Bren Ryder

I think this is truly the Holy Grail of productivity. How, on earth, do I get all this shit done? All this shit that is keeping me from realizing my dream. All this shit that will one day lead me to my ideal life. If only I could get shit done, then my life would be perfect.

I’ve read books and blogs on productivity and how to prioritize and simplify and get that shit done. I’ve tried working for really really long hours and working for short spurts of work. I tried “Big Rocks First” and “MIT’s” and “microtasking”. I’ve tried working in a dark office, a café, my kitchen table, outside and in bed.

I occasionally will do a weekly review and update my long-term goals.
I’ve downloaded a variety of productivity software - which I spend all my time figuring out how to use.

There’s one part of productivity that I’m always drawn to: simplicity.

[I just diverted from my writing to check out zenhabits.net - a blog about simplistic productivity - and found our how to get shit down. A giant list of lists.]

Top 20 Productivity Lists

This article will take me a few hours to get through, but after I’m done, I’m really going to get shit done.

Check out my monthly contribution to “Porn at Large” column in the Village Voice Sex Blog - NakedCity.com!

Every Thursday, Naked City expands your pornographic worldview with tales from the far reaches of the earth. Four international pornographers share this space to tell all about the experiences of being porny and making porn outside of the United States.

Bren Ryder is the creator of Good Dyke Porn, an independent amateur hard core pornographic video website which proudly features authentic queer women having amazingly hot sex.

I had a conversation with a friend recently who is a no-nonsense, out-spoken, hard-core feminist about porn. We were talking about what I do and she listened politely as I spoke about it and then proceeded to let me know why porn was incredibly wrong and harmful to women. I admit it, I was shocked. I really didn’t know that feminists still felt that way. She was utterly against all porn for the following reasons: the violence against women, the profiting off of women’s sex (and violence against her) and using powerless and vulnerable women. I’m sure that does happen in the world. I don’t doubt that, unfortunately. But, then I had to ask, “What does any of that have to do with what I do?” She replied, You make porn.

Porn. It’s a word that holds a lot of meaning for people…

Read more: Naked City blog article by Bren Ryder

“She worked hard and was a nice person.”

The eulogy of the person I used to be:

Dear Brenda:

You have been a part of me for so long now. Prior to this moment I didn’t even know I could function without you. With an uncanny ability to wile away the time, you’ve inspired the most motivated person to sit and relax. I will take inspiration from your stick-to-it-iveness. The way you stuck with dead-end jobs and bad relationships was awe-inspiring. The hard work you did to line the pockets of unappreciative bosses was pure martyrdom. You spent more than you earned and saved nothing - living on faith alone. A faith that we could all use a healthy dose of every now and again.

Brenda, you started some really incredible projects and accumulated an impressive amount of debt doing so. Your methods were typically similar to everything you did in the past. So consistent. I will miss the way you stretched 2 hours of work into 4 hours. I’ll miss that black hole that sucked up all of your time. I’ll miss your inability to ask others for help and your penchant for working solo. You never were much of a team-player.

Most of all, I’ll miss the way you could work your ass off and still come away with an income below poverty level. The way you could make a sure-fire income generating business into a voluntary hobby was your finest work to date. We are sad that you are leaving us with the debt of the past, but confident that it will disappear nearly as quickly as it was accumulated.

You were a very important part of my adult development and now that you are gone I will never be the same again.

Love,
Bren

My muscles are aching. Right above my shoulder-blades is that good soreness. Holding the camera up to my grinning face for hour-long takes on our Femme Circle Jerk scene has left my muscles a little tired.

This weekend was a shooting weekend. The first one in a little while. All the models set their day aside to be on set for this amazing scene. After a few changes of plans the crew came together about an hour before we got started. The day quickly began to smoothly sail along as we all got settled into the living room of a friend of the Good Dyke Porn Team. The theme was simply for a group of femme queer women to get together, wear fun lingerie and masturbate with their favorite toys.

It was beautiful. The women were truly stunning. The orgasms were sweet, vocal, multiple and wore everyone out by the end of the day. I just kept thinking, This is so beautiful. By the end of the day I felt very proud of what we had done, eager to watch the footage and get started on the editing: one of my favorite parts of the job.

