Jon Acuff's Blog, page 27

People always say that you shouldn’t eat your feelings.

I agree with that in principle, but have you ever tried a feeling? 

Feelings are delicious. That’s what no one is ever honest about. Feelings are so good. 

And they go with everything.

Nervous about losing your job? Add a side of dipping feelings.

Global pandemic that’s turned everything upside down? Season it with feelings. 

Anxious that your kids are going to forget how to read and end up riding the rails like a hobo with a stick and red bandana tied into a bundle because they dropped out of school in the fourth grade? Sprinkle some feelings on top.

There’s really no situation that can’t be enhanced with a little bit of feelings. 

Feelings are delicious, but on the other side of this crisis, we’ll all be glad that we ate less feelings. 

So, what do you do with all those extra feelings you have right now? 

Well, start by being honest that you do have extra feelings. Everyone does. You’re supposed to. This is the biggest health and economic crisis most of us have been in for at least the last decade. If you don’t have more feelings today than you did in say January, I’d be worried for you.  

I’ve been taking my extra feelings out on Pringles. A single human shouldn’t be able to eat as many Pringles as I have in the last two weeks. The economy might be down, but my Pringles consumption is way up. Hopefully that’s encouraging to that guy on the logo. I think his name is, “Mike Pringles.” You think maintaining that thick mustache he has is cheap? It’s not. I’m doing my part to keep him in mustache wax. 

But, I’ve started to do three things with my feelings that are actually a lot helpful and I think you should do them too:

Write your feelings. 
Talk your feelings
Walk your feelings

I wanted so badly for “write your feelings” to rhyme with talk and walk but the only way to do that was to say, “Chalk your feelings” and you guys would see right through that. No one is grabbing a piece of chalk just because I was desperate to rhyme. 

I’m writing in my journal right now more than I was before the pandemic. Big thoughts, small thoughts, silly fears, real fears, and everything in between. I’m capturing it all. There’s zero calories in writing. The notebook I use is the Leuchtturm 1917 dot grid. I’m a bit of a notebook snob and this is the best one I’ve ever found.

I’m also talking about my feelings. With my wife, my family, my parents, my friends. Just because you have to self-distance doesn’t mean you have to self-isolate. I had a great hour-long call recently with another keynote speaker to brainstorm ideas for the future.  

And, I’m walking my feelings. I’m trying to get a little bit of exercise. Even a quick lap around the yard is helpful. I need endorphins and I need vitamin D. 

It’s not easy. Stress eating is a real thing. 

We even have a whole category of food called, “comfort foods.” Broccoli is cold, hard and unforgiving. It doesn’t love you like chowder served in a bread bowl. Bread bowls understand you. Bread bowls won’t judge you. Bread bowls get you.  

Only eventually they don’t and then your pants won’t and now I got to rhyme. 

Don’t eat your feelings. 

Write your feelings. 

Talk your feelings.

Walk your feelings. 

Jon

P.S. Have you subscribed to my new YouTube channel yet? You will love it! 

 

The post 3 things to do when you want to eat your feelings. appeared first on Jon Acuff.

“Do you know what the big issue is with Millennials?” he asks me.

I don’t, it could be one of a million things at this point. For a group best known for their laziness, they sure have been busy ruining a lot of things for older generations. 

“They don’t look you in the eye when you’re talking to them.” He answers.

I immediately take my eyes off my phone and stare into his awkwardly for the rest of the ride to the airport on the shuttle bus, lest I be lumped into the Millennial bucket. 

I won’t be, as my hair is gray and I have a belt on, but you never know. Some of them look just like us. They’re getting smarter every day, learning our ways, infiltrating our communities, turning lights on and off with their voices. 

Maybe I went gray early. Maybe I read a blog about how belts put old people at ease. But there I said, “Read a blog” instead of, “Watched a video” and I’ve made it clear I’m not a Millennial. 

I’m Gen-X, the slacker generation who has now taken a seat with the adults thanks to Millennials who must wait their turn at the kid table until Gen Z is old enough for us to all publicly criticize. 

The woman sitting next to him is not a Millennial and does what is so tempting in conversations like this. She dredges up the worst thing she’s ever seen a Millennial do. 

The whole way to the airport they trade Millennial horror stories like baseball cards but neither one of them ever admits the truth. 

We’re not mad at Millennials, we’re jealous. 

I spent 15 years showing up at offices 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. I lost countless hours of my life commuting in Atlanta because I thought I had to be inside buildings in order to have a job. If you want to work, you have to go to work. 

 And then Millennials showed up and said, “Nah, that doesn’t seem fun, we’re not doing that.”  

Wait a second, you don’t have to come into the office every weekday? What do you mean? There are some days where you just stay at home? Not as a sick day, not as a vacation day, you just don’t come in the office? You call it “telecommuting?” That’s brilliant! That sounds like a real thing. I love it! 

How much less do they pay you for this privilege though? I’m assuming there’s some sort of way they dock your pay. You get your full salary? There’s no reduction?

You’re a genius. You just broke a century long agreement that to do work, you had to be at work. 

In 2002, a company in Massachusetts said I could keep my job with them when I moved to Atlanta. I said, “No thanks. I need to be in an office.” That’s how conditioned I was. I didn’t like going to the office but I was so used to it, that when offered freedom I closed my own cell door.

We shouldn’t be criticizing Millennials, we should be high fiving them in the street.

Millennials also invented Flex Time.

At my first job out of college, they offered me 8 vacation days. I gave them 253 days and in return, they gave me 8. I wasn’t happy with that particular trade, but my hands were tied. Every year though, I could earn one more day of vacation. It only took me a full year of work to earn an additional 8 hours off. 

Millennials were brave enough to fight that system. They said, “We want to be paid for results, not time spent on the factory floor. As long as we get our work done, let us take as many vacation days as we want.”

Instead of 8 days off, Millennials negotiated for endless and they got it! For all of us. Don’t you dare say they’re lazy. They turned “8” into “infinite.” They’re like some kind of wizards.

Their greatest gift is that they found a way to retire early. They decided they wouldn’t wait until they were 62 to live where they wanted, dress how they wanted and bring their dog places dogs aren’t usually allowed. They took all of those things and applied them to work.

What did we create? Casual Friday.

On Fridays, you get to wear jeans at the office. 

That’s what my generation added to the workforce. 

The next time you see a Millennial, don’t criticize them. Thank them. And then marvel at the fact that you’re catching up on some work at a coffee shop while eating a piece of avocado toast. They gave you that, too. 

Jon

The post The truth no one wants to admit about Millennials.   appeared first on Jon Acuff.

There’s an unwritten rule in Nashville that if you see someone famous around town, you don’t bother them. 

You pretend you don’t know them. You don’t ask for a photo or an autograph. You let them go about their day as if they’re a normal person just like you.

This is why when I saw Sheryl Crow at our neighborhood swim meet, I didn’t bat an eye. “Oh, there’s another suburban mom cheering on her kids. I guess all she wants to do is have some fun.” Stop that, that’s terrible. 

This is why when I met Katie Perry and she shook my hand (this was years ago, everyone was shaking) I didn’t flinch. She said, “Hi, my name is Katie” and I did my best not to say, “Hi, I’m a firework.” Two dad jokes in the first 100 words? Ridiculous. 

I apologize for those, but the rule stands. 

In Nashville, let famous people be people. 

This rule does not apply to me. I’m more known than I was 10 years ago, but I’m by no means famous. Think about it this way. There are 327 million people in the United States. If I had one million Instagram followers, that would mean in a room of 327 people, about one would know me. 

But I don’t have one million, I have a little more than 100,000 so that means 1/10 of one person in a room of 327 people would recognize me. What’s 10% of a person? It would just be one dude in the room whose right arm wanted to high five me, but the rest of him would be confused why his arm recognized this gray-haired, very tall person. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about social interactions like this because of the social distancing with the CoronaVirus. It’s easy to feel isolated in times like this. It’s easy to feel cut off from not just famous people, but mentors, friends and family. I realized something surprising though, social distancing has never stopped me from learning from other people.

I’ve never met most of the mentors who have had the greatest impact on my life.

They don’t even know I exist, but they’ve still taught me invaluable lessons.

How?

Books.

I have a library of mentors the likes of which you’d never believe.

