Dumb Little Man | Tips for Life

I've been planning to write an ebook for over a year. While that project is still in the planning phase, I managed to write a full ebook last week that went from the planning stage to a finished product in only 3 days. Taking massive action allowed me to step away from the timeless planning stage and finally get things done.

"The path to success is to take massive, determined action." ~Anthony Robbins

It all began on Tuesday when I was contacted by Jordan Harbinger, from Maxim Radio's show on SIRIUS Satellite Radio. We had previously discussed doing an interview towards the end of November but when a a time slot opened up, we moved things up.

It was very important for me to have a downloadable information product (ebook) prepared in time for the show because I knew that offering it for free would greatly increase my blog's subscriber numbers. This left me with the end of Tuesday, all day Wednesday, all day Thursday, and half of Friday to write the book and prepare for this interview. If that wasn't enough, I still had to work take care of my internship!

That left only the evening and late night for getting things done. Once you add the fact that I had zero experience in putting together an ebook and less than stellar graphic design skills, you'd have to agree that I was in trouble.

I had three days, and I mapped out 2 major tasks that needed to be completed.

1. I had to create enough content for an ebook, and it had to be quality.
2. I had to find a designer that would be willing to work overnight, and at a tiny budget.

Since the topic of the radio show is dating and relationships, I decided to write my ebook on dating. The title 'How to Get a Girlfriend' automatically came to mind. I remembered that I had written a series of guest posts on this topic. I quickly contacted the site owner, who is a friend of mine, and asked him for permission to reprint the work with attribution to his website within. He agreed.

On my bus ride into NYC Wednesday morning, I began to compile articles that I had previously written on relationships. Luckily with 330+ articles on my site, with a decent amount of them being on dating and relationships, I did not have any trouble picking out relevant content.

On the bus ride back I continued this work, and then again when I got home. At this point I started sending out bulk e-mails to my online friends asking them to recommend an ebook designer that could work pronto and cheapo.

The replies started pouring in and I got at least 10 responses. I then took those e-mails and began to send a generic message asking for their assistance. I ended up speaking on AIM with my website designer, Nate Whitehill, and he personally introduced me to the man that would become my knight in shining armor, Joshua Denney.

I ended up working late into the night Wednesday, editing and revising many of the articles that I had previously written. I finished and worked closely with Josh in order to ponder the creative approach he would endeavor upon in the creation of this ebook.

After staying up a good portion of the night, I took a nap and then woke up to go to work. The day passed slowly as I constantly checked my iPhone for e-mails from Joshua to work on the book. Thursday night we ended up staying up all night, but we (mostly him) finished the ebook by deadline.

With one hour of sleep, I woke up early to finish doing the necessary blog posts and newsletter preparation to have everything go smoothly.

I continued to work while traveling back into NYC for the interview. I took the train in, and worked out different topics that we could possibly speak about during the show. I'm not going to lie, I think I sounded kind of bad, mostly because this was my first radio appearance and I didn't know how to control my pitch in the microphone.

You can listen to the personal development podcast if you want to laugh at me, but I'd still say that the whole endeavor was absolutely successful. Over a year of planning brought me no result. Three days of action brought me amazing results.

Sure, I used content that I already had to put this ebook together and I couldn't have written such a high-quality book from scratch in the same amount of time. That doesn't matter, because I did what I had to do and took massive action.

The moral of the story is that when the pressure is on, the work gets done! The key is to this success, as so eloquently stated by Anthony Robbins, is to determine what action needs to be taken, and then to put 100% into taking this action.