Jared Dees's Blog: The Latest from Jared Dees, page 30

My Morning Routine: The Morning Preview

I wake up around 5:00 a.m. every morning and spend the first 10-20 minutes of my day going through a checklist of tasks I call my Morning Preview. It is not as miraculous as The Miracle Morning Routine, but I find it helps me focus and start the day off right.

This has been my routine for almost all of 2018.

Every morning a Trello card is automatically duplicated and appears at the top of my “DOING” list. The checklists looks like this:

Reading & Reflection (Scripture) – I read the Scripture...

April 2018 Project Report

Welcome to my April 2018 Project Report. My goal with these monthly reports is to help other authors, entrepreneurs, leaders, or anyone else who wants to make an impact through their work. Each month I will share how I spent my time as an author and creative entrepreneur and the successes, failures, and lessons I learned along the way.

How I Spent My Time in April 2018

I track every minute of time I spend working on projects using an app called Toggl (here is why). Here is a list of the proje...

How Children (and Adults) Succeed

I finished reading How Children Succeed by Paul Tough yesterday and I appreciate the thesis that it isn’t IQ or academic ability that leads to long-term success, but grit and character that makes the biggest difference in the lives of young people.

In truth, this is the case for all people and not just children.

Take writing for example. The most successful writers are not necessarily the most brilliant thinkers or the most eloquent linguists. In many cases, the writers who make a living from...

Relationship Advice: Give 90, Take 10

I never thought I would listen to relationship advice from Frank Oz, but he is the voice of Yoda after all.

On the James Altucher Show, Oz shared why his marriage is working (around the 54 minute mark).

He offered a piece of advice he heard from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans who were married for more than fifty years.

Their advice:

Dale talked about their shared belief in God and how that was so important to them.

Roy said, “Give 90, take 10.”

The more you give, the more you get.

In my own marria...

Automated Investments

When you work for an employer, you fill out a lot of forms to select your medical and retirement benefits. For retirement, you ideally pick a percentage of your income to invest in an employer-sponsored retirement account. Many times companies will match up to a certain percentage of your investment.

The amazing thing about this is that you never see the money. You don’t have to write a check or transfer the money yourself so you start to see the balance in your retirement account rise. The d...

Chaos in Nature

We spent a lot of time doing yard work this weekend.

We’ve only been in our house for a few years and it amazes me how quickly things can get overgrown. Rocks that were meant to be the barrier between a flowerbed and the grass were almost completely buried.

It reminded me of visiting Rome and the way ruins were buried under ground. I also thought of dystopian movies like Wall-E and I Am Legend with vegetation growing everywhere in the cities.

My first thought was about how much chaos there is...

Priority: Mother’s Day

I didn’t want to break this daily blogging streak and miss a day, but as a husband, father, and son my priority is Mother’s Day.

A lesson to remember every day: keep your priorities straight.

The post Priority: Mother’s Day appeared first on Jared Dees.

White Working (or Non-Working) Class

Too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man with every reason to work—a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way—carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here—a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself.

J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy ...

Pray Like A Child

“Though I’m quite unworthy, I love to say the Divine Office every day, but apart from that I cannot bring myself to hunt through books for beautiful prayers. There are so many of them that I get a headache. Besides, each prayer seems lovelier than the next.

I cannot possibly say them all and do not know which to choose, I behave like children who cannot read: I tell God very simply what I want and He always understands.

For me, prayer is an upward leap of the heart, an untroubled glance towar...

Book Launch Month vs. Book Launch Week or Day

It seems to be common practice to pick a book launch day or launch week to concentrate all of your activities around the release of a book.

Indeed, this was a philosophy I subscribed to for the launch of my first few books and many of the book launches I helped plan.

I heard Tim Grahl say in a webinar that the main reason to concentrate on a book launch week is that a high volume of sales in one week gives you the chance to hit a bestseller’s list (New York Times, Wall Street Journal). Likewi...