Blog - The Hyperfocused Mind

Take Control of Your Life With This One Word

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” Henry Ford Your thoughts dictate your actions. This isn’t a revelatory concept. And yet, many of us are sabotaging ourselves on a daily basis with our words and thoughts. There is one word in particular that’s beating us before we even begin. A…

The Most Important Question in Any Negotiation

Negotiations, you either love’em, or they inspire such awkward dread that you curl into the fetal position and simply give up before ever actually advocating for yourself. There’s something unique about the American perspective on negotiations. In most other places around the globe, haggling is the norm. In fact, for many people, it’s all part…

The Secret to a Winning Morning Routine

The quest for improved productivity is Sisyphean. Bit by bit we push the boulder up the mountain only to occasionally stumble, lose our grip on that chunk of granite, and then get summarily smooshed by the damned thing. Yeah, that’s right, we’re coming straight out the gates, swinging towards the fences with our weird, strange…

The Socratic Method for the Modern Leader

I love answering people’s questions. It fills my ego with an almost perverse sort of glee when somebody comes to me with a question I definitively know the answer to. The joy my ego derives is directly linked to the unspoken power I now wield over the other person. Now, you might disagree, thinking the…

The 4 Ways of Getting More Done By Doing Less

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” Francis of Assisi Earlier this week I sat at a big conference table alongside some really smart people, with many important tasks vying for their attention, and (like all of us) too little time to complete them all. I’d…

The Reason Most People Fail To Achieve Their Goals

Coaching The Negative There’s a reason the majority of New Years Resolutions fail. It’s because goal-setting is easy. Following through, on the other hand… well, that’s something else entirely. For most of us, setting a goal is initially met with a swell of motivation. That’s the brain rewarding you with little dopamine-kisses. Filling you with…

A New Sort of Motivation

Motivation is a fickle beast. Some days I beat the sun out of bed and meditate my way to the coffee machine while doing Pilates. Then I sit down at the keyboard and words drop from my fingertips while my mind cycles through a monk-like-zen that doesn’t snap until a handful of hours have passed…

The Five Cornerstones of Building Personal Wealth

“The laws of money are like the laws of gravity: assured and unchanging.” George Samuel Clason Problem is, most people don’t know these laws. Most of us weren’t taught personal finance in school, or by our parents. We never studied how money works and, more specifically, how to accumulate it. Finance is a taboo subject…

Everything You Need To Know About Building a Personal Brand

Big corporations spend ungodly amounts of money in the pursuit of ingraining their brand into society’s collective consciousness. Think Coca-Cola. Think Apple. Think… Hell, the very fact that you can think of any corporation at all implies their branding has done something right. Maybe it’s not doing what they want, but hey, it stuck enough…

4 Steps to Becoming a Medium Top Writer

First, if you’re looking for a shortcut, you’ve come to the wrong place. There is no magical way to cut the line and skip straight to the front. It’s not easy. But it is relatively simple. Writing is a game of patience, consistency, and dedication. But of course you already know that. You’ve put in the work. Toiled…

The Body Language Masterclass (Part Two)

You are already an expert at reading Body Language. Your ability to read the meaning behind people’s words happens almost entirely on a subconscious level. It’s a skill you’ve been honing since you were just a little baby, back when words were nothing more than a bunch of funny sounds. Much of our survival as…

The Body Language Masterclass (Part 1)

In the world of body language, there is an often quoted study conducted by Professor Mehrabian which found that only 7 percent of what we communicate is verbal, whereas the remaining 93 percent is non-verbal. Of that non-verbal portion, body language comprised 55 percent, while tone-of-voice made up the remaining 38. If true, that’s a…

Why Nobody Likes Your Story

Ever find yourself slogging through a story that, on the surface, you’re really jazzed about? You started off with a great concept and compelling characters, but for whatever reason you’re just going through the motions, trudging towards an ending that’s somehow lost its luster. You’re drifting down the Blue Danube on a story raft that…

Writing the Sequel Nearly Broke Me

I worked on the sequel to Time Heist for 180 days in a row. Everyday from 5am-8am, and then again from 6pm-7pm, I sat down with coffee in hand, and clicked out 5,000 words. That’s nearly a million words, or 3,000 pages for those of you non-writers out there who do not think in terms…

Finding Your Author Voice

Fasten your seatbelts, buckaroos! Today we’re talking about voice, which is a slippery eel of a topic if ever there was one, so we’re gonna come at it from a couple different angles and hopefully one of them sticks. Voice is a hard thing to lock down because it’s entirely subjective. What one person considers…

Bettering Your Editing

Creating imaginary worlds filled with whatever weirdness your thinking-noodle cooks up is (if you’re doing it correctly) fun. Sure, forcing yourself into the chair to sling words onto paper can be hard some days, but once you’re in the flow and ideas start plopping out of your word-hole, the act of writing becomes a fairly…

The 4 Steps to Mastery

“If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.” Michelangelo When I started out writing, I knew nothing. Well, no…maybe not nothing. So, just enough to get myself into trouble. I knew how to put words on a page. And I knew how to string together…

3 Investments to Make in Yourself Today

How many hours this week did you invest in yourself? How you spend your time is the clearest indicator of what you value in life. Make it yourself.

Breaking the Multitasking Myth

Raise your hand if you think you’re an above-average multitasker. Okay, so obviously I can’t see you through the computer, so I have no idea how many of you actually raised your hands (hopefully it was more of a mental hand raise than a physical thing anyhow). Lucky for us, I’m not the first person…

What’s Your Body Language Saying?

“What you do speaks so loud, I cannot hear what you’re saying.” Ralph Waldo Emerson They say, “I’m fine”, but it doesn’t take a Sherlock to see their words and body language are fundamentally at odds. Arms are now folded, whereas only a moment before they were open and expressive. Tone has changed from light…

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