A couple years ago, Billy was just a ski instructor and recent college graduate who wanted to be a writer. After becoming interested in Holiday’s  books  (Obstacle Is the Way, Perennial Seller, and others), he sent Ryan an email thanking him for his work, and offered to help out on any projects Ryan might have for him. He sent the email and moved on with his life.

Then Ryan wrote back.

For creators, sometimes the hardest thing is just to start.

We plan, we prepare, we tidy up. Maybe I need to build a better chapter template for my book. Maybe I need to do more research. Maybe I need to go to the store to get different paints. Maybe I should search for a new sonic plugin that will really make this track sound great. I think if I could just tweak my desk setup, I could really get some good work done.

Some planning can help you fly further when doing your creative deep work. But too often, planning can be an excuse. It’s tangible, tractable, satisfying—and deadly to your creative production.

Artificial intelligence is having a moment right now, especially if you are a professional creator. Especially if you are a writer. In this article, I want to propose one way that authors can utilize AI writers ethically—saving time and producing more writing, while saving money—by using AI writers as research assistants.

In this installment of my reading advice for college students, I share two connected strategies to get more out of your reading in less time.

The first tip is to decide how long you want to read, and set a timer. Having a timer running will help you stay on task and avoid distractions such as checking email, social media, or YouTube.

Avoid trying to set Herculean goals that are impractical. If you say you are going to read for 2 hours straight, your brain is going to think that a quick break can’t hurt anything. But you can probably convince yourself to focus for 30 minutes on reading with no distractions, and complete focus.

In my previous post, I shared my overall advice for college students who want to spend less time reading while getting more out of what they read. Now I want to follow up with the most important mindset shift to make when you are moving from high school to college reading assignments.

The goal of a reading assignment is not simply to read all the words from beginning to end and take scattered notes on random elements that you think might be important.

Instead, the goal is to uncover the author’s argument, and be able to restate that argument briefly in your own words.

How do you know when you have understood?

After weeks and months of research, reading, and–as it turns out–practicing, I emerged at the end of that summer of 2011 with a whole new mindset. I not only no longer considered myself a slow reader, I knew for a fact I was pretty darn fast. And as I got quicker at reading, I was somehow also understanding more of what I read, and remembering it with a clarity that was unsettling.

For their 2017 album, Everything Now, Arcade Fire created an extensive faux-promotional campaign. I’m writing about the album and its promotional campaign in my book project, Sway: How Promotion Has Shaped American Music. One of the features of the campaign was the creation of a fictional, evil corporation that plugged AF’s release with all the vigor and crassness of a profit-mongering company.

The ploy led to a number of funny and caustic creations from the band, one of which was their music video for “Creature Comfort.” Here’s how it went down:

It is important to understand the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. These terms refer to how many layers of scholarly interpretation and analysis have been applied to the source material before you are interacting with it. To get a sense of how this works, consider a research project on Duke Ellington’s compositions in the 1940s.

Here is a step-by-step process to find relevant sources for your research project quickly and efficiently.

If you take the time to do things right, it will seem like you are moving slowly at first, but you will save time later, at the finish line, when it counts most. Learn how this philosophy applies to your research process.

As a university student, you are asked to do research, but why? It turns out that we use our research skills constantly, every day, to make decisions. In this video I imagine what it would be like in a world where research didn't exist.

As I have been watching courses on Masterclass, I have been paying attention to patterns of thought or approach that several top performers share. What are the similarities of top performers in very different disciplines? I am keeping a running list of these concepts in order to study them more deeply. One of the first ones to surface for me was in how top performers respond to and utilize critical feedback.

It can be difficult to know how to convert your live lecture courses to an online video course. In this video I share my approach to dividing lectures into short, manageable chunks for students. Then I show you exactly how I sequence these short videos into a "playlist" in the course website.

What if you could quickly find the most respected sources and reference information on your topic, organized in a way that would save you time in the outlining, drafting, and proofing stages. And what if you could do that all within the first two hours of research?

Picture in your mind the Mona Lisa. Now take a step back and observe yourself picturing the Mona Lisa. Consider what you are seeing. If you are like most people, you can call up in your mind a general image of the painting by Leonardo da Vinci called the Mona Lisa. We can call this image your "mental representation" of the Mona Lisa.

In this video, I explain three levels of video editing that university professors should understand: basic, intermediate, and advanced. I explain each level, what skills you will need, and which level you should use in in your classes.

Things worth doing take sacrifice. One reminder of the principle of sacrifice comes from The Mandalorian, a television series in the Star Wars universe. As the story begins, it follows a mysterious, helmeted character called "Mando." At first Mando seems like a ruthless, lone warrior,

If you’re a university student, or a university professor like me, you’ve probably been making a lot more teaching videos these days. In this video, I share my approach to making simple edits to my video lessons in a software program called Panopto.

Imagine a world without research. What would that world look like?

You would have no ability to seek out answers or information about a decision. You would have only your experience to draw upon. There would be no Google. No YouTube "how to" videos that could teach you how to draw, how to cut your own hair, solve a Rubix cube, or the perfect way to shovel snow in your driveway.

Now imagine, in this world, a scenario in which you are hungry and you are standing in front of a bush that has berries….

In a brand new academic article published by Musical Quarterly, I tell the story of how P. T. Barnum used strategies of branding to create the most successful music tour of the 19th century. The singer he brought to America was Jenny Lind. Lind was already a star in Europe, but was relatively unknown in America before signing a contract with Barnum.

Barnum did something unprecedented: