BAMP! BAMP! BAMP! BAMP! BAMP!

The alarm goes off. I hit snooze and buy myself 9 more minutes of sleep.

BAMP! BAMP! BAMP!

Alarm again. Snooze again. 9 minutes again.

BAMP! Snooze. 9 minutes.

Over.

And over.

And over again.

For years, I’m ashamed to admit this was my morning routine. On some days this alarm-wake-sleep spiral of misery would play out for 2–3 hours. What started as a plan to wake up at 5 AM and conquer the world devolved into Plan B — stumble out of bed at 7:30 AM feeling groggy and defeated. My ambitions of being an early riser would have to wait yet another day.

To add insult to injury, it wasn’t just the later rising that weighed on me. I was keenly aware I robbed myself of energy for the day ahead. Curiously, I felt less rested waking up at 7:30 than if I just woke up at 5 AM in the first place. Those 2–3 hours of interrupted junk sleep was not restful nor productive. I was simply squandering valuable morning time.

About 4 months ago, this habit changed. I now rise at 5 AM feeling rested (almost) each and every day.

Here is the 🎩 magic 🎩 question that I began literally asking myself as my hand hovers above the snooze button every morning:

Am I ready to fail my first challenge of the day?

This was a complete game-changer for me. In resilience, I would respond to myself emphatically, “No, gosh dangit, I do NOT want to fail my first challenge of the day!”

Think about it. You are a mere 30 seconds into the day and presented with your first challenge of many more to come. You really want to retreat back to bed and admit to yourself that you’re 0 for 1 already?

In order to create an environment for you to pass this first challenge of the day, here are 3 supportive tips.

1. No snooze button.

Seriously — this is non-negotiable. You cannot do it. You’re going to sabotage your mornings by hitting the snooze even once. When your alarm goes off, get out of bed. Hitting the snooze button is a slippery slope. Don’t tempt yourself by considering this as an option. This is far easier said than done, so keep reading…

2. Set Your Alarm Physically Out Of Reach.

I use my iPad for an alarm and it sits atop an armoire that is over 6 feet tall. To turn off the alarm at 5 AM, I have to get out of bed and walk over to it. I have to reach up high and stretch to grab it. It’s terribly inconvenient, but this is done intentionally. By making it deliberately difficult to access, I’m forced to move my body and begin waking up a little bit through physical movement.

3. Go To Bed Ridiculously Early.

“Nothing good ever happens after midnight.” — Bo Schembechler

Rising early is excruciatingly miserable when you don’t have enough sleep.

Rising early is astonishingly easy when you’ve had enough sleep.

If you begin to rise earlier without going to bed earlier, you’ll likely sabotage your efforts to change your habit. As you adjust to the new time you’d like to rise, it’s crucial that you actually get enough sleep. You need to manage the risk of sleep deprivation.

It’s a common misconception that rising early means you have to sacrifice the amount of sleep you get. This doesn’t have to be true. You can get the same amount of sleep you're accustomed to, you just have to roll back your internal clock a bit.

It’s cool to go to bed early. Be proud to be a person who chooses to start sleep at a comically early time. Tom Bilyeu — co-founder of Quest Nutrition — says he goes to bed at 9pm every night. When my routine was to get up at 7am, I would regard midnight as the end of the day. Now I’ve simply adjusted my standards and consider 10pm my bedtime. Two hours earlier bedtime = two hours earlier rise time.

“The quiet time between 6:00–7:30 AM is when some of my best work gets done. It’s my time to read, think, and prepare for the day ahead.”
–Bill McNabb, chairman of The Vanguard Group

More posts to come on routines and optimizing sleep. Follow me for updates.

August 3rd, 2015. San Diego. I just accepted an offer at Sunrun, and I’m sitting at my manager’s desk filling out employment paperwork.

Me: “It’s amazing that this many homeowners have gone solar. I mean, to think….almost a million people have done their part to help stop climate change. It’s just incredible.”

Andrew: “People don’t go solar because it’s green. People go solar because it’s cheaper than what they are already doing.”

It’s funny to think how naive I was when I first started in the industry. I dismissed solar as a tech toy reserved for those with deep pockets. And I don’t think I was alone in that paradigm. I think this misunderstanding prevents a vast number of people from exploring solar in any more depth.

I often channel that empathy when working with folks who aren’t as up-to-speed as I am in solar. From the outside looking in, solar seems like a thing that rich hippies do. Peel back a couple layers of the onion, and you find that solar is for people from all walks of life.

This story is to serve as a simple guide to see which route would work best for you. There are 3 basic strategies to go solar. As long as your house qualifies for solar — more to come on this later, follow me to get notified on new stories— there isn’t much to stop folks from making the switch, most especially including a modest bank account balance. I can say with confidence that there is a path to solar for you, it’s just a matter of finding the right one.

Strategy 1: Drop That Bill Low, Low, Low

Think about how many bills you have per month. Your cell phone. Your car insurance. Your internet provider. With each one, how many different companies can you choose from? At least a few. Competition is typically good for the consumer. In almost every part of our transactional lives, a marketplace with many players keeps prices down and sweetens the deal. Geico claims they can save you 15% on car insurance. Sprint says they’ll cut your cell phone bill in half. DirecTV reminds you to get rid of cable to save money.

For more than 100 years, the power grid has been completely void of this competition. It’s very common in many cities to have exactly one choice for an electricity provider. Don’t like their prices? Hate their customer service? Well you could always switch to Yankee Candles and run your TV with a bicycle generator, I suppose.

And then Lynn Jurich and Ed Foster met at Stanford Business School and hatched a little idea.

When Sunrun debuted in 2007, it wasn’t just another solar installer. Nay. The founders envisioned a dramatically different approach to solar. Instead of charging for the solar system, they decided to only charge for the electricity that was generated. If the utility charged a homeowner $.40 for a unit of power (we call it a “kWh”), Sunrun would charge $.20. Same product, lower price.

It’s called a “PPA”, which stands for “Power Purchase Agreement”. Sometimes it’s referred to as renting or leasing.

It then became a simple question for homeowners. When given a choice between expensive dirty power, and renewable affordable power, what would you take? Over 100,000 homeowners agree that buying electricity from Sunrun is way more affordable and practical than buying it from the power company.

It’s ironic really. I get a lot of people that are apprehensive of solar because they presume they can’t afford it. Frankly speaking, those are the people who need solar most. If your average power bill is $150, wouldn’t you rather pay Surun $120 for the same amount of electricity?

Strategy 2: Thanks For The Free Solar, Power Co.!

How much did you spend on electricity over the last year? How about over the last decade?

Whether you have paid one power bill or one-hundred, you have exactly nothing to show for it other than check stubs. Show me what you’ve earned for paying all those bills. Point to it. The power’s been used. It’s gone. Your hard earned cash was sent to the power company for a product that you used up long ago.

So here’s a fresh idea…how about instead of paying for power, you take those same funds and allocate them towards paying down a loan on a solar system? You’d use the solar system to create your own juice, and kick the utility to the curb.

Let’s say you are spending $1,000 per year on power, and a solar system would cost you $8,000 after tax incentives. To make the math easy, let’s pretend we are in a fantasy world where electricity prices don’t rise every year. (That’s quite a fantasy. Rates go up about 5% a year.) You could either:

• Continue to buy electricity just like you have been, or…
• Make a loan payment that’s no larger than the power bill it replaces

Now, let’s fast forward 10 years. If you had stuck with the power company, you’d have nothing to show for your payments. You’ll be sent a new bill next month. And the month after that. On and on until the end of time.

If you went solar, your solar loan is now paid off, and there are no more monthly payments. You didn’t spend any more per year than you already would have with the utility, but yet now you’ve got a solar system up on the roof. Magic! Consider yourself an alchemist of solar. The panels still have 15 years left on the warranty, and now each and every year you are keeping cash in your pocket instead of paying a power bill.

It’s a smart way to reallocate the funds you’d already spend anyways. Instead of paying your utility a monthly bill for the next decade, wouldn’t you rather spend those funds on a solar system for your roof?

Be sure to thank your utility for the free solar that was paid for with the money that would have otherwise gone to them.

“Getting a loan for solar is the only way I can think of getting something for absolutely nothing.” — Daniel Maduell

The Money Maker

I’m careful to use the word “investment” because I think it’s one of the most overhyped and misused words in sales environments. It’s a misleading label for an expensive purchase to justify it’s cost. A jet ski is not an investment. Nor is a timeshare, nor a car, nor a gold watch. Heck, not even your house is not an investment.

An investment is a place where you park your cash in order to make more cash. And putting cash towards a solar system is one of the most lucrative spots to make your money multiply.

Imagine you’ve got $8,000 to invest, and you get a solar system that produces all the electricity you need. If you were spending $1,000 / year on power, then your initial investment will yield you the same amount annually — $1,000. That’s a 12.5% return. You invested money, and now every year 12.5% of that comes back to you.

I often see solar plans with an ROI as high as 20%. In 5 years, you’ll return all of your investment. And now the real fun begins, you have 15–25 years ahead of you of electricity that doesn’t cost you anything to produce. I’m consistently able to show homeowners plans that save them $50,000 to $100,000 over a 20 year period, compared to not going solar.

Where else can you experience such a return? The Stock Market? Maybe 8–10%, but you’ll have down years that drag that down. A bond? No way! Savings account? Please.

There are very few investments that can return your capital in such a short period, with such little risk. Sure, there is a downside with solar. I suppose the sun may not rise tomorrow. (Technically speaking, we even have a plan that hedges against this risk.)

We’ve got plans where you can eliminate literally all of the variable costs. Like any investment, ongoing expenses can severely limit your return. That’s why many people opt for our plan where all maintenance, insurance, upkeep, and repairs are covered for 20 years. There is precisely $0 in additional expense after the initial investment is made upfront.

Forget about electricity, and forget about climate change. This is simply about making your money work for you. I don’t care what the context is…if someone offers you a deal to make a consistent 10 — 20% return, you take it. Except if it’s from your sketchy cousin Vinnie. You learned that lesson.

To add icing to the cake, solar “income” is tax free. If you make $1,000 in the stock market, you’ve got to pay taxes. If you keep $1,000 to yourself, instead of paying the power company, it’s not labeled as income.

Curious to see what solar can do for your home? Shoot me a text right now. Seriously try it out. 858.23o.2o33

The No Bull$#*! Crash Course On Solar was originally published in Adventures In Solar on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Homeowners often go solar is in order to insulate themselves from future rate increases. It’s a cornerstone in the decision making process, and one of the highest regarded reasons. They know that over time, the power company jacks up rates at a pace considerably higher than inflation. With each passing year, the power bill consumes more and more of the paycheck. However, when folks no longer “buy in” to the notion of ever increasing costs of electricity, solar isn’t nearly as appealing.

Over the last few days, SDG&E distributed an email to it’s customers about some important changes in the rate structure that are taking place in the coming years. The message was somewhat misleading, and may have left some residents a different impression than it should.

A friend of mine remarked that it looked like looked like SDG&E was taking steps to lower electricity rates. This is what SDG&E wants you to believe.

To think that power rates on the whole are actually going down is laughable. Over the last 20 years, they never have receded. In fact, they’ve marched upwards at an average rate of 5% per year. The email from SDG&E may make it appear like power is going to get cheaper. No way. Tier 1 and 2 are currently set at $0.17 and $.20, respectively. Effective tomorrow (July 1), they are combining increasing to $0.22. Tier 3 is in fact coming down a little bit, but not as much as Tier 1 & 2 are going up.

SDG&E can pull a number of levers to affect the total cost of power. In one particular section of the bill, they lower the costs. But on the other side of the coin, they raise it. It’s sleight of hand at it’s best, and pure manipulation at it’s worst.

Our analyst team at Sunrun ran 15,000 scenarios of hypothetical SDG&E power bills with varying combinations of power consumption. They discovered very few combinations that would actually result a lower bill than before.

My friend also speculated that these rate changes were a likely response to the new competitor on the street — solar. In most industries, this logic prevails. Losing customers to the competitor? Well then, lower the price!

With utilities, the situation is different. For years, they’ve operated at a cost-plus model. Whatever their costs are, they get to add on a guaranteed 7% profit, and that’s the revenue they are entitled to collect from ratepayers. So unless their costs can come down dramatically, the rates don’t stand a chance of getting any more affordable.

SDG&E has already lost 100,000 customers to solar. Assuming each one of those customers paid $2,000 a year in power bills before going solar, that is $200 million dollars per year that they need to find somewhere else. They literally have no way of reducing their operating costs enough to make up for that reduction in revenue. Those who are left behind have to pay for those who no longer SDG&E for power. It’s a virtuous cycle that will only become exacerbated with time.

Curious what solar can do for you? I’m Greg Muender, and I’m a solar consultant at Sunrun. Text or call me at 858.230.2033.

That Email You Just Got From SDG&E? Here’s What It Means… was originally published in Adventures In Solar on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My car is due back at noon, so I’m getting a little worried. The renter — we’ll call him Jim — hasn’t contacted me in the last couple of days. Normally, renters are highly communicative, and often even bring the car back early. Something is off.

Four days ago, I picked Jim up at his house in my car. Jim used RelayRides — a popular peer-to-peer car sharing platform — to discover and rent my personal car. During our drive back to drop me off at home, I didn’t get a good feeling. Jim was very young, and although our dialogue was a brief ten minutes, he didn’t strike me as someone who came cross as outwardly responsible. A few abrasive references, a couple peculiar idioms, and my guard was up. I didn't have anything tangible to act from, but my gut was on high alert.

However, the car rental was booked, and I wasn’t going to cancel solely because of my intuition — that would be rude and prejudgmental. I gave him the benefit of the doubt. It turns out that was the wrong move.

At 12:06, I decided to text him.

“Hey Jim, what’s your ETA?”

Ten minutes go by with no response, so I called him. No answer.

At 12:19, I got the following text.

I had to go back to Texas today, I don’t know if I ran out of gas or if the clutch messed up but the car is at {address redacted}. I put the key in the mailbox by the front door…I’m boarding my flight right now.

I was not shocked per se, presumably because I had already subconsciously registered this outcome as an inevitability. I took an Uber to retrieve my car, and found it in a condition I feared — filthy, damaged, and unable to move under its own power because of a clutch scorched worse than a space capsule on reentry. The rear tires were considerably worn down, the car interior smelled like weed, and sand was in every nook and cranny. Two of the wheels had been badly damaged from striking a curb. Despite handing the car over with half a tank of gas, it was completely empty. Worst of all, the key wasn’t in the mailbox as indicated. (To this day, it has yet to be returned.) Thankfully, I brought a spare.

I can get past the damage to the car, but it’s the way at which it was handled that upsets me most. The renter left my car for dead on the side of the road, and then expected me to pick up the pieces. Presumably, he considered this operation to be no different than Hertz. Clearly he didn’t care to adhere to the expectations of the sharing economy. He didn’t acknowledge the time, hassle, and headache I would have to endure to rectify this. It didn’t click that it’s just flat out rude to leave trash for me to clean up. Despite my best efforts at communicating, he didn’t seem to understand that this was my car, not some anonymous auto from an airport rental company.

His actions had consequences that were very personal in nature. Unlike a traditional rental outfit, there was no buffer between the party afflicted and the party of wrongdoing. His inability to act appropriately makes him undeserving and unfit of membership into the community.

Jim abused the trust that is built within the sharing economy and he didn’t abide by the rules. He treated my car with carelessness and disregard. As a result, I got metaphorically burned — even worse than my clutch.

Let me be clear, I’m extremely supportive of collaborative consumption and this story is not a oh-my-god-the-sharing-economy-is-not-going-to-work rant. I’ve been a host on airbnb for over 200 nights. I’ve racked up more than 1,000 rides behind the wheel with Lyft. I even shipped my sister’s Honda off to FlightCar indefinitely.

In those thousands of interactions, I’ve never had a materially unpleasant experience. Sure, maybe a previous guest left my apartment a little messier than I would have liked, but it wasn’t a big deal.

When I started driving for Lyft in early 2013, my experience was incredible. Consistently and nearly without exception, passengers were polite, friendly, and downright interesting. It was like a cross section of the population had been carved out, and everyone that hopped in my ride got it. They understood what it meant to be a citizen of the sharing economy, and what the mutual expectations were. They abided by the inherent undertone of respect that comes when I extend my personal belongings to a complete stranger.

As the days, weeks, and months ticked on, I became skeptical. Would an unwanted byproduct of growth be a change in clientele? Would the search for more and more passengers cause me to have to pull from a population outside those who acted as positive participants in the sharing economy?

I thought about taxi drivers. Their jobs are rough. They have normal passengers and nice passengers. But they also have people that vomit in their cars, yell directions at them, and skip out on the fare. Was it only a matter of time before those people were getting in my car? If and when that day came, would I feel just like a taxi driver, the only difference being I was in an unmarked car? Would the magic and splendor of the sharing economy lose its luster?

“As collaborative consumption goes mainstream, it risks losing the very thing that attracted people in the first place, the unique and even transformative social experiences made possible when you interact with helpful strangers.”

Neal Gorenflo, co-founder of Shareable magazine

With RelayRides, most renters treated my car — and therefore indirectly me — with immense respect. They brought it back with more gas than it started with. They communicated with me and returned it clean. One renter was even kind enough to detail the car, and then gift me the purchased cleaning supplies. But I always thought of the looming possibility of what could happen when the platform had exposure and appeal across the full spectrum of demographics.

Jim was my expected inevitability. In a game of Russian roulette, he was the bullet that fell into the chamber just before the trigger was pulled. Jim was the alarm clock that shook me violently awake into the real world, a society where not all of its citizens are respectful and courteous.

What’s particularly infuriating about the experience is the financial burden that I am left with. RelayRides has been helpful in the repair process and I will be reimbursed for the costs of most of the damage. However, they weren’t able to make the situation absolutely and completely mitigated.

