Nicole Dieker

Writer, editor, teacher. Daily posts on the art and the finances of a creative career.

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Two Problem-Solving Techniques That Might Be Applicable to More Than Just Piano

Every time you repeat something that isn't currently working, decide what you want to change on your next repetition — and then evaluate whether or not you actually changed it.

Yesterday I wrote about the ways in which problem-solving is the process of going from guessing to knowing — and, as promised, today I am going to share two problem-solving techniques that are helping me get to “knowing” a little more quickly. At least at the piano. (L thinks they could apply to the rest of life as well.) These two techniques can technically (pun intended) be categorized under…

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Problem-Solving Is the Process of Going From Guessing to Knowing

If problem-solving is the process of going from guessing to knowing, then there could be an advantage to learning how to expedite that process.

What does it mean to solve a problem? I feel like I cannot be the first person to have tried to answer this question, though a quick Google search reveals — well, that Merriam-Webster defines problem-solving as “the process or act of finding a solution to a problem,” which doesn’t seem particularly helpful, and that someone named Gene P. Agre wrote an article titled “What Does It Mean To Solve…

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Thoughts From My Office

Includes where I got published this week!

Let’s start with this week’s work-showing. I really wanted to get the second movement of Mozart K332 performance-ready, as it were — and I almost thought it was, but as soon as I put it under the pressure of “making a recording,” I realized there were still some uncertainties in the recapitulation. This is still astoundingly more specific than it was last week, specifically because I am using…

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Not-Magic Is Letting the Elements Manipulate You

If magic, as I wrote earlier this week, can be defined as "the manipulation of elements," then it would seem to follow that not-magic could be defined as "letting the elements manipulate you."

If magic, as I wrote earlier this week, can be defined as the manipulation of elements, then it would seem to follow that not-magic could be defined as letting the elements manipulate you. Right? L isn’t as sure of this as I am. “Isn’t that Zen?” he asked. “No, it’s not Zen,” I said. “Also I don’t know enough about Zen. But accepting what is around you is different from letting it affect you…

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Magic Is the Manipulation of Elements

A short digression, because of the snow.

A short digression, because of the snow — and because L and I have gotten ourselves onto the subject of magic, and I want to work through what I’m thinking about it. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to come up with some definition of magic, btw. You might remember what I wrote about magic when I went to Disneyland in 2017: I don’t believe in magic but I do believe that people can create…

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Thoughts From My Office

I just got my very own CAL NEWPORT'S TIME BLOCK PLANNER...

I am very very excited about the slate of guest posts I have coming your way over the next month — I told you a while ago that I wanted to run one guest post per week, and someone must have spread the word on Twitter, because I got a pile of pitches. It’ll be good to have a few other perspectives on this-here blog, right? Especially since I tend to have a particular sort of perspective… AND ON…

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You Don't Have to Settle if You Are Willing to Take the Time

The perfect may be the enemy of the good, as is often said — but the good is just as much the enemy of the perfect.

Let’s start with another bit of work-showing. Here’s the first half of the second movement of the Mozart: As you can see — especially if you’ve been watching my previous videos — this performance is phenomenally more specific. First of all, it’s actually adagio. (Not “slightly-faster-than adagio.”) Second of all, every grace note gets its moment of grace. Nothing is blurred, nothing is slurred…

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Why I Went Back to Time Blocking

T is for the time we use... B is for the blocks we choose...

Yesterday I wrote about having to “figure out which part of my day to take time from,” and if you’ve been reading Nicole Dieker Dot Com for the past six months or so you might be thinking wait, didn’t you try this experiment where you let the days unfold without trying to plan them in advance? Yep, I for-sure did. (If you don’t know what I’m referring to, you might want to read Thoughts on a…

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You Have To Set Aside Time for the Things You Want To Do

I've been writing about time management for years and I just did this very thing myself — I signed up for an online class in January, the class started last week, and I realized that I hadn't set aside any time in my schedule to take it.

