Have you ever gone into your email to search for something, saw a new important email, and forgot entirely what you were searching for?

Computer usage in general seems to be conducive to doing that. You go to Wikipedia to look up some fact, and suddenly it's two hours later. Ok, you're much more knowledgeable about the Cold War or Ancient Mesopotamia or something, but was that really how you wanted to spend the last two hours?

I've found this to just be something about computers in general: they're such marvelous multi-purpose machines that it's easy to get sucked off one's current objective into something else.

I'm always exploring better ways to work, and a couple years I had an idea of doing "tally marks" as I worked: I would mark down every single action I did. If I was lost or stuck, I would cut down to the simplest possible action, rapidly marking down tallies.

At first I did this on the computer, but eventually I came to a way of working with a notebook and pens right next to me that's been an absolute godsend and marvelous boost.

I just emptied my editor@thestrategicreview.net email address for the first time in a while; I got so much mail after the final issues of Upstream Effects series (#7/8/9), I wasn't able to get to all of it processed until now.

What's interesting is, about 30 minutes into to a "I'm finally going to get this empty" session, I wanted to get up and do something else. It's like, some little tiny pressure in the back of my head is telling me to go do something more novel.

It felt like the email would never end.

This is a good problem to have, I admit. Getting to read feedback from people who send notes saying that an issue made them re-think their week, helped them set huge plans, helped them get a project successful, or that they shared the writing with their kids -- this is amazing.

And I want to write back and not let all those emails go stale. And yet, there it is, when I finally have some time, my mind tells me to go do something else.

The Case for Dennis Rodman is one of the finest things on the entire internet.

If you hate statistics, you'll hate it.

If you can merely muddle through statistics -- you don't have to like them -- it's a set of essays where bombshell after bombshell of epiphany and mental models break through.

It looks at bias, naive and advanced statistics, hubris, winning, contributions to team efforts, resource usage, utilization, media, narratives, historical eras and change... it's sometimes meandering, sometimes laser-focused, highly aware of itself and its own potential flaws... it's a masterpiece.

You should probably read it, but that's not the point of this post.

I don't really get excited too easily, but this has me really excited -- it looks like the time tracking app I've been wanting for years.

Eternity Time Log is an iOS app (iPhone, iPad) that lets you track time easily.

Why do I like it?

Setup takes like 5 minutes to figure out, to create a bunch of different hierarchical categories. So I can add "blog" and "TSR" under writing, and when I track time on either of those, it both adds up to writing time... and then it takes only a single button to start and stop --

Podcast Appearance on The Art of Authenticity --

Had an awesome conversation with my friend Laura Coe on her new and killer Art of Authenticity podcast --

Linkage to Sebastian Marshall on Art of Authenticity

Or check it on Laura's site.

(While you're there, check out Carlos Miceli's appearance too -- Carlos is such an ace and such a positive wonderful guy, you'll enjoy his episode too.)

It's Sunday, so I did my Weekly Review today.

Last week was a barnburner -- one of the most productive "normal weeks" I've had in recent history. A week at a conference or the culmination of a huge event might be highly productive, but I size those up a little differently than a week where I'm just going through the standard sets of work I typically do without some large external happenings.

Last week, an incredibly large amount of good and important things got done.

Thus, I was excited to review the week. How'd this happen? Why'd it go so well? What can I learn from it?

I'll give you the spoiler right now: 13 hours of great work accounted for just about all of the results this week.

For my February column at Ciara Pressler's new Pregame Magazine, I'm taking questions on community, finding exceptional friends, building out your social circle, etc.

I'll answer all questions at least briefly, and go into depth on at least one of them.

Leave your Q's here in the comments or email me at editor@thestrategicreview.net -- regards,

Sebastian

... and that makes me really happy.

I haven't done any promotion since re-launching The Strategic Review. Nothin'. And yet, over the last 5 days, we added over 80 new subscribers just through word of mouth. Awesome.

Here's what people are saying --

***

Dear Sebastian,

Hi friends,

I get a lot of inbound requests for personal consulting which I've had to turn down the last couple years. My commercial projects often have me becoming effectively the right-hand man for a CEO of a growing company, and I haven't had the bandwidth to take on clients who don't need that level of intensity, or who are looking for something other than the type of commercial work I typically do.

One thing I wanted to start for 2016 is to start working with people at scale more.

Hence, I developed this new offering --

Productized Service: Get Your Next Project On Rails

“In peace there's nothing so becomes a manAs modest stillness and humility:But when the blast of war blows in our ears,Then imitate the action of the tiger...”

Hey friends,

Back in 2013, I had a newsletter that people really liked called "The Strategic Review" --

http://thestrategicreview.net

It got popular and people were raving about it, but I didn't have the bandwidth to support writing it. Each issue took too much research and too many hours to put out there.