Get out more. Produce more.

Are you always there in the studio during business hours? Do you dutifully put in your eight hours at the easel every day?

Maybe you should quit that. Lot of wasted time there.

Lost money, too, probably.

Whoa.

To do remarkable and consistent work, don’t you have to show up and be there day in day out? 

And to make a decent living, don’t you have to put in the hours?

Absolutely. But not all in a row.

The drag of 8 to 5

Consider writer Jeffrey Archer. He has been turning out beloved best sellers like Kane and Abel one after another for thirty years.

(The kind of writer that other writers want to smack.)

When doing a book, Archer writes diligently and methodically, without fail, for eight full hours every day.

But only for two hours at a time.

He’s at his desk from 6-8am, then 10-12 noon, 2-4pm, and 6-8pm.

In between, he goes about life as usual. He gets a haircut, eats a meal, goes to the bank. Whatever.

But isn’t that too fragmented and disjointed? How do you get in ‘flow’ when you’re always starting and stopping and chunking up the day like that?

And who wants to still be working at 8 pm anyway?

Fact is, the people who study such things say that Archer has accidentally tuned into the way our brains are wired. Which means he gets more done, and better, in his eight hours than we do in our eight hours.

Because apparently, we are naturally equipped to ‘go deep and hard’ for only about two hours at a time. (Author Tony Schwartz says it’s ninety minutes, based on work by Anders Ericsson. Close enough. And sorry for the almost footnote.)

Our energy and mental acuity ebb and flow in these cycles all day long. Even during sleep.

Trying to do anything all day, or even for four hours is counter-productive, draining and tedious. (Yes, even that.) The time is wasted. And the work is mediocre. And half the time, you’re yanking on a dry pump.

For the kind of work we do, think in terms of work sessions, instead of work days.

Sprint and rest

Thing is, you’re probably working like this already, without realizing it.

I certainly was, back when I was making a grand pretense of staying in the office all day.

I’d draft an article for maybe two hours until I got stuck, so I’d check my email. Answer a few. Then I’d ping pong around Wikipedia for a while, land on a You Tube Interview with Francis Ford Coppola, call up my friend Bill and bitch, fiddle with the CSS on my website, then work diligently to get a sesame seed unstuck from a tooth with a straightened paper clip.

Which all took about ninety minutes, at which point I would drag my ass back to the article for a little while.

I’d do this pretty much all day.

Time at desk with hand on mouse: eight hours. Actual work time: Maybe four hours. And I’d end the day exhausted. Work in the evening? Forget it.

What to try, tomorrow

Start this way. Two hours on, two hours off. Or ninety minutes and ninety minutes if you’re fidgety.

Begin when you want. Noon? 4pm. You pick.

Me, I start with a session at 6 am or so. I’m pure then. The critic in my head doesn’t get up till much later. The one who looks over my shoulder, with sour coffee breath, “Is that what you’re using for an opening? Be freakin’ original for once.”  In those two hours, I get my licks in, unpoked at.

Two hours in, two hours out.

In between, leave the desk. Leave the apartment. Cut grass, wash the car, drive the kids somewhere, nap.

Repeat.

Don’t worry about being accessible to clients. You have set your voice mail on four rings.

When you’re back at work, though, you work. There is no Twitter. No nothing. Go deep into the work. Get lost in it. If you read this blog when you should be working, I will know it.

Two on, two off. Four sessions.

Are you nocturnal? Do your sessions all night. My friend Bill has been working the graveyard shift for ages. He’s single so he can get away with it.

(By the way, we humans used to sleep in two separate sessions, too. Before electric lights and cable messed it all up.  See segmented sleep. Do a session in between if you want. Write and tell us about it.)

What to expect

People will think you goofy and unemployed. But we’re freelance, so we don’t care what they think.

Also, you know how, when you’re taking a shower, or waiting in line somewhere, and all of a sudden you get a flash and you finally know how to fix that thing you couldn’t figure out before?

