Two kinds of work. One is tangible and imminent. Someone's waiting for it. You can check it off from your to do list. The other is ambiguous and without a deadline. But it leads you towards your goal. It helps you make progress, no matter how slow it may seem. It'
The professional creates his own luck. We hear the term "beginner's luck" thrown around everywhere. Some of it has to do with the fact that the expectations are way low for a beginner. But still, many strive to make it through riding the beginner's luck. And once you fall into
Money & emotions If money is an emotional issue for you, you’ve just put your finger on a big part of the problem. No one who is good at building houses has an emotional problem with hammers. Place your emotional problems where they belong, and focus on seeing money as a tool.
Don't leave your seat. It's not about working longer hours. It's about maintaining your focus on the task that matters. It's easy to keep switching contexts from the work that you need to do to the unending distractions vying for your attention. But if you keep doing that,
Infinite to finite. Creativity is the act of engaging with infinity and creating something finite which our audience can engage with. The canvas that you paint, the startup that you launch, the book that you write, the conversation that you initiate are all acts of creativity, are all about creating this magic. The
Choices and decisions. We make a lot of choices each day, and sometimes we might call them decisions. Most of the choices are impulse choices or habits that we have formed over time. On the other hand, decisions are mindful thought and reviewed. They help us in making the choices as we go
Lost in the clutter. One by one, slowly but surely, clutter starts to accumulate. It seems harmless every time but soon it takes over. All our energy goes into navigating through the cruft. And our priority goal gets lost somewhere.
Out of balance? What would you do if you were driving a car and it seemed out of balance? Would you speed it up or slow it down? Would you take it to a maintenance shop and get it recalibrated or keep driving? What about you when you feel out of balance?
Becoming a better "boss" to ourselves. If someone working with us is not feeling well, even if slightly, we will proactively ask them to rest and get better before they get back to work. We will not question their intention or assess their situation from a critical eye. But when it comes to ourselves, we can
99 business ideas. When we make ideas scarce, we feel afraid. What would we do if it fails? But there is no dearth of ideas. Ideas are always in abundance. To access the good ones though, we need to go through the bad ones. We need to write them down. And this isn&
The antidote to perfectionism. Perfectionism is laziness, the laziness coming from our desire to create only one draft, the perfect one. And this desire comes from the fact that as consumers we only see the final iteration. We see the movie only after it's released in the theatre, we buy the phone
Getting out of our own way. There may be other obstacles between you and your goals, the life you want to live. But the greatest obstacle is us, ourselves. The fear, attachment, emotion associated with doing the work that can make our lives better. The key is to work as a professional, doing things because they
The best version of you. There are days when you are at your best self and there are days when you are not. And that's okay. That's human. The important thing here is to take the strategic decisions for your life and work when you are your best self. And not
Scars “Martin Sheen turned to me and said, “Do you know what Saint Peter says to everyone who tries to get into heaven?” When I looked blankly, the man who once was president said, “Peter says, ‘Don’t you have any scars?’ And when most would respond proudly, ‘Well no, no
Pick one goal. More often than not, we strive to achieve multiple ambitious goals, especially when we sit down to write our new year's resolutions. While all the goals might be virtuous and helpful, this approach also puts us off the hook because we do not have one clear goal that
"Where you are" or "where you want to go"? We tend to strategise about our goals from the place where we are currently. We look at the current circumstances and see what's possible and what's not. But a different lens, a different framework may be useful while setting our goals and that is to figure
Striving to feel stretched. When we take action to lead, to bring about change, we might end up not feeling good, we would feel the resistance, we would feel like an imposter. These feelings want us to stop taking action. On the contrary, when we stop creating change, when we do what everyone expects
The edge of the box. We all live in a box, the box of our awareness, our knowledge, our certainty. It's the people we know, the books we have read, the places we have visited. Our perceived reality is within this box. And then there's the outside of the box, the
Everything is impossible until it's done. Everything worth doing, at least. The industrial era created a culture based on seeking certainty rather than exploring possibility. It created fear and scarcity as tools to increase compliance and it created an ecosystem which made it a norm to hide. But now, the hollowness of the system based on
Slippery slope. The walk away from creativity and professionalism is a slippery slope. The rational mind distracts us from the work and takes us towards the temptation of the displacement activities. It starts with a harmless seaming action, but keeps gaining momentum with each subsequent iteration. Taken alone, none of these iterations
Doing the hard part first. The hard part is customer traction. It starts with choosing the people who would benefit from what you are offering and building your presence in the community to earn trust and permission. It's tempting to focus on frills like making a fancy website or setting up automated funnels
The beginner's mindset. The beginner's mindset begets curiosity. It enables learning. It weakens the symptoms of the imposter syndrome. It says, "I am not an expert, I am trying to learn. I am merely doing a job. " The expert mindset takes us towards the other extreme. It creates pseudo-confidence.
Toolkit for solopreneurs Groove is the best place to meet like-minded solopreneurs and work with them. Check out their writing on medium here: Groove Sunsama is a tool that can help you gain sanity in your workday. It is mindfully designed to help you design your day. Hey is email as it should
Slow change. Just like a child feels afraid on his first day of school, we don't want to leave the predictable certainty of the status quo. It's just that we are not given an option as a child. One thing we can do to help is to make
Deactivating the amygdala. When we try to work on something new, something audacious, something that will change the status quo, the amygdala gets activated. An activated amygdala creates doubt, it wants us to play safe. It wants us to get our ducks in order before we go out and make the change inevitable.
