add something, let me know. Also, full disclosure, some of these may be affiliate links, which means I get a small commission at no additional fee to you if you purchase one of these products.

Blogging Tools

• WordPress – The world’s largest blogging network. Comes in two versions: .com and .org. One is a blogging social network, the other is a content management system you can install on your website. (say hello)
• Medium – Founded by the guy who brought you Blogger and Twitter, this is an awesome social network that’s built for exchanging ideas. Articles by tech entrepreneurs, aspiring authors, big brands, and your next door neighbor… oh, and you, of course. (say hello)
• Quora – A Q&A site kind of like Yahoo Answers, but much better. Experts answer questions asked by other users. If you have knowledge, share it on Quora, become a “most viewed writer,” and drive crazy traffic to your blog. (say hello)
• Maptia – A lot like Medium, but focused on travel writing. The stories here are beautiful, thought-provoking, and inspiring. (say hello)
• Pencil – Also like Medium, but stories are told with .gifs. Lots of potential here. (say hello)

Writing Tools

• Ulysses – A distraction-free editor that lets you write in Markdown. You can export to HTML, PDF, ePub, and a bunch of other formats.
• Scrivener – The number one tool used by writers to write, organize, and publish their work. Exports to Word, PDF, and ePub, among other formats.
• iA Writer – A super lightweight, ultra-minimalistic writing experience on Mac. It’s the closest thing to writing on a Typewriter I’ve been able to find… only it’s even more immersive.
• Novlr – A powerful app for novelists with a very active and responsive development team.
• WordKeeperAlpha – A great way to set word count goals for yourself, track your progress, and hit your deadlines.
• Beegit – Work with your team of editors and beta readers to make changes in real time.
• Draft – I used to use a collaborative writing app called Editorially that sadly bit the dust. They recommended this tool and it’s a good replacement.
• Canvas – Another collaborative writing tool.

Publishing Tools

• Reedsy – An author marketplace that helps you find editors, cover designers, and book marketers all in one place. They also have an awesome book publishing and editing tool. (say hello)
• Createspace – Amazon’s self-publishing toolkit. Find services to get your ideas out into the world, then hit publish to go live on Amazon’s marketplace.
• IngramSpark – Self-publishers can get print books too. These guys make it easy and affordable to get your book printed in bulk.
• Bowker – If you want your book to be catalogued, you need an ISBN for each version (print, ebook, audio, etc). This is where you buy them.
• BookBaby – They make it easy to distribute your book to the most popular book marketplaces online. They also print books in bulk.
• Booktrope – If you want to go the indie publishing route, but you’re not quite ready to take the leap on your own, Booketrop hooks you up with an editor, designer, and marketer to help you along the way.

Book Marketing & Discoverability

• Tablo – Share your stories with readers and explore other writers’ work.
• Wattpad – A place where writers publish stories to share with readers.
• iAuthor – Where authors and publishers discover their audience and where readers discover stories they love.
• Bublish – A publishing tool with marketing features built in. Readers can also sign up and search through available books.
• Find My Audience – Audience discoverability for social media. Discover potential readers who are talking about books like yours and reach out to them directly.
• Story Wars – A fun way to share your work with others. Write one chapter then write someone elses second chapter. Users upvote the best version of a story.
• Goodreads – A social network for book nerds. Build your library, write reviews, and share your work. (say hello)

Email, Marketing Automation, and CRM

• Mailchimp – The gateway drug to email marketing. Build a list and send simple automations, RSS feed newsletters, and easily designed emails.
• Autopilot – A very affordable and robust marketing automation tool. Lacks some crucial things like RSS and one-off emails, but it’s flexible enough that you can find workarounds.
• Streak – Nice, simple CRM for Gmail.
• Zapier – Hook up APIs from various apps. Get your platforms talking to each other with this very powerful automation and integration tool.
• IFTTT – Like Zapier. Connect apps with each other and create automations called “recipes.”
• Leadsius – Affordable marketing automation with WordPress integration.
• Hubspot – Powerful marketing automation platform. A bit expensive, but extremely comprehensive.
• Pardot – Like Hubspot. Super powerful marketing automation for people and businesses with bigger budgets.
• Salesforce – The quintessential CRM. A little on the pricey side. Mainly for businesses with growing sales teams.
• ConvertKit – Marketing automation built for bloggers and writers by a blogger and author.

Inbound Marketing

• Typeform – Beautiful forms for anything from contact boxes to quizzes and surveys.
• SumoMe – The ultimate lead conversion platform. Pop-ups, heatmaps, social sharing buttons, and much more.
• Add This – Powerful social tools to plug in to your website. Comes with nifty analytics updates straight to your inbox.
• RaffleCopter – Run giveaways that require people to follow your social media accounts, tweet or pin messages, or a variety of other things.
• Gleam – A lot like RaffleCopter. Has some cool integrations with other apps like Gumroad and Eventbrite.
• WooBox – Another platform to run social promotions on. Also includes Facebook tab integrations for Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.
• LeadPages – A great way to create landing pages and sign-up forms quickly and easily.
• KingSumo – A really robust way to run promotions on your WordPress blog.
• Upviral – Platform that lets you gain subscribers through referrals and contests. You can also build landing pages, do some A/B testing, and automate email drips.

