I’ve been busy working on my next book, a version of The 7 Secrets of the Prolific just for undergraduate students. (More on this in future newsletters.)

The local vegan group I cofounded two years ago, Vegan Kalamazoo, has really taken off. We’ve now got hundreds of members and do several activities each month. Running it is now at least a quarter-time job.

I’ve also been doing more blogging on effective vegan activism. For those who are interested, here are some of my articles: Compromise Isn’t Complicity, The Myth of the Overnight Vegan Conversion, and (an oldie, just fyi) The Rise of Nonperfectionist Veganism.

I was given the opportunity to blog on Balloon Juice, one of my favorite blogs. It gets between 15-50K visitors a day (more during times of political excitement—like now!), and is also read by influential bloggers, members of the press, and others. So it’s a huge opportunity. I blog on veganism and animal rights (of course!), but also mushrooms, dogs, and other topics.

I’ve also been distracted by current events—the U.S. election, especially. I sometimes feel I should be less distractible, but there’s actually no one right answer to the question of how much attention one should give to politics versus the rest of one’s priorities. So, on this as on all other occasions, I work to make ever-better decisions while refraining from perfectionistically second-guessing or bashing myself. (Reminder: perfectionism is ALWAYS a dead end.)

Finally, I also felt I had reached a wall with my newsletters. I’ve been sending them since 2006, when I published my first book, The Lifelong Activist. (That’s a decade!) Sometimes I sent them weekly, sometimes monthly, and sometimes less frequently. But it still adds up to a lot of newsletters—all, overwhelmingly, on productivity-related issues.

I stalled not so much because I was running out of things to say about productivity—it’s a topic that continues to fascinate me, and there’s always some news or insight to share. It was that I had too much to say about everything else. But I was censoring myself because I thought that if I wrote about things other than productivity, I might alienate you, my Loyal Reader. And the self-censorship turned out to be, as it always is, highly demotivating.

So, effective immediately: No More Self-Censorship. I’m going to be emailing at least twice a week, on a range of topics. I promise that at least a third of all newsletters will still be about productivity, perfectionism, time management, creativity, and all my other traditional topics. But there will also be some politics, veganism, activism, personal stuff, and other stuff mixed in. I hope you find the mix fun.

As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions. Thank you for your time, attention, and support.

In the next newsletter, I’ll give you a brief update on my book projects, plus fall coaching and classes.