David Whyte’s books have been a constant guide over the years, especially in moments when I was confused about the way forward. His book, “The Heart Aroused” changed the way I look at my career. 

I might never meet Anne Lamott, but that hasn’t stopped “Bird by Bird” from mentoring me for years. It’s not just a book about writing, it’s a book about life and I keep coming back to it. 

I don’t know if I’ll ever have a chance to connect with Brian Biggers or Michael Todd, but their sermons have been the background to many miles I’ve run when I needed a little bit of encouragement. 

Sometimes, thanks to the Internet, I’m even able to go beyond the book or the podcast and get a little one on one advice with people who are famous to me. I did that with James Victore. I read his books and absolutely loved them. I followed him on Instagram at @JamesVictore and then I even hired him for a coaching session that was worth every penny.

You might feel isolated from people right now, but you’re only ever as isolated from your mentors as you allow yourself to be. 

If you want to grow during this challenging season, add one new mentor to your life. Read a new book. Listen to a new podcast. Follow a new Instagram account. 

That’s not just content, those are mentors. Those are teachers. Those are leaders. Each one is waiting to teach you, waiting to inspire you, waiting to say to you, “Baby you’re a firework!”

I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. 

Jon

P.S. If you’re going through a career transition right now and need some awesome, practical advice, start here.

 

 

 

The post How to learn from mentors you never meet.  appeared first on Jon Acuff.

Twelve years ago, I had a personal crisis. A small ad agency I started with a friend blew up in my face. Our biggest, and let’s be honest, only client fired us. Worst of all, we owed them money back that we just didn’t have. I won’t go into specifics but I had about a nickel to my name and we owed them significantly more than a nickel. 

The only way to salvage the situation was for me create a brand new project for them. My business partner ghosted me and so I found myself alone trying to hail Mary something I’d never done before. I had a full-time job, two kids under the age of five and a wife who was as worried as I was about how things were going to turn out.

In order to make it through this chaos, I had to get up at 5AM and work on the project before I went to my corporate job. Every morning, for weeks, I’d wake up early, drink as much coffee as I could and grind on the project. Bit by bit, day by day, I was able to turn it around. The client still fired us, but they were happy enough with what I had completed that they didn’t sue me or make me pay the money back. That wasn’t the real win though.

The real win was what that crisis taught. That crisis taught me how to get up at 5AM. That crisis taught me that I could accomplish amazing things and still go to a corporate job. That crisis taught me I was capable of more than I know. That crisis taught me how to side hustle. 

That might not seem like a lot, but prior to that crisis, I’d written zero books. Since then, I’ve published six and am about to finish my seventh. I used those lessons to become a professional public speaker. I used those lessons to build a blog that would eventually move my family to Nashville and forever change the trajectory of our lives. And I can easily point back to that crisis as the starting point. 

That’s what’s so interesting about a crisis, it’s always trying to teach you something you might not have learned voluntarily. Without the emergency with the client, I never would have started to get up at 5AM “just because.” The crisis was a crash course in innovation. It was an invitation to be more than I currently was. 

We’re in one right now. Maybe yours is small. Maybe the Coronavirus has barely impacted your life. It’s inconvenient, but nothing much has changed. Maybe your crisis is big. You lost your job. I know what that’s like. The biggest part of my business is public speaking. Do you know what’s not happening right now? Public speaking events. 

There’s no denying there’s a crisis, but I don’t want you to miss this chance to learn. I think a year from now, if you’ll pay attention, you could be saying, “You know, I wouldn’t be doing this thing I really love but then the Coronavirus forced me to change a few things in my life and I’m so glad it did.”

Maybe it’s something as simple as family dinners. It’s been years since your whole family sat around the table together but sheltering at home forced you to do that.

Maybe it’s finally breaking up with a social media site you’ve been meaning to quit. The bickering during the Coronavirus convinces you to finally say, “Yeah, that’s enough.”

Maybe it’s a new business or new technology. I’m using this time to try more video. I’m jumping into YouTube finally. (You should subscribe to my channel! 

I don’t know how you’ll use this crisis, but I hope you’ll use it. 

There’s innovation hidden here.

There’s growth hidden here.

There’s hope hidden here. 

