EDITOR’S NOTE:

Josh Spector is a fellow writer and founder. 

When I asked about his work routine, he said: “As much as possible, I try to focus on one thing at a time and limit distractions.”

He also mentioned “deep work” — a mode of intense, distraction-free concentration (made popular by Cal Newport’s book of the same name). 

Deep work helps clear your mind of “attention residue” (lingering thoughts, basically). 

For example, let’s say you’re writing and suddenly get the urge to check Twitter. As soon as you do, even if it’s only for a minute, you’ll carry attention residue from the tweets you read into your work. 

“Until that residue clears out,” Newport explains, “which could take up to 30 minutes, you’re operating at a reduced cognitive capacity.”

No wonder Josh is so productive. His newsletter, For The Interested, has gone out every Sunday for the past 4 years, a testament to his passion, creativity, and probably, his penchant for deep work. 

In his 731-word Micro-Interview, Josh also shares: 

• His most valuable career move…

• How to speed up your audience growth…

• When it’s time to stop what you’re doing and move on… 

And more…

Enjoy!

Thank you, Josh.

Let’s get started: 

1) “What’s your work routine?”

I start every day with a 30-minute walk during which I typically listen to a business/marketing-related podcast and spend time thinking about various stuff I'm working on. 

I work from home (even in a non-COVID universe) and my days are typically a blend of writing, consulting with clients on calls, and engaging with my audience online. 

I try to keep my calendar as open as possible and limit scheduled calls or meetings to a couple a day (at most) so I'm able to work on whatever's most pressing in that moment and/or have large blocks of open time I can use to focus on writing or other deep work. 

When it comes to email, I try to only check it a few times a day and don't have any notifications turned on so I don't have things blinking or dinging at me to distract me from getting stuff done.

As much as possible, I try to focus on one thing at a time and limit distractions.

2) “What do you know about your work now that you wish you’d known when you first started?”

The way people grow audiences constantly evolves, but the core principles never really change — it's always about figuring out how to provide value to a specific audience.

That said, I initially believed the key to audience growth was to focus solely on one audience niche, but I now believe that's not always necessary. 

There can be advantages to aiming at a few different audiences and as long as you're able to provide clear value to each of them, doing so can actually speed up your audience growth.

This is particularly true if you choose multiple target audiences that share some overlapping characteristics.

3) “What did your biggest professional failure teach you?”

I once worked at a startup company that was struggling and the founder was investing just enough to keep it from failing, but not enough for it to actually succeed.

That's a bad place for a company (or individual) to be… and ultimately leads to failure in the long run.

If you want to build something, you have to be willing to invest enough time, effort, and resources for it to not just survive, but succeed.

If you're not willing or able to do that, you're better off shutting down and moving on to something else because you'll just wind up wasting a lot of time.

4) “What’s the #1 thing that has helped you shorten your craft’s learning curve?”

I do a lot of things.

One of the pieces of advice I most often give to people who are trying to learn something or make something happen in their career is, "You need to do things. Not enough people do things."

You can read a ton of books, watch a ton of videos, and listen to a ton of podcasts about how to grow an audience (and I have), but there's no better way to do so than to actually go try to build an audience for something.

Nothing that I do was learned in school — social media didn't even exist when I was in college.

Everything I've learned has come from doing and studying what others are doing.

5) “What book has helped you the most over your career?”

All of Seth Godin's books have been extremely influential on my career, but in particular his book Tribes.

It's not specifically about audience growth, but it's the book I most often recommend to anyone looking to grow their audience.

6) “And your parting piece of advice?”

Everyone should write a newsletter.

My For The Interested newsletter — which I've published every Sunday for 4+ years — is the single most valuable thing I've done in my career.

The process of putting it together and finding valuable ideas to share within it has given me an incredible amount of expertise and a huge competitive advantage.

Plus, it's attracted people to me, which has given me a large audience, valuable network, and unlocked tons of opportunities, including clients and relationships which I never would have come across without the newsletter.

I've built a successful consulting business without ever having to actively pursue new clients because the newsletter leads people to me.

Even if you're not in the market for clients or business, writing a newsletter will change your life in all sorts of positive ways.

Plus, it's fun.