1. Long Range Winter Forecast: Cold and lots of snow – “snowiest winter in years” for New England.

2. It’s About To Turn Around: Just 22 days until the winter solstice.

3. Allbirds: I’m a massive fan of Allbirds shoes. There battle with Amazon gets to the heart of the future of capitalism, branding, and the environment. Read this article if you want to understand why.

4. Connection To Our Things: Both vinyl record sales and physical book sales are on the rise. In an age of everything digital there’s a yearning for emotional connection and that trickles down to connection with our stuff.

5. Make The Changes Now: There are 33 days left in this year. I’m using the next month to get a head start on 2020.

1.Question I’m Asking Myself: What can I stop doing?

2. How To Defeat Paywalls: Using Safari in private mode and/or clicking on reader view.

3. Making Time For What Matters: There’s no better productivity tool than putting everything on your schedule and blocking time to get the things don that need to be done.

4. Daylight: Today the sunsets at 4:25pm in Hartford. That good news is the earliest the sun will set here is 4:19pm from December 7 – December 10. After that we start adding afternoon daylight. By the solstice the sun will set at 4:23pm.

5. Quote I’m Thinking On: ‘I emotionally underestimated the pull on my emotional bandwidth, the sheer determination it takes to stay calm under pressure, and the weight of continuous problem solving and decision making.’ – @BreneBrown speaking about transitioning from studying leaders to becoming one/CEO. h/t @hellodivorce

1. Book I’ve Enjoyed The Most This Year: The Beastie Boys Book (affiliate link) – it’s a story of friendship and growing up and ultimately mortality. Worth buying the hardcover for the art and pictures.

2. Thing I’m Going To Get Back To: Journaling for 5 minutes a day. I find journaling to be so productive but for some reason my execution is hot and cold. I’m going on a hot streak.

3. Currently Reading: Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself (affiliate link) by Mike-Michalowicz (author of Profit First) and his Queen Bee principles are resonating with me. Read it if you’d like to improve how your business functions.

4. If You Read One Article Today Make It This: How the Climate Crisis Is Killing Us, in 9 Alarming Charts by Wired. Climate change is not some problem for the future. We are in trouble at this moment.

5. Some November Poetry: The world is tired, the year is old, The little leaves are glad to die, The wind goes shivering with cold Among the rushes dry. – from November by Sarah Teasdale h/t @inspiredcat

1. Best Article I’ve Read All Week: Matt Eagan’s article on modern parenting is both moving and insightful. Read it.

2. Unlocking Travel Deals: I start vacation travel planning on Google Flights. If you keep an open mind as to a destination you can unlock amazing airfare deals (like $200 RT to Europe kind of deals). For example you can search flights to Europe in February and then click on Flexible dates.

3. The Future of Conferences: Jim and Tyson from Maximum Lawyer just announced a 2 day Zapier workshop. These specific, technical, and productive workshops are the future of conferences. Conferences are great for ideas but where the rubber meets the road is implementation.

4. The Goal After The Goal: Setting a goal and then setting a goal after a goal is a way to keep going.

5. Radical Self Candor – I just finished speaking to the Minnesota State Bar Association. The have a wonderful conference facility. My only ask was that they record my talk so I can watch it back. I most recently watched a talk I gave in Park City and was mortified at the amount of pacing that I did. Watching myself speak is an awful mirror being held up to my face. But my goal is to get better – and this week I didn’t pace.

1. Managing By Energy: Imagining my day as if it were a cell phone battery has been life altering. Some apps drain my battery fast. Other times, I need to be recharged. There’s no reason to treat our days any different than we treat our cell phone batteries.

2. Thing I’m Loving: Rockin’ Green Platinum Powder. I work out a lot and my clothes used to stink. No longer. I first soak them in my bathtub with some Rockin Green Powder and then wash. My workout clothes now smell like unicorns.

3. Other Thing I’m Loving: Lume Deodorant! It’s full body deodorant and it’s awesome. Lasts 72 hours. This is the thing you never knew you needed but you need.

4. Song I’m Listening To: Sunshower by Chris Cornell. This song is November.

5. Software You Need For You Business: Filevine – Filevine started as plaintiff case management software and has grown to being just fantastic project management software. If your business – big or small – has projects you should look at Filevine. It is highly and easily customizable to meet your needs.

1. Two Cents On Marketing: Be authentically yourself. People want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. Not everyone is going to like you. And that’s okay. You don’t need everyone to like you.

2. The Single Piece of Content That Terrified Me To Post: I wrote this post in 2008 arguing for the legality of same-sex marriages in Connecticut. I sat on the post for weeks. And thought the sky was going to fall when I posted it. The lesson here: risks don’t look so risky in time. Take a risk today.

