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
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
