Embracing cyclicality. Nature has cyclicality built in. Day and night, summers and winters, life and death. As creatives we can also embrace the cyclicality of creative work. Sometimes, we need to leave the creative soil vacant so that it gets replenished. Shutting the office at 5, taking the weekend off, these are
What you seek... We complicate life unnecessarily. Yes, we want this and that and that too and this too. Yes, I understand that. But let’s talk about which one do you want first. And why. Let’s keep asking ‘why’, not because it’s a hack, but because it may bring us
A few kind words. A few kind words can change the world. At least for some one, at least for some time. It doesn’t take too much time or effort. It doesn’t take anything away from you. Rather, both the speaker and the listener feel good. Oxytocin (love, bonding) is released in
Pebbles in your shoes. Yes, you can walk with them. They are irritating, but you can manage. You are in a hurry, no? Let’s keep going. It’s easy to put off the pebbles for later… But try taking 2 minutes to take off the shoes and take the pebbles out. Not only
The ideal status quo. That’s what we are sold. Do this and life will be perfect. Whether it is a test, or a job, or a relationship, that’s what we are told. Get this thing done and then everything will be perfect. Yes, these things do significantly change our life, sometimes for
Showing up... again. That’s hard. Yes, it takes courage to show up the first time. But when you fall into the Resistance traps, when your streak gets broken, when all seems lost… Just to show up again. To write another blog. To raise your hand. That takes another kind of courage.
The deadline. There was a time when I hated the deadline. I despised it. Now, I don’t think I can survive without it. The deadline helps me publish this blog. The deadline helps me run my company. The deadline gets me to complete the course I sign up for. If I
The symptoms are all the same. Overwhelm. Guilt. Multi-tasking. Not feeling like I am doing enough. Unable to show up consistently. Distractions. When we allow the shallow mind to run our life, we all feel the same symptoms. The medicine, therefore, is also the same. Establish a ritual to access the deep mind on a consistent
Priorities or priority. One word that I’d like to eliminate from my life is priorities. If I say priorities, I am not putting in the effort of identifying the priority among the priorities. Having priorities is a way of hiding, of escaping the hook. HT to Essentialism by Greg McKeown for the
Typing to decide. Most of the time we do not do the work because we don’t know what we want to work upon. Our mind makes us believe that there is no point sitting down to work if we are not clear. So, we start thinking and deciding and talking and so
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