Given that the clutch is a “wearable” item, they only offered to pay for a prorated portion. The shop bill was $2,300, and I’m unfortunately stuck with $900 of that. Since beginning to rent my car out on a regular basis, I’ve only earned $554.17. The math doesn’t look attractive. As of this moment, I’m nearly $350 in the hole.

As an operation, I’m in the red, even before factoring in the long term costs. Some damage is objective and quantifiable — the clutch, the tires, and the wheels. But what about the damage that doesn’t show up now? If Jim ran around town acting like it was a race track, how much wear did he place on my engine? Did he shorten the lifespan of my suspension, drivetrain, and transmission? It’s precisely impossible to determine. Only time will tell the true costs of Jim’s wild ride.

Despite the time and resources I’ve allocated, it’s been an unsustainable and unprofitable endeavor, and I have decided to not continue until things change.

If it wasn’t Jim that showed up, it was likely only a matter of time before someone with Jim’s destructive tendencies rented my car. Jim represents the person who does not belong in the sharing economy.

Platforms have an obligation of developing better ways to filter out those who have a high likelihood of abuse. We have to learn how to remove the Jims before they get on the platform. RelayRides likely reviews driving and criminal history of renters, but there is a opportunity for more due diligence.

As the sharing economy matures and overflows its banks into the mainstream consumer, we have to start asking — and answering — some hard questions about trust and reputation.

Jim’s actions placed a burden on RelayRides as a company and a platform, and myself. When we have destructive rogue citizens of the sharing economy, the entire ecosystem is in jeopardy of collapse. Without trust, a fundamental pillar is shattered. So where does this leave us, and what do we do going forward?

RelayRides has eased some altruistic concerns of mine by assuring me that Jim has been black flagged and removed from the system. He can’t ever rent a car again, and he won’t be able to put another RelayRides owner in an unfortunate outcome such as mine. However, this siloed approach has one fundamental flaw — Jim can still go rent a car from other peer-to-peer rental platforms like Getaround and FlightCar without restriction. Heck, he can even go score a place on Airbnb to host a raging party, or rent a jetski on Fun2Rent and sink it off the coast of Mexico.

Without cross pollination and communication between platforms, Jim can keep replicating his destructive tendencies over and over. Marking him up on a single platform has very little effect on another.

It’s predicaments like mine that pique my curiosity about concepts like social currency, or even a social credit score. Jim has proved to be a harmful participant of the sharing economy, and members of other platforms need to know of his documented vandalism in order to make an educated decision about transacting with him. It is socially responsible to mark Jim’s platform-agnostic record with a blemish that represents an event of significant wrongdoing. Just like lenders need to know of a potential borrower’s history of payment delinquency or bankruptcy, destructive events like these need to be catalogued for future decision makers.

To be fair, the RelayRides platform does present some information to me that I can use to grant or deny a prospective renter’s request. In the case of Jim, I had his phone number and a grainy profile picture. That’s it. I think RelayRides can do more. Who are Jim’s friends? Do we know anyone in common? Has he used any other platforms before? How is his creditworthiness? What does he do for a living? Good or bad, things like these paint a picture of the type of person that Jim is.

Just like you wouldn’t befriend someone that you know very little about, you shouldn’t feel obligated to transact with someone you don’t have a baseline understanding for.

After all, the whole point of the sharing economy is to foster transactions by accelerating relationships. Platforms connect otherwise strangers because of systems that are in place to subsidize trust. And trust acts as the currency of the sharing economy. When that trust is frequently compromised, we are left with little. Trust comes from information and transparency.

I hope that RelayRides will make sweeping changes. I hope that we as renters can be given the best chance at stopping problems at the source. I even hope that with time, Jim can learn how to become a deserving citizen of the sharing economy.

If we don’t protect the sanctity of the sharing economy, it becomes nothing more than a commodity game. It will no longer be about utilizing idle resources, forming friendships, and providing delightful experiences. Owners will be in it for the income, and renters will use it for the cost savings. Priority number one will be protecting your ass…ets, and the platform will act more as a mediator of disputes rather than an enabler of transactions.

In the interim, for those considering participation in the sharing economy, my recommendation is to be cognizant of the exposure you are assuming. You do not have complete and absolute information, you have some of it. And until we bridge the gap that allows wrongdoers to hide in the shadows of the industry’s shortcomings, you are assuming substantial risk. Just like any other business, there are ups, and there are downs. You need to ask yourself if you are prepared to weather the storm if Jim comes knocking on your door.

Curious how to get the most out of Medium? I’m Greg Muender, and I literally wrote the book on it. Pick up your copy here, and you’ll get access to the tips and tricks that have been proven to work to get more readers and more exposure.

This story originally appeared on Pando. Read it here.

This Is What Happens When The Sharing Economy Goes Horribly Wrong was originally published in Adventures in Consumer Technology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Greg,

I know there are some big changes at Medium. It just sounds like they’re not profitable and a bit of a mess. Does most of your advice [from The Ultimate Guide To Medium] still apply or is it too soon to know? Have the changes been rolled out or just announced?

Thank you,

Janet, online reporter at NewspaperGirl

Let’s start off by setting the stage for Janet’s questions. When she mentions the “big changes” at Medium, she’s referring to the shake up that happened in late May of 2015. Medium is focusing its efforts on strengthening the network and community. Consequently, they’ve had to pull resources from their internally supported content efforts. A number of popular publications — including Re:form, The Nib, and War Is Boring — were either shuttered or decided to move their content elsewhere.

If you were paid by Medium to write, or to run a publication, then these changes were probably quite material to your bottom line. But most likely, you are not a paid contributor. So, nothing significantly affects you. It’s business as usual. If anything, this is a good thing for the average writer.

In my admittedly speculative opinion, Medium is moving to make the network even more of a meritocracy. They want to empower the average writer, not play favorites with the publications that are on their payroll. And while this may result in a short term drop of quality content, we are all going to be appreciative of these changes in the long run.

