On the difficult days, whether you got up late, missed an important call, got into a fight, or received bad news, we can pull back and disappear and lose the day, the week, or the month. We could, but we should try not to.
Life is adversity in one form or another.
Adversity is not always controllable. But your response is.
Adversity is not a choice. Your response is.
When you think you’re finished and you’re ready to give up, you’re only 40% of the way to what you are actually capable of. Bite down, compartmentalize, and press on. David Goggins preaches this and I think he’s right.
Take advantage of the full reserve of focus and energy that you have early in your day and get started with work quickly.
When your mind is starving for dopamine, don’t feed it by consuming social media or watching videos. Feed it by getting things checked off of your to-do list.
By midday, you’re drugged out on dopamine and have little motivation, energy, or focus left to have a really and truly productive day.
Imagine if by mid-day you’ve gotten 85% of your work finished? Then you can use the remaining energy to feel great about what you’ve accomplished before relaxing for the evening.
Start fast and do the important, impactful tasks first. Avoid the temptation of lining up ten easy things that you can get done and feel like you’ve accomplished a lot. That’s urgent, but not important work. Do the slow and important stuff that makes an impact on your life first.
1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain’t restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.
Those are some fun “rules to stay young” by the legendary Satchel Paige. That last one “don’t look back” is such a useful reminder that looking back usually either makes us fat or afraid.
If you look back and admire your work too much, you lose your edge today and you start resting on your laurels. You get fat, lazy, and complacent because you're too busy basking in the memories of former glories.
If you look back and hold yourself to the standard of your greatest successes, you lose your ability to be free and creative. Also, don't look over your shoulder at how awesome everyone else seems to be.
Work hard in the moment and do your best, but have fun and stay loose. That’s where the creative magic lives.
It’s great to aim way higher than you can attain. You aim high and you hit low. But that’s still pretty high. Way higher than if you settle for junk.
But unrealistic expectations without understanding that they’re a motivational target at which you are aiming will cause a great deal of disappointment and destroy your will to keep pressing on.
Aim high, but just for the sake of raising the floor of what’s possible. Be a 7/10 by aiming at a perfect 10. Or you could be a 4 because you decided not to aim at all.
Last year on January 26th, I wrote that I had finally stopped my break and had uploaded a video after 17 months off. I was happy and excited. The work had just started and now it was time to keep it going!
Well, then I promptly did not upload another video for an entire year. Yesterday, I finally broke the monster’s spine and uploaded again.
This time around, I’ve built an entire system on the foundation of the SCRUM workflow and I’m about 500x more confident that I’ll actually continue creating videos are set the time aside that is required to re-build my channel and start having fun with it again.
The focus will be on the work to be done each day and prioritizing the channel work above all the other projects in my life. Bit by bit and day by day and this channel will be cooking again in no time.
I’m energized and excited. The boat’s been pushed away from the shoreline and I’ve gotta get paddling.
People have a thousand reasons for doing what they do and leaving you out of things or making mean comments or whatever you are beginning to take personally. But don’t take it personally. It only distracts you from the important stuff and literally sucks the energy from your life.
Taking things personally is like being upset at something somebody did and choosing to poison yourself because you think they might be upset with you. It’s pretty dumb.
I’ve been a bit obsessed with the creation of value as of late. This idea of introducing value into the marketplace has again been brought to the fore by a semi-viral video.
The moderator of the popular subreddit “r/antiwork” had a disastrous interview on one of the FOX news shows the other day.
There was a whole lot that the moderator spoke about which I sympathize with. Fair treatment and pay for workers. Not being required to work as a slave just to be able to pay your bills, etc… I understand the plight. But nowhere does this guy seem to have the conception that doing valuable work is the easiest and best way to make more money for fewer hours of work.
Maybe it’s my own self-centeredness, but I can’t help but think how much better off so many of these people would be if they would work extremely hard to pull themselves out of these less-than-enviable positions.