Project Management

• Calendly – The easiest way to let people schedule meetings with you. (say hello)
• Assistant.to – The video alone is enough to sell you. But the product really is the best thing since sliced bread. Easily share your availability via email and let the recipient choose a time that works for them.
• Wunderlist – The easiest way to track your to-do list and get stuff done.
• TrackingTime – A nice way to track projects and see how you’re spending time on certain tasks. Great for freelancers and small business owners.
• Dropbox – Cloud document sharing and storage.
• Skype – A great way to keep in touch and have online face-to-face meetings.
• Slack – A messaging app for teams. Great for sharing ideas and chatting about a project.

Event Management

• CadmiumCD – Basically everything an event planner needs to manage their conference and share content with attendees.
• Eventbrite – A really easy tool for registering attendees and promoting your event.
• Catch Box – A fun way to engage attendees in sessions.
• Sli.do – A great tool for audience response in sessions.

Social Media Management & Monitoring

• Tweetdeck – The best way for Twitter junkies to follow hashtags, participate in tweet chats, and generally manage their Twitter experience.
• Buffer – A great tool to share articles to multiple platforms at one time. Also helps you schedule posts to multiple platform so your feed stays up to date and your audience stays interested.
• Crowdfire – An app that lets you manage followers and automate direct messages (be careful). Great to weed out active followers vs. non-active followers.
• Hootsuite – The king of social media management. If you’re looking to manage multiple accounts across a variety of platforms, this is the tool for you.
• Klout – A way to keep track of how much of an impact you’re making across various social media networks. The higher your score, the better you’re doing. (say hello)
• Friend or Follow – Another tool to manage followers and mass friend/unfriend followers and unfollowers. A bit like Crowdfire.
• Commun.it – Yet another tool to manage followers. This one makes it really easy to identify and interact with influencers and send out various messages based on interactions with other users.
• Google Alerts – A great way to monitor the web to see who’s talking about a certain topic, product, or company.
• Mention – Like Google Alerts, but more robust. Monitor the web, social media channels, blogs, and much more.
• StumbleUpon – Socializes the open web. You won’t ever regret sharing an article you wrote here and you’ll probably end up stumbling for hours after you do.

Web Hosting

• 1and1 – Fairly inexpensive and secure shared hosting with apps (like WordPress) built in. Makes setting up a website and purchasing your first domain easy.
• Squarespace – A fool-proof content management system, cloud hosting, and domain registrar all in one.
• Rackspace – If you’re a bit more web savvy and want to have your own cloud server, this is a great service.
• Cloudflare – DNS that makes your website more secure and faster.

Coding

• Codecademy – The best place to learn the basics of coding. Stay dedicated for a month and you’ll be able to build your first website. Give it another month and you’ll be building the foundation of an app.
• Coda – A great text-editor for coding with a built-in FTP for managing your websites files.
• Sublime Text – Another amazing text-editor for coding with a bunch of open source packages. Has a heavier learning curve, but is super powerful once you get the hang of it. Also good for writing in markdown.

Graphic Design

• Canva – Lets you explore templates, icons, and images, then combine them to create beautiful images, ebooks, and more for the social web.
• Pablo – A lot like Canva, but not as feature rich. Focused mainly on allowing you to easily create images for social media.
• Adobe Creative Cloud – The powerhouse of graphic design. Adobe has created an entire suite of tools for designing and editing anything from websites to books to images and videos. Requires lots of learning.

E-Commerce

• Paypal – Basically a cloud-based bank account. Sell goods, collect payments, and manage funds.
• Stripe – A great way to collect payments for your products on your website or in your app. Requires a bit of coding to get set up.
• Amazon – Sell your goods on Amazon’s network because it’s the largest marketplace in the world. If you’re an author, check out Createspace above.
• Gumroad – A place for creatives to find an audience and sell their goods the way they want to. Features pay-what-you-want pricing and a database for users to see what they’ve purchased and access their downloads again in the future.

Reading & Entertainment

• Serial Box – The coolest serialized fiction I’ve ever seen. First chapters are always free.
• News360 – Like Pandora for news. The app learns what you like to read as you read. Replaced the much-missed app, Zite.
• Scribd – Tons of books for next to nothing. Also a subscription service for the voracious reader.
• DEVICE 6 – One of the greatest reading experiences I’ve ever had.
• McSweeney’s – Great stories by great people.
• Monument Valley – A puzzle game with a compelling story.
• Sword & Sworcery – Zelda meets LOTR. ‘Nuff said.

A mentor recently asked me a poignant question. “Beginning with the end in mind, how would you like to be remembered?”

He was asking about my legacy.

I first thought about goals. I almost listed them. But goals are short-sighted. They only take you where you’re already going.

Being too goal-oriented can also get you in trouble. You might attempt to achieve your goals at all costs, and the cost could be diminishing returns at the expense of integrity. Winning isn’t always winning.

So I did the sensible thing and said I’d like to be remembered for my principles.

Principles are, after all, the driving force in life. They’re there when you’re setting goals and they’re there when you’re achieving them. They’re there when you’re asked a question, and they’re there when you’re asking one.

Principles guide both action and reaction. They’re the foundation of a life well-lived. If your legacy is built upon principles, you will be remembered for how and why you lived rather than for what you did. And that’s a legacy worth living for.

When Jerry Seinfeld was asked what goes into writing a comedy set, he said, “That’s like asking God how much time goes into making an oak tree? I don’t know, I do it every day, I do it all day.” Narcissism aside, he makes a good point.

Success can be defined by a simple formula: focus and consistent action over time equals success. The greater your focus and more consistent your habits, the less time it will take to reach success. Easy as that.

When you’re successful, you’re an expert. When you’re an expert, the work is no longer an uphill battle. A one hour set for Seinfeld writes itself for the simple fact that he’s done so many. He’s already put the work in.

There are two challenges that may hinder success. The first is finding your focus. Defining what makes you tick, figuring out what you want to be known for, and making sure you can find an audience is often enough to stop us before we start.

The second challenge is forming habits that lead to consistent action over time. It’s hard to write every day or stick to a schedule. The only solution is to simply do the work.

There’s no better time to start than now. Plant a seed, watch your oak tree grow. It’s worth it.

A lot of people confuse the non-zero principle with lowering your expectations. But if you’re setting your expectations low, you’re missing the point. Non-zero is about setting the conditions for success. It’s creating a system that ensures certain outcomes over the long term.

On Lewes Howes’ podcast, The School of Greatness, Humble the Poet says, “I’m trying to be less goal-oriented and more habit-oriented.”

That’s the essence of non-zero. It’s about creating consistent habits. When you have consistent habits, the expectations are not to climb the mountain, but to take one step at a time. It’s about moving forward. Eventually you’ll reach the top.

It’s important to come to the table with high expectations for the work you’ll be doing every non-zero session. It may fall flat sometimes, but that’s okay. We’re achieving quality through quantity.

For example, I like telling jokes. I’m not a comedian but I enjoy getting a laugh out of friends. My friends constantly make fun of my joke-telling abilities. They say that out of every 100 jokes, I land one good one. It’s a great feedback loop. The more often I tell 100 jokes, the more good ones I’ll land. I achieve some sort of quality through quantity.

It’s the good ones that get published in the end. I tell them to strangers or use them in presentations. The same goes for poems. I’m not a great poet, but I use social media to test ideas and create a constant feedback loop. I can identify which ideas resonate with people, then expand on them in a blog post, write more poetry with that given theme, or explore those ideas further in a novel or short story.

Non-zero is about quantity, but it’s also about quality. We don’t have to forsake one for the other. Our expectations should be high for our work, but it’s also okay when we come up short. The important thing is to be consistent and show up every day.

Have you heard this anecdote about Salvador Dalí? Dalí was enjoying lunch in a Parisian café doodling on a napkin, when a woman approached him and offered him a couple bucks for the sketch. Dalí kindly refused. He wouldn’t sell it for a penny less than $40,000.

“But it only took you 30 seconds to draw!” the woman objected.

“No, ma’am,” Dalí replied. “This drawing took me thirty years.”

The authenticity of this account is dubious, but it illustrates an important point. Dalí understood the value of his work. He knew he had something to offer that no one else could. It took him years to perfect this craft, and that’s worth something.

This is an example of squaring the circle. There’s a mental shift required to recognize the value of your work and dare to ask for what it’s really worth. But, if you’re successful, you might just pull off the $40,000 napkin sale.

We often find ourselves doing certain things simply because that’s how they’ve always been done. Deep down, we know there’s a better way. We just can’t step away from the details long enough to consider the possibilities.

Squaring the circle is a simple reminder to do exactly this. It forces us to ask how we can improve ourselves and the way we live our lives.

Traditionally, squaring the circle was a mathematical problem deemed impossible, a metaphor describing the transformation from lead to gold, and a symbol for finding meaning in life. Similar to Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence, this concept can be difficult to understand if taken literally.

For us, squaring the circle is all about gaining new perspective and turning old thinking (lead) into new insights (gold).

The ultimate goal is to get high output from low input. It’s about finding ways to maintain, magnify, or nullify the status quo while moving on to bigger and better things. Some call this delegation or outsourcing, but it’s more than action. It’s a mindset.

Squaring the circle helps free up our time, energy, and resources so we can transform our business, life, and relationships.

Here’s how it works:

First, observe your current status quo (the inner circle). This includes what you’re doing, the processes you use, and how it all works together.

Then, step away and consider why you’re doing these things (the square). Ask yourself (or, better yet, ask someone else) if your time might be better spent elsewhere, how you can automate or consolidate processes, and if there are opportunities to amplify the results of your successes while freeing up time for yourself.

Next, take action on your best observations (the triangle). Cut out high-input/low-output investments, hire someone or purchase a product to take over repeatable processes, and implement new ideas.

What you’re left with is a new reality that will eventually become a status quo itself (the outer circle).

This is a never-ending process. Once you create a new reality, you’ll begin work on transforming it again. Squaring the circle is about constant and endless improvement.