Kevin and I are both fairly 'green' on the color personality test so of course we love lists, sticky notes, and MS Excel of course. We've often said, "we need an app to share our digital to-do lists"!

Being the nerds we are, we've tested different approaches from a shared doc in Google Drive, a sticky note sprint board in our home, to various free apps and we've finally found one we like: Any.do

Check it out and let us know what you think and/or tell us your favorite to-do list.

​Here are 4 hacks that make writing easier summarized so nicely in this Podcast by Omar Zenhom at the $100 MBA Show. The objective of these hacks is to get your ideas down and get the ball rolling. Once you get more comfortable, you won't need these writing "training wheels" anymore.

Blog Writing Hack #1: Go for the "peak" first 

• start with the climax of the story first (i.e. peak of the mountain), the meat of the article
• now work backwards and write the introduction moving towards the peak (i.e. incline of mountain)
• now work on the decline of the mountain, i.e. conclusion or summary

Blog Writing Hack #2:  Speak it, don't write it

• use your phone dictation app and pretend you're being interviewed 
• once it's in text format, you can edit/rearrange after
• there are some best selling authors that actually write 'real' books this way!

Blog Writing Hack #3:  What, Why, How, Your Thoughts
Jot down your thoughts under these 4 headings, then rearrange/edit later.

• What are you talking about? What question will your article answer?
• Why is this important? Why am I writing about this?
• How do you actually do what you're trying to teach? List steps.
• Finish with your thoughts. What is your experience? Your opinion?

Blog Writing Hack #4: AIDA
From the book: This Book Will Teach You to Write Better

• [A]: Get people's ATTENTION right off that bat
• [I]: Get their INTEREST, give some interesting facts or ideas
• [D]: Get them to DESIRE whatever you want them to do
• [A]: Clearly outline the ACTION, what do you want them to do next? i.e. email signup

I'm also just starting to get into the habit of blogging (as you can tell by the small number of articles on this site currently) and I'm finding these hacks are extremely helpful with "getting it done" instead of procrastinating. 

So, tell me, what tricks/hacks do you use for blog writing?