Medium is most likely not profitable, and to the outsider, things perhaps do look like a mess. But we all need to give Medium the benefit of the doubt — there are dozens of brilliant people on the team who care greatly about the product and the community. Things are still early enough to chalk this up as an experiment, and getting through the storm now means calmer seas ahead. Love it or hate it, Medium is still a giant petri dish. There are going to be bumps along the way. Patience, young grasshoppers.

This is a long term play. Medium has taken on one of the most ambitious goals of the modern digital publishing era, and fruition will not happen quickly. Perhaps I would be more worried if the man in charge — Mr. Ev Williams — was a first time founder & CEO. But he’s not. He previously founded Blogger and Twitter, and unless you’ve been living in a cave since the last millennium, you know that both products fundamentally shifted the way we communicate. Medium is his third iteration of a formula that has worked well before — give people the tools to communicate and watch what happens. With more experience under his belt than ever before, it seems unlikely that Ev doesn’t have a penultimate destination for Medium.

In short, keep writing great content, and you have nothing to worry about.

Curious how to get the most out of Medium? I’m Greg Muender, and I literally wrote the book on it. Pick up your copy here, and you’ll get access to the tips and tricks that have been proven to work to get more readers and more exposure.

Reader Q & A was originally published in Book Resources on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By design, Medium is stripped down, streamlined, and lightweight. This isn’t a result of a lazy product team — quite the contrary. Medium has worked tirelessly to demolish all barriers that exist between you and your written word, and the resulting super simple editor is a tremendous asset in accomplishing such an ambitious target.

Don’t mistake Medium’s approach as limiting. Within the sandbox that Medium has provided for wordsmiths to play, a creative writer is still left with plenty of options. Constraints are a beautiful thing, and Medium has reached an elusive balance to encourage you to stay on track while simultaneously empowering you to add some custom touches. Next time you write a story, see if you can tap into these seldom used off-the-shelf bits.

1. Embedding

Don’t tell your audience. Instead, show them. There are better ways to present another work other than the trusty underlined blue hyperlink. YouTube & Vimeo videos, GitHub gists, Tweets, Vines, Kickstarter campaign summaries, Instagram photos, and SoundCloud & Rd.io recordings are all embeddable.

Tom Farr on Twitter

Thanks to The Ultimate Guide to Medium by @GregMuender, I've begun to reach more people on @Medium http://bit.ly/mediumbook #mediumbook

To embed content, insert the URL and hit return, and Medium will automatically detect and format the link. Alternatively, you can click the the “+” menu on the left side of a fresh line and select the URL option.

You can even embed other Medium stories that are part of a series or pair well with another story. For example, when people buy The Ultimate Guide To Medium — an ebook published right on Medium — they are sent a link to a table of contents, which is nothing more than a Medium story with the 9 Chapters embedded in order.

2. Linked Images

Unless you are writing for altruism or goodwill (which it totally OK), you likely want your audience to take an action — join a mailing list, visit a product page, etc. In the industry, these are referred to as calls-to-action. Although Medium’s editor does not allow for custom buttons to be inserted, there is a clever workaround.

Use your favorite design tool (Photoshop, Illustrator, or even Keynote) to create an image, and place it into your story. Then hit “⌘” + “K” on a Mac, or “control” + “K” on a Windows machine to display the hyperlink box. Insert your link.

Scroll down to the bottom of this story to see how I’ve used images to encourage readers to follow me on Medium & Twitter.

You may also use linked images to navigate between stories. In The Ultimate Guide To Medium, the reader navigates between chapters by clicking buttons in the bottom that simply link to the corresponding story. I didn’t use any custom coding or pull in a personal favor to the design team — I simply built images and linked them to URLs. Take a look at the book to see this in action.

3. Tags

For each story you publish, you can select up to 3 tags. Tags will help an interested audience discover your story, and improve search result rankings within Medium.

To add tags, click “Preview/Publish” for drafts, or “Edit” for published stories. Type in your first tag, which can be made using alphanumeric characters, spaces, and dashes (e.g., “Hip-Hop” or “Climate Change”). You don’t need to add a “#” before entering a tag. When you’re done entering your tag, go to the next by hitting tab, return, or adding a comma.

Click “Publish” or “Publish Changes” to save tags. You can always return to published stories to update or remove your tags.

When viewing your story, you’ll see its tags below the Recommend button.

The “Featured Tags” section on your home page is a way to see what is currently popular amongst readers. Use this information to tap into the zeitgeist, to see into the collective conscience of what the community is reading, discussing, and sharing. Leverage relevant featured tags, and you’ll increase the likelihood that readers will find your story.

4. Highlights

You’ve likely noticed the highlighting feature that was released earlier in the year. It’s a great little function for readers, but writers can also utilize this feature to their advantage.

Use highlighting as another way to add emphasis to specific text within your own story.

5. Sharing Drafts

As the adage goes, two heads are better than one. Before you publish your next story, send the draft over to a friend or colleague for a quick glance. Worst case - they will catch a couple typos. Best case — they will shine light on some rough spots in your writing that could use a little polishing.

Click “Share draft” in the header when you are composing your story, and share the specific link via email, Twitter, Facebook, iMessage, etc. Anyone with the link can view your draft — a Medium account is not required — but those who are logged in can leave in-line notes.

6. Note URLs

One of the fundamental differences with Medium compared to other publishing platforms is the focus on context. Medium ripped out the traditional below-the-post commenting system in favor of in-line notes.

These notes have their own distinct URLs, so you can link directly to them in a story as needed.

Click the little link icon next to the original note and copy the sharable link. Anyone who visits that link will be directed to the exact spot of the note. It makes for a great reader experience.

7. Social Cards

Sharing on social media is deeply integrated to the Medium product, and is likely a root cause for virality. Medium stories are shared on Twitter and Facebook using “cards,” which are brief summaries that include a title, subtitle, teaser, and a thumbnail version of your cover image.

In order to give your story the best chance of spreading far and wide, you will want to make sure that they display exactly as you want them to. Click the “Preview / Publish” button to edit for Medium story listings, emails, and across social networks. You can make a change at any time, even after publishing.

