My partner Lauren and I are moving to Mexico City later this year. This post explains why, both to clarify for myself, and to be able to share with others. We’ve been able to identify 5 reasons for why we’re moving. I’ll elaborate on them below, from most to least important. 1. It’s time for…
Lauren Valdez joined me last week for an interview and case study, on how she developed her online course Win a Fulbright, which coaches people step by step through the process of successfully applying for the Fulbright fellowship, a prestigious government program that pays for a year of overseas research. Submit your email here if…
Last month I partnered with Jeff Sauer of Jeffalytics on my first “joint venture” webinar. I’d wanted to try this format for a long time, as I’d heard it described as the “ultimate online marketing tactic.” I partnered with Jeff because I noticed that a huge proportion of my audience are freelancers, entrepreneurs, or have aspirations…
I’ve been writing on Medium for three and a half years. In that time, I’ve written somewhere north of 100,000 words, in more than 50 long-form essays, read by many tens of thousands of people. I’m a “Top Writer” in two of the most popular categories on the site — Productivity and Reading — and have more than 8,000…
After I quit my job in June of 2013, some of my very first projects were small consulting gigs. From designing a website for a friend for $50, to helping a local business figure out their social media accounts. These projects gave me some runway to get on my feet and start thinking seriously about…
On March 7th, 2018, our Head of Ops Benjamin Mosior facilitated a virtual workshop on Wardley Mapping, a value-chain mapping technique that has taken the strategy world by storm in recent years. First developed by Simon Wardley to navigate the emerging cloud computing industry, it’s now exploded into dozens of different industries and applications. Here…
In Part I, I described a new kind of worker called the Full-Stack Freelancer.
I argued that more affordable and user-friendly software-as-a-service (SaaS), among other things, has enabled individuals to manage portfolios of complementary income streams, instead of focusing on only one specialized skill.
But you may have noticed something missing: what is in the stack?
Here’s mine:
I first came across the idea that great strengths can emerge from great constraints in Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle is the Way. He takes a philosophical and historical approach, citing numerous Very Important People in history who used their unique challenges as springboards. I was annoyed by the idea, thinking something along the lines…
A Portfolio Approach to Modern Work In the past, being a freelancer meant being a specialist. The only way you could generate enough income to make it as a free agent was to focus on a single, highly monetizable skill. For example, copywriting, coding, graphic design, photography, journalism, or language translation. You had to be able…
A thesis on software eating the world This is an unauthorized summary of the 30,000-word blog series Breaking Smart, by Venkatesh Rao of ribbonfarm, which I believe to be among the most important writing in recent years on innovation, productivity, and problem solving. The series attempts to answer the question “What exactly does it mean to…
A Few Non-Obvious Things I Learned at Culture Summit By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs On Friday I attended the inaugural Culture Summit in San Francisco. Hung Pham and the team at MTCA put on a great event, with speakers, sponsors, vendors, and attendees from some of the most influential companies in the Bay. Hung Pham…
Teaching is not the last stop on your learning journey — it’s the first. By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs This post originally appeared on the Skillshare blog. I created an online Skillshare class on productivity last year that has enrolled more than 8,000 students, and since then have become very passionate about helping others do the…
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