Stew Fortier

“I would pay unlimited money for somebody to teach me how to open my laptop, do the one thing I opened it to do, and then shut it.”

Stew Fortier is a former technologist and current writer, who writes about the internet, writing, and storytelling.

What's your favorite song that you love to Flow to?

• I don't have a single song, but my friend Kushaan Shah curated a masterful playlist of instrumental music that I've recently been enjoying.

Do you have any rituals that help you begin your workday?

• If I have a meeting -- even a 15 minute phone call -- before noon, I might as well not even work that day. The first half of each day is sacred and I do my best to keep it open to do proactive work. My only other daily routine is procuring an appropriate amount of coffee to get the juices flowing. Yes, this is a bad habit. No, I do not plan on stopping.

Learn more about the flow-enhancing powers of coffee and other drinks on our blogpost.

What’s your favorite productivity tip that you like to share?

• I feel woefully unqualified to give advice here as I rarely feel that I've accomplished what I need to in a given day, but I think my advice would be this:
• Find what schedule works for you. It's possible that you're most productive from 9-5, but if you have the privilege to have some control over your schedule I'd be willing to bet that many of us can have unbelievably productive sessions outside of those hours.

 

Do you have any current projects you are working on that you would like to share?

• I'm currently building a platform where online writers collaborate and edit each other's work. 
• We just wrapped up Y Combinator and I plan to invest every moment of my productive energy into improving our experience for members: https://compoundwriting.com

 

Learn more about Stew and his work at https://stewfortier.com/ or https://twitter.com/stewfortier