Whenever you do something, anything, you’re making a choice about how to spend your life. If you run entirely on impulse, it’ll be hard to get ahead.

Having a plan, no matter how thin, will always be better than just stumbling ahead. More people than you think are in their current jobs and relationships because they simply wound up there. Think about it, how many people do you know who went to school for X but are now doing Y for a living?

This video is meant to inspire you to start doing things with intention. Don’t always do what feels good in the moment .. but to do what IS good for you, long term.

That has many benefits, not the least of which giving you the peace of mind to focus on the current task, makes it easier to get into the flow state, etc.

Now, real life isn’t always so easy. There are fires to put out at work and in your personal life, sometimes your car breaks down, sometimes the boss calls an emergency meeting, etc. The thing to remember is that these aren’t really surprises – they are expected. Life is never going be 100% smooth and ordered so be flexible and ready to handle these things when they pop up. Adapt, resolve, and get back on to your plan. Move something to the next day if you have to, but do whatever works for you and get back to your plan.

Be intentional. Don’t be reactionary.

There are tons of videos on how to take back your time from this modern world of interruptions and distractions but I WILL share the one thing I’ve found that has worked the best for me.

Schedule your online interaction time. On your calendar, on purpose. Mark out 20 minutes here and there to sweep through your email, your facebook wall, your instagram feed, etc. Whatever social things you involve yourself with.

The important thing is to not let the act of opening of your web browser steal 2 hours of your work day. You’d be surprised how often that happens.

I personally went a little nuclear and dropped social media from my life but you need to do whatever works best for you. Nobody’s situation is the same as yours so we all need to customize and personalize advice videos like this.

Something else I recommend which has really worked out well is to turn off all notifications. I know, that sounds crazy, but it will be impossible to get into a flow state and remain focused if there’s always a looming chance that a new email will pop up, or messenger pings you, or any one of a hundred other apps want your attention for no good reason. Really, I mean, what’s so important that I need to know RIGHT NOW? Very few things, to be honest.

So disable your new email pop ups. Your Facebook messenger notifications. Slack mentions. Anything that will want to grab your attention is a zone killer. Turn it off. That’s my advice. Then you can deal with it all when one of your 20 minute pre-allocated blocks come up. You’ll be amazed after you do this for awhile and realize how few of those things need to be dealt with quickly. Most, if not all, can easily wait 2 hours … or even until tomorrow …

We are all unique in how we work and get things done but the one thing we all share, however, is the same 24 hour clock. So make the most of yours.

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Hi! I’m Warren Marshall!

I’m a freelance, hard surface 3D artist living in North Carolina. I specialize in hard surface work but I can do pretty much anything from environments to props.

I worked at Epic Games for over 15 years and started freelancing after that. Since then I’ve done prop and environment work for some fun projects, including We Happy Few from Compulsion Games and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. I’ve also done a bunch of asset packs for the various marketplaces.

I have experience with Unreal Engine 4 and Unity and know how to put assets together quickly that look good in those engines.

Here’s a link to my Art Station page where you can see a bunch of my latest work:
https://www.artstation.com/artist/warrenm

Visit my main web site here :
http://www.warrenmarshall.biz

You can email me directly if you’d like :
warren@warrenmarshall.biz

Questions, business inquiries, support – or just to say hi!

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