3. Darkness: I love dark chocolate and the new dark mode on iOS.

4. Words To Live By: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” – John Wesley

5. Food Hack(s) I Love: Chobani Greek Yogurt with grape nuts. And if I want dessert Chobani with dark chocolate chips.

1. The Truth About Entrepreneurship: “What got to me was the discovery that to truly be relevant, to sell yourself and your brand, you need to dive far deeper internally than you ever have before. Nobody tells you when you build a startup that what you know about yourself is not enough. Every insecurity and fear surfaced when building my company. To stay relevant, being clear, grounded, and present became essential. To be successful (in the way many of us want to be), I had to become visible. To become visible, I had to be authentic. To be authentic, I had to dig deeper into who I am than I ever have before.” – Erin Levine, Writing About Self Love And Building A Start Up (read the whole article)

2. Best Software I’ve Added All Year: Acuity Scheduling (affiliate link). Scheduling takes up so much time. This eliminates that wasted time. Added bonus is I schedule more things like lunches.

3. Coolest Thing About New Mac OS: iPad pairs as a second screen using Airplay. This works really well. Check it out.

4. Core Values I’m Loving: Check out the Zappos core values if you are looking for a starting point to work on core values for your team. “Do More With Less” is essential for growing firms.

5. What I’m Working On: Being more aware of gender issues and being a better man. Currently reading The Little #MeToo Book For Men.

1. My Test For Saying Yes To A Commitment: How would I feel if I had to do this tomorrow? Before committing to anything that’s the question I ask myself. Because if I commit, someday that tomorrow will come. This helps me focus my efforts. Before I commit to speaking to a bar association I imagine the materials are do tomorrow – I imagine I’m getting on the plane tomorrow and it focuses everything. Try it.

2. Everything Is As It Should Be: One of the things I’ve been working on is acceptance. This week I had to run a quick errand to a store. As I was approaching the checkout line a woman showed up with a large box of returns. There was 1 cashier working. And I had to get to work. I reminded myself of this. And thought maybe this delay is saving me from some peril.

3. Because This Week Could Use Some Hunter S. Thompson: “Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, “Wow what a ride!”

4. Business Book Recommendation: Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits! by Greg Crabtree. The best book I have read about small business finance. It’s a must read if you have or are thinking about having a business.

5. Guilty Pleasure: Candy Corn. Bad for my health. Bad for my teeth. And pure joy.

1.The Tough Parts Will Be More Tough Than You Think: Nobody thinks starting a business will be easy. The thing that no one or nothing prepares you for is how tough the tough parts will be. Be grateful that it is tough. That’s a barrier to entry for your competition.

2. Prepare For The Tough Parts: You must listen, read, and engage with people and content that will prepare you for the tough parts. The good news is for whatever you are doing there is an abundance of free or low cost advice. Consider buying yourself an Audible subscription or getting audiobooks from your local library.

3.When Things Get Tough: Don’t deviate from what you know works. For example, if you know planning meetings work – do planning meanings. Don’t skip planning meetings because things are on fire. Double down on planning meetings when things are on fire.

4.When It’s Tough Go Harder: There’s no time to feel sorry for yourself. Every business has a moment. When it’s your moment you can either watch it pass you by or you can go get it. If you really want it – go harder, work more, and double down.

5. Learn From The Tough Parts: You are losing if you aren’t reflecting on what hurts. “Things that hurt, instruct” if you are smart. If you are smart things that hurt will fuel your growth.

@ryanmckeen

1. My Business Tipping Point: For years I was overwhelmed by the phone. I could get nothing done besides phone calls. Then I decided that almost all of my calls will be scheduled. The result was I was able to get important work done without being overwhelmed by a phone ringing constantly and having to play telephone tag.

2. Looking For Topics To Write About: Check out Answer The Public. A cool tool for finding out what’s on people’s minds.

3. Thing I’m Not Sad About: The Red Sox season. Last year they were one of the all-time great teams. It is hard to sustain anything. And this season makes clear just how amazing last season was. I’m okay with it.

4. A Work Hack I Can’t Live Without: I’ve found that starting projects myself and then hiring experts on Upwork to help me when I’m stuck is a highly cost effective and efficient thing to do. I did a spreadsheet and had difficulty formatting one portion of it. So I hired out the formatting.

I think it’s because it’s easier to hire for a task than a complete project. Project management is actually hard and requires an investment of time to execute on properly.

5. Rainy Day: Yesterday, it rained. It was refreshing. Rainy days just feel slower. And there’s less pressure to do anything.