The late night outline

For some reason, I seem to get overwhelmingly motivated right before I’m trying to go to sleep. Suddenly, I feel like going for a long run, doing 100 push-ups, or writing 1,000 pages of the next Great American Novel–all things I’m rarely interested in during waking hours. I think we’ve all felt more awake when we’re trying to sleep, and sleepier when trying to wake up.

So along these same lines, I’m often struck with work mojo in the middle of the night. I think of a great blog topic (this one right here is being typed out at 11:25pm), get energized for a new e-book content offering, or remember that nagging metric I forgot to check in Googe Analytics earlier in the day. Again, for some reason, few of these late night jolts of inspiration linger into the morning.

Enter the Late Night Outline.

When inspiration strikes, I lean over, grab my phone, and open up Evernote to jot down my Great Idea in neat, semi-coherent bullet points. Usually, this leaves me with enough material to hit the ground running in the morning. Voila, that new e-book is done before lunch, and my boss is happy (and so are our customers!).