I know it can be scary and uncertain, but I encourage you to make a simple decision:

Pivot don’t panic. 

That’s the phrase I’m saying these days.  

Pivot don’t panic. 

Jon

P.S. One of my pivots is putting more video content on Instagram. Have you followed my account yet? 

The post The personal crisis that changed my life 12 years ago.  appeared first on Jon Acuff.

I love skiing. 

Few things make me feel alive like stepping off a ski lift and seeing an entire mountain range waiting. I love how quiet and loud it is at the same exact time. I love bombing steep groomers, navigating powder through the woods and the feeling I have driving away from the resort exhausted from a full day.

Skiing is my favorite thing to do and it’s also a dumb hobby to have in Nashville.

It’s hard to enjoy big mountain skiing when your city is 597 feet about sea level. 

There are buildings in your city taller than Nashville. Last year, Nashville got 6.5 inches of snow. Not in one storm. Not in one weekend. In the entire year. 6.5 inches. 

The good news is that my friend Randy lives in Salt Lake City. He’s about 20 minutes from Snowbird and Alta, two of my favorite mountains. Snowbird is 11,000 feet high. Last year, Snowbird got 700 inches of snow. 

When I visit Randy, we ski every day. If I stayed there for five days, we would hit a mountain five times. What would happen though if I came back to Nashville and held myself to that same goal?

“OK, I know it’s a little more challenging, but with the right attitude, I ski as many times here in middle Tennessee as I do in Salt Lake City! I just have to believe in myself!” If I said those sentences to you, you’d say I was crazy. I couldn’t possibly hold myself to the same exact ski goal because everything was different now that I was in Nashville. 

Snowbird is 11,000 feet. Nashville is 597.

Snowbird gets 700 inches of snow a year. Nashville gets 6.

Randy lives 20 miles from the mountain. I live 1,652 miles away.

The smart thing to do is to admit things have changed and come up with a new goal. Each new situation requires a new goal and we’re all in the middle of that same scenario with the Coronavirus.

One of the greatest frustrations you’ll face working from home today is to hold yourself to the exact same goals you had when you were in an office in January. 

Tell a toddler that you expect to have firm office hours from 8AM-5PM with at least 45 hours of uninterrupted quiet time per week. If you think that’s happening, you are adorable. 

Tell your work out plan that even though the gym is closed and you’re the kind of person that needs a class setting to get the most out of your work out that you expect to burn the same exact calories this week. 

Tell your client in the restaurant industry that you really need to hit your sales numbers even though they don’t have any revenue coming in this month.

Things are different right now. 

Not everything. 

Not forever.

But some things are different and one of the most encouraging things you can do is to get creative with your goals. New challenges require new goals. New conditions require new goals. New opportunities require new goals. 

I think something amazing can come out of this season. I really do. 

The first step to get there is to adjust your old goals and come up with some brand new ones. 

We’re not in Salt Lake City anymore. 

We’re in Nashville. 

The skiing isn’t so great, but the music is amazing. 

Let’s change our goals so we can appreciate what we’ve got in this season. 

Jon

P.S. Follow me on Instagram to see all the new video content I’m creating! 

 

The post Toddlers are terrible coworkers.  appeared first on Jon Acuff.

I’ve worked from home full time for 7 years. 

I spent the first 15 years in corporate America and then made the transition to a home office when I started my own business in 2013. It wasn’t easy. I had to quickly learn how to be productive in my house without the helpful structure a company provides. 

Right now, you might be in the same position. With the Coronavirus, more workers are at home than ever before. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some tips that have helped me, starting today with the simplest bit of advice I can possibly give you:

Put on pants.

Too fast for you? Let me repeat it. Put on pants.

I know what you’re thinking. “But isn’t the dream to work from home in your pajamas?” Isn’t flannel our final destination when it comes to our career aspirations? Won’t knocking out work in a robe show us we have finally arrived? Let me answer those questions with one of my own.  

Have you ever spent the whole day in your pajamas? 

Around 11AM you start to question every one of your life decisions. Even the people on the Price is Right got showered, dressed and made it in time somewhere to be part of a studio audience. They might be aggressively average at guessing the price of a vacuum cleaner but they did something today. 

