Category: Creativity
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A good example is worth the effort
Finding good examples, references, and stories is one of the most important, and undervalued, aspects of writing. It remains a good opportunity to make your work better: Is the example too well known and common? Can a reader relate to this? Does this example say what I want it to say? Does the metaphor work?…
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A lesson this blog has taught me
I write here every day, and I don’t take it for granted. It’s not difficult for me to imagine a world where I stopped writing altogether. It almost happened a decade ago. (I mentioned it here briefly.) While I wrote very wholeheartedly at the time, I also didn’t treat my work very well. I felt…
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Discover what you want to say by writing every day
I was reading a post I wrote recently, and I realized that I’d actually excerpted the same quote twice. That was inevitable—I’ve written over 1,000 posts at this point—and it created an opening for me to explore why it continues to resonate throughout the years. I started reading each of the related posts as well.…
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Your brain’s ecosystem
Virgil Abloh really DJed. Music, hanging out, and DJing shaped his brain—they were key fundamentals to his ecosystem. This ecosystem would enable him to take his skills and approach into fashion and creative direction. I write every day at this blog. It’s a key part of my ecosystem. In a recent interview, I was reminded…
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Don’t just talk about it, write it out
There is a lot of jargon in the business world. That’s because it’s easy to give something a name and talk about it. It’s much more difficult to give meaning to the name and define it. Writing the new definition out forces you to get clear on the specifics of what it means. It also…
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Dead ends and gateways
The reward for good projects are more projects. Some people are willing to pay you for projects that you may not enjoy doing. There are two types of projects: Dead ends are projects that you don’t enjoy, and don’t lead you to an outcome you want. You can figure this out by looking at people…
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The sincerity of a blog post
It’s not very likely your blog post will go viral. There is no status, money, or recognition to gain from writing a blog. Here’s what remains: I’ve recently been reminded of how sincere and vulnerable that people who write blog posts choose to be. I find it rare even for many of my friends, many…
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Tolerance for difficult emotions
A paper from decades ago studied both elite and non-elite swimmers. The findings suggest that while both types of swimmers experience intense anxiety, elite swimmers interpreted the emotion as a part of the process—their bodies were getting ready to perform well—whereas more non-elite swimmers felt that the anxiety was debilitating. This tendency could probably apply…