8. Notes

Leave notes on your own story to clarify a point, provide further resources, or callout an update or amendment to the original text. This keep readers from having to scroll all the way to the bottom and then back up to where they left off. As the story matures and reader feedback is collected, adding notes can improve the story over time.

Leave notes that ask questions and encourage a conversation or healthy debate amongst your readers. Doing so will make your story feel much more alive, and you’ll forge a stronger relationship with your audience.

To leave a note for yourself that only you can see, keep it set to private. This a great trick to leave little reminders to yourself and keep internal notes without sharing to the world.

Curious how to get the most out of Medium? I’m Greg Muender, and I literally wrote the book on it. Pick up your copy here, and you’ll get access to the tips and tricks that have been proven to work to get more readers and more exposure.

The 8 Medium Features You Might Not Know About was originally published in Adventures in Consumer Technology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Let’s break down the intended cognitive path for the recipient of this ad.

Binge eating? I guess I occasionally eat too much. I hear ya’!

Wait just a minute…Binge eating is a real medical condition? Holy cow, that’s scary! I wonder if I need treatment?

Oh wow, look at that! This video will tell me if I am totally sick or not. If I am, it’s a good thing I have a doctor that can write me a prescription. Time to call the doc!

More than 10 percent of Americans take five or more prescriptions. I acknowledge that some drugs are critically important. I speculate many — or most — are not.

Big budget marketing departments come up with ways to convince us that we have “diseases” that have been completely fabricated. After all, a sick population means healthy financials for drugmakers. It’s just good business to convince us to pop more pills.

If this binge eating campaign proves to be successful, tens of thousands of self deduced overeaters will begin tossing back pills to cure a disease that is essentially made up. Even if bing eating is a disease, why should someone ingest an apparent solution produced by the folks who explicitly state they don’t know what causes it? (See “Exact cause is unknown” in the ad.) Shouldn’t the drugmaker establish more certainty before claiming that they’ve found a cure?

Using no more than 28 words in the entire ad, the company has the audacity to make a bold claim, and then immediately retreat on it. I’m almost certain this only to fulfill a legal requirement — but come on.

What if other companies did this? What if marketing departments were allowed to make ludicrously radical claims that were not actually consistent with their product?

Pharmaceutical companies have the biggest sales force in the world. They have you, the public. They train you and they condition you to think you are ill, and that only something that comes in a bottle with a child proof cap will fix it. You sell yourself that you have the disease, and then you go sell your doctor to prescribe you with the fix.

“Doc, I definitely have the binge eating disease. You should have seen what I ate at In-N-Out Burger last week! But it’s all good — I know the exact pill that will fix me up. I saw an ad on TV. I’ll take 100.”

Pharma spends billions on direct-to-consumer advertising. Sometimes the ads are clever, sometimes they are as exciting as reading an Instruction Manual for a VCR, but almost all include the suggestive phrase of “Talk to your doctor.” A call-to-action, the ad men call it.

The medical system is fundamentally broken when we are the ones that come to our doctors with the cure. It needs to work the other way around.

Why is it that an industry supposedly in the business of improving the quality of life is so incredibly unpopular with the public? Perhaps it is because the same organizations that are supposed to cure us of illness are the ones that have infected us with the most relentless disease of all — conviction. Conviction that we have the disease, conviction that we need a cure, and conviction that our doctor is the one that can make that happen.

According to a study reported at FiercePharma,​ drugmakers spend more to market their products than they do on research and development. In one recent year, Johnson & Johnson spent $17.5 billion in marketing — more than double its $8.2 billion earmarked for R&D.

Despite radical advancements in medicine over the last century, we are a society of sick people getting even sicker. Although many factors play a role in this, this pandemic is no doubt correlated with the fistfuls of chemicals we ingest without thinking twice.

How are ads like these even allowed? Are the people in these companies so brainwashed that they genuinely believe their products help people? Do they actually think they are serving others? Or is it just all about the greenbacks?

I’m not a doctor, but common sense tells me binge eating is not a medical condition. Binge eating is the result of millions of years of evolution that wires us to think, “When you have food in front of you, eat it! Who knows when we can get our hands on some again!” We don’t need a pill to fix it.

Think this kind of practice is a new thing? Nope. Big pharma has been selling us harmful poison for years by repackaging it as a solution.

There’s a condition called learned helplessness. When we continuously believe that we cannot help ourselves, we have programed our mind to turn to an outside resource. Pharmaceutical ads continue to fuel that fire. The narrative becomes about how we can’t survive without the miracle cures that come out of the big pharma factories.

Drugmakers should behave better. Drugmakers should follow the rules, and they should operate with a moral conscience. But, can blame them for not doing so? We can chastise all we want on their advertising practices, but we shouldn’t criticize pharmaceutical companies for behaving like businesses. After all, they are doing everything in their power to increase the bottom line.

When share price and earnings calls are guide the actions of pharma companies, their own agendas are consequently misaligned with our health. Cash is king. They have investors to please and shareholders to impress, and they are under the same financial expectations as any publicly traded company.

So then, the question must be asked. How do we proceed as a society? Is it in our best long term interests to have profits and pills in the same bed? If we want a change, then we need to start talking about alternatives. Perhaps government should lead the way, perhaps not. Perhaps pharmaceutical companies can remain financially incentivized, but let’s reward them for objective measurements of health, not gross sales.

It’s large scale problem, and one that will continue to surface more over the coming years and decades. Now, if only there was a pill to cure it…

Curious how to write viral stories? I’m Greg Muender, and I literally wrote the book on Medium. Pick up your copy here, and you’ll get access to the tips and tricks that have been proven to work.

When I was writing “The Ultimate Guide To Medium: How I Made $10,000 & Other Viral Strategies”, I was constantly switching between Chrome, Evernote, and iBooks Author. I had two or three browser windows up, and I’m not ashamed to admit I may have had in excess of thirty different tabs open. Writing the book was no simple task, but it was certainly made easier once I discovered the following shortcuts to navigate between all my windows, applications, and tabs. Without further adieu, let’s get to the life hackery.

