michaelthiessen

Hey all! I put a ton of time and effort into researching this article and making sense of it all.

I hope you learn something from it.

I'd love to know what you think about this question, where my reasoning doesn't make sense, and any other feedback you might have.

Cool

It typically takes me 2-3 hours for a well written ~1500 word post. These posts get 3k / mth organic views and many subscribers to my email list, so I know they perform well.

Spending an order of magnitude more time on each post seems ridiculous to me.

Exactly this.

The point of most on/off page SEO things like meta tags and link building is to help Google understand what needs your website can satisfy.

If your content solves problems effectively, and Google understands how to connect you to the people who have those problems, that's when things work.

Google has gotten very good at weeding out the hacks and tricks that black hat SEOs use (PBNs, spammy links, generated content, keyword stuffing etc.)

These days the most consistent way to get lots of traffic is to provide lots of value and help people.

Google can measure whether people bounce and keep clicking around for better answers to their queries.

A in my experience.

The goal is to answer the question or problem as best as you can.

Typically this means not just giving a one line answer, but expanding and elaborating, going into relevant details and explaining more in-depth.

Often this extra detail will overlap with extra detail from other questions. You can link between articles, but you can also rephrase / repeat ideas.

eg. If you're searching for "Redirect in javascript" or "Simulate link in Javascript", you'll want two separate articles.

You know that the answer is the same for both, but the searcher doesn't. And as you go more in-depth explaining how `window.location` works, you'll end up covering similar material in both articles (which is not duplicate content so Google won't penalize you).

Perhaps the 4 day week works best with knowledge work, which is significantly different than manual labour.

I used this to merchant in Falador! Such an awesome tool.

I am always blown away by this stuff, but it still applies some distortion to the image in a way that feels slightly unnatural.

It's similar to the effect that changing focal length on a camera has. eg. Wider angle lenses seem to squish far away objects and enlarge closer objects. However, this affects the entire image in a consistent way whereas changing focal length does not.

I wonder if this could be used to simulate focal length changes?

I found this blog a few months ago and then lost it. Thanks for posting this!

You can, but that doesn't mean that it's going to be a cake walk. Just because you are trying to rent out a property doesn't mean it will be rented out.

That's all I was getting at in my poorly constructed reply.

> You can always rent it out

This is clearly false.

Additionally, if you can't pay your mortgage because the recession hits you as well, then you can lose the house.

There is no bullet-proof strategy.

Keep a long term view (10+ years or more) and not a short term view (< 5 years). That's what most of this advice boils down to.

Almost all bad decisions result from not taking a long enough perspective.

The recession will end at some point, so how can you use the recession to improve your situation?

Yes, for investing, keep extra cash on hand for when the stock markets plummet. Then you can scoop up ETFs etc. for hugely discounted price.

The economy will recover, and you'll have bought a lot of value for a good discount.

This only makes sense if you are planning on using that money in the near term (< 5 years from now).

Like you say, timing the market is a bad idea, and that is what you are doing if you try to move to "safer" assets when you "think" the market will go bad.

If you keep your assets in riskier stocks (which have higher long-term returns) for more than a decade, you may take a huge hit during a recession, but you'll come out the other end way ahead than if you try to time the market.

This is a great post on what to focus on if you're trying to make a cash-flow business out of building apps.

I especially like the idea of not just looking for competitors, but trying to figure out why they are successful, and making sure that they don't have some advantage that you can't replicate.

How did you go about learning this?

I have had Feyman's lectures sitting on my bookshelf for well over a year now, and hope it won't always be in my "someday" bucket.

What areas have you found to have most impact/benefit from splitting in this way, and how have you split them?

I think that "passive income" is a misnomer, or at least, not very useful. I find it more helpful to think in hourly rates, since you're always putting in time for something.

If you spend 100 hours setting up a website, and over the next 5 years you never touch it and you make some money, some would consider that "passive". But really, you put in 100 hours, and made $x from it.

I think people are really looking for high ratio of money to time spent, not something that is truly "passive".

For #6, are you storing checklists in Evernote as well? Just reading through GTD right now, is this to replace the "Weekly Review" concept in the book so it is automated?

I'm looking to implement a GTD-like system myself, and any automation is helpful.

I think you may be making incorrect assumptions.

Are you sure that you need to be working more hours? Based on the setup you have, it simply sounds like you need to be accomplishing more. The actual number of hours it takes to complete a ticket is irrelevant (if I understand correctly).

itamarst had some good things to say about increasing productivity.

If you want motivation and ideas on how to get better at executing, and get better at embracing discomfort, I highly recommend reading Seth Godin.

Specifically his latest book: http://yourturn.link

Why not ask your members?

You have the attention and trust of a LOT of people. Figure out what they need, what problems they have.

If you hit "next page" on the Table component enough times it throws an error and the component becomes unresponsive.

It looks like the example data isn't correctly set up.

http://www.jetbrains.org/ring-ui/table.html

Build an application.

Even if it's terrible (and it likely will, since you are still learning), you will have learned all those skills that you say you need.

You need to develop your skills in building applications, and the only way to do it is by building applications.

You also need proof of your newly acquired skills, and actual code is the best way to do it (even if you have great credentials).

Actually, don't build an application. Build several.

Thanks for un-click-baiting this.

How does a single post lead to a book deal?

I listen almost exclusively to EDM mixes.

Podcasts or YouTube videos are usually about an hour long, and the songs are mixed so they flow continuously from one to the next.

I find the constant beat, and somewhat repetitive melodies and rhythms help to get me into a state of flow.

I would agree with this.

It sounds like it's a mental health issue, not an issue with your skills or the marketplace. You just need to heal your mind, and nature and a good vacation or break can do that.

I'm so glad I saw this.

I got a camera recently and have been debating whether or not to get Adobe's photographer package. Currently I just use Lightroom mobile.

Now I'm thinking I'll probably go with this. It looks really good!