This euphoria was soon shattered when I realized that no audio was recorded at all. Not on either one of the cameras. Turns out the one camera that had working audio wasn’t plugged in properly. It was my fault. I was trying to do too many things at once. I had a great crew - just a few of us. I like to keep the crew fairly small to facilitate a more intimate environment. Unfortunately, I’m too unorganized to ensure that accidents like this don’t happen. Besides that I’m still trying to get the video off of the tape - yet another technical difficulty that I hope to overcome. The future of these beautiful images are uncertain and this fact was crushing to me. I felt so disappointed and worried that I was going to disappoint everyone who gave so much to the shoot - the models and the crew.

I am very conscious about remaining positive about my life not matter what is happening. When it comes to hard times, it could be A LOT worse. (Hello! Femme Circle Jerk!) I am hoping to recover some video, but sometimes these things happen. I’ve shot nearly 20 scenes and haven’t had any significant problems. I suppose I was due for a big one. But, besides that, I feel like this business needs to get organized.

Now my intention is to obsessively get organized and create systems to materialize my greatest dreams. Then I will use that same obsessive energy to decrease the amount of work I do to accomplish these dreams. It’s a vision I’ve had for myself and for what I want to accomplish for a long time.

This new phase of work is a combination of a few of my favorite books: anyting by Deepak Chopra, Getting Things Done, 4 Hour Work Week, E Myth Mastery, The Type-Z Guide To Success: A Lazy Person’s Manifesto for Wealth and Fulfillment.

Can this lazy labourer make the business successful, create hyper-organized systems and orchestrate a life in line with a clear and inspiring vision? Stay tuned.

Day 8

I got up early, got my hour in first thing, went to work and came home and caught up on little things. It was a very positive day. Inspiring. Well, it was only half a day of work and the sun was shining so it was completely lovely.

Day 9

My goal for this experiment was to change the self-defeating belief that I didn’t have enough time in my day to get all the important work done on the business. Part of that experiment was to repeat the phrase, “I have a lot of time in my day”. And, wow, I am a lot more powerful than I thought I could be. As of today, I really do have a lot of time in my day. I was fired from my day job.

Day job over. Experiment over. No more condensed one hour days. It’s time to kick this shit into gear. Now, I have to make this work. I have to make this work make money. Or I don’t eat.

Day 4

Totally back on track today. I got the precious hour done first thing in the morning. It’s such a great start to the day. An intensely focused hour of doing only the work that will move the business forward. At one point I was checking something and caught myself and realized I wasn’t using the time as planned and immediately got my focus back.

And I’m actually saying that sentence: “I have a lot of time in my day”. I have it written down on an index card on my desk to remind me. I think I’m noticing the difference. The day doesn’t simply disappear when I’m conscious of the time that is there.

The most painful part of truly feeling all that time in my day is experiencing the agony of my day job. It’s taking everything I have in my to keep this job. I’m not sure if that’s laziness or if that’s a sign that I shouldn’t be doing that job or what, but for now I need to eat and pay for a roof over my head. I’m incredibly grateful that I have a job and that I can count on money coming in every two weeks. Someday I won’t need it, but for now I do. I accept that. Someday I’ll look back on this time with nostalgia. It’s the end of an era. It’s a simple life. The life of a window cleaner.

Day 5-7

Today was the first day of completely going off the rails. If I was following the habit forming “rules” then I’d have to start over and begin again at Day 1. The idea is that once you have successfully done 30 days of your preferred behaviour then the habit has been formed. I’ve only done the 30 day experiment once before and that was to form a habit to get up at 6am everyday. I did it. I got up everyday at 6am for 30 days straight. The habit didn’t exactly stick, but it’s a lot easier for me to get up then whenever I need to and I do intend to set up that habit again in the future.

For my experiment on changing my beliefs - from “I have no time” to “I have a lot of time in my day” - and squeezing all my most important work into one hour per day, I am going to keep going for the next 30 days. I want to stick with it. I’m not going to start over. I’m doing to observe myself over this time and keep trying to re-focus my attention on changing my beliefs and getting my important work done.

Tomorrow is another day. So far, I’ve learned that to get the most out of my “work hour” i need to do it before I go off to my day job. That’s not an easy task, but it’s incredibly effective. That’s what I’m going to try this week, everyday.

Day 1

I admit it. On my first day I cheated. I worked more than an hour. But the nearly two hours that I worked today felt really productive and focussed on what was essential work. Plus, I “worked” all day (I put that in quotes because I’d prefer to think of my work as what I do for Good Dyke Porn, not the 8 hours of window cleaning that I was referring to) and I had down time. It was a beautiful day.

