assistance We talk a lot about resistance and rightly so. Most of us keep experiencing that force. But there is another force at play, the one which is on our side. The one which never falters. It works if you do the work. Neil Gaiman famously said in his commencement speech
Shifting the focus from circumstances to action. When we focus on our circumstances, we invite the ‘victim mindset’. We become helpless. We feel that we can do something only if ‘this happens’. The best way to change your circumstances is to focus on the action that would lead to the change. In most cases, the actions would
Rushed. When we are rushed, we keep moving but we get nowhere. The feeling of ‘rush’ comes when we try to get something done in lesser time than it requires. But when we act rushed, we increase this time and in most cases actually do not get the outcome. It’s
Non-negotiables Our non-negotiables define us. It’s imperative that we find them and be explicit about them. When we start making exceptions to our non-negotiables, that’s when we start losing our sense of ourselves. By definition, there can be no exceptions to the non-negotiables. — If you liked reading this, consider
Experiment. Life gets better when we experiment. When we try something out and see if it works. A 5-year old experiments all the time, with the snacks they eat or the toys they love. As we grow old, more often than not, we lose this knack of experimenting. We become comfortable
Time is finite. If we spend 3 hours extra awake in the night, it gets deducted from our day the next day, or worse, from our sleep. The natural cycle of day and night is an ally and not an enemy. It is something to be embraced. Sunset and sunrise are very strong
Accepting yourself. I don’t do well in open offices. Even when no one is around. I don’t do well on social media. Even though it offers a supposed shortcut to success. I don’t do well making plans in excel. I prefer a blank document instead. I tried for a
Resolving ambiguity. Ambiguity is the reason behind procrastination, more often than not. And we try to resolve this ambiguity in our head or by talking to someone. Sometimes, very rarely, we see through it, but most times, it leads to even more clutter. The reason is that thinking and talking are not
The opposite. Common wisdom is rarely wisdom. In most cases, our initial ideas are not as good as we think they are. It’s just that they are our ideas. It might be a good exercise to consider the opposite. What if I did the opposite? What if I said the opposite?
Transparent. What if our thought, our voice and our action were in sync. It doesn’t start from thinking about it. It starts from writing, sharing and doing our work with intent. When we become transparent, then the cunning voice inside our head becomes weaker. When we share our fears, our
The good, the bad and the ugly. Was our day completely good or completely bad? Are we objective about our assessment? The ugly part is that in most cases we obsess about the worst thing that happened in our day instead of looking at the good parts also. That’s a habit we can change. This is
Review. We plan all the time. And most of the times we fail to execute our plans. But that’s not the end of the story. There is an important step that we mostly don’t do. It’s to review what happened and adjust our plans accordingly. Reviews make the
Do it now. I read a blog entry from Jason Fried of Basecamp and I felt an urge to reply to the blog as it quite resonated with me. Almost immediately, I had another thought, a very forceful one. It told me ‘not today, not now’. Yes, you should reply but you need
Keeping things inside your head. This is a dangerous habit. We feel that by not communicating, by not replying, somehow we are avoiding the uncomfortable conversation. Somehow, things are better because we chose not to speak. Yes, dealing with trolls might be a fool’s errand and should be avoided in the first place. But,
The fear of success. Are we afraid of failure? I don’t think so. We call it the fear of failure, but when we give into it, we barely act. And thus, by default, we fail. Failure is not something we are afraid of, rather failure is something we may have become quite used
Embracing who you are. J. Krishnamurthi talked about the concept of ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’. The ‘what should be’ interferes with how we feel about ourselves. It creates a barrier between who we are and some imaginary supposedly perfect version of ourselves. Yes, we want to become better. But that is much
Action steps. It’s good to have goals and desires and whatnot. I wish I could earn more / lose weight / gain weight / get into a relationship / travel more / and so on. What’s more important is to identify doable action steps and then getting started with them. The day will never be
Self-sabotage There is no lower limit to the self-sabotage that we can cause. It becomes too addictive too soon. It is very important to identify when we are downward sloping and to arrest the slide. Small, positive actions can go a long way in breaking the momentum of self-sabotaging activities.
The decade of the freelancer. Technology has evolved. The next decade is going to be the decade of the professional freelancer. Not because of Uber or Upwork or Fiverr but because of tools like Zoom, Discourse and Basecamp and learning platforms like Akimbo, Creative Live and Masterclass. Seth and Tim Ferriss host their blogs on
Perspective. The brain perceives us in relation to something else. When it has to choose between a stranger and a friend, the friend becomes us and the stranger becomes the other. When it’s between the friend and ourselves, suddenly the same friend becomes the other. And when it comes between
Stay. Stay with this idea. The one you are working on. Yes, the other one seems tempting. Yes, this one doesn’t seem to work, at least for now. There is a time to pivot, but mostly it’s not when we believe it is. Change takes courage but staying also
Visual clutter. Are you unable to focus and get things done? Look around you. What do you see? How many things are there that you want to see? What all is there in your field of vision that is not put there with intention? Removing this clutter from your view, whether physical
One by one. Is the brain able to process more than one thing at a time? It definitely gives the illusion that it can. But choosing/deciding is not something the brain is good at. That’s the job of the gut. So, when the pre-frontal cortex is at loggerheads with the gut,
Writing a blog. Seth Godin nudges everyone to start writing daily. I agree with him wholeheartedly. On a dark day, the one minor blog entry can help you feel good about yourself. Some days, you can go through what you wrote months ago, and seek wisdom. It is an asset that keeps giving
Breaking the mental barrier. Our mind finds solace in the status quo. We get used to our ‘condition’. To break that mental barrier, we need to take action contrary to it. Taking these actions is where the highest kind of courage is needed. If we want one status quo, I may very well choose
