Dude, you’re wrong

We all run around and like to think we’re right all the time. We hate to admit we’re wrong. If we could, we’d go our whole life without saying we were wrong about anything important.

Instead of saying “you’re wrong” stop and think “maybe I’m wrong.”

Nothing will make you happier, more grounded, more poised, and more respected than accepting responsibility.

But the ego is a heck of a thing. The brain might know I’m wrong and the brain might know I can instantly be in peace by accepting responsibility, but the ego whispers like the devil, and the pride of life consumes what we know will be good.

It’s funny how one part of us knows what to do, but another part of us just refuses to do it. Humans are weird and irrational creatures.

Don’t be afraid of how life will go

Don’t slowly rot away. Use the life you have. You're tougher than you realize. Better to wear out than rust out.

We need to push harder, be more aggressive, be more focused, stop being afraid to ask for what you want, and don’t fear doing things differently.

We jog through life when we should run.

We hesitate when we need to be decisive.

We settle for just-good-enough when we could press harder and be excellent.

We’re scared to take risks and fail in front of family and friends so we walk softly, we take the safe route, and we ridicule those who dare to be great.

Don’t find reasons why you’ll fail when you prepare to take a risk. Focus on the reasons why you might succeed. If failure still comes, then you can deal with it, but not before it happened.

What if you don’t fail? What if you turn out to be great? If your project hasn’t yet failed, why choose to believe in the worst outcome?

Don’t be afraid of how life will go. We have little control over it. However, we have more control over our efforts and the good we do.

Control the scaries

Make something difficult for yourself every day which will be the scariest thing you do all day. Like a hard workout in the morning.

When you control the scariest thing in the day, the unknown scary stuff becomes less of an obstacle. You become more fearless.

If you procrastinate and are afraid of committing or completing and sharing your work, or interacting, or an interview, big test, or meeting, or anything that stings your heart with anxiety, seize the control by giving yourself the scariest thing to do every single day.

When you control the scaries, they are less scary, and so is everything else.

Put the important stuff first

When you speak or email somebody, put the important information first. Try to include the main question or concern in the first thing you write or speak.

Don’t waste people’s time or mental energy wading through an entire backstory just to get to the point.

Present the question or concern upfront and then explain your line of thinking.

Not only do you come across as more confident and sure of yourself, but you respect other people’s time and energy they need to commit.

Important stuff first, explain and add the niceties afterward.

Don’t try to prove that you’re good

Be good and do good. Don’t waste time or energy trying to prove it to everyone else.

Adding purpose to life

Find your gift. Find what you’re good at doing and do that really well. Then give it away. The stuff you do, the stuff you make, and how you do it. Give it away and share it with everyone.

Grace under fire

The challenge is difficult and the unexpected bad news hurts. But we can embrace both bad news and challenges if we learn to control our response.

The response is the only thing that we can control. the circumstances are set and the response is up to you. Do good and do what is right.

No meltdowns when things go wrong. They are a gift to strengthen you and make you better on every challenge or unexpected bump in the future. Use the bad moments to your advantage and get some good thing out of them.

Grace under fire is a beautiful (and useful!) attribute.

It never gets easy

When you begin any new art it’s easy because nobody is looking. There is no pressure from the audience. But it’s also tricky and challenging because nobody cares about you or your work. To breakthrough, you have to be very good and very unique.

When you finally get some attention, it’s easy because radical uniqueness doesn’t matter as much–you just doing something makes it unique! But it’s still complicated and challenging because you have constant pressure to live up to the best thing you’ve ever done. That is the mark to which the audience will hold you.

It never gets easy, but certain things get easier while other things become more difficult. To sustain success beyond the initial seed, you must be flexible, humble, and always looking forward.

Squeeze out the wine

The good stuff usually comes out by adding pressure. Squeeze intensely and relieve the pressure for maximum effectiveness.

It’s all about being intense for a period of time and then relaxing and recovering. The slow and constant squeeze of stress is what kills us. The intense stress followed by intense relaxation is therapeutic.

So squeeze and squeeze hard to get the good stuff to appear. Put yourself under pressure, make deadlines, find ways to hold yourself accountable, find comfort in the uncomfortable, and then set aside time to rest.

Constant lingering stress kills, momentary intense stress strengthens.

Squeeze and release.

Script the weak spots

One of the best time “hacks” I’ve ever been given is to find the times of your day when you often fall off the rails or fall behind your schedule and note them.

Then build a short 15-minutes-at-a-time schedule for the day at those times.

For instance: I eat lunch around 1pm. I go home for that. After I eat, I could sit around with my kids and play with them for two hours and not realize I’d used up most of the afternoon. The solution was to schedule from 1pm-2pm to ensure I could get home and eat, spend some time with my wife and kids, and be back working in a reasonable amount of time.

Find the weak spots in your schedule and script that hour or two and you’ll be delighted that you save days that would have “drifted” away without some structure to help stabilize things.

More risk, more risk, more risk!

The more you can tolerate risk, the greater is your potential reward.

You want to make the million? You’ve got to put more on the line.

You want to go faster, get stronger, and jump higher? You’ve got to push harder and risk injury.

The risk can derail you in the end, but at least you were on track to doing something big.

Be comfortable with people around not understanding the risk you take and being scared of what you venture to do. Then be gracious enough to share the rewards if the risk pays off. Also, be humble if the risks don’t pay off. And try again.

All in

Go all in. When you’re using energy on “Plan B,” you’re probably not spending enough time on “Plan A.”

Plan, commit, jump.

The difficult days

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

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.

Start fast

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.

Don’t look back (in anger or joy)

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.

Breaking your own back

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.

Uploading to YouTube again

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.

Don’t take it personally

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.

Make because you can

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.