Misery. Your mountain. Your boulder. You. That’s all that matters. The soul had an option, not to take birth. It did not take birth to survive, it was always surviving. It took birth to accomplish something that it could not do without a body. That something is your mountain. That
Fighting back. Procrastination, self-doubt, rationalisation, fear, paralysis are all the different faces of Resistance, we know that very well. We also know that we can fight back against them by being a pro, by putting our butt in the chair, removing the clutter and focussing on a single task. But many times,
Does the incentive help? I think it harms. It takes the focus away from the process, the engagement, and obsesses about something that is not in our control. Doing the work for the work itself, reading a book for learning, listening to someone just to listen to them, these are holistic undivided activities which
Speaking & typing. Our brain works in different ways when we are speaking vs. when we are typing (or writing). Speaking exists only in the moment. You can’t correct what you said. You can’t take it back. Typing is more deliberate than speaking. You can read what you typed, you can
Being a better boss. Empathy is a tricky concept. Our mind makes us believe that we know what the other person would be feeling. That’s not true. It takes tremendous emotional labour to empathise with someone. The most difficult person to empathise is ourself. And the lack of this empathy makes us the
'Do the work' in public. I don’t mean a co-working space. Instead, I am talking about your work. I’d urge you to share your daily work with other people, with 5 friends. Just send them an email with all the notes for today, preferably with a timestamp on each task. This will make
"I just need more time. But I don’t really know what I’ll do with it.” Seth Godin says that price is the refuge of the marketer who has run out of things to say. Similarly, time might be the refuge of the creative who can’t gather themselves to start working on the
Consistent. In cricket, the batsman who hits a six off the last ball to win the match is celebrated while the one who persistently batted for a long time is mostly ignored. In the movies, the hero has to pull off something miraculous in the climax for the movie to be
Passing through the membrane. Once you start writing, you keep writing. Once you start working out, you keep working out. By starting an action, we pass through a membrane. On the other side, everything seems easy and doable. The membrane is between the psychological and the physical, the thoughts and the action. Whenever you
The challenge in being Pro. MacBook Pro is a Pro. When you switch it on, it works. It does exactly what you expect it to. The challenge in being Pro is that we are human. We have a voice inside our head that manipulates us, that convinces us to take the amateur route. The Pro
Being kind. Can we be more kind? The answer, always, is yes. Should we be more kind? Again, the answer, always, is yes. Does that include being more kind to ourselves too? You get the point. Yes, the answer, always is yes.
What to write? Is the wrong question. Instead, it’s about the decision to write. Once we make up our mind that shipping is imminent, the content will take care of itself. ‘What to write?’ is a question that Resistance uses to stop us from writing.
The fear of success. Success, i.e. the moment we achieve our goals, changes the status quo. The problem is we do not know what to do after that. Yes, we have fantasised about achieving this or that goal for a long time, but we haven’t really given a thought about what we’
How to get unstuck? ‘Declutter’: That’s the mantra we can use when we are stuck. What does it mean? Well, I guess you already know but let me still explain. If you are stuck, if you are unable to move forward, the thing that works for me is to declutter. I remove everything
The joy of missing out. The Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) can be really useful. It can make us sign up for courses that we might not have otherwise. It can make us go say ‘Hi!’ to that person that we want to talk to. But there are so many companies that are hacking into
What it feels like? One of my favourite chapters in ‘War of Art’ is when Pressfield describes what a writer’s day feel like. Here’s a glimpse of what he describes: The sun isn’t up yet; it’s cold; the fields are sopping. Brambles scratch my ankles, branches snap back in my
Activation energy. Stephen Duneier, in his TEDx Talk, talks about breaking down big goals into small doable actions. Like instead of focussing on reading 50 books, he would focus on reading a book for only 5 minutes. That’s it. He says, “After that, I’ll shoot some hoops, do this or
Decisions. Tim Ferriss says, what’s the one decision that removes ten. Seth adds onto this by mentioning that he decided that he will publish a daily blog, some 20 odd years ago. That’s a decision that does not need revisiting. Taking decisions when we are not up for them.
Giving up... Giving up is easy. And it can be easily rationalised. And not only you, but the world will understand. To some extent, many of them would be relieved. But not giving up, especially when every sign in the world urges you to, to get up one more time, to stand
The power of people. People can have a magical power. Just by listening to and acknowledging what someone might be feeling. By nodding and sharing what resonated with them. We each have that power, to make someone’s day better.
Giving power to Resistance. Resistance has no power of its own. Our decisions are what gives it power. It can only nudge us to deviate from our path, our task. If we ignore the nudge, the power that Resistance wields over us reduces. If we give in to the nudge, the power multiplies. The
The off-day. Is it inevitable? Can we avoid it? Can we turn it around? If not, should the strategy be to do the minimum and play for tomorrow. It’s quite tricky to assess and handle the off-day.
Small, deliberate actions. The big changes. The big decisions. The big chances. We keep looking out for them. For the sudden luck. But it is the small, deliberate actions that bring about change. You keep doing the crunches for 10 minutes daily, and in a few months, your abs start shaping up. And
The default mind and the deep mind. By default, the mind is shallow. It gets attracted to shallow things and shallow activities. It resists going deep. It takes labour to access the deep mind. The deep mind doesn’t show up accidentally. That’s why a daily routine that help us access the deep mind is important.
The illusion of control. Whether it is our health, our work, our finances or our relationships, we find it hard to differentiate whether we are in control or if there is just an illusion of control. When we are in control, we have clear insights on what the current situation is and where we
