Category: Life
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It’s not real feedback until it hurts
If you want to learn, you need feedback. There’s a reason that Marshall Goldsmith’s method involves interviewing the people around his clients; because he interviews them and takes in their feedback about his client. Without someone like Marshall, it’s a bit more difficult to take in real feedback from people. Cate Hall suggests one way,…
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Friendship and creative work
Rebecca Morrison asks, “What do you do when your family doesn’t believe in or even understand your writing dreams?” It’s natural for you to express your frustrations, angst, and fears with your family and friends. They’ll do the same to you, because you’re close. You can let your guard down around them and be yourself,…
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Showing up vs. disappearing
Anna Gat writes: I’ve been telling people that your number one job is to not disappear. It’s maddeningly easy to disappear, the stage trapdoor remains open. I’ve been repeating it with wild gestures, whenever someone breaks up with their famous cofounder, I’ve been waxing ex cathedra, when friends leave buzzing cities, upscale jobs: Do not…
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Assumptions and big decisions
Patrick McKenzie says to Tyler Cowen: I had gone to university at Washington University in St Louis to study computer science. I was worried because the Wall Street Journal said the dot com bust means that engineering employment will cease in the United States of America. All future engineers will be hired in China or…
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Put the words on the page
When Lauren Martin was writing her book, and dealing with the anxiety of it, she sought out advice from other writers (via Jimmy Chim). She learned: The consensus was obvious: Stay present. Stay with what’s in front of you. Don’t get ahead of yourself, don’t worry about the middle and the ending, just stick with…
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Lightning in a bottle
Seth Godin writes, “When you’re having a good day, go for a walk and record a ten minute audio sharing your optimism, confidence and possibility. You’ll want to listen to it again.” If you know you’ll want to remember it later, then give your future self a prompt. That way, you can also practice the…
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A place is a tool
Whenever you feel like what you’re doing is really difficult, try changing where you do it. I wrote about this in-depth at Forge. I also recently heard Paul Ford and Rich Ziade describe the office as a tool, which reminded me of a story from my student days, about how the library was a tool…
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Just one tooth
There’s a classic idea that the key to flossing regularly is to floss just one tooth. The key his this: it’s much easier to show up every day if you can reduce the task down to something so small and simple that it requires next to no effort. In Creative Doing, I share a prompt,…
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To succeed in the age of A.I., build your capacity for longcuts
A couple of years ago, my friend Nik Göke wrote a really nice piece at his blog, “Sometimes, the Work Is Easier Than the Workaround.” In the intro, he writes about trying to find a fast, technical, shortcut to scrape a bunch of text online: The tool was pretty technical, so it took a while…