What if you didn’t spend 6 hours scrolling through TikTok on your phone every day? What if you cancel Netflix, or stopped watching sports, or even quit binging that TV series for the fourth time, etc…?
How much better would my life be and your life, too, if we would avoid time sucks? These companies have scientists devoted to creating systems that reward your dopamine receptors the more you use their software.
It sounds insidious (and it probably is!) but you are the one in control of recognizing the problem and working on yourself. Nobody can do it for you. If you do it, you will be more productive, happier, more balanced, and more fulfilled in virtually everything you do.
Create rather than consume.
Sorry for the tangent. It has become quite an obsession lately.
We must strip ourselves of the illusion that our next big goal will change our life entirely. It won’t. Achieving big goals almost never has the immediate life-changing impact that we expect. So stop expecting.
We even tend to look back on the good that we’ve done and attribute way too much credit to this or that thing for entirely changing our life.
Real growth and change come in the pursuit of the big goal. There are a thousand things that we need to do in pursuit of our goals and those things are what set change in motion in our life.
The pursuit of the goal should be the goal itself. The goal at the end is just a nice cherry to enjoy at the end before the process begins again.
The doing is often much more important than the outcome. Don’t stress about achieving that goal, just work day after day and the progress will follow slowly, consistently, and joyfully.
“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” How does a great artist steal and “get away with it?”
You steal, as an artist, by reaping the general idea or framework of the art, music, writing, video, etc… but by adding great transformative difference and value to the piece on which you’re working.
If you seek to add value (and actually add value) as any kind of artist, you are transforming all of the artwork you copy, steal, rip off, re-use, etc… because, while the structure of the original artwork is still there, the soul of the work has been transformed by you, the new artist.
Don’t copy artwork, steal artwork.
Self-help style books, quotes, and way of life is a high-wire act of annoyance. If you don’t play off the concepts as something unimportant and completely up to the other person whether they accept or reject, it’s quite often one of the most annoying things to deal with.
Self-help charlatans who “know it all” might be the most irritating form of person I’ve ever interacted with. Just shut up, please.
That being said, I have started reading some of my older blog posts and I definitely come across as a self-help douche.
It’s low-hanging fruit to quickly bang out a blog post on working harder or being more kind or pursuing the truth above all else, etc… so I’ll work on writing about some not-so-low-hanging stuff in my future posts.
Self-help charlatans are annoying and I wouldn’t want to read them, so why would you?
What carries our dreams into reality? How do you change and stick with the new commitment? We fail because we don’t pursue our goals consistently. Instead of slow, consistent pressure moving forward, we slowly slide away from the change and back to the old habits. Then our dreams remain as just dreams.
This is what happens when the routine breaks. Routines are boring and repetitive, but they’re stable and efficient. Routines are good. If you want happier, better, more relaxed, and more fun in the not-routine parts of life, make routines and STICK TO THEM.
We all want to make changes in our life, but usually, we don’t know where to begin. We have a thousand problems and a hundred that need fixing right away. So we close that box and pretend it doesn’t exist. There is too much to be worried about and more than we can do right now.
It’s an understandable feeling. It’s suffocating and overwhelming all at once.
The answer is that you begin by first doing the things that are necessary. Just do them. Don’t worry about doing them well, just get them done.
You do what is necessary, then you move on to the things that are possible–that is, the things you would like to do, but aren’t necessary to your essential living right now. (i.e. I've found a way to make enough money to eat and pay for my heat, now I can work on a more effective morning routine, practice writing more, etc...)
After a little while of that, you’ll see that you’ve entirely changed your life. There will still be much to do. But, once the toe-hold is established, you will understand that you have some time now to work through your other issues and goals. In this manner, we can progress from doing what is necessary to what is possible to eventually achieve what we once thought was impossible.
Necessary ➡️ Possible ➡️ Impossible. That's the progression.
Why do you deserve a high-paying job where you’re free to explore the things you want to in a career field that is suited exactly to your preference?