Switch Between Chrome Windows (Mac)

Sometimes it’s useful to have multiple windows open on the Chrome browser. Other times, you are just too lazy to keep that number at bay. Either way, you may find yourself frequently switching between windows. Use this shortcut to toggle between all open browser windows. Boom!

Switching Between Tabs On Chrome (Mac)

Most of us are guilty of having way too many tabs open. When oscillating between two tabs, ditch the mouse altogether and opt for a keyboard shortcut. Either 1) click “control” + “tab” to scroll through your tabs, or 2) click “option” + “command” to navigate with the left and right arrows.

If you are having trouble getting this to work properly, check this out.

Application Switcher (Mac)

Repeatedly switching between applications can be a real pain, especially on the smaller screen of a laptop. Switching between Safari and Pages? Or Evernote and Calendar? Or how about Notes and Messages? Quickly toggle between the applications by hitting “tab” + “command” simultaneously and then immediately releasing. You’ll switch to the last used app. Hit the buttons again, and you will return to the app you were just on.

To navigate within the app switcher menu, continue holding down the “command” key and then try the following on for size:

• tab or right arrow — move selection to the right in the app list
• ` or left arrow— move selection to the left
• h — hide the selected application
• q — quit the selected application
• mouse scroll wheel — move the selection back and forth

Curious how to write viral stories? I’m Greg Muender, and I literally wrote the book on Medium. Pick up your copy here, and you’ll get access to the tips and tricks that have been proven to work.

3 Keyboard Shortcuts I Wish I Learned Long Ago was originally published in Adventures in Consumer Technology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When I was in high school, I had a friend that came from a wealthy east coast family. Paul was 21 years old. He lived in a modest 4 bedroom house and drove a new Ford Mustang. Paul always dressed nicely, but never extravagantly. He went on a few vacations throughout the years to Hawaii and Mexico, but spent most of his time locally. He had hobbies that weren't cheap, but they weren't ridiculously expensive — skiing and golf. Interestingly, Paul did not have a full time job, yet he was never concerned about money.

When Paul was 18, he was given access to a trust fund worth five million bucks. After taxes and management fees, Paul received about $300,000 a year from the corresponding interest and investments. He took 5% and put it right back in the fund to offset inflation, and spent no more than the remaining $285,000 annually. Not a bad income. Paul could live comfortably for the rest of his life, so long as he maintained the lump sum in his fund. He realized the importance of protecting the resource that unconditionally provided for him.

Paul had an younger brother named James, who lived quite the lavish lifestyle. He drove a brand new yellow Ferrari, and was always dressed his best in custom tailored suits from Italy. James built a custom 6 bedroom mansion right on the golf course and spared no expense in doing so. He was notoriously generous with his money, and was known for picking up the tab whenever going out with friends. He wrote sizable donation checks to his favorite causes and charities, and the nicest country club in town appeared to be his home away from home. James had a lifestyle that was like a rap music video playing 24/7.

How was James able to afford such a lavish stylish compared to his older brother? He couldn’t afford it. He was an idiot. He made poor financial decisions that benefited him only in the short run. James and Paul had the exact same trust funds, yet James consumed at a rate 10X what his brother did.

That was fifteen years ago. Where are they now? Paul has a couple kids and a wife, but his lifestyle is still mostly the same — comfortable but not outrageous. And what about James? What kind of exotic car is he driving now?

James drives a 1992 Toyota Tercel. He is a waiter at an Applebee’s and lives in a 1 bedroom apartment. After James blew through his fund in a few years, the checks stopped showing up. The Ferrari was repossessed and he had to offload his house in a short sale.

The Earth is full of tremendous resources, and everything that we consume — our food, our cars, our houses, our toys — comes from it. I don’t need to remind you that houses are built from trees, cars are built from iron ore, and even the device you are reading this on was made mostly from materials mined from the ground.

The earth may seem to have infinite resources, but it doesn’t. The earth can provide unfathomable amounts of raw materials to us, we just have to let them replenish. But we don’t.

Instead, we are blowing through our proverbial piggy bank like James blew through his trust fund. $5,000,000 seems like it can buy an awful lot of expensive things until it can’t anymore. The seemingly bottomless pit isn’t so bottomless. It has a hard floor, and it really hurts when you hit it.

If the Earth is our bank account, we are pulling out cash like a trust fund baby hooked on cocaine, with a shopping addiction, who has an ATM right across the street.

We are chipping away at our resource base at an alarming rate. In the past twelve months we have consumed the resources that it took the planet about eighteen months to produce. Every forest we clear cut, every oil field we drill, every ocean we overfish, we are setting ourselves up for disaster. The more that we pull out, the less that can be replenished.

If all of the world’s 7 billion people consumed as much as an average American, it would take the resources of between 5–8 Earths to sustainably support it all. Even at the current global rate of consumption, we need between 2 -3 Earths to keep the party going.

It’s not only the consumption that’s a problem, it’s the destruction. We are burning the candle on both ends. We put a tremendous strain on our Earth while simultaneously expecting it to provide more for us. Since we’ve polluted our air, water, and land, the Earth does not replenish resources at the same rate it did two hundred years ago. It’s like we are expecting our horse to win the Kentucky Derby after we have starved it for 2 weeks.

We are feverishly swiping our debit cards while simultaneously throwing molotov cocktails at the bank’s front door.

California is famous for movie stars, tech startups, and beautiful beaches. Recently, the Golden State has also become famous for something not quite as glamourous — epic drought. We’ve placed huge burdens on the water resources of the region, and with abnormally lower rainfall to replenish our reservoirs, we turn to our aquifers.

Aquifers have a particular recharge rate — the rate at which new, fresh water flows in. If we pump out water at or below the recharge rate, we can continue to tap into the resource indefinitely.

Perhaps due to lack of accountability, or convenience, or even macroeconomics, we continue to consume more of this resource each and every year. We’ve pulled so much water out of the ground that one part of the San Joaquin Valley has even sunk by 28 feet over the last century. While our initial consumption rate was probably less than the recharge rate, it crept up year after year and now far exceeds it. At some point, an adjustment is inevitable. When the wells dry up, we can only use what falls from the sky. Right now, that isn’t much. California has seen record low rainfall totals over the last few seasons.