It’s impossible to do great work while wearing pajamas.

Pajamas are clothes melatonin. 

By day three, flannel feels like failure. 

And yet, that’s our goal as employees. 

The work at home dream is that you can do your job in your pajamas. Is that what’s been holding you back all these years, belts? Is the most challenging part about climbing the corporate ladder that you weren’t wearing flannel?

What about pants? How come we boast to each other that, “I worked from home today and didn’t even put on pants.” 

Was that previously an issue? You sat in meetings, furious at the corporate norms that kept you in pants. “I hate these pants so much. Someday, I dream of a world where I won’t be kept down by the pantiarchy.” 

That’s ridiculous. I’m not saying you need to put on a tuxedo. You don’t need tails, a top hat and a monocle. You’re not Mr. Peanut, but I promise you that getting dressed each day for work even if you’re at home will pay dividends. It’s not about the pants, it’s about the routine they help trigger. You forget how many triggers your normal work day used to have in an office. 

Your commute was a trigger. 

The music you listened to on the drive in was a trigger. 

Making sure you had your badge to get into the building was a trigger. 

The sound your feet made walking across the marble lobby was a trigger. 

Even the terrible breakroom coffee was a trigger. 

Each one was telling your mind, “It’s go time!” We’re here to work. We’re here to be productive. We’re here to be successful. Each trigger was reinforcing behaviors and actions you’ve been propelled by for years. 

Pajamas are triggers, too. They tell you it’s time to relax. It’s time to slow down. It’s time to binge watch a show about a dude who owned way too many tigers and definitely should have lived in Tampa, Florida. How in the world did, “The Tiger King” end up in Oklahoma?

When you work from home, you instantly lose access to a thousand different helpful triggers. It’s your job to recreate the ones that will encourage you the most. There are a lot of ways you can do this, but I suggest you start with pants. Start with a shower. Start with getting dressed up like you’re going somewhere. Remind your mind that some things have changed but some are still the same. You’ve got work to do. 

It’s go time. 

Put on some pants. 

Jon

P.S. I’m going all in on YouTube this year. If you want fresh, funny content that’s surprisingly helpful, subscribe to me today! 

 

The post The life changing power of pants. (Work from home tips.)  appeared first on Jon Acuff.

“Jenny, does my voice sound scratchy to you?” I ask this subtly so as not to alert her to what I am really thinking.

“You don’t have Coronavirus,” she responds. Nineteen years of marriage has given her highly-tuned worry radar.

“That’s not what I was asking,” I say. That was exactly what I was asking. I wait a few more minutes to throw her off the trail.

“Do my eyes look a little red to you? Like redder than normal?” I ask casually.

“You don’t have Coronavirus,” she responds, not even looking up from her phone to properly check the redness of my eyes.

“I feel congested.” I say, pressing on, as I try to make Jenny play a game of “Couch WebMD” with me. She will have none of it.

“It’s allergy season. You ran five miles today outside. Through a pine forest. It’s spring and you guzzled pollen. You don’t have Coronavirus.” She says.

We’ve had this conversation approximately 97 times and we’ve only been home together for a few days. Please tell me you’ve done this same thing with a spouse or friend? No? It’s only me? Fine.

Last week was weird for all of us. It didn’t have a shape. I never really felt like I knew what day it was or what my proper response was supposed to be. Freak out? Go about business as usual? Something in the middle?

After spinning for a bit, I decided to make a choice. When things feel out of control, you often forget you have those. But the truth is, you do. Even if you have to work from home. Even if you have to self-distance. Even if your job, city and future appear to have changed dramatically. You always have a choice. Here’s one:

Fear or Faith.

This week, you get to choose fear or faith. Regardless of what happens, that’s a choice you have access to every single day.

What does that mean in a practical sense though? Here’s an example:

Ask the news you’re watching and social media you’re using a simple question – Is this feeding my fear or my faith? Is what I’m watching, reading, and listening to, building up my faith or stoking my fear?

It’s not a complicated question, but it is a powerful one.

I caught myself watching a program the other day that had a rolling death toll. It was like a stock ticker, but instead it was tracking global deaths. Was that feeding my fear or my faith? Hmmm, that’s a tough call. Really hard to tell the answer to that one.

What about the friends you’re talking with right now? Do you have that one friend who is constantly predicting global destruction? They didn’t predict the Coronavirus, they didn’t see that coming at all, but now they try to tell you exactly what’s going to happen a year from now? “In mid 2021, we’ll be out of socks. The sock economy is going to completely crash and you’ll have to go barefoot. My uncle is in the sock stock market and he told me.”

Why does every negative prognosticator always have a friend of a friend of a friend who is an expert? I had no idea so many of my friends knew doctors, politicians and high ranking members of the military until last week.

Does engaging with that person who talks about doom like it’s their hobby, lead to more fear or more faith?

If it leads to more fear, you have another choice to make. Change what you’re doing.

That’s why I’m limiting the news I’m watching.

That’s why I’m being more deliberate about the social media I’m engaging with.

That’s why I’m looking for fresh ways to move to action, instead of getting stuck in anger.

One specific way is with Instagram. I’m doing more Instagram live to share new content like:

Tips I’ve learned from working from home for 7 years.
Tricks I’ve picked up about career transitions from writing my book “Do Over.”
Hope I’ve discovered even in the midst of trying times.

On weekday mornings, I’m going to share what I call “The Get Up!” It will be 3-10 minutes of positive content. If you want to see what I’m doing, follow me here: @JonAcuff.

These are weird days, but we’ve got choices too.

Thanks for choosing to read my emails.

I’ll continue to encourage you in the best ways I know how. First though, I have to check with Jenny about this runny nose I’ve developed.

Jon

The post What a weird week. appeared first on Jon Acuff.

I ran 1,000 miles last year.

How?

The short answer is I ran a lot.

The longer answer is I learned the “Spare Change Principle.”

I know what you’re thinking, “Did you carry pockets full of coins to throw at neighborhood dogs who broke through their meager electric fences because their desire to bite you was so overwhelming?”

That’s a good guess and my wife does still make fun of me for bringing a Masai Rungu with me on a long run for protection from packs of hyenas native to the Atlanta suburbs. You might know the Rungu as the wooden throwing club common to parts of Kenya. Obviously.

No, the Spare Change Principle was my willingness to do an extra .2 miles at the end of my runs.

If I was planning to run 3 miles, I ran 3.2. If I was supposed to run 5, I ran 5.2. If I was scheduled for 6, I ran 6.2.

I always had a little more in me and although it didn’t seem like much, it added up over the year.

I ran roughly 300 times last year. That .2 spare change turned into an extra 60 miles.

The principle worked so well that I started to in incorporate it into other parts of my life.

I don’t write for three hours. I write for 3.5 hours. I don’t send 5 thank you notes to 5 clients. I send 6 thank you notes to 6 clients. I don’t read 20 pages of a book, I read 24.

I spare change as many areas of my life as I can because it works.

Save a little more, write a little more, sell a little more, run a little more.

It turns out that over time, a little bit more is always a whole lot.

Jon

P.S. I love sharing life lessons like this. Don’t miss the next one I email to my friends. Sign up here.

The post Want to make every workout better? Use the Spare Change Principle. appeared first on Jon Acuff.

My doubts get loud whenever I think about time. 

At the start of the week, as I look ahead at what I would like to get done, I hear three different voices:

You don’t have enough time. 
It’s too late. 
You’re too far behind to catch up. 

When confronted with those doubts, I have two options:

Hope they go away on their own.
Fight them head on. 

I spent years hoping number one would happen. Maybe doubt would get tired of bothering me? Maybe there was someone else doing more meaningful work that needed harassment. Perhaps I would wake up one day and find that all my doubts had vanished. 

That has not happened. 

So, I had to fight my doubts, to meet them on the battlefield of a Monday morning and push them back once more so that I can write books, run a business, be a father, be a husband, give speeches, serve clients and a thousand other things. 

How do I do that?

With facts.  

Doubts hate facts. 

When doubt tells me I’m out of time, I do one simple thing:

I look at my calendar.

I say, “That’s not true. Look how much week or month or even year I have left. There’s a ton of white space that I get to fill up. I’m not out of time.”