That can easily happen three or four times a day now. When you’re off doing whatever. You get back to the desk later and you know how to do it. You know how to get that damn <div> to quit moving around. You have a better headline.

It’s almost as if your muses can’t wait till you get up and leave. “Thank God, she’s gone. Let’s get this done.”

You will get eight hours in and not be so drained and frustrated. And see if the work isn’t better. And you will probably get more of it done.

Try this tomorrow. Or the day after. If you hate it, no harm. Go back to the other way.

Work sessions, not work days.

Maybe for a big job, or for some complicated work.

Or whenever you have to explain in detail what you plan to do, and how much it will cost.

(You don’t need this for casual quotes or simple estimates. Just for the bigger deals.)

It sounds odd, but it works.

Here’s the idea:

Put your fee, the price, smack dab on page one.

In 24 pt. bold

Unadorned, unqualified, un-apologized for

Start with the money. Work from there.

I know this sounds counter-intuitive. Especially since I harp so much about making freelance negotiations less about the money and more about the work.

But oddly, that is exactly why this seemingly stupid tactic can work so well.

Getting it backwards

For years, every presentation and proposal I had ever seen followed the same flow:

First the chatter. Then the price.

You start with the business objectives, the parameters, the need. Slip in some nice stuff about your credentials and experience. Step through your process, methods, approach, creative issues, technical considerations. Show how all this meets the objectives, blabbity, blabbity.

Then somewhere on page nine, or on slide 34, you reveal the price.

The thought was, you need to soften them up with your dazzling ideas and expertise. Then, when they are putty in your hands, you can talk price. And only then.

Everybody did it that way. Big companies, small players, freelancers. Including me.

But it’s backwards.

Flipping it

A while back, a video producer had called me in to write the script for a new corporate project. He asked me to come along when he presented the overall concept and budget to the client.

“This guy is a tightwad,” the producer says. “There is no way I can meet his ridiculous budget on this, so I’m coming in much higher than what he’s thinking. I’m not sure what will happen.”

At the client’s office, we all settle in around the conference table. The producer hands everyone a single sheet of paper.

It says:

J&A Productions

XYZ Corporation
Customer Interview Video

Delivery date: June 1
Budget: $17, 230.

Nothing else.

Everyone reads it silently. They look up. They look at each other. The client looks up.

The producer asks, “Shall I continue?”

The client, of course, starts hemming and hawing. It’s higher than we wanted to go, this is too steep for customer interviews, blah, blah. He goes on for a bit. He’s not happy.

But finally, he gestures dismissively. “Okay. You might as well tell me about this video I’m not going to buy.”

So the producer hands out his proposal. He starts talking about the video. We explain how we’ll shoot the interviews, how we use voice-over, graphics. Soon, everyone is into it. We talk about how we structure the script, scheduling, logistics. The client asks questions, we answer.

An hour later, the client buys it. He bitches, but he signs off on it.

(Okay, to preserve his reputation as a skinflint, the client did eventually ask to lop $2000 off the fee. The producer simply asked which shooting location he should eliminate. So the price stood. But I digress.)

Why this works

At the time, I thought this was a risky one-time stunt, a good story to tell over a few beers after work, but not a useful tactic for every day.

But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. And the more I started doing it. And the more it eliminated the awkward fencing and parrying, the silly cat-and-mouse games I had seen so often.

In those proposal meetings, for example, I always saw people flipping ahead in the handout, looking for the last page, where the price was. (Meanwhile, not listening to the actual discussion.)

I’m sure clients did the same thing when I emailed my proposal as a pdf. They scrolled right ahead to price, ignoring all my carefully-fluffed bullshit up front. Maybe, just maybe, if the fee was okay, they would scroll back and look at what I was actually offering.

