Asked myself this question over the weekend actually. Just went through a huge purge of my RSS reader as I'm trying to shift more of my time and attention to what I'm calling "pillar content." Content that defines frameworks for a field. More Gary Halbert and Claude Hopkins and less Copyblogger and Content Marketing Institute. In general, I think that's a more valuable use of time and energy in the long run.

I stayed subscribed to your blog for a couple of reasons I think.

1. You - You're compelling, your story is interesting. The true value in blogs to me is the humanity and you allow yourself to be vulnerable and that's attractive and inspiring.

2. It's thought provoking. Though I often skim. I usually do reflect on what you write and compared with most content I consumer, it's more likely to force me to examine an existing framework or belief system in my own life.

I don't know what I want more of. I want to adopt more aspects of your mindset and so I think reading your blog drills some of that into me. You have some sociopathic (I mean that in the best way possible, not accepting the status quo) perspectives that I find fascinating.

I was speaking with a friend last night about this. He's reading some book on Willpower (can't remember which, apologies) and the concept we discussed was the ida of rewarding yourself in the short term for taking steps towards more long-term (opaque) goals.

I'm reading Seth Godin's Icarus Deception and the cross between the two concepts was fascinating. In his book, Seth emphasizes the need to focus on making art, with the understanding that most art won't be successful the first time around.

My friend and I have both been writing a lot of copy recently. Some that's been more successful and some far less. Our focus is not on the success of the copy (outcome dependent), but on just getting it done. Let's say you write 5000 words of sales copy every week for the next 24 months. You study and analyze both your copy and that of some of the masters of the field. While it would be very difficult to predict your success at any given point in that 24 month period, by the end, I think it would be nearly impossible for you not to be pretty darn good at writing copy.

In a sense then it's a method for achieving the deliberate practice that Gladwell, Cal Newport, and others talk about.

Keep coming with the content Sebastian. It's inspiring.

Looking back now, I've sort of changed my stance. If you can close deals and keep closing bigger and bigger deals, maybe it does scale.

I do still know a lot of people that wheel and deal but aren't really going anywhere tehy're just skating by until they need cash and then make another deal. Nothing wrong with that. But, I wouldn't consider it a business.

If you're going to call me out Sebastian...

In the past year and a half I've gone from an aspiring "wantrepreneur" to being in a unique and privileged apprenticeship position where I'm able to work for and around other motivated, intelligent entrepreneurs above my level. I still have a long road ahead of me, but the progress I have made is, in retrospect, much faster than I expected. 

There wasn't any one incident that lead to that. It was the aggregation and accumulation of relatively dull tasks that led to the acquisition of useful skills. Building niche sites taught me SEO and WordPress basics which was enough to get me a job at a small marketing agency in the U.S. That let me work on bigger projects and learn about project management, content marketing, managing clients, and copywriting. That experience led me to the position I'm in now.

The biggest thing that I take away from this post and something that I've been thinking of lately is the ability to see value in seemingly mundane and boring tasks. I've spent a lot of the last month researching and writing about a specific industrial product that I'm not inherently passionate about. That's allowed me to improve my research, copywriting, process writing, and productivity skills. All of which I think are small advantages that I can build on.

However, the day to day reality of that doesn't look very sexy. It means I get up, put on some mashups and jam out a few thousand words about the product. It keeps me motivated though because I can see the value in doing that. I'm accumulating advantages that are going to put me in a position to breakthrough work.

I've had similar thoughts about "normal" Sebastian, but haven't succeeded in putting it into writing.

You can't be the best at everything, but you can choose a few things that really matter and absolutely crush those.

The main that occurs to me is that gold mines aren't scalable. I know guys that can slide by without any real skills just based on connections and throwing business deals together. Let's use the goldmine analogy and call them "prospectors."

They can keep sliding by, but that's not scalable, it's not a business, it's a deal. Just like reddit or stumbleupon ads. It may get you a good solid win, but it's not scalable.

Then again, if your network was big enough and of high enough quality, maybe it is scalable.

I thought the same thing Sweeney, reminded me of the train piece.

I definitely relate Sebastian. I've made a similar adjustment in my thinking in the last year. I think you can open the door for people and give them the opportunity, but only they can step through.

I'm loving this Sebastian, keep it coming. I wouldn't say I'm on a "productivity run" right now, but I'm definitely trying to integrate some of the processes you're using into my life, especially time tracking.

I'm not sure how to do it, but I'd like to take the time tracking one step further and be able to quantify and track exactly what I'm working on and how long I worked on it/how much I got done. Basically so at the end of every day/week/month, I could pull up a report that showed me: General Life: 90 minutes, Effectiveness 4/5 Troubleshooting: 45 minutes, Effectiveness 3/5

Something like that. The key being that it would all be trackable so I could go back and look for trends. I suspect for example that days I workout I actually get more done than days I don't, but without any data it's tough to know.

If anyone wants to do a google hangout or other accountability, I'm definitely in. I've got to have a better accountability system.