Making life easy is hard

If you want to be successful, learn to love the parts of the process that you hate.

Doing this facilitates everything. It virtually guarantees success. If you can find a way to love the gritty stuff, the stuff you’re scared of, and the stuff that you hated before, your work will flow and it will spill forth from you with ease, beauty, and rapidity.

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. So find a way to make working hard a little easier. Learn to love what you hate.

Make life easy and business easy by finding a way to love the stuff you hate.

Dense blocks of work

You can get lots done by working 12 hours a day while spreading yourself across multiple tasks and having background distractions sucking up attention and cognitive “bandwidth.”

But you can get just as much done by having two blocks of three very dense hours of work without distractions, background noise, or stuff stealing attention from you.

That’s six dense hours of work that allow you to have six free hours, where you’re not quite playing, but barely working as well.

Trim the fat, cut out distractions, no phones or social media, no background podcasts or music. Just a pure focus on work. A meditative experience.

Note: It’s very difficult at first, but like any workout, the more you do it, the easier it becomes and the better at it you will become.

Wasting potential

Don’t let your potential go to waste because you aren’t confident enough to start working. Don’t worry if you don’t feel ready. If you doubt yourself, that’s usually a sign that you’re much better than you realize. It’s the overconfident people who stink.

People who are half as talented as you are building businesses, generating value, and doing what you wish you could. You’re stuck waiting to feel ready.

If you don’t feel ready, you’re more ready than you think. Every day is one day you’ll never get back and you’re as young today as you’ll ever be. Seize the opportunity, don’t waste time, and don’t wait until you’re ready. You’re probably ready right now.

Everything ends one day

Your youth, your earning years, phases of life, raising your kids, and eventually your own life. It all ends at some point.

Don’t take it for granted and do your utmost to enjoy the journey. Wouldn’t it be awful to arrive at the end of your journey only to realize you spent the entire thing worrying about what came next every day? Stroll through life and find gratefulness.

No-scroll writing

Write so the reader doesn’t have to scroll, can read it and understand it a year later, and put the important stuff in the first line.

When writing a recipe or directions, don’t say “add the flour now.” Instead, reiterate how much flour is to be added so the reader doesn’t have to scroll back to the top and see how much is to be added. “Add 2 cups of flour now.”

When arranging a meeting, don’t say, “we can meet up next Saturday.” Say, “we can meet up next Saturday, April 10th.” Now the information is not hooked to that one single day in time and there is much less opportunity of somebody misinterpreting your message.

Finally, condense everything in a single line and put that first to save your reader’s time. Respect the user and the user will respect you.

No ideas today

I’m in a rush. I have nothing at the top of my mind to write about, but I don’t want to fall down the slippery slope of missing a day for a dumb reason and then losing a habit that I’ve managed to keep going for almost four years. So here I am, just checking in. Walking into the gym and turning right around and going home. At least I still went to the gym.

Tomorrow should render better ideas and thoughts to write about.

All the good ideas are gone

You might think that everything that can be invented is invented. The limitation is not in what there is, but in what you can see. We like to view ourselves as somewhat exceptional, but many generations have probably thought the same.

Imagine trying to explain the internet to Julius Caesar or any citizen of the Roman Empire. They would not have been able to comprehend the basic terms of what you meant.

Next time you think there are no good business ideas, no ideas for your next portrait, or art project, remember that the limitation is within you, not the world around you.

Shut out the distractions and marinate for hours, days, or weeks and the good ideas will come. Start playing and discover what you were once blind to.

End of the month squeeze

There is a terrible squeeze I feel at the end of each week. And then a tighter squeeze at the end of each month. It has happened a lot recently. The past two and a half years have not been friendly to me. My business sense and killer instinct have not been good. I can blame the pandemic, but I could have done a lot differently. I have been far too passive about things that I normally would have gotten after. But I’ve been fighting my way out of the funk and things are getting brighter. It will soon be a new day.

This squeeze happens on weeks when I don't finish everything I wanted to get done. And likewise at the end of the months when I know I could have been more productive and more focused on the important things.

Here I am at the end of March and I feel the squeeze. It’s a gentle compression in my chest. The kind of stress that is not good for you.

When stress is intense but limited to a set interval of time before you rest from that intensity, that stress is good for you and helps you grow.

When stress is slow, dull, and constant. It’s a relentless and deadly stress. It wears you down instead of building you up.

So I must find my way out of this funk and lessen the squeeze that the end of the month brings. I must and I will.

Also, what makes the end of the month any different other than the fact that we count years by stacking twelve chunks of 30 days together? Who cares if it’s the 10th or the 30th? Just get to work.

Writing the same thing over and over

It feels like I’ve been writing the same blog post for the past 2 months. It goes like this: get to work and don’t overthink it.

My blog is an open letter to myself. It’s me exploring ideas that bounce around in my head.

At the moment, I am at a moment of tension in my business. The opportunity is immense. But only if I get after it and put away the distractions.

If I focus on how much success there will be, I get lost and distracted. I start to believe that the work is already done. Problem is, I haven’t yet begun. Making lists and imagining success is not success!

If I focus on doing good work for the next hour and think about just that, I am very productive and then those dreams might eventually be realized.

But those aren’t really the dreams. Right now my biggest dream is to have days that are full of life and aren’t wasted away.

Each day, re-focusing on having productive hour after productive hour is the focus and when I sit down and write, I have the opportunity to remind myself of this thing every day.

Don’t worry about how successful you are

Focus on producing value and the rest will take care of itself. Don’t focus on success, focus on creating value. When you don’t know what the next step is, find a way to create value.

If you create value, value, value. Use your life force to contribute value to society and you will always have a seat at the table. Always.

