Stop Time Travelling

 Stop Time Travelling

 A couple of weeks ago while I was talking to my fourteen-  year-old daughter, she told me she couldn’t wait till the  weekend. It was only Monday, so I suggested she should  stop time travelling. It’s like the Adam Sandler movie (I  know, who the hell would’ve watched that?) where he has  a remote that fast-forwards him through all the boring and uncomfortable moments of his life. Then, bang, he’s an old man and he’s missed it all.

Time travelling, we all do it. Won’t it be great when? Wasn’t it great when? But… what about what’s happening right now? I find myself constantly trying to solve next week’s problems before I’ve even started my weekend. Flying through Saturday and Sunday at warp speed to get to issues that haven’t even happened yet.

Cue quote: ”I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened”. Mark Twain

Now this is all very well, but what does it have to do with being a Generalist? Well, for example, I’ve spent the best part of the last two months wondering what I will do when I finally have an audience, my 1000 true fans . In fact I’ve spent so much time looking into the future, I’ve completely missed the point. The whole reason I am doing this is to build my audience friend by friend, stranger by stranger.

So here are some tips if, like me, you need some help with a time travelling habit.

1: A cool app called Headspace. It’s an app for people wanting to give meditation a try, but not wanting to head off to India and live in a commune. It’s super practical and a great way to stop your monkey brain from time travelling.

2: Everybody knows this one, but it’s still worth mentioning exercise. It doesn’t have to be hard out, just enough to get the heart pumping a little quicker and help put the time machine in neutral for a while.

3: Pick up a book. When your mind keeps getting off its leash – flying backwards and forwards through time – taking fifteen minutes to read can be all you need to help focus on what’s in front of you. And sometimes you’ll actually learn something, how’s that for a bonus?

Now that we’ve learnt how to take control of our time machines, I’d like to get back to audience building. The Amazing Imageneralist.com Giveaway  is run using a product called KingSumo Giveaways. You can find it at Kingsumo.com. It’s a cool plugin that does pretty much everything for you. You set up a competition, provide a prize, fill in some blanks then publish. The cool thing about the way it works is that when someone enters, it asks that they share. This is the secret sauce. This is how you start reaching people outside your immediate circle.

Imagine trying to do something like this five years ago. You would have needed to be a graduate of some fancy computer science course, at some fancy arse university. Now a bear of little brain (me) can set up an online giveaway in about half an hour, using this product made by Noah Kagan and his crew at AppSumo. If you’ve read the post “Read These Blogs Or Else” you’ll recognise the name. The guys from AppSumo make awesome stuff to help Generalists build an audience – check them out. A bunch of their stuff is free too.

Anyway, I hope this helps with time travelling and audience building. Here’s the link to my competition, if you’ve already entered, please enter again and share the love to help me grow my audience. The Amazing Imageneralis.com Giveaway

Cheers @generalistalan