Whenever I miss some goal in January, I look at my calendar and say, “Aha! But, there’s February and March and I even see an October waiting for me you scallywag!” (Doubt also hates when you use pirate jargon.) 

I need a huge reminder on my wall of how much time I really have to work on the things I care about the most.

I love the calendar for a lot of other reasons. It’s dry erase, it’s beautifully designed, the weeks are organized Monday – Sunday instead of Sunday – Saturday and it’s a great catch all for all the things I’m working on.

But the real reason I’ve used it for 9 years is that it reminds me of the truth.

I have more time than doubt wants me to believe and you do, too.

Today, you can add a new weapon to your arsenal against doubt. It’s 25% off and will give you a simple way to remind yourself of the truth. 

There’s a year waiting for you. Go out and live it without doubts. 

P.S. Click here if you want to get a calendar.

The post 1 way to beat 3 voices of doubt.  appeared first on Jon Acuff.

My first drafts aren’t funny.

My first drafts aren’t particularly positive.

My first drafts don’t have the right words.

My first drafts are written in passive voice, since I failed to learn how to beat that in the 7 th

grade and have simply trudged along since.

My first drafts don’t make sense.

My first drafts are only a connection of ideas loosely strung together with the thinnest of

thread. That used to drive me crazy. I’d look up from a few hours of writing and pace

around my office in anxious frustration. Then, I decided to admit something.

I write in layers.

The first layer is just a sketch. All I’ve done is taken a bunch of ideas that feel related and

put them on the same page. The transitions are flimsy, the logic is fuzzy, the cohesiveness is

none existent, but that’s OK. That’s how the first layer ALWAYS is.

I don’t even care about the words in the first draft. I’ll type NEED BETTER WORD and then

just keep going. This isn’t the good words layer. This is the concept layer. Then, once I’ve

spent enough time away from the first layer to be somewhat objective, I’ll come back and

do the second layer. Now, I care a little more about the words. I care about the transitions. I

care about the flow.

That’s better, but it’s still not very positive. Despite appearing very positive and tall online,

I can be pretty negative. I don’t know if you’ve ever picked up on this, but I can be a smidge

sarcastic. With that sarcasm comes some negativity. My initial drafts are so mopey. They’re

dark little storm clouds best suited for the liner notes of a Cure album.

So, I work in more positivity. It has to be honest, it has to be genuine. It can’t be syrup. If I

Def Leppard the whole thing and just pour sugar over it, I won’t hit the mark.

Once I get the positivity on point, I amplify the humor. In the movie industry, they often

hire comedians to “punch up” a script with more jokes. That’s what I’m doing with this

layer. I’m going back through the entire piece and making sure there are some genuine

laugh out loud moments. I look for the ridiculous and then turn it up a few notches.

The next layer I add on is to make sure it’s helpful. I like ideas that move me to action. I

don’t just write to write, I want to inspire you to do something. So I read what I’ve written

with a filter of “What’s in it for me?” I want you to learn something practical that you can

use today.

When I’m done with those layers, I finally make sure I’ve got the right words in place. In

some ways I’m doing that all along, deciding that Def Leppard is a funny band name to turn

into a verb, for instance. But during this final layer I meticulously go through every

sentence to decide if I have my favorite words.

I don’t write drafts, I write layers and that word distinction matters. While researching my

new book on overthinking, I discovered that the names we give our work have weight.

“Drafts” is too serious for me. A draft is a complete work. That word awakens my

perfectionism and makes it hard to move beyond the first rendition of my work.

The word “Layers” gives me more freedom. It’s just a layer. Other layers will come. Other

layers will do their job. An architect would never stand on a muddy job construction site

and say, “Why did you only do the foundation? What a failure of a first draft!” Instead,

they’d recognize that big projects come in layers. The foundation was just the start. There’s

an electrical layer and a plumbing layer and a framing layer.

If you ever have a hard time finishing a first draft, try a layer instead.

Mine are:

1. Concept

2. Positivity

3. Humor

4. Actions

5. Words

Yours will be different, but every writer has them.

Write down three of yours today.

P.S. I love to share the writing tips that helped me become a New York Times

Bestselling author. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one.

The post The simple trick I use to finish first drafts. appeared first on Jon Acuff.