Letting go of the past. Seth Godin talks about letting go of sunk costs: things we have invested time, money or energy in the past that do not serve us in the future. This is one of the most difficult skills to build. If you had to choose from scratch, which habits, people and projects
Getting to a calm mind. No child has ever stopped crying when someone shouts "Stop Crying" to them. Similarly, our mind never calms down when we order it to calm down. Similar to a child, we have to let the mind be, we have to ask it what's wrong, we have
5 blogs a day. Seth Godin told Tim Ferriss in a podcast interview that he writes 5 blogs every day and publishes one. For him, writing the blog is not a chore, it's a privilege. A privilege to observe something interesting and to put that in words. It also creates a mindset
Starting with the problem. As entrepreneurs, many times, we are in search of problems that can be solved by the solution we have in our minds. In the process, we end up wishfully inventing problems that might or might not exist. The challenge, instead, is to leave the comfort zone and talk to people.
Actions and decisions. Decisions happen when we act, when we take some action which makes the situation irreversible or at least inconvenient to go back. Without action, there is no decision. If you can't decide on something, the way forward is to identify the action that needs to be taken.
A dollar saved is a dollar saved, not a dollar earned. Saving is a finite game. There is an upper cap on how much you can save. Earning, on the other hand, is infinite in nature. It's not a zero sum game. The more value you create, the more you can earn. More than the act itself, it'
Routines and repetition. Typically, we end up making hundreds of decisions every day, most of which do not make our life better: what we'll eat (at least 3 times a day), what we wear and so on. The irony is that no matter how many times we repeat them, they persist.
What are we having for dinner? You can ask this. Or you can ask, "How can I double my income in six months?" You can't ask both.
What gets done matters. There can be a hundred things we can do, big or small, meaningful or meaningless, selfish or generous. We can spend hours and days debating these, but the only things that matter are the ones that get done, that get shipped. Steven Pressfield talks about Resistance being the highest when
People like us. We are all on different journeys in different spheres of life. Sometimes these overlap, many times they don't. We expect our close ones, our friends and family, to empathise and relate to our project, our challenges, or our wins. But, unless they are enrolled in a similar journey,
Showing up as our most ambitious self. We usually don't. We are mostly afraid to do so. To show up with our ambition without any caveats, without smoothening the edges, without defending our dreams. There is magic in being unashamedly, unabashedly your best self, your most ambitious self. Maybe, we can start by writing it
One push-up a day. Tim Ferriss once asked Matt Mullenweg (Founder, CEO of Automattic (The company that made and runs WordPress) about his workout habits. He replied that his goal is to do one push-up every day. No matter how tired or busy he is, he can get that done. Most days, he gets
The power of one. Focus. Select. What's the one over-arching goal that you can be committed towards? Everything else becomes secondary.
What we want and what we need to do. Goal: Lose weight [Book reference: The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss] 1. Eat a low-carb diet. 2. Maintain a food log. 3. Workout/walk at least 20 min 3-times a week. 4. Sleep at least 8 hours a day. 5. Drink at least 3 litres of water every day. 6.
Getting back on the road. When we are driving from one city to another, there are many distractions along the way: restaurants, billboards and whatnot. Sometimes, we take a break from the journey and spend some time with these distractions. But we are quite cognizant of the fact that we need to get back on
Action steps, not goals. It's easy to become obsessed with goals: lose x kg weight, earn y amount of money, get a score or rank of z. But that doesn't really help us in reaching the goal, does it? Rather, it creates a kind of vacuum with the present situation
What happens when the amygdala is in charge? I have written about the amygdala earlier. But it's too important to leave it at that. The amygdala is a small almond size part of the brain which is the centre for emotions, particularly fear. Specifically, the amygdala is concerned with 2 things: that you stay alive and
Deadlines The SpaceX spaceship Falcon which took the astronauts to the International Space Station had to be launched at the exact millisecond for the mission to be successful. That's what a deadline is supposed to be like. The launch date. No earlier, no sooner. As creatives, setting deadlines and
Finding the neutral gear. In the hustle culture, especially made popular in the last decade, we are expected to be speeding all the time, pushing ourselves to do just a little bit more. This keeps taking us closer to the last straw that broke the camel's back. Instead, if we invest in
How to handle the never-ending to-do lists? To-do lists can easily seem never-ending and too much to handle. No matter how much we get done, the list never seem to end. This bottomless nature of to-do lists is a big cause of the chronic stress and anxiety we feel on a regular basis. One way to overcome
Buy the ticket first. Many times, we are disappointed with what the universe has offered us. We feel we deserve better. We feel that we have not been lucky. But have we taken action that can lead to what we want? If we are looking for a job, how many potential founders/team leaders
Shipping is the cure. When we don't ship, when we delay, we start feeling the symptoms. A false sense of importance, of making things heavy, of becoming precious starts setting in. The only way out of this conundrum is to identify what we can get done and then focus on making it
Detached from our work? Can we be detached from our work? And if we can be, then is it really our work? Steven Pressfield says that detachment from your work is necessary for becoming a professional. Elizabeth Gilbert says that your book is not your baby. In this case, I'm afraid I
The seemingly impossible challenge. There are sometimes challenges that seem impossible especially when we can't see the path ahead. As creatives and entrepreneurs, these are the kind of challenges that we face more often than not. There is no easy answer to these challenges, no hack that can take away the uncertainty
The magic of done. It's easy to get stuck into the mire of "perfect" or even "good". And somehow later seems to be the time when perfect or good would magically appear. So, we let things stay in the "doing" status rather than getting them "