As for the positive affirmation, I didn’t say it out loud three times. Well, actually, I did. I whispered it this morning, said it out loud on my way home from “work” and now as I’m about to go to bed… I’ll say it right now. There three times out loud. It feels a bit awkward saying a phrase outloud to myself, but it feels powerful at the same time. I have my essential tasks set up for tomorrow and I’m excited to get my work done - one hour at a time. As I get deeper into truly condensing work into a shorter time frame, I know my answer to accomplishing this is going to be.. to delegate.

Day 2

I got my hour in first thing in the morning and I am very glad of that. I am slowly starting to believe myself when I say (outloud) that I have plenty of time in my day. However, the last portion of my day was so unproductive that I feel incredibly relieved that I got that work in first thing in the morning. The great thing about this hour of work that I am doing is that the work that I have to do is VITAL work. It’s the work that needs to be done to move the business forward, to make money. I don’t spend this hour organizing my files or anything administrative. Only important business emails are allowed. And no planning during this time - only doing.

Besides working at this experiment to eliminate the self-defeating belief that I don’t have enough time, another important belief change is that I need a lot of time to get my work done. This “work hour” is intense and I get a lot of work done, but only what’s important. The only thing left to do for today is to decide what my most important tasks are for tomorrow morning.

Day 3

I didn’t do my “work hour” this morning before the work shift and damn it, but didn’t that just blow the whole day for working. Well, my task was just to put in one hour of work this evening and unfortunately that didn’t happen. It’s unbelievable how other tasks and persistent procrastination gets in the way of working on something that is so important to me.

The purpose of this experiment was to change my belief that I don’t have enough time to do everything. Turns out I have tons of time, but I don’t seem to be using it wisely. But, for now, I’m intending to focus on creating that time in my day. Tomorrow I will be sure to get that “work hour” over and done with first thing in the morning and continue to tell myself that I have a lot of time in a day.

After working my day job I am going to k.d. lang with two ex-girlfriends, so I’m not going to have time to work in the evening. And I won’t want anything weighing on me when I leave for the evening. The morning has to be my time to get the essential work done. I’m now going to review my tasks for that hour and makes sure that everything I’m doing is immediately vital to the success of the business.

I have a lot of time in my day. Believe it. It’s only Day 3.

For my work as a pornographer, I am doing everything I can to change people’s beliefs about porn. A lot of people believe that to create porn is to take advantage of women, to exploit sexuality for the purpose of making money, with no concern for the impact of the models who expose themselves.

Of course, some of that does actually exist in porn, but the winds of change are blowing.
Now, as a business owner and contributor to this burgeoning porn movement I am keeping in mind what I want to accomplish. I want to earn a living. I want to create positive images of women expressing their sexuality. I want to make a difference.

So here I am, less than one year into the life of Good Dyke Porn and the negative beliefs about porn are the least of my worries when it comes to overcoming obstacles.

Since I still have a day-job while I continue to get the word out to the world about what we’re doing at GoodDykePorn.com, my biggest self-defeating belief is that I don’t have enough time to get everything done. When I tell myself everyday, all day that I can’t market more because I don’t have time or I can’t make changes to the site because I don’t have time or I can’t engage in forum discussion because I don’t have time or… you name it and I will apply my self-defeating belief to prevent me from getting things done.

But, there is some truth to this, right? There are only so many hours in a day. But, that last sentence itself is a self-defeating belief. When I tell myself that I don’t have time, then I don’t have time. That is how our world works. We’ve been taught differently. We’ve been taught to believe in what we see. Therefore, when I get home from the day-job, putter around the house, connect with people, prepare for the next day, rest and relax, try to get some work done, fail miserably, then go to bed, I repeatedly take on the belief that I don’t have enough time - entirely based on my observation. But what if we switch it around? What if I believe that I have MORE than enough time to make this business work? If my suspicions are correct, then that belief will beget a day with more time. At the very least, a day with enough time.

I am going to start an experiment. In this experiment I am going to eliminate two self-defeating beliefs:

1. I don’t have enough time to turn GoodDykePorn.com into a success while working a day job.
2. I need to put in A LOT of time to make GoodDykePorn.com a success.

I am a fan of personal development books and blogs and one of my favorites is zenhabits.net, which focuses on simplifying life and achieving your goals one habit at a time. The most important step in making a behaviour a habit is to do it for 30 consecutive days. This is what I am going to do.

