Everyone says the unknown is scary and that uncertainty is treacherous. But what if we think about the unknown as exciting and hopeful? What if we think about the uncertainty as opportunity?
One good thing a day
No need to change the world in a day, but a lifetime of doing one good thing a day will turn into a life of much good done. The overarching goal of this year is to find some good and productive thing to do every day. Create before you consume and the volume which you consume, create the same amount.
Goodbye, 2021
As we all closed out 2021, we gave it the familiar scornful treatment that we seem to give every year. I can understand the hate toward 2020, that was a strange year, but every year can’t be “the worst year ever.”
My goals are all process-based goals this year. Meaning, I don’t care about the outcomes, just the part that I can take hold of and do something about.
Goals:
Read at least two books each month.
Normalize my sleep schedule for the first time in my life.
Take a photo of my kids every day and get them printed in a book.
Write a story about my kids several times each week.
Produce 12+ videos for my main YouTube channel each month.
Create the new channel project that I’ve been working on.
Create and launch 3x courses to establish additional streams of income.
Buy a gift for a family member or friend every month (or maybe every two weeks.)
Move one day at a time. Relish what you have and what you’re doing. Do a little work for 365 days and you’ll build an empire.
So busy that we get nothing done
We’re apparently more busy than ever these days. Yet so many people are not doing fulfilling work. We spend our days wondering how we’re so busy, and yet feel so unaccomplished.
The answer, I believe, lays in the difference between the so-called “deep work” and “shallow work.”
Shallow work is lots of small tasks, often disjointed, that are relatively easy to complete and can usually be done while we are distracted by background noise and also permit us to take frequent “Facebook breaks.” (The brain surgeon cannot pause surgery to scroll Instagram!)
Deep work is the process of shutting out all distractions, technology connections, social media, and background noise. In that stillness, you spend hours or days immersed in your work and you make real value and deliver important work to your community. Stuff that makes real change.
The more we do only shallow work, the more we lose the capacity to do deeper work. We become addicted to the fast-paced, distraction-filled shallow work. As with other addictions, it feels good at the moment but leaves you wondering what exactly happened shortly thereafter.
The more we do deep work, the more we increase our capacity to sit for longer periods of time and be focused on one thing.
Prioritize large, long periods of distraction-free time in a place that is conducive to focus to get more deep work done and make a greater impact in your life, study, and art.
Trapped by your brand
As an artist begins to gain popularity he no longer is the private artist who has the freedom to create with respect to nothing around him.
There must be some artists who can continue to create as if nobody is watching. But, something tells me that it is a very human response to take on a certain burden of pressure when you know the crowds will look at your work.
Salvator Dali, the artist was eventually trapped by Salvator Dali, the celebrity. It’s a very hard thing to create purely and freely when you have the expectation and peering eyes of the crowd.
Be careful of the brand you build and the audience you amass. Success isn’t possible without them (usually) but they can be an artist’s downfall if we’re not able to still be free to create.
Whoops. I almost forgot to write this.
So I’ll take the easy/boring way out and leave you with a quote. (I’m in a rush!)
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
–Zig Ziglar
Editing is the hardest part
Simplify. Editing down things you love is nearly impossible, but you will never find the success you are seeking without trimming the fat and streamlining your process, your routines, your product itself, and everything.
Right now, I’m working on trimming my morning routine down. It takes me far too long to get from bed to the office. My goal is to wake up and be in a working flow state within a more reasonable amount of time.
Right now, it takes me about three hours to get to work. I’m hoping to trim that time to about half of that. but I’m finding out just how hard editing is.
The other option is to wake up earlier, but in the back of my mind, I’m angling for trimming the time AND waking up a little earlier.
When the world bows
Imagine that you’re sitting in court and they’re saying that you’re guilty of murder. The gallery is full of people who believe you’re a killer. The only problem is, you’re not. You would never do such a thing. Yet, the entire world seems to believe that you are a monster. I think this would be a crushing reality to endure.
But then a single person sitting in the gallery tells you that they believe you and they know that you are innocent. They show support for you with nothing to gain and with immense pressure all around them.
To do what is right is not to follow the masses, but to stand for what is correct and right and good because of its goodness. It’s so difficult, but in standing for what is right, you show the true content of your character.
Can you be stable?
Talent, potential, and expectations are all nice, but without mental flexibility to control your skills and fulfill your potential, something is always missing.
Sure, you may flash and taste success for limited moments, but sustained success and stability are nearly impossible without the flexibility to be stable.
How is flexibility actually stable, you might ask? Think of it like the ocean, the top can appear calm, while underneath the water is being pierced by animals and forces of all kinds. Yet, the outside that we can see and interact with is mostly calm. The flexible underside allows for the stable top side.
If the ocean was rigid like a stone, it would be initially strong, but if anything pierced it, it would crack and never be the same.
Flexibility will equate to stability and indeed, still waters run deep.
