Category: Life
-
Everyone makes mistakes
It’s how you respond to the mistake you just made that defines you. Will you let your emotions get the best of you? Will you let yourself get paralyzed? Will you keep digging yourself into a deeper hole? Will you react with defensiveness when somebody gives you painful feedback? Or will you regulate your emotions?…
-
Guarding against incentives
Credit card companies make spending money fun by giving you perks. For example, with every dollar you spend, you earn a point that you can redeem for a prize—such as cash, hotels, or airfare. Sometimes, these credit cards offer prizes for you to sign up—such as a free iPad, or enough points for you to…
-
What are you running away from?
One of the first things I did when I started a business was outsource bookkeeping and accounting. While it was a good move, I also think I handed off the reins far too much and for too long. It wasn’t difficult for me to find other priorities to care about—sales, marketing, operations, HR—but at the…
-
Overthinking and stopping
I recently came across a phrase that resonated with me, “I’ve realized that the only way I’ll lose is if I stop.” You stop because you talk yourself out of doing things you want to do, you put too much pressure on yourself, you avoid problems, you panic, or you try to control things that…
-
Water polo and penicillin
When I was researching a new piece of work, I revisited Chase, Chance, and Creativity. Author and medical doctor James H. Austin puts forward the idea that there are four types of luck, which I covered at Lifehacker over a decade ago. Of all of these types, the one I wanted to dig deeper into…
-
The infinite game of blogging: 1,000 posts later
On February 14, 2022, I started playing a game. I could win by writing a blog post every day for 100 days. Before the game, writing had felt like a chore on good days and torturous on bad days. I struggled to find my way out of the mindset of “content creation.” I started the…
-
Wiggle room
The second-worst thing that can happen to a good habit is interrupting it. Let’s say you’d been running for 10 days in a row, and on the 11th you stopped for some reason. You got busy, the weather was bad, etc. The worst thing that can happen to a good habit is letting that one…
-
Free coffee
The other day, I ordered a coffee at a restaurant. I sipped it slowly for 15–20 minutes, and then I asked for the bill. I waited a few minutes, and caught the manager’s eye. He said, “Sorry for the delay—don’t worry about it, it’s on the house.” The saying goes, “There is no such thing…
-
Out of the comfort zone
I recently started a podcast called New Material with my friend Hamza Khan. It’s been an incredibly energizing project, and has stretched my creative abilities in all sorts of ways I couldn’t have imagined. Even though I write here every day, I mostly stay in my comfort zone. Without thinking too much about it, I…