Let’s see if this sounds familiar: You sign up for something that takes place in the future, like an online class or a book club or a community choir. It’s something that you’re really excited about, not something that feels like an obligation. (Too many other things in your life already feel like obligations, after all.)The future arrives, and the class/club/commitment begins. It might feel…

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In Which I Discuss Six-Figure Freelancing on Make a Living Writing

2020 was actually my second six-figure year as a freelancer.

I haven’t written much about my freelance income in a while — so if you’re curious about how my year has been, writing-and-money-wise, you should check out the piece I just wrote for Carol Tice’s Make a Living Writing: Earn Money Writing: 4 Big Lessons from a $126K+ Freelancer 2020 was actually my second six-figure year as a freelancer. The post I wrote for Carol includes at least four of the…

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Thoughts From My Office

Thoughts From My Office

I love the new blog layout. I had never been completely happy with the way the blog looked in the old layout — the quotes were too big, the font wasn’t the best, etc. etc. etc. — and I also wanted to switch to a theme that put the blog front-and-center instead of below-the-fold. The current theme is Scrawl, if you’re curious. It was created by Automattic, which means it is going to integrate…

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You Know, When You Start, Whether You're Actually Trying to Solve the Problem

I decided, in that moment, that discipline didn't count.

I was going to make this more of a theoretical post, expanding on the idea that you know, when you start the trill or the drill or the conversation, whether you’re going to try to solve the problem or whether you’re just going to run through the old stuff from beginning to end — and then I ended up creating a for-real example of this very scenario. On video. Here we go. I wanted to show you…

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"The best $5,929.10 I ever spent: moving back to the Midwest"

Moving from Seattle to Cedar Rapids cost nearly $6,000, and I’m so glad I did it.

I have an essay in Vox today about leaving — and returning to — the Midwest. ❤️

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Why “whim time” is one of the most important slots on my calendar.

If I don’t get a full “whim day” at least once a month — and it’s nicer to get two — I start to feel cramped and worn out and overwhelmed.

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My NEXT BOOK draft currently stands at 14,526 words, and I wouldn’t consider any of those words my “best work.”

Thoughts on what “best work” means, and how to know when we’ve done it. ❤️

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Financial independence and self-publishing share a nearly identical mindset.

You should read the whole post, but I’ll give you this quote for context:

Self-publishers take on both the author role and the publisher role. They develop various “success scenarios” for their books — maybe they want to crowdfund their “advance,” the way I did for The Biographies of Ordinary People; maybe they want to sell more than 500 Kindle copies in the first three months; maybe they want to to go on book tour or get their book reviewed by Kirkus or submit their novel for various awards.

There’s a lot that a self-published author can’t control, such as who wins those awards or how much money Amazon pours into its Kindle Unlimited Fund or whether the market for their particular genre changes, but there’s a lot they can control through research and careful budgeting.

The biggest factor under their control is whether they spend more on their self-published book than they plan to earn (THIS IS THE NUMBER ONE MOST IMPORTANT THING I WILL TEACH IN MY CLASS, BTW).

That’s also one of the biggest factors that will determine whether they’ll self-publish another book and slowly build up a career as a self-published author.

Likewise, the person going after financial independence takes on both the worker role and the employer role, even if they already have another employer. This person is setting aside money for to pay their future salary the same way an employer sets aside money for payroll, and deciding how much they might want to earn in the future the same way an employer decides how much to pay employees.

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How to Schedule Your Day When You Freelance or Work From Home

I’ve been a full-time freelancer since 2012, and most of my work gets done at home—that is, from my home office. I tried working from coffee shops and co-working spaces, but I tend to get the most work done when I’m in a quiet, comfortable, familiar space where I don’t have to worry about whether I’ll be able to find a seat near an electrical outlet (and won’t have to ask someone to watch my laptop every time I need to use the toilet).

New post at Lifehacker!

LEARN MY WORK-FROM-HOME SCHEDULING SECRETS