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Reality catches up
A good plan is preparation—or at least, preliminary work—for dealing with reality. Sometimes, you may want to avoid planning, and take a more spontaneous stance to your work. For example, if you find yourself inspired or in the zone, you may want to clear your calendar of your other obligations—or prevent those events from accumulating…
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Shoot your shot
When actor and former NFL linebacker Terry Crews was a senior in high school, he played on the basketball team. During a practice session, he had an open shot and his coach yelled at him for not passing it to the team’s star player, Craig. When Terry tried explaining himself, his coach stopped practice and…
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Luck vs. skill
There are parts of how something turns out that are within your control. This set of knowledge, actions, and beliefs, you can call “skill,” “hard work,” or “effort.” Your judgement of what’s in your control is known as “wisdom” or “reason.” For some people, it’s useful to believe that you can achieve positive outcomes largely…
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Self-belief vs. the odds
Of the 49,000 members of the Actors’ Equity Association, the national union of stage actors, about 17,000 work at a median income of $7,500 in 2013. That’s not considering actors who don’t qualify for or participate in the union, who are likely paid less or working less. The conventional path of an actor is built…
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How do you think it’s going to turn out?
Imagine that any time a meteorologist forecasted the weather, the prediction changed how the weather would be that day. So for example, if they predicted it would be sunny, then it was more likely to be sunnier that day. If they predicted it would be rainy, then it would be more likely to be rainy.…
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Ask people to give you what you want
In December 2009, Patrick McKenzie invited Thomas Ptacek out to coffee in Chicago. This was unusual for Patrick, because he wasn’t comfortable writing cold emails at the time. While Patrick’s original intention was to gossip about Hacker News threads—they were the top two users by karma points—the conversation shifted to Thomas asking Patrick about SEO…
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Don’t let the name stop you
Naming your business or your project is an important decision. A good name will help people remember your work and make a good guess about what it is, a bad name will confuse them or worse—give them a reason not to take your work seriously. Julien Smith wrote a really good guide here, and I’ve…
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Re-appraising perfection
The story of perfect: Perfect is free of fault, incompletion, and error. Perfect is safety. Perfect is first place, a gold medal, or 100%. It is happily ever after, the peak of excellence, something to remember while also setting and forgetting. This is the imagined reality we live in, a story based on the assumption…
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Liberating rules vs. governing rules
In my early 20s, I found myself getting easily distracted by social media. So I introduced a rule into my life, which was to check social media only after 6pm. That particular rule was great, because it freed me from the possibility of getting a quick, thin, reward. I was free to be more present,…
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Coping with reality
Imagine you have a bag full of papers you carry with you everywhere. Each paper has a set of instructions. Every time you experience a strong enough negative emotion, you instinctively pull one of these papers. You do that because you know you will feel better after you follow the instructions. You’ve done this for…