Our global consumption habits are self destructive and won’t last indefinitely. We can’t go on forever like this. One day, the money will run out. One day, the man at the the Gucci store will tell us that our card has been declined. One day, we’ll have to downgrade to the Toyota Tercel and close our eyes to pretend we are still in the custom suede seats of the Ferrari. Unless we stop spending so damn much.

If we don’t stop the hemorrhaging soon enough, our resource stock will continue to shrink and can only replenish at an increasingly slower rate. As a society, we have to ask ourselves an important question. Do we want to live it up for a few years, and then have it all come crashing down? Or do we want to live a bit more modestly, but have it last indefinitely?

I wonder if I’ll ever get the chance to catch up with James. I would ask him why he had not stopped spending sooner. I would ask him if he saw the likelihood of a zero balance before it actually happened. Did he really think it would last forever? If he cut his cards with even $1,000,000 in the bank, at least he will still be making enough interest to live comfortably. It would take him decades of controlled spending to get back up to $5,000,000, but he could have done it.

Paul was smart with his money, yet he still lived a great life. He wasn’t any less happy than his younger brother, even though his car wasn’t as nice and his house was smaller. Today, Paul is far better off than James. He made a very small sacrifice to gain a very large benefit, and it has paid off.

Our planet may not have $5,000,000 in the bank anymore, but perhaps we have $3,000,000. The interest from this amount is still significant. If we make a change now, we can save ourselves from the fate of James. Let’s learn from Paul. Let’s use less resources, and let’s start today.

It’s Time We Start Thinking of Earth As a Trust Fund was originally published in Better Humans on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When seeking the most suitable option for long term storage of said horseless carriage, traditional logic would suggest to park it somewhere safe, lock it up, and check back in later.

However, as a function of remaining stationary for the nearly two quarters, the car would likely be in poor condition upon her return. The battery would be dead. Small rodents would begin to forward their mail here. The tires would become as under inflated as a New England Patriot’s football during the Superbowl.

A deeply compassionate sibling such as myself always looks for opportunities to help out closest of kin. I stepped up to the plate. “I will be the shepherd of this vehicle during your global expedition!” proclaimed I, index finger aimed straight to the sky. Although this remarkable selflessness would come completely free of charge, I saw no harm in making a buck for my troubles.

My entrepreneurial tendencies are rarely suppressed, even in situations as seemingly mundane as the long term parking of an econobox on wheels. I’m always on the hunt for unique opportunities to add profit to my piggy bank. I couldn’t help but see the sitting vehicle as missed revenue, stacks of bills blowing away in the wind. So what was an ambitious — and don’t forget caring — brother to do?

Enter FlightCar, the airbnb of airport rental cars.

Instead of renting a car from Hertz, FlightCar thinks that you should rent a car directly from another traveler. It’s a wonderfully simple — yet novel — idea. When you visit another city, you often need a car. But when someone else travels to your place of origin, they also need a set of wheels. So why not essentially just switch?

Imagine that instead of paying out both ends — $30 / day for a rental car and $20 / day to store your own — you could actually have zero car related expenses when traveling? That’s the hope with FlightCar. They want you to earn cash from renting your car, and indirectly use that cash to pay for another FlightCar rental while away from your hometown.

When my sister took off for the exotic lands of Thai, her car was in sloppy condition — unfit to be rented. I’m pretty sure the car hadn’t been washed since the iPad was revealed. Thanks to my sister’s lovable fur-factory French Bulldog, the back seats looked like they were upholstered in white astroturf. The tires were as hopelessly bald as George Costanza. In fact, they were so depleted that one of them actually ruptured about 1/2 mile away from the tire shop, where the new rubber awaited.

I made a deal with my sister. If I fixed up the car, I could keep any cash I earned from renting it out. I ordered some basic tires. I dropped it off at a detail shop. I buffed out some scratches. The car received a much needed overhaul, and after a little TLC, it was nearly good-as-new. Total investment? About $250. Drumroll, please — I am about to announce the winners.

Win #1: Flightcar pays me $300 per month, guaranteed. With their monthly rental program, they commit to pay a certain dollar amount, independent of how much the car is actually rented. Over 5 months, I will gross $1,500. Not a bad return. To add icing to the cake, I get a free rental car at the SFO location for up to 4 days per month, which will come in handy for the occasional trip to the city by the bay. (I live elsewhere in California.)

Win #2: My sister is happy. Upon her return from an exhausting global trek, FlightCar is going to pick her up in a black car — free of charge — and bring her back to her trusty steed, which will greet her with fresh tires, a shiny clean exterior, and an engine purring like a kitten. (FlightCar handles basic maintenance free-of-charge.)

Win #3: FlightCar is not a charity or a non-profit. They have bills to pay, employees that need income, and profits to be had. They make a margin off renting out my car, and it’s well deserved in my book. Make that money!

Win #4: For the dozens of folks that will likely drive the car over the next few months, they are getting a reliable, clean set of wheels for significantly less than what they would find at Hertz, Avis, Enterprise, etc. Plus, if they read this story, they are going to feel like they are driving a famous car. (Look out for the silver Honda pictured above at FlightCar SFO, ask for it by name!)

Win #5: This may come as a shock to you — but Ford Fiestas and Kia Optimas don’t grow on trees. They take nonrenewable materials to build — steel, aluminum, rubber, plastic. When we reduce demand, fewer rental cars need to be manufactured. That’s a good thing for the planet and for future generations. Instead of churning out a new car, let’s choose to utilize a perfectly good one that would otherwise be parked in some anonymous lot. On any given day, there are tens of thousands of parked cars across the country that would make terrific rental inventory. Let’s use those.

We can become much better at consuming less resources as a species. And we don’t have to give up our quality of life to do it. A little bit of creative thinking can go along way, and maybe even make a bit of cash money is the process.

Want to try FlightCar out? Here’s a $20 bonus.

How I Made $1,500 From Renting Out My Sister’s Honda was originally published in Adventures in Consumer Technology on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.