In live meetings, I also noticed a bit of mental tension when the price was a mystery. It seemed as if people were reluctant to fall in love with an idea or even consider an approach until they knew how much it was going to cost. You don’t flirt with the girl before you know if she’s married or not.

Often, too, leaving price to the end made the meeting or conference call come down with a bump. Happy meeting runs into quicksand. Nice discussion turns into bean-counting and haggling.

But somehow, getting the money thing laid out at the beginning changed the entire tenor of the discussion.  It steered the conversation toward the work and the approach. Is this worth the money? Is this what we want? Will this fix the problem?

This approach also gives the client a chance to ‘live’ with the fee for a while. Maybe they gasp a bit when they first hear it. But once you get talking about the work, the solution, the price softens a bit. They get used to the number. (Well, sometimes, anyway.)

Even if the price is shocking, or off-the-charts impossible, the next question is always, ‘Well what would I get for this hilarious price?” They’re curious. They’re listening.

It is now about the work. About the ideas, the solution. Not really about the money.

It shifts from “How much does it cost?” to “What do I get?”

Which is where we want to be. “Here’s what you get.”

When you think of it, this mirrors precisely how we all make decisions about expensive things.

We know roughly how much the car costs. We visit the dealer to see if we really like the seats, the handling, how it rides. What the terms are. It’s all about deciding if we like it enough or not.

We know roughly how much they’re asking for the house, the apartment. We go to see if we really like it. Check the closets, look in the oven, measure the den. It’s all about deciding if we like it enough or not.

No, this isn’t a cure-all. Not a guarantee.

They may, after all, listen to your story and blow you off anyway. (Been there. Been blown off.) Or, they may consider what you have to say, and decide it ain’t worth the money. Which happens.

But at least it’s about the work. What they get rather than what it costs.

I’m over-explaining this.

I’ll stop now.

But you can apparently invoke this to your advantage, almost at will.

Let’s say your workload starts to slow down. Or you want to expand your stable of true fans. Or maybe you’re just itching for fresh faces and different work.

So you start to reach out more. Instead of waiting, you begin pursuing.

You contact a few companies you’d like to work with. You call people you haven’t spoken to in a while. You send ideas to your clients to plant the seeds for new assignments. You hustle.

And after a few days of this, or maybe a week, or even two weeks, lo and behold, new stuff happens.

New work shows up.  New clients ask about a project or two. Inquiries land in your inbox. The pot begins to bubble again.

But here’s the odd part: none of the new stuff comes from the people or projects you were chasing.  None of it.

It comes from unexpected quarters. From a guy who had worked in the cubicle next to you ages ago, who has moved to a new company and needs work done.

Or from someone who stumbled across your web site a month ago and has been meaning to call you.  Or a client is referred to you by a person you don’t even know.

You beat the bushes, and new opportunities fly out. But not from the bushes you’re beating.

It’s almost as if, by diligently and earnestly doing the right thing, you somehow trigger random events in your favor, now.

This sounds so goofy, I’m reluctant to bring it up. Except I have experienced this dozens of times.  And I’ve heard the exact same story from a freelance information architect, a freelance composer, freelance project manager, many freelance designers and writers, and even a guy who sells concrete.

They don’t know why this works, either. But there it is.

Oh, and as we have all discovered, you can’t game the system.  It doesn’t work to copy and paste some lame emails or make half-assed calls for an afternoon, hoping to be mysteriously graced with work from on high. You must pursue in earnest.

If you have an explanation for this, I’d like to hear it.  (And no, that woo about the theory of attraction isn’t an explanation.)

Meanwhile, go do.

Re-do something that bugs you. Alan Siegel re-imagined the typical credit card agreement. Opened some eyes with it, too.

Or what if your portfolio is 82% skunk work that you’d rather keep under the bed?

No problem.

Dazzle them with makeovers.  Redesigns.  Rewrites.

It’s actually a more interesting way to convey your skills, your voice, your sensibilities.

Befores and afters

Find some website home pages, or marketing copy, or photos, or interfaces, or whatever it is you make.

