how to be productive if you're self-employed

A lot of my friends are in-between jobs, or taking some time off work right now. Most of them are compulsive workaholics and really want to keep themselves occupied even when they’re not in a structured environment. Often they want to do their own thing (start a business, write a book, whatever). Even though they’re extremely productive and have been that way for many years, they tell me that they have a lot of trouble getting things done when they don’t have any kind of external structure. And I thought, this is an area I actually have expertise in! Since I’ve always had weird jobs (I did a podcast with Sasha that will come out next week where we talk about exactly this) I’m extremely used to maintaining my own schedule. It’s taken a lot of trial and error…

I’m not claiming to be super productive by any means, but my credentials: I run this Substack (which is my primary source of income) and have updated it at least once a week, often twice a week, for almost three years. I worked a 9-to-5 job for nine months between last August and this May. I’ve been working on a book which is sadly still not finished, but even though it’s incomplete I have written probably 80k words for it every year of the past three years. I fairly reliably manage to get work done even when no one is supervising me. Here is my (very simple) advice: