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Cargo cult confidence
A couple of people from a tribe untouched by civilization are scouting their nearby land. They see a freight airplane landing on a runway. The plane is full of food. They report back to their tribe and instruct them to build a runway for an airplane. They believe once they build a runway, the airplane…
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Game reps
If you want to compete as a creator—to help your work gain recognition, to improve your craft, to earn respect and prove yourself, to monetize your work—then you will need to show up to the marketplace. In your early career, as you still improve, you want to find every opportunity to do this. Sometimes this…
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Be nice and kind to yourself
When you’re being nice, you are being polite with the intention of making someone feel good. You may be withholding your honesty because you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When you’re being kind, you are being honest with the intention of helping someone improve. You will tell someone that there is food in their…
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Two types of confidence
Confidence means different things to different people. Generally, there are two types of confidence: Epistemic confidence describes a person’s certainty about what’s true. When a meteorologist reports a 70% chance of rain, they are expressing epistemic confidence. Social confidence describes a person’s comfort with their social expression and role. When a person steps on a…
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Doing the impossible
Nobody thought it was possible to run a mile in less than four minutes. Until 70 years ago, one person did it. He believed he could, because he saw his run times improve slowly and steadily. Then a month after that, somebody else ran a mile in under four minutes. Since then, nearly 2,000 more…
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The case for a non-social publishing surface
One of the traits of publishing work on social media is its quick feedback loop. You’ll quickly know if an algorithm believes that people care, or doesn’t. Some people strike gold the first few times, but it’s more likely that the experience of posting will feel disappointing. You need to hang in there until you…
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3 ways out of the declining writing market
A friend of mine was a thriving freelance writer looking to escape. His situation made me think of my own experiences with freelancing. Rates were always low, competition was always cutthroat, and clients rarely ever saw value in hiring somebody creative. Now, AI has blown the door open. Fortunately, writing generally is also a great…
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Most things won’t go anywhere…
So you need to either commit to making an important project go somewhere by promoting it constantly. Or you need to use it as a reason to make more work. If a hypothetical 10% of your work goes somewhere, then making 10 projects mean one goes somewhere. But if you make 100 projects, then you…
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The timeline of change
A lot of change happens on its own timeline. You can push, pull, and prod at it, and yet rushing it is like honking your car’s horn in gridlock traffic. Most times it just takes the time it takes. There are still many decisions in your control: What’s not in your control is when the…
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Momentum
Before Terry Crews became an actor, and after he played in the NFL, he took on gigs to make ends meet. One of these was as a security guard on movie sets, where he worked 12-hour shifts. While he didn’t have time to go to the gym, he improvised. He jogged in place for an…