Matthew Lang

To get yourself into the groove of batching, try blocking out two to three daily email check-in times on your calendar, perhaps 30 minutes a piece. If at all possible, schedule an additional 45-90 minutes for creative work before you check your email for the first time. Then, when you do turn your attention to your inbox, no matter what you find there—what fires you have to put out, what unwanted questions you have to respond to—you’ve already gotten some good work done that day.

— Don’t Let Email Zombies Eat Up Your Day by 99U

I've been using Quitter as well to automatically close my email client after a period of time. Out of sight, out of mind and all that.

Start small. Start with just the smallest version of your idea and a way to manually make it happen. You can automate later. You can add more to it later. You can test the waters without a massive investment of your time or your money, and see what happens when people start buying it from you. That’s actually a much smarter way to launch.

— Define your “need to haves” vs “want to haves” by Paul Jarvis

I love this. Sound advice for anyone looking to turn their idea into something real.

Wally Bock has you covered with your first six steps towards a published book.

Long before any writing starts, most authors spend a great deal of time preparing to write. At this point, they usually don’t have a specific idea about what they want to write, but they do have some ideas and a few hunches about what might work.

This is the stage where you do some research. You probably already have some good sources and you’ve probably spoken about the ideas you want to write about several times. Try to get some more information. Dig down. Don’t worry about being comprehensive. It’s almost certain that you’ll need more research once you start writing.

— How the Book Gets Done by Wally Bock