Fear or confidence? The confidence that I will definitely right the blog today. Or the fear that I might miss today. Which one works? The first one makes me delay and procrastinate. The second one jolts me out of my slumber. The fear is real because you can’t repair the streak once
Are you predicting the future? Don’t. Career plan is a recipe for mediocrity. It means you are not going to do anything excellent. Instead, focus on what you can do this week. Not on what you’d be doing in 5 years. How can you possibly know that? Unless you are just not going
The list. Well, not the Schindler one. But yours. The brain, as marvellous as it is, has limited RAM. It’s not supposed to hold a list. Give it 3 items to hold onto, and it will generate an infinite loop using them. ABCBABCABCACBA… and so on. You get the idea. The
Where does the magic come from? A friend of mine recently started writing ‘dailies’ and shared with me. They are magical. They transport you to some other dimension. She says that she doesn’t know where it comes from. She is afraid it might not come tomorrow. What is the source of the magic? I have
Mental push-ups. Ignore the urges. The urge to leave your seat. The urge to check WhatsApp or Instagram or whatever. The urge to order from the food-ordering apps. The urge to call someone unnecessarily. The urge to not do your work. Every time you ignore an urge, add them to your tally
Something to hold on to. What is the difference between a job and a creative enterprise? In the job, you have to be in the office on Monday. There is no getting away from that. Whereas, for a creative enterprise, especially when we have not turned pro, we are either working 24×7 or we
The dichotomy of chasing multiple goals. In “Harry Potter and the deathly hallows”, there is a point where Harry has to take a decision. Should he continue his search for horcruxes, which is going nowhere actually; or should he change course and try to stop Voldemort from getting the hallows. Luckily for us, and the muggles,
Let gravity do the work. It’s okay to be okay. More expectations do not lead to more work. Rather, mostly it hampers the work. Sometimes, you just need to be in the right posture and gravity will pull you in the right direction. But you need to let gravity do its work. You need
Keep ploughing on. That’s all. That’s all we do. That’s all we can do. Nothing fancy. No big strategy. No big discussion. No big decision. Just keep ploughing. One day after the next. Do what you can do today. And then come back tomorrow. This doesn’t need to be
The importance of artificial urgencies. The worst, most debilitating thought is: I have time. When we think that we have time, then we do not come to the battle to finish it. We get distracted, we delay. And once we start procrastinating, either because of self-doubt or perfectionism or rationalisation, it becomes increasingly difficult to
Stuck in a dead-end job? Or a cul-de-sac as Seth Godin calls it in the Dip. What does a dead-end job looks like? You work and you work and it just doesn’t seem to end. You are burning the candle not only from both ends but also from the middle. You are expected to
Be human instead. Empathy: The innate ability of a human to understand what the other is going through. To act accordingly. Resistance makes empathy extremely difficult. When we cast ourselves as the victim, we lose our ability to contribute. We lose our ability to connect. We just want that thing that you are
The magic is in the fingers... When you are typing or painting, it’s the movement of the fingers that creates the magic. The more you move them, on the keyboard or on the canvas, the more magic takes shape. The brain, or the mind, frankly doesn’t really move and doesn’t really create anything.
One thing at a time. That’s all we can do. A lot of stress in life comes when we try to do more than one thing at a time. Our brain is not designed to work with instant messaging and social media and notifications. It just can’t function that way. Instant messaging is
Put yourself on the hook. It’s not going to be easy. Our society or industry has been built on avoiding it. But the best thing that you can do for yourself is to put yourself on the hook. Make your work non-optional. Remove the backup. Start publishing a daily. Let WordPress count your streak.
Convenience and excellence. Excellence is rarely convenient and vice-versa. Excellence requires us to do manual, intellectual and emotional labour without knowing exactly what fruits might come out of it. Convenient on the other hand is quite straight-forward, you do this you get this. Mostly, our last minute mind, would keep making decisions of
Changing the status quo. That’s what creativity is. It makes things irreversible. Once the artist has painted over the canvas, once the singer has recorded over the tape, once the writer has written over the page. There’s no going back. Potential has now become tactile. You can touch it now. You can
Fear of missing out... …never leads to anything that’s not worth missing out. Rather, it takes us away from things that we’d actually enjoy. FOMO, is what most of the Resistance businesses are made on. FOMO of missing the latest meme on Instagram, FOMO of missing the latest series on Netflix. FOMO
I can make it better... …or a variation of this is an excuse we use to procrastinate. This is when Resistance is at top. It doesn’t want us to ship. It has got us by the huevos. Every time we try to write, or think of finishing something, it whispers: Not now. You are
Say yes, instead. When your friend pitches you an idea, don’t play the devil’s advocate. Don’t let your resistance take charge. Don’t try to keep you and your friend safe. Say yes, instead. Be the first customer. Pay an advance. Help your friend overcome their self-doubt. At worst, you’
Skipping a day On a good day, anyone can write. But if you only write on the good days, then you are not much of a writer. The professional would write no matter what. Especially on the days when he has every reason not to write. Skipping a day is not a luxury
Be realistic. Get a job. This is stupid advice. Yes, you need to earn money. But if that’s the only thing you do, there’s no point of you being here. Yes, you’d survive and procreate, but what’s the point. Instead, you can create value for others, you can make their lives
Boss as a service? We hate managers until we become one ourselves. And then we start hating both the managers and the ones being managed. We rarely think of our managers or our bosses as providing us any service. They breathe down our necks to drain every ounce of time and energy out of
Are you paying attention? There’s a quirky t-shirt comment, “I am so broke, I can’t even pay attention.” It’s much closer to the reality than the writer of the quote intended. It’s because we don’t pay attention, that we end up being broke. The most valuable resource we have
Multi-tasking is the killer, literally. Einstein once said that if you can drive a car while kissing a beautiful girl then you are not giving the kiss the attention that it deserves. Multi-tasking is the new buzzword. It started with the dual-core Intel processors which could do two tasks at the same time. Mind you,