I would contend that you don’t deserve that. None of us do. We may live in a historical bubble where that is loosely and generally the case, but it’s probably good if we don’t fall into the trap of insisting that we “deserve” that. It’s nice, and we can get it on some occasions, but it’s not a right.
Creating value is the name of the game. Can you create value and employ others? Or are you becoming another part of someone else’s machine?
In fairness, even the value creators are a part of a greater machine, but they generally have the independence in a field they love to a far greater degree than the average employee.
I have a theory that people who create value; whether physical, educational, or artistic, and do that in a morally-upstanding way, will be those who drive society and civilization forward.
Without getting into the arguments or ideas of what constitutes being morally upright, creating value stands firmly next to that as a way to ensure that you have some control, self-respect, efficacy, and good in the work you do.
We probably don’t value it enough. “Nothing” has a depth, a mystery, and a peacefulness that is incomparable.
Covering the mechanized world and its distractions with a dark shroud and focusing on each moment, as if nothing else existed, is simultaneously the most effective and efficient way to do your work, and it is also the most peaceful way to operate.
Nothingness seems pointless and stupid and vapid and pretentious-to-talk-about, but for being a whole lot of nothing, it’s quite valuable.
“I don’t need to do it today, I can do that tomorrow.” It’s interesting that we often push the possibility of difficulty off onto “tomorrow.”
But today is the future we pushed stuff onto five years ago. Rent is due.
With the credit card swipe, the pill laden with side effects, the no-cash-down car lease, and procrastination, we push off the bad stuff until later. Interest accrues, your body slowly breaks down, and the distractions keeping you from important work are forgotten after the momentary pleasure.
We convince ourselves that some immediate satisfaction is worthwhile because all those nasty effects are way are in the future. Turning that lease in costs a bunch of money–three years from now.
It’s so difficult to connect with our future self, yet we’re all so ready to saddle him with untold burdens.
You should see some of the ridiculous emails I get. Stuff so crazy that I can’t believe anybody would respond or “fall” for the offers in some of these emails.
But then I kind of admire the tenacity and never-die attitude. No matter how often I ignore the emails, they keep sending them. Week after week for months (or years) at a time.
I can get angry that the emails keep coming, but I use them as a reminder that if they can be persistent and shameless with the spam, I should be excited to be shameless about putting out legitimate work and having no care for the criticisms of the peanut gallery.
Disorganized energy makes you a crazy zealot, while planning without energy makes you a dreamer.
Taking fifteen minutes to plan the day saves an incredible amount of time and effort throughout the day. It seems like a waste when you’re writing down the things you need to do, however, you have a plan and you know what you need to do in each block of time throughout the day.
Speaking of the structure of the day, I don’t like the rigidity of a schedule, but it is the most effective way to get stuff done.
To preserve flexibility and freedom for creativity, I typically block out certain chunks of the day that are “sprints” and leave the remainder free.
5:30am-7am free and clear.
7am-11am structured work.
11am-1pm free and clear.
1pm-6pm structured work.
6pm-8pm free and clear.
8pm-10pm structured work.
10pm-12am free and clear.
A balance of freedom and absolutely nothing that I need to do with more strict sprint periods seems to work pretty well for me (and be sustainable, to boot!)
So I don’t waste time planning. I plan, so that I don’t waste time.
Work hard when you set aside time that will be work hours.
When you have “slow days” or periods where things slow down, you don’t just stay still in a place where you can pick up and jump forward from later on. When you slow down or stop, you immediately begin falling behind.
But we need to be content with this reality and still take time to rest, relax, and recuperate from those seasons of really hard work.
It’s easy to cope with a moment of knowing that we will fall a little behind when we understand that in the seasons we work, we will work really hard.
Think of it like fitness, time off is necessary, but you do lose fitness during time off. Yet it’s absolutely necessary.
So when you rest and chill out, really rest and relax. When you work, really work (and if you work on something good and worthwhile, that’s even better!)