The nuanced middle.

More, more, more... less, less... a bit more... a little bit less... perfect. Whether it's tuning your acoustic guitar, fixing the focus on your camera, examining a cell through the microscope, or tuning into your favourite channel on the analogue radio, we must follow this process of tweaking

Make your dream specific.

The easiest way to be off the hook is to be vague about your dream. It would take hard work, mostly emotional, to figure out "What does it look like when it works?" But without shaping that, we tend to not move towards it at all.

Low battery protocol.

When our phone goes to low battery mode, we become very cautious about how we use it. We avoid the high energy consuming apps and tasks and shift to minimum mode until we can plug it back in. And we know that once it's charged, we can use

Identity requires evidence.

Identity is the leverage that can help us bring about change. When we see ourselves as a person who works out daily, it becomes much easier to go to the gym daily. The catch is that unless we create evidence for the identity, we won’t believe in the identity

Shipping mindset.

When you are in a shipping mindset, you are intent on moving forward. You make decisions, you make difficult trade-offs, you let go of far-fetched ideas that are too vague to execute. You are on a mission to get things done. When a pro sits down to work, she can

Driving with the handbrakes on.

That’s what stress feels like. It leads us to a place where we keep putting in effort without making much change happen. If that’s the case, it may make sense to figure out the root cause of the stress, especially if it’s chronic stress. Sometimes, maybe not

Via neutral.

You can't go from first gear to a higher gear, or vice versa, without going via neutral. More acceleration isn't going to help if you are stuck in the first gear. The skill of changing gears requires the skill of shifting to neutral.

Identity votes.

With every action we take, we cast a vote, either for the identity that we want to build or the one that we want to get rid of. Whichever identity gets the majority votes wins. The only way to imbibe an identity is to create evidence for it and the

Imperfect forward motion.

When we are working on a project, we can get stuck and become paralysed trying to figure out the perfect strategy or perfect action to execute. Fear and self-sabotage work together in sync to stop us from taking any action. It's not that we forgot about the project.

Finite & specific.

Making a project finite and specific makes it doable. And that's the hard part. The hard part is taking the project from an ambiguous state and making it finite and specific. It's hard because it requires us to make choices. We will have to choose the

Focus is a skill.

And like any skill, if we don’t use it much, it becomes weaker. And like any skill, we can start again, day by day, in becoming better. The amateur fears solitude and silence because she needs to avoid, at all costs, the voice inside her head that would point

Customer traction.

Customer traction is the moment of reckoning. Either the customer would want our product and sign up. Or they would decide it's not for them. One way or the other, it moves us forward. And customer traction is also the hard part. It requires emotional labour. It requires

Doing things with intent.

Doing things with intent means that we are on the hook, that we are taking ownership and that we are not hiding behind chance. Instead of saying the compliance driven “I didn’t do anything”, we get the courage to say, “Here, I made this.” Excerpt from The Practice by

Not selling is akin to stealing.

When we generously design a product or service that can make things better for our smallest viable audience, it is on us to create sufficient tension for them to help them enroll. This is where sheepish behaviour stops us from showing up as our best selves. We hesitate to sell,

Writing it down.

No matter what it is, it will most likely become better if you write it down. Resistance will push you to not write. It will try to convince you to resolve it in your mind. But, that will only make the thing more complex. Just start writing. Don’t think

What you can't see, yet.

Our biases and blindspots can hide important information when we are making a decision. The perception deception, though, makes us believe that we can see everything. This leads to erroneous decision-making. This is where generous feedback from others can help significantly. When the feedback giver is ready to do the

Burnout.

The strongest sign of burnout is that we want to continue burning out. That we resist taking a break and keep pushing it back. The body and mind can support us at times when there is a crisis. But, if we keep manufacturing a crisis, one after another, then that

Segregating income and vocation projects.

Income projects: I do this work as a professional but I would not do it if I was not paid to do it. Vocation projects: I would do this work as a professional whether I am paid for it or not.

The trap of entitlement.

Entitlement chokes creativity. When we focus on what we don’t have, when we compare our situation with someone who is supposedly getting a better deal, we fall victim to resistance and we earn a good excuse not to do our work. If there are people with more who are

Conflicting directions.

Conflicting directions create confusion. And mostly, that's what we give to our body, our brain and our mind. It takes emotional labour to keep life simple and keep our direction simple. It takes emotional labour to overcome the urges that self-sabotage puts up in front of us. It

Taking a break.

Taking a break doesn't make you not a professional. Rather, that's what professionals do. They take breaks with intent. Burning yourself out is a trait of the amateurs.

Shipping cures all.

There's a saying in business, "sales cures all". As creatives, we can trust that "shipping cures all". When we ship, we breakthrough resistance and get to the other side. And the other side is where the magic happens. “What does Resistance feel like? First,

Being a contribution...

Excerpt From The Art of Possibility by Ben Zander & Rosamund Stone Zander: Four young men sit by the bedside of their dying father. The old man, with his last breath, tells them there is a huge treasure buried in the family fields. The sons crowd around him crying, “Where,

Energy savers or taxers?

Some people are energy savers. You spend time with them and you feel more energy than you had started with. Others are taxing. They leave you drained. Sometimes, we have to spend time with the taxers. but many times we do that without needing to. How can we become more

Receiving as generosity.

A blog reader receives the blog as a generous gift, so does the person who listen to an artist's song or the movie-goer who makes it a point to watch his favourite moviemaker's film. Some of these gifts may require a payment, but that's