Be stupid instead. It might be better to be stupid rather than smart. Smart people don’t take risks. They are too smart for that. But stupid people ask ‘What’s the harm in trying this out?’ They are not much concerned with ‘What will others say?’ They are just having fun, learning
Shaping up a project. [For subscribers: Please open the blog in a browser to see the images if they are not showing in the email] One of the best tools I have used for shipping projects is Basecamp. I want to mention two tools (or processes) they have taught me that I find extremely
Creature of habit. Repeat something, anything, enough times and you wouldn’t even realise how easy and automatic it becomes. Writing this blog is not a chore anymore, it’s a habit. To build a habit, you can start it with a streak of 5. Similarly, if you stop doing something for multiple
Evil inside. There is an evil inside humans. We are attracted towards the evils and the distractions. That’s the downward slope, the automatic path. Our struggle is to fight against the evil. The evil that starts with procrastination and eventually creates wars and genocides. The battle that you fight every day
It's not about time. How much time does making progress in any meaningful task take? Mostly very less compared to the time we spend worrying or stressing about that task. It’s not about time. It’s the fact that when Resistance forces us to say later, it creates the habit of later. That
Pit-stop. You can’t service a moving car. Even if the car is in a race where every micro-second matters. You can’t perform a surgery on a walking human. The human has to surrender for the surgeon to do the work. It makes sense for us to identify our pit-stops
Holding onto hope. Sometimes that’s all that we can do. Sometimes that’s all that we need to do. Find hope within you and hold onto it.
Fear driven decision making. ‘If we stay here, we’ll be safe.’ Will we? For how long? A conversation we need to have. The constant tussle between fear and courage has kept our ancestors alive enough for us to interact through this blog. The physical fear of falling off a cliff kept us and
Decision making. Most of us make tens or hundreds of decisions everyday. We have grown fond of this type of decision making. We feel that we are in-charge when we get to decide what we are going to eat for dinner. But in the disguise of these numerous, small, irrelevant decisions, we
Up and down. Balancing the different facets of life is a challenging task. It takes hard work to keep things simple. The biggest challenge is to not concede control to the last-minute mind. How does the last-minute mind take control? It creates the illusion that exceptions would yield better results than the process
Managing the weekend. The common notion is: We can really let loose once the office is shut. We can binge any series, order any food, do anything. The reality is that when we can do anything, we end up doing nothing. Nothing of significance, at least. Our last-minute mind redirects us to the
The root cause. The root cause of all misery is letting the last-minute mind take decisions. The last-minute mind is not equipped to take decisions; it does not understand resource allocation, opportunity costs, or delayed gratification. It can only work well in constraints. Constraints designed by the deep mind, by the writing mind.
40 hours a week. That’s how long the Basecamp team works. And they have created some of the most innovative and successful software products present. Rather, during the summers (May-Sep), they work only for 32 hours a week. As a creative, there is a tendency to work for every waking moment, at least
Talking about deep work... …is not deep work. It’s an illusion that Resistance creates to avoid deep work. The check for deep work is single tasking for a significant time (at least around an hour).
Avoiding Panic. Panic has become our default feeling when we are working. Deadlines and last minute work. That’s what we have been trained for, for years. We study (cram) when the exams are coming, there is a rush, and then we are done with the exams. This is not productive. This
4 x 60 Four stretches of uninterrupted 60 minutes, each focussed on a single task. That’s good enough for a work day. If you can get a single stretch of 180 minutes, that’s even better. Are you getting one? HT to Jason Fried & DHH of Basecamp
Change. Change is chaos. It’s easier and much more comfortable to stay with the status quo. Do things as they have always been done. Change creates turbulence. It can be good or bad. The good change is the one done with intent. Keep asking: ‘What’s it for?’
Scrolling vs. typing The less you scroll and the more you type, the better you become. Scrolling is consumption and we have been trained to do that mindlessly. Scrolling our finger on the iPad or the trackpad leads to anxiety and dopamine expectation. That’s the training that I was referring to. Instead,
What are you putting off for 'later'? Does ‘later’ help? How? When we put things off for later, we expect them to magically resolve them on their own. The longer we put them off, the more we are surprised that they did not get themselves done. The things that we put off for later are generally ambiguous
Just keep typing. Is there anything more beautiful than a blinking cursor, looking at you with desperate eyes, waiting for you to start typing? Again and again, I keep coming back to the same conclusion: Just keep typing. Don’t overthink. Over-type. Keep typing. Let your fingers do the work. No matter what.
Slippery slope. You know what, I can at least get myself a cup of coffee. Is that too much to ask? Ahem! Now that I am here in the kitchen, I notice that there are the dishes. They have been pending for days now. I can’t ignore them any longer. Okay.
Repetitive? Is it becoming repetitive? Or worse ‘self-righteous’? Am I ‘should-ing’ my readers? Am I not being kind? Yes, I can decide not to write today, because of these and hundred other reasons. I can skip to ship today, thinking that tomorrow might make things better. But it won’t. I
One exception at a time. That’s how we lose the day. That’s how we lose the week. That’s how we lose. The importance of the ‘work’ has to take priority over any exception that may present itself.
Rebound. When we push against Resistance, it pushes back. A rebound is to be expected. How we handle the rebound is what matters. Sometimes, it’s very important to be kind to yourself and build small wins over time rather than trying to be productive all the time. Taking guilt over
The General and the foot-soldier. We have to don many hats as a creative. The thing to understand here is that we can don only one hat at a time. The foot soldier has his role and the General has her role. It makes sense to identify the role we are playing and the responsibility
