When I was a young kid I was brought up to always strive for excellence in academic subjects and in sport, although it applied to most other areas as well.

Perhaps the area in which this strive for excellence had the biggest impact on me is the academic. Education in Malta in my time was very competitive, with exams being a do or die affair that determined whether you would advance to the next year or not.

Failing, especially in the year end exams, was pretty much unacceptable as it would mean a ruined summer studying for the resits in September, potentially losing all friends if you fail to advance to the next year, and feeling like a total failure. Not to mention the scolding to be received from parents and teachers for not trying hard enough.

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For the past twenty years, I’ve been on a journey towards improving my productivity. I’m an ideas guy and it’s very hard for me to stay focused on one thing for long. Adding to that I have a very strong drive to achieve and build things.

Mix those two together and you get an explosive cocktail that leads to depression if you don’t put systems in place. Simply put, with such a personality it is easy for me to overwhelm myself and those around me with projects but then struggle to make progress on all of them. I could also overwork myself to try to keep up with my ideas and wishes.

The right way to do things essentially turns out to be focusing on becoming an essentialist, then setting clear goals and breaking things down into manageable chunks.

In this post, I’d like to share with you some productivity hacks that have helped me throughout the years. Some I continue to use while others have helped me in the past but are no longer useful at this stage of my life, but I’ve included all so you can pick and choose which ones resonate with you.

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I thought I’d share my thoughts on how the Coronavirus situation will be affecting the world in the coming weeks and months from different perspectives.

The key takeaway from all that is happening, in my opinion, would be this:

Don’t panic, but don’t stick your head in the ground like an Ostrich either.

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Over the course of the past couple of years, I’ve learned to identify myself as a multipotentialite. I’ve known since my childhood that I was different from most people in that I had an insanely varied and ever-changing range of interests, but I never knew how to explain why.

Reading recent books like Refuse to Choose and regular psychotherapy has helped me understand my characteristics better.

There were many times why I wondered what was wrong with me for always having too many things I wanted to do and seemingly never going to the very end in any project I undertook. There seemed to be some hidden finish line where my heart would suddenly decide that I’ve done enough of this thing and it’s time to move on to the next. My heart and my mind used to be at odds as I would interpret this as a failure and struggle to understand why I’m finding it so hard to continue investing time and energy into something I was obsessed about just a few months ago.

In the light of multipotentiality, this all makes sense, so here’s some more information about multipotentialites, scanners, or renaissance souls; all these terms refer to the same kind of person.

Typical multipotentialite traits:

• Have an unusually wide range of interests and a low tolerance for boredom
• Change jobs, careers and/or fields of study more often than most
• Follow their energy and inspiration more easily than a schedule or calendar
• Either have lots of diverse projects on the go at once, or bury themselves in one project until they lose interest and move on to something different
• Are better at starting projects than finishing them
• Prefer variety rather than concentrating on one single thing
• Will lose interest in a topic or task when they’ve learned what they wanted to know or achieved a particular goal
• When they reach a goal or level of success, they decide to change to something different, rather than going deeper into the same subject or project

Do you identify with the above? It can be a revelatory moment to understand that you’re not alone and there’s nothing wrong with you. I highly suggest working with a psychotherapist once you’ve identified as a multipotentialite, so you can get past any negative emotional feelings about yourself and flourish.

I frequently get asked why I blog so regularly, especially in the age of Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and all the other social media platforms that are all about short form and quickly digested content.

In this post, I’ll explain why publishing my thoughts is by far the most rewarding activity for me online.

A Lifelong Journey

Since my early childhood, I remember loving both reading and writing. To me, it seems like a natural process to read, digest the information, and then come up with my conclusions and write them down. Writing things down helps me organize my thoughts better. At any point in time I am usually reading about several different topics, and unless I take the time to write things down, I feel like things are all jumbled up in my head and I can’t make the best out of the new information I’m consuming.

As I grew older, with the introduction of the internet and computers, I found myself extremely comfortable storing my writing electronically. There was no longer a need for diaries and the risk of my writing getting lost. Online and in electronic form I could take backups, easily edit my writing, and organize it in a logical way.