• Starting Monday, June 9th, I will say out loud, “I have a lot of time in my day. ” I will say it in the morning, at “day end” and before going to sleep. That’s it.
• Starting Monday, June 9th, I will spend one hour everyday on the business (not including shooting days).

That may sound crazy to some people - to spend such little time on the business and expect to see any progress. But, it’s just an experiment. I have this powerful belief that I need to spend an exorbitant amount of time in front of my computer in order to make this business work. That belief creates a lot of resentment around working at my day job. Also, that belief is contrary to my goal of working less over time, not more. So, let’s eliminate these self-defeating beliefs and see what happens. I think I will be surprised at my own ability to get things done in less time. Stay tuned, you too might be surprised at what can happen with a little positive affirmation and daily habits.

It’s autobiographical. It reveals the how-to. And it’s unique. Follow your own path and please feel free to tell me about it.

1. In the summer of 2006, I decided to stop trying to create a career in mainstream society and become a pornographer. After that decision was made I immediately began work on starting my first website, GoodDykePorn.com. I didn’t know anything about how to create or run a website so I thought I would teach myself.
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2. I asked a few experts to see if they could do it for me, but, since I didn’t have any money and I like to be in control of things I decided to do it myself. I spent the summer doing research on adult webmaster sites and existing independent lesbian/queer porn sites. Research and Development is a very fun phase of the business. You get to talk to a lot of interesting people and watch plenty of porn. I, of course, made sure I kept all my receipts. Right in the middle of this phase of development the movie, The Crash Pad, came to The Vancouver Queer Film Festival. I approached Shine Louise Houston at the screening and asked her if I could buy her brunch the next day to get the inside scoop. She was really nice and as helpful as she could be. The brunch ended up being with a large group so we didn’t get much time to talk shop but I appreciated her effort and felt inspired and motivated to know that I wasn’t the only one out there working to contribute to the genre of “dyke porn”.
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3. By the end of summer I’d figured out how to make one page of a website. I put a picture of myself and the words “Good Dyke Porn - looking for models to create authentic sex scenes”. I posted it on the community site, Superdyke.com and immediately got a flood of emails. At least 10 women wanting to model and nearly a hundred who wanted to encourage and congratulate me on the endeavor.
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4. It was Remembrance Day, November 11. For weeks we’d been planning our first shoot and had all the equipment rented, locations booked and experienced a few snags. We had two scenes booked. One was a “solo”. The plan was that I was going to film her masturbating and she was going to cajole me into joining her. I would be convinced, of course. The second scene was one between a couple. Done and done. A week before the shoot, we planned a martini party to allow all the cast and crew to meet each other and celebrate the beginning of Good Dyke Porn. By the end of the night the first scene was a bust. The “solo” model’s girlfriend decided she didn’t want to have an open relationship anymore. And, within a couple of days the couple had broken up.
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5. Determined, I declared the show must go on. The crew already started making other plans but I got to work scheduling last minute models. I filled in for the “couple scene”. Check out “Geneva and Bren Ryder” on the site. And, it just so happened that an interested out-of-towner was brave enough to perform the “solo scene”. “Romeo Cooley” was amazing with the toys I got for her. The very first shoot was a success!
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6. The goal for starting the site was to have enough videos available to view with the purchase of a membership. So, we continued our work in bringing together hot dykes, bis, bois, femmes, queers, transguys, couples, groups, and solos. I put together a short film with two of these scenes and a montage of these early months of shooting. It was my dream to premiere this film in Vancouver, my home, and coincide the launch of the website with the screening.
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7. In preparation for this glorious occasion, I secured funding to shoot all these scenes, I learned how to use a Content Management System for the website, I quit my day job and got a loan to get me through, I worked day and night in front of the computer, learned Final Cut Pro and bit-by-bit turn that dream into a reality. In August 2007, at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, in front of an overflowing theatre, I introduced Good Dyke Porn to my community and my dream came true. One year prior I was telling everyone who would listen that I was going to create a website called GoodDykePorn.com and there I was in front of everyone saying, “I did it! I followed through with my promise”.
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Indeed.

I am a guest blogger at the Village Voice sex blog. I represent the Canadian Pornographer in a weekly series that showcases the porn creators from around the world.

Check out the latest article at NakedCity.com, “Zen and The Art of Porn Blogs“.

This subject will be explored here further. Please feel free to comment.