Maintaining a creative mindset is damn hard.

The fear of burnout is enough to sap anyone’s energy. When it strikes, it’s hard to imagine recovering from it.

Projects that start with inspiration can derail at the slightest hurdle, leaving you drained and wanting to give up. You might even start to think that you’ve lost your touch.

I know the feeling all too well.

All too often I’ll dive into a new post, fired up and coasting on my initial momentum, only to get 500 words of a rough outline and then flat-lining. Then the slog begins to finish it since it’s already in the calendar and now has a deadline.

This slowed my progress to a crawl, which I would beat myself up over. This cycle repeated until the stress (among other things) drove me to seek therapy, which I am still undergoing.

What I’m trying to say is that creativity is taxing, scary, emotional work. Some weeks I write 4-5 long-form high-quality articles and still have time left over to give my brain a break. Other weeks, I’ll try not to fall behind, stress myself out and waste a whole week staring at text files full of junk.

So, after recently overcoming a bleak patch, I’m going to tell you what I’ve found helps to keep hold of your creative mindset and keep your flow going. These are tips, attitudes, and practices you can work on whenever you start to feel your work slowing to a grind.

Let’s get started.

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“I don’t have time to exercise. I can’t do it at the office, and I’ll look like an idiot if I do.”

I was wrong.

Office exercises don’t have to be complicated, long, or hard to do. You don’t even need any special equipment, and most can even be performed sitting down.

That’s something I wish I’d known before working my hands until they nearly broke.

“Approximately 3.2 million deaths each year are attributable to insufficient physical activity” – World Health Organization, Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health

This isn’t a post about getting buff while at your office. It’s a guide from personal experience on how to limit the damage that office work does to your body in the easiest and most convenient way possible.

To that end, you’ll learn:

• How to exercise without hurting yourself
• Office exercises for finger, hand, and arm injuries
• Exercises you can do while sitting
• Other for standing or when in your office
• A full workout to stay healthy (without leaving your office)

There’s no “hop on one leg” or “run until your face is purple” here. Instead, you’ll see how to release the strain from day-to-day office work without embarrassing yourself while doing so.

Let’s get stuck in.

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Life loves to throw things at us from all directions. The key to staying on top of everything is having an effective schedule to keep you on track.

So how the hell do you create a system for managing your tasks, events, notes, and calendar no matter where you are?

You need to create a bullet journal.

“A full 93% [of educators] state that using their Bullet Journal… makes their lives easier or significantly easier.

As one educator noted, ‘I find it difficult to track all of my classes and schedule in any other system’.” – Todd Foutz, Educators on Bullet Journaling

We here at Process Street know how difficult it is to keep track of everything, so that’s why this post will take you through everything you need to know to create your perfect bullet journal.

You’ll learn:

• What a bullet journal is
• What you’ll need to make one
• How to create a bullet journal
• How to get the most out of it

Let’s go!

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[ Download our Free Ebook ] – Click here to download our free 111 page ebook on “How to automate the tasks you hate at work using Zapier“.

Business vs Casual, Zapier vs IFTTT

Whether it’s Coke vs Pepsi, Ariel vs Persil or Hawaiian pizza vs everything good in the world, rivalries are everywhere. They make for fantastic spectator sports and can help improve our lives by showing the flaws in each side.

In our efforts to help you guys automate as much of the laborious shovel work in your lives as possible, we came across two main competitors; the great battle that is Zapier vs IFTTT.

Okay, so maybe “battle” is over-dramatizing things a little; it’s not as if they’re running massive smear campaigns. Still, the competition is real, as both Zapier and IFTTT have earned their spots on the map for being darned good pieces of kit. This got us thinking; which is better?

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We’ve all been there. You wake up between 7 and 9, have a quick breakfast (or not at all) and start work. Perhaps you’re hoping to get that big project out of the way to get ahead, then blast away some of the more difficult topics whilst you’re on a roll?

The trouble is, if you set off working ASAP after waking up, the chances are that something will stop you. It could be that you’re not awake properly and so don’t work as quickly as you’d like, or that you burn out in the first few morning hours, drudging through your afternoon in a zombified, unproductive state.

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Documented processes don’t just save you time, money, and give a consistent method for your team to follow. They make everything you do more reliable and efficient, even increasing project success rate by 70%.

Unfortunately, getting started is the hardest part. Whether you don’t feel like you have time to set up your management system or just don’t know what to use for your needs, it’s difficult to get over the initial learning curve.

That’s why I’m going to outline the 9 organizational tools you can use to get started right now.

From their pros and cons and best use guidelines to general tips on what to do with your organizational tools, this post will cover:

• Process Street
• Office 365 (Microsoft Word and Excel)
• Trello
• Airtable
• Google Suite (Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Drive)
• Zapier
• …and 4 process management techniques to get you started

It’s time to learn what organizational tools you need to manage your processes, and how to use them.

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So, you want to know how to beat procrastination? Well, here’s the simple answer.

You can’t.

At least, not completely.

No matter how hard you try, it’s impossible to completely eliminate procrastination. There will always be tasks you put off, and there will always be projects that get shelved in favor of others.

You can, however, learn how to use procrastination to your advantage and make what many see as a chronic issue into one of your greatest strengths.

First, however, you need to know your enemy. That’s why today I’ll be covering:

• What causes procrastination (and when that isn’t a problem)
• The benefits of procrastination you can take advantage of
• The drawbacks that can come back to bite you
• How to use it to your advantage

It’s time to stop stalling and get stuck in.

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There’s a lot of advice on the internet. Some of it is good, some of it is terrible, and some sits in the gray area between.

Within the fields of tech and startups, a lot of what people do day to day is influenced by what they’ve learned online; I doubt many people reading this article learned in school how to effectively market a product over Instagram!

Sorting the good from the bad is a challenge we all face, and one we have to become better at as individuals and as a society.

Improving our ability to analyze information doesn’t just mean identifying fake news, though we will look briefly at it. It also means being able to take a second look at informative journalism and the reporting of research; the kind of information which you might use to inform big business decisions. We’ll look at:

• The importance of recognizing the gray area in complex issues and reviewing the source text.
• How media reporting of studies can often obscure the real points
• Why certain models of investigation can have inherent flaws, and why you should be wary of that.

At the end I’ll follow up with the 10 step process you can use to improve your analysis. This process is pulled from the recommendations of Carl Sagan, Richard Feynman, and Michael Shermer, and repurposed for your professional needs.

But first, let me tell you a little story…

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Dictation software isn’t just something that can save you time by typing out your speech and performing commands. Talking instead of typing can and will help you prevent lasting damage to your hands.

You might think that sounds silly, and so did I.

I’m 23 – way too young to be worried about my joints or work-related injuries (my work isn’t exactly manual labor).

Then my hands seized up. Repetitive strain injury.

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“I won’t get distracted”, you tell yourself, “I’ve got a deadline – I’ll be fine”.

Next thing you know you’re looking at the goals-per-game statistics for second division Scottish soccer team Raith Rovers from their 1976/77 season.

I know because it happened to me. It was 1.15 goals-per-game. In the league only – not including cups.

This is why I’ve had to drill myself to be able to work effectively, and why I’m telling you how to avoid distractions today.

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