Category: Life
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From 49% to 51%
I joined a podcast recently, and referenced this post I once wrote: don’t make “Bad” the enemy of “Good.” The editors at Fast Company picked it up a couple of weeks after I first published it. The gist of the post: Many times, “Good” things start out “Bad.” Thinking about it, getting feedback, looking for…
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Confessions of another recovering frog eater
Adam Mastroianni wrote a really cool piece, “Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs.” Mastroianni is referring to the analogy likening eating a frog to doing something that feels difficult every day. In this sense, I’m a frog eater myself. I started frog eating in the early 2010s in college, because I…
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Outer scorecard, or inner scorecard
Make something to sell, or make something you like. Write something to get attention, or write something to express yourself. Care about the outcome, or care about the output. Focus on the future, or focus on the present. Serve your ego, or serve a person. Appear like you’re winning, or be happy with what you…
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The Doing Thinking Flywheel
A few days ago, I tweeted a quote from Austrian American scientist Heinz von Foerster, “If you want to think differently, first learn to act differently.” Foerster was also known as a pioneer in the field of cybernetics, which investigates communications and automatic control systems in machines and living beings. I’d included this in my…
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Grass is greener syndrome
I originally heard the phrase, “Grass is greener syndrome,” from my friend Peter Kang, when I talked to him about this tweet: It’s easy to want to pick something new to do—a different ladder to climb, a different game, a new project or venture—because it seems easier. Better. More rewarding. Smarter. That’s why we want…
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Cultivating honesty
One nice thing about posting every day is there’s no time to be dishonest or inauthentic. If you have fewer than 15 minutes, you can’t dawdle. You can’t tinker around, or worry about your legacy, or how you’ll come off to your reader. Every minute you spend not writing is a chance you risk not…
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Flexible habits are stickier habits
If you want to do something every day, you’ll need to be flexible about it. If you want to work out every day, do it all times of day—and in all time slots of the day. Have a workout plan for when you have just a few minutes, or even one minute. That’s not to…
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Knocking on doors
How people find out about you matters a lot. Your current physician probably didn’t cold call you. You find good products and services through recommendations, media, and searches. Anyone who is cold calling you is implicitly telling you, “Not enough people trust me to do business with me yet.” That’s why cold calling is difficult.…
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Build the team
If you’re an entrepreneur, one of the highest leverage activities you can do is find good people to work with, build a good relationship, and keep working with them. You don’t need to be hiring full-time to start doing this. People can be available in all capacities, for all sorts of roles. (In fact, many…
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On developing a taste for problems
“What if You Had a Universal Remote… That Controlled Your Universe?” The premise of Adam Sandler’s film, Click, is simple: the protagonist is granted a remote control that allows him to change the speed of his life (e.g., he can fast forward, slow motion, even rewind, etc.). Here’s the trailer for it: Spoiler alert: the…