Benjamin Franklin once said, "If you want something done, ask a busy man." I never really believed this but have found it to be absolutely true in the past year. We've grown a lot here at mbg, which has been incredibly fun and also incredibly demanding. When first approached about writing a book I thought to myself, "There's no way in hell I have time for this." I already had a huge problem finding hours in the day for things other than work, let alone a book! After all, Randi Zuckerberg famously said of entrepreneurs, "Work, sleep, family, fitness, or friends. Pick three." I could relate to this battle for balance! Couple that with the fact that I had a lot of friends who had written books and had heard lots of stories about all-nighters, insane deadlines, and tremendous pressure to sell lots of books! So even though my head was saying, "No, don't do this!" my heart and my gut were saying, "Yes." (See #15 above, about listening to your gut.) Suffice it to say, I plowed forward. The next challenge I had was finding time to write! My solution? Writing while flying. Every time I flew in the summer of 2014 (which was a lot!) I did not opt for the in-flight Wi-Fi and I wrote. And wrote and wrote. If you look, you'll find there are hidden pockets of time everywhere, like the 10 minutes on your subway commute or the 15 minutes before the rest of your family wakes up. Just find those pockets and use them.

By the fall I had almost 50,000 words and a book. I even turned it in a few weeks before it was due. And there were no sleepless nights! The big lesson in this experience was that the more we do, the more we can do. But, it comes down to passion, prioritization, and time management. If you're passionate about something, you'll prioritize it, and you'll find a way to manage your time. And you can do it without killing yourself.