The real game-changer for me, however, was the introduction of the internet and the fact that I could put out my thoughts to the whole world. I feel much more comfortable writing about something than speaking about it, and feel that I can communicate better using this medium. By putting my thoughts out to the world, I got the opportunity to meet like-minded people and get feedback on my ideas.

Ever since my son was born, I also feel that by recording many of my thoughts and decisions on this blog and other private journals (I use Day One for that), my children will have a nice record of what their parents did and why they did it. It’s a kind of autobiography of sorts.

Reasons for Blogging

Blogging about different topics helps me learn. Whenever I’m learning something new, you can be sure that I’ll also be writing about it at the same time. The act of organizing thoughts and into cohesive content that can be published is a great aid in the learning process. In fact, I started the WordPress blog WP Mayor for this same reason, and that was its sole reason for existing before it grew popular and became a business in its own right.

From my experience, one of the crucial factors in a successful venture (in any area of life) is how many great connections one manages to make. There are many ways to connect with people, be it by attending conferences, running a podcast, attending meetups, etc. However, I’ve found that blogging helps create some really strong connections with people. I find it much easier to write about complex topics than explain them verbally, so when I blog, readers have the chance to experience what I think and then connect in a meaningful way based on whether they agree or disagree with what I said. I guess the perfect example of this is my post about Malta. Basically, blogging helps connect you with like-minded people and establish deep friendships.

Many times I also get the chance to meet a person briefly at a conference or meetup, so I don’t have a lot of time to talk about certain topics. I have a habit of speaking briefly about a subject and then sending the other person a deeper article on the same topic that I would have previously written on my blog, so he can then read about my thoughts on his own time and reconnect with me later if he found the content intriguing and would like to discuss further.

Readers of my blog sometimes disagree with my analysis of certain topics, and that’s a great opportunity for me to experience a different opinion and refine my thoughts. Sometimes readers will change my way of thinking about things, but even if not, it gives me the opportunity to strengthen my conviction by having to answer their challenges. I am the type of person who has a lot of strong opinions that are weakly held. So I deeply enjoy writing about something and then having someone more knowledgeable come along and make me realise that I was wrong. Unlike many people, I enjoy being proved wrong, because that means that I would have stepped up my game and now know something more than what I did yesterday.

Blogging is a great way to become a thought leader, and while this is not something that I seek actively, I’ve experienced this effect through many of my articles. There are few better ways to becoming an influencer or sharing your leadership lessons than by writing about them on a blog. When you write consistently about a topic, readers start seeing you as an expert or authority in that area. Whether you are actually an expert or not, you will see a lot of doors open where there simply were none before, and that’s a tremendous plus point in favor of maintaining a public blog.

At this point, I think it’s also worth addressing one of the most frequent criticisms I get. Many people just don’t understand why anyone would want to talk publicly about investing successes or personal challenges, saying that it might attract jealous eyes or make people see you as a weak person due to some struggles described. The answer is that yes, it will have that effect on some people, but that slight negative effect is far outweighed by the quality feedback and new connections that I enjoy through blogging.

One last but very important benefit of writing. It’s a great means of daily therapy. Some people like to draw, others sing, while I find my therapy through writing. When my head feels like it’s exploding with negative or positive thoughts, sitting down and writing about whatever’s on my mind always brings me back to a state of homeostasis.

One of my favorite quotes from Socrates is the one above.

It might be the best summary of why I love writing, journaling and blogging so much.

An unexamined life is not worth living simply because it is so important to get to know yourself and then examine the interaction between yourself and the world around you. Subject your own thoughts and ideas to examination, rather than acting on impulse. Knowing yourself will help to strengthen your knowledge and won’t allow you to get pulled by feelings so easily.

Our mind is often subconsciously dragged by popular opinion or “doxa” as the Greeks called it. Writing is my way of sitting down, examining my thoughts and experiences, and then learning the lessons I need in order to achieve progress in my life.

What are your thoughts on blogging? Have you tried it yourself?