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Rejection calibration
If you don’t think you’ll write up a successful application, you might choose to barely show up. You feel like the odds are against you. Why put the effort in if you’re not going to get what you want, anyway? If you think somebody doesn’t like you, you might behave like you don’t like them.…
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“I don’t accept that…”
There’s a really great letter that Vincent van Gogh wrote in response to criticism from Anthon van Rappard. Van Gogh makes it clear that he doesn’t accept Van Rappard’s critique calling the totality of Van Gogh’s work totally extremely weak, “The work in question, painting the peasants, is such laborious work that the extremely weak…
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Foresight is not essential
James Naismith invented basketball when he was really just trying to keep a bunch of rowdy students busy indoors during a blizzard. One day, he saw a boy in the gym tossing a ball toward the basket, picking it up, and tossing it again. An hour later, he passed by the gym again and saw…
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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…