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Gosh, I really need to spend some time working on the book...
Sometimes I get paralyzed by my own to-do list. I have so many tasks, ideas, and projects in flight that I end up spending my entire day just looping through what I could do rather than actually getting anything done.
It's miserable. I can spend the whole day ruminating over the weight of my to-do list without making any progress—which means deadlines only get closer and the weight only gets heavier.
When I'm stuck in those loops, I'm lucky if I keep up with the day-to-day "in the business" tasks that keep the trains running:
Writing my newsletter
Recording a podcast
Posting and responding on social
These things are non-negotiable, and I somehow always find a way to make them happen. But if I'm caught in a doom loop of competing priorities, it's easy for them to become the only things I get done in a given week. Suddenly, weeks may pass where I haven't made any real progress beyond maintaining the status quo.
That's when I start to panic.
Am I falling behind?
What am I doing??
How is it February already?
This happened to me recently. Between the book, the core business, and The Lab, I have three insatiable projects I can focus on day-to-day. In the past, I've themed my days to solve this problem:
Mondays are for the book
Tues/Weds/Thurs are for The Lab and core business
Fridays are for content
But that doesn't feel like a fit in this season. Giving the book project one day per week slows the process and puts a lot of pressure on me to get into flow.
So this season, I'm taking a different approach, which I call "two out of three." Between the book, the core business, and The Lab, I need to make a positive contribution to two of them every day.
Granted, this is totally subjective. My personal rule for The Lab is that reactive tasks don't count (e.g., responding to messages or posts), but proactive tasks do, like setting up our private podcast on Spotify or improving the system prompt for our AI Agent.
When I'm stuck in a loop of, "What should I be doing right now?" I can simply run through my three-project checklist:
Did I make a contribution to The Lab?
Did I make a contribution to the book?
Did I make a contribution to the core business?
Life is busy. Distractions and interruptions are inevitable. But at the end of each day, I can't help but ask myself, "Was today a step forward or a step backward?" And if I can point to a positive contribution to two of my three priorities, even if they're small, I know I didn't throw up a zero for the day.
I can't tell you how much peace of mind two out of three has brought me. It's given me a clear, achievable goal for each day. It's also given me some flexibility to follow my natural enthusiasm and curiosity rather than brute-force my way through the next task on my list.
Some days those contributions are small, some days they are larger—but I care about making somecontribution each day more than I care about the size.
Some days, I just can't seem to care or get my head right for one of those buckets. In a two out of three world, that's OK! The day can still be a success.
I hope this helps you as much as it's helped me. Remember, when you're playing an infinite game, everything about zero compounds.
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Bookkeeping probably isn't at the top of your list of priorities. But it's something that I've been taking seriously for years now, and up-to-date financial reports play a huge part in my month-to-month plans and projections. It's also non-negotiable come tax season, when clean, up-to-date books stop being "nice to have" and start being essential.
This was a painful, time-consuming, manual process before Kick.
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That's a $2,000 value. Not only that, they're offering Creator Science readers 25% off any Kick plan (including Custom) for 2026.
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NEW EPISODE 🎧
#293: 12 Ways To Stand Out In 2026
The world is changing faster than ever, and sometimes it feels like the old playbooks just aren't working anymore. In this solo episode, I share 12 opportunities I see for creators in 2026—ideas that range from the practical to the philosophical, from the obvious to the genuinely weird. These aren't predictions. They're possibilities. And you don't need to pursue all of them. But keeping a running list of where opportunity exists can help you find the direction that feels most right for you.
Some of these ideas might surprise you. Long-form writing making a comeback? In 2026? But I think there's real evidence for it. Others might feel more intuitive—like the continued importance of community, or the value of live learning as self-paced courses lose their luster. And then there are the weirder ones: effortful art, doing the unscalable, being a "good hang." The through-line? In a world racing toward automation and optimization, the most human things are becoming the most valuable.