Then re-cast them as YOU would do them.

Pick examples that bug you. Or examples from the types of clients you want to work with.

Attack some visual cliches. Fix common UI errors. Translate some high-profile corporatespeak into English.  Or rethink the package or logo as you see them.

Put the examples side by side in a downloadable e-book, or .pdf. Or post them on your site.  Three, four or five are plenty.

Show the before, show the after. The format is more engaging than a portfolio. There’s a story line, a voice. Clients seem to be endlessly fascinated by this.

You don’t have to redo entire sites, or rewrite all the product copy. Snippets and pieces are fine.  Maybe explain why you changed what you did.

The trick can even get you some good press, too.  Last year, interface designer Dustin Curtis generated huge buzz by posting a redesign of the United Airlines home page on his blog. (The UX architect from the airlines actually got fired for responding to the post, however.)

Naturally, don’t pretend you did these makeovers for those companies. You’re just trying to show your chops and viewpoint.

Oh, and if you’re tempted to do a makeover of a client’s stuff, and send it to them in hopes of landing some business:  resist the temptation.

The stunt usually backfires. (I have the soot stains to prove it.)

Redo somebody else’s stuff.

For help with the head-game, creative, staying-sane part, read Steven Pressfield:  Amazing stuff happens when you quit diddling and do your work.

Today Pressfield interviews Godin as part of a new series on the creative process.

A productive writer asks a prolific writer, ‘How do you do it?’  Linchpin meets War of Art.

Godin’s sticky-note quote for the freelancer:

“Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus.”

Probably a lot less than you think.  (Well, way less than I used to think.)

Click for the full effect. All 6kb of it.

I’ve been all over the map on this question. I’ve tried fat and rich websites.  And bare bones. And in between.

But I’m thinking there’s a lot of power in being more lean.  Laconic.  Not so talkative.  It’s smarter not to say everything.  Let the customer fill in the rest, the way they want to.

Example.  I’ve bumped into this web site for Oak Studios several times now, and have always been intrigued.

It’s a page.  Barely.

Now mind you, Oak Studios is no newbie fledgling.  They designed the idsgn blog, did launch work for kayak.com’s branding agency and plenty more.  They’re a busy shop doing class work.

But to me, their 19-word site works.  And by works, I mean it’s just enough to get a client to think, “Maybe we should talk to these people.”

Yep, the web and branding gurus would say Oak’s site lacks content, a definitive brand positioning, proof points, customer validation and testimony, portfolio samples, compelling content, and viewpoint.

Phooey.  I say it has all that, in about 6K of bandwidth, and without all the usual blather and chatter.

We know what Oak does. We know they don’t talk much. We know they’re not haughty.  (“Hi . . . Get in touch.)  We know their phone number and email. We know they’re not trying too hard to sell us.

In a way, it lets a client paint their own picture of Oak, based on what they want a firm to be.  It’s a clean slate.

But here’s what’s even more important:  There’s nothing to turn you off.

The usual thinking is, put a lot of stuff on the site — a lot of portfolio examples, essays, philosophy, bios, commentary, childhood pictures and dancing flash — and you have a better chance of serving up something the client likes.  Something that spurs a client to call you.

But all that content also boosts the chances of making a client lose his initial interest.  One portfolio example he doesn’t like.  Some high-sounding ‘philosophy’ that makes no sense.  The expectation and the curiosity are gone.

Too much life story on the first date.

A cagey old salesman once told me, when they’re sold, shut up already.

What’s the smallest, leanest, sparest site you could possibly get away with?

What Oak says

Incidentally, I was so curious that I emailed Oak about their web site.

Skylar Challand told me that Oak does indeed lean toward a minimalist approach to design and development .

But as it turns out, the real reason their site is so spare is because they have been way too busy with client work to build a bigger one.  Too busy with work to fuss with their own web site.

That is where we all need to be.