Defend the flow state at all costs
We have to find a way to structure our workday to leave wide open blocks of time where we can enter our “flow state.” The flow state is where you don’t have background noise, family obligations, deadlines, pressures, or distractions to turn your attention from crushing tasks and projects.
In a good flow state, your two hours of work should be what others can get done in six hours. The focus must be locked in and your attention should be on nothing be conquering what has been set in front of you.
Defend the slow state at all costs. Set boundaries, plan your morning, ignore email, turn off your phone, whatever it takes. Defend the peace and focus of your flow state by setting aside time for “deep” work sessions.
Doing too much
“I’m too busy!” that was my go-to whenever I was looking to explain why I couldn’t take on a new project.
What’s interesting is that “being busy” is a luxury of those who aren’t all that busy. When you’re not loaded with tasks and work to do, the little work you are doing (or procrastinating from doing) will expand to fill all the time you have.
Whether you have ten things to do or three things to do, it’s going to take the eight hours you’ve given yourself.
Why not do five things, but limit yourself to a five-hour block of work? Force yourself to focus and streamline the process. Get more done in less time. Then spend your free time doing more work, or reading, or with your kids, or whatever you really want to be doing with yourself.
What we think we know blinds us
When we walk into a new situation, it’s best to assume everything is new. Yes, even the obvious stuff. It takes two seconds to confirm most things and it’s usually worth it. If you learn nothing new in every re-confirmation of the obvious, you exercise the muscle and habit of always being fluid and adaptable, and open to creative ideas.
The stuff we know will lead us and guide us in the decisions we make, but they must not be allowed to blind us and close off creative solutions that are overlooked because we’ve locked in on one solution that we “know” is right because of a bunch of preconceived assumptions.
Never underestimate the value of the fluid movement of information that will be presented in every situation we face.
Edward Hopper, the failure
Edward Hopper was an American realist painter who gained notoriety around the early part of the twentieth century, however, Hopper was a bit of a miserable fellow.
By age 40, Hopper was essentially a failed painter. Nobody liked his stuff and it wasn’t selling. Hopper never stopped and eventually, his best-known works, Nighthawks, House by the Railroad, Automat, and more became hits, and Hopper by about age 42 was much more successful.
So if you think you’re a failure at age 22, or 32, or even 42, stop. There is so much more time and potential. Heck, who says you can’t start a business at 72 years old and run that for two (or three!) decades?
The two-week push
It’s that time of the year. We hear the drone of the “holiday season” and start wrapping up the year. But, you could make a strong two-week push heading into 2022. Next year could have 54 weeks instead of the 52 that everyone else will be working with. It’s the two-week push and it’s time to get going.
“Only a year”
Then he said to me, “I went to prison, but it wasn’t bad, it was only a year.”
ONLY A YEAR!? It sounded crazy from my perspective. But that’s where I stopped. This guy I was talking to had served with other guys who were serving decades and even life sentences behind bars.
It was just another reminder that so many of the human emotions we feel come from our perspective and how we look at the situation, not necessarily the raw data about the situation.
When you consider spending weeks or months with guys who are locked up for 50 years, yeah, I can see why he said “Only a year.”
Quit vs. Continue
Whether you quit or continue the grind, they’re both painful. Choose wisely.
New things vs. new eyes
Is it better to look for new things, or look at the things we have in new ways?
Writing a wedding speech
How to write a wedding speech? I don’t know. But I’ll know a little more about how it’s done soon.
I’m putting the finishing touches on a speech I am to give at my brother’s wedding today. I’ve never written or delivered a wedding speech before, but there are a few pointers I have been given and I will be trying to follow:
Keep the speech short and thoughtful. Five or six minutes is good.
Don’t try to be funny. Let money moment happen naturally.
Don’t overthink it. A good wedding speech is nice at the moment, but nobody cares that much and you’ll likely be forgotten by tomorrow.
To combat being forgotten, try to include a nugget or two that will be memorable.
It’s not about your “presentation,” it’s about the bride and groom.
I’ll check back in at some point with how it went–if I remember to check back in.
Will you stand up for what is right?
I heard an interesting lecture a little while ago and there were some interesting points the speaker made about controversy and taking a standing for what is right.
You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You only need to be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down.
You, who have studied and worked your way to where you are in life, know subconsciously (or consciously) that you can’t go against the raging river current of modern favor and the status quo. You must think as you’re told and recite from the script that everyone is comfortable with—but why were you born? What’s the point of being alive? Computers are vastly better at number crunching. They’ll soon be better at all kinds of more complex tasks. What they cannot do is stand on principle. What a computer cannot do is refuse to lend credibility to different systems that you disagree with or find false altogether. What the computer cannot know is the glorious exertion of the human will when it refuses to do obeisance in the face of lies and instead publicly speaks the truth.
The question is, are you able or willing to stand up for what you believe is right–even in the face of fierce public backlash?
Slow it down
Whatever you’re doing, do it a little slower. Sacrifice an extra hour for that task and take a stroll through the work instead of panicking and running around. It makes work more fun, life less stressful, and creative discoveries more abundant.