If you’re scared, be a conman

There is a particular scourge that many creatives face. It’s called imposter syndrome. Instead of rooting for yourself and supporting what you do, you convince yourself that you’re not that good. You tell yourself that you don’t deserve to have even the little bit of success that you do taste.

I’ve found that a good way to combat this roadblock is to embrace it and deem yourself a conman in terms of getting the things you want.

Imposter syndrome tells you that you don’t deserve that higher-paying job. Fine. I don’t deserve it, but I’m going to be a conman and pretend like I do and take the money anyway.

Imposter syndrome tells you that you don’t deserve that big purchase you’re about the make. Fine. I’m going to make the purchase anyway because I am a conman and I will pretend like I deserve to get it and am capable of making it.

When the imposter syndrome creeps in and makes you second-guess yourself fight back. Admit that you don’t deserve it, but be a villain and take it.

Work first

I’ve noticed that the more I get done early in my day, the better I feel about taking breaks later in the day. If I don’t get a strong start to my day, the entire day feels like a slow piston is pressing from behind me compressing with a constant pressure that I’m slowly falling behind.

It’s a recipe for procrastination and feeling pretty terrible in the evening.

That distraction in the morning slows the workflow for the entire day and sucks the joy out of the end of the day.

I’ve adopted a work-first schedule and mindset. My goal is to be doing some productive work task that advances my business within an hour of waking up.

This process does three things,

  1. Finish several hours of work done in the morning.

  2. Feel great about an afternoon workout and spending time with my kids.

  3. Nearly zero pressure in the afternoon and evening as I wrap up the day of work.

The patient approach

When a sculptor is working on his next marble bust, he understands that not every chip of stone he knocks away is the final finishing blow. Each swing of the hammer brings him closer to his goal. Patiently, day after day, he sits and eventually achieves his goal of creating a masterpiece.

If a profitable business or an industry-shifting invention or building an audience on social media is your masterpiece, patiently work.

It’s so difficult to avoid the trap of a bad client, a bad setback, or a bad piece of content you made. Maybe you haven’t made anything that is “bad” but your stuff that isn’t picking up traction as quickly as you would like. Your business isn't growing as fast as you want. Try to remember the sculptor who is chipping away. You’re still chipping away.

Don’t lose motivation and don’t be distraught. Keep working and refine your skills and your process. The breakthrough is coming.

Prove it every day

It’s so easy for each one of us to grow a sense of entitlement as we achieve goals in our life. Got the college degree, check. Got the new car, check. Got married, check. Got my side-hustle profitable, check. Built another business, check.

The list goes on and on.

We start to smell ourselves and believe our own hype. We’re awesome! We’re so good!

That’s the road off a cliff. Instead, imagine how hungry and hard you’d work if you woke up every morning as if you’d accomplished nothing? Chase that next business like it’s the first. Be open to learning from everyone despite your degree. And so on.

When you seize the day, seize it as if you’ve never had the chance to seize it before and as though you will never have this opportunity again.

Don’t over-think it

Note to self: Keep it short and sweet. Don’t over-think it. Go forward. Do, don’t perfect. Respect their time, but respect your time, too. Good enough is good enough, but keep your eye on the prize as well.

Love yourself? Love myself?

Everyone says that we have to love ourselves more. We have to take it easy on ourselves, etc…

What does that mean? Genuinely, what is loving yourself? Without a set of rules or targets at which you aim, how do you know if you love yourself more today than you did last month?

Also, if you identify loving yourself as hedonism, is that what makes the best human beings? Does that allow you to contribute value to society and give satisfaction to you for a job well done?

Or is loving yourself about delaying gratification and enduring now for a better future?

The enduring of difficulty now not only feels great after you’ve done it but gives you a bright future. Maybe loving yourself is about the pursuit of more deserved pleasure and building a future that gives you as much peace as possible as you grow older.

Buy cheap (at first)

Buy the cheap bike, the cheap tool, the cheap camera, the cheap computer. Use that tool and grind it into dust.

When you invest little money at first it allows you to see if you need that tool as much as you thought and also gives you the knowledge of what features and functions you will need when you are ready to invest some money into a better version of that tool.

It goes without saying that it’s a terrible waste to spend $1000 on a piece of tech it turns out you don’t need as much as you thought and also, because you didn’t quite understand it, you bought the wrong version for your needs.

Buy cheap and learn the product/category before you drop big bucks on the one that will be the best for you.

Straight lines

There is an absolute levelness and a perfectly straight line. It’s an objective thing that we can measure.

If we shine a perfect, flat, straight laser line at a wall, we have a straight line. However, if the floor is not level, that straight line is going to look crooked when cast onto the crooked wall. If we didn’t know that the line was objectively straight and the true line, we wouldn’t know which was wrong, the wall or the laser line.

Now, imagine that your point of view is a tilted house. Everything you look at will be a mystery whether it is good or bad, right or wrong. That is, unless you have some touchstone against which you can measure objective reality or truth.

So, I believe that there is an objective reality and an objective truth. If not, we float through life in a crooked house, while never knowing if anything is right or wrong, real or fake, and no way to examine it.

Straight lines are interesting things.

You’re not building a skyscraper

Your life is kind of like a skyscraper. It hurts if someone tips you over. Also, the decisions you make in your foundational years can mess up everything that comes later.

However, most of the time, things find a way to work out. There are very, very few serious decisions. Even stuff we think is serious in the moment usually turns out to be pretty relaxed when we reminisce.

Focus on doing what you do to the best of your ability and do what is morally right.

With that guideline, make small decisions quickly and decisively and everything else will work out well.