Category: Expectations
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Vision, practice, and spine
At his Substack, Austin Kleon suggests an alternative to having a creative vision: And this all sounds very inspiring — it really does pump you up! — but for much of my life, [having a vision] would have been almost useless advice, because I didn’t really see any of my career coming. There was no…
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“This is not important”
This is how procrastination outsmarts you. It tells you, “[This] is not important.” So you may hear statements like, “This isn’t the right time for me to be doing this.” It may sound like, “I shouldn’t be doing my administrative work right now, because planning for the upcoming quarter is more important.” That’s fine, and…
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“Don’t do that”
I once got this piece of advice from a bestselling author after I told him I wanted to write a memoir. He told me, “Memoirs don’t sell unless you’re famous.” He wasn’t wrong, and I’m glad I listened to his advice at the time. It was also a sign to me: I didn’t really want…
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Changing your context
Everything you experience is filtered through your mind. There’s no way to remove this filter, (nor would you want to). If you want to change your behavior, or how people perceive you, you need to embrace the art of contextualization. Reading a book, writing regularly, and identifying someone you want to be more like and…
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Marketplace of truths
“Language is also clearly crucial for a special kind of abstract thinking that requires what the philosopher Daniel Dennett calls ‘scaffolding’—chains of reasoning so complex that we need external placeholders to keep us from forgetting where we are,” writes Edward Slingerland in Trying Not to Try (p. 60). Slingerland continues, “The sum total of these…
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Advice for high performers
If you’ve been recognized as a high performer by someone, you’ll probably need to learn different things than everyone else. For example, while other people can let go of their work very easily, you may have trouble doing that; you can’t stop thinking about it when you get home. This might be fine in your…
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Ironic effects
A few weeks ago, Jaylen Brown said this after winning three games in a row and on the verge of a historic playoffs moment. He pointed out how his team almost fumbled the game. “I guess I’m not sure why we do it. It seems like when we get in those moments, we get a…
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On shrinking, dying, industries
Sometimes, the most rewarding things to do also make little sense on paper. They would be the complete opposite of a smart decision. Two examples come to mind: 1. When graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang started writing comic books, Marvel Comics had just declared bankruptcy. “People were predicting that it was just gonna blink out…
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Your future is constrained by…
The direction of your work will be constrained by the people you’re talking to and the projects you’re doing right now. If you’re forecasting your path and don’t like where it’s going, you need to talk to people who have taken a different path, and change the projects you’re participating in. Start building new relationships.…
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Suspension of disbelief
Part of the magic of stories—RPGs, films, improvised comedy—is they require you to temporarily suspend disbelief. You need to put aside the heuristics that pop up in your mind that are incredibly useful for the real world, and be open to a new set of rules. There’s a use for this in the physical world,…