-
Letting go
Unlearning is an incredibly important skill. It’s also often, in my experience, much more difficult than learning. Part of that is probably because we go through decades of learning to acquire facts, lessons, and insights, but there isn’t much of a curriculum on unlearning beliefs and scripts. I’ve had some experience applying and practicing in…
-
Three mechanisms of “manifesting”
Matt Webb is pretty sure about manifesting, the idea that you can manifest the goals you imagine into your physical reality, even though he doesn’t have evidence for it. He writes, “I don’t know what the mechanism is. I don’t need to know.” I’ve found this to be a driving force in my life, and…
-
Advice for taking advice
The best advice comes with another person understanding you. In fact, the best advice could even originate from you. The other person isn’t forcing you into a solution; they genuinely want to understand the problem, and in the process of doing that, help you understand it better as well. They know how to ask you…
-
Starting, developing, and finishing
A little over a year ago, my friend Michael asked me, “Are you a starter, a developer, or a finisher?” He explains the differences, which he learned from Kevin Kelley, in this issue of his newsletter: While I initially saw each of these elements in my work, it’s become much clearer to me that I…
-
Polished packaging vs. punk packaging
Last night, Donald Glover announced Atavista, the finished version of an album he had previously released. He released the original version, entitled 3.15.20, with no announcement at the beginning of the pandemic. On the original version, songs had timestamps for titles (e.g., a song might be entitled, “24.19”), making it more difficult for people to…
-
Apple’s bad ad
Two words you don’t see together very often: Apple apologizes. Recently, Apple released a new commercial intended as a sequel to its iconic 1984 commercial. Instead, it completely fell flat. It’s not just that Apple made a misstep, which seems to be happening more often lately. It’s more that its usual defenders aren’t as vocal,…
-
J. Cole’s hard decision for an easy life
In case you’ve missed it, two of hip-hop’s biggest superstars—Drake and Kendrick Lamar—have been in conflict for the past several weeks. (There’s a Wikipedia page!) The inciting incident for this particular one was Kendrick responding to Drake and J. Cole’s song, “First Person Shooter.” While J. Cole responded with a diss, he quickly withdrew it…
-
Listen to yourself, and do more of what works
You would think that writing a second book would be easier than writing a first one. As I prepare to put my second book together, I haven’t found that to be the case. While there are lots of new things I learned, as I apply them this time around, it’s almost like they’re bumping out…
-
Contact list to database
One day, an upcoming recording artist named Rich the Kid discovered the phone numbers of really important people. They just popped up on his phone, and he’s still not sure how it happened. Through a technical glitch, he had inherited a key part of someone else’s database. While he didn’t have relationships with or introductions…
-
Be your own co-founder (or publisher, or distributor, etc.)
The most effective way to get something done is to do it yourself. Rely only on yourself, and pick up all the skills you need along the way. Scope things down. Paul Graham writes, “I’m skeptical when people tell me they’re very determined to make their startup succeed, but they can’t find a technical cofounder.…