Category: Life
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Rebuilding year
Around halfway through 2019, I was really experiencing the peak of a creative block. I was working full-time at a Fortune 500, trying to run my editorial studio, and had barely enough time to write. Something had to give. Fortunately, my contract with the Fortune 500 would end in March 2020; conventionally, the Fortune 500…
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Either way, it’s gonna be difficult…
So you might as well do what you want to do, and succeed at what you want to succeed at. You may think that there are two paths; an easier one (should) and a tougher one (must). In reality though, there’s no such thing as an actual easier option. Both are gonna be tough. The…
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Load management
In 2019, during Kawhi Leonard’s championship run with the Raptors, I learned about the term, “Load management.” The British Journal of Sports Medicine defines the objective in 2016: “The aim of load management is to optimally configure training, competition and other load to maximise adaptation and performance with a minimal risk of injury. Load management…
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Help each other
A person goes on vacation and asks their neighbor to watch their pet animals. The neighbor obliges. The neighbor writes a letter after: Good afternoon, This letter is regarding your vacation two weeks ago, and how you let me babysit Smokey, Oreo, and Jennifer. I’d just like to give you a letter of thanks. As…
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Time is not money
You make your time, then your time makes you. One of the biggest misconceptions of time is that it’s spent like money. While it’s customary for us to trade our time for money (e.g., working a job), time itself actually has few properties actually related to money. Unlike money, time is not fungible. Time can…
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Half a match
When psychology professor Lee Ross wanted to persuade his team at Stanford to recruit Amos Tversky, he used this story (via The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis): “I said, I’m going to tell you a classic Yiddish story. There’s a guy, an eligible bachelor. A happy bachelor. The matchmaker comes to him and says, ‘Listen,…
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It works for you
The emotion you’re experiencing, the block you’re feeling, the reactions and responses that emerge from your subconscious; it all works for you, for some reason. In some cases, it helps you get what you need or want. In other cases, it helps protect you from others or from yourself. It takes great discernment to know…
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30 productivity hacks
1. Start for just 15 minutes. You’re allowed to stop after. 2. If you’re nervous about writing an email but need to respond, schedule it to go out. 3. Make a decision at the end of the meeting. Don’t do in two meetings what you can do in one. 4. Do something, even if there’s…
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Throw out the instruction manual
Instructions are useful, but complicated, and incredibly frustrating, things. There’s a bit on Confucius about engaging in thought on his own for an entire day and night, and wishing instead that he’d spent that time in learning. In the chaos of the real world, it’s useful to see what people have done, but sometimes the…
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Inbounding
Is it better for you to find a new job and apply to it, or for a recruiter to come reach out to you? Is it better for you to find a new client and sell to them, or for a client to come find you? Is it better for you to reach out to…