Category: Life
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When emotions limit earnings
When I ran an editorial studio, I was often approached by clients to join their companies full-time. I declined these opportunities and conversations, because I enjoyed entrepreneurship and thought it was the best way to learn, until one client approached me with a salary that I found difficult to say no to. While money was…
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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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Free lunch
If you’re eating a lunch you didn’t pay for, you’ve exchanged something for it. Your time. Your energy. Your presence. Your compliance. Your opinions. Etc. Was it worth it?
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Paper happy
A paper gain is an, “Unrealized capital gain (loss) on securities held in a portfolio based on a comparison of current market price to original cost.” For example, if you bought a share of stock for $20 and it rose to $25, you’ll have $5 in paper gains. If you sell your share of stock…
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Stretching time back out
Whenever you experience overwhelm or feel like time is moving too fast, you always have the option of slowing it back down. You won’t be actually changing time, of course. Time passes by constantly, and there’s always only ever the present. What you’re actually doing is changing your perception of time. There are a couple…
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Rereading
Your brain isn’t a hard drive. Taking notes will prompt your mind for a memory of what you learned, though it’ll never serve as a full catalog of a book. You’re not only going to forget stuff—you’ll actually realize how different the things you noticed were when you first read the book. What stands out…
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This TV show was too real
I watched the first couple episodes of American Born Chinese, and found them really great. I’m going to finish the series. I highly recommend watching it, and reading the wonderful original graphic novel as well. In 2017, I interviewed creator, author, and TV series executive producer Gene Luen Yang. While I was born and raised…
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It’s not supposed to go according to plan
Planning is always a good idea. The adage goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” There’s another saying, attributed to Peter Thiel, “A bad plan is better than no plan.” Things get weird when our plans create a byproduct: expectations. It’s like we forget that our plans are just guesses; it can…
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Playoff mode
In amateur and professional sports, the year is typically structured into a series of games known as a regular season. Not to be confused with a season in nature, a sports season can last the majority of the year. For example, in the NBA, each team plays 82 games from October to April in a…
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“Problems” create meaning
I recently revisited this blog post I wrote almost a year ago. Here’s the passage that inspired the headline, from Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks (p. 180–181): Behind our urge to race through every obstacle or challenge, in an effort to get it “dealt with,” there’s usually the unspoken fantasy that you might one day…