Thinking beyond this instant.

Assets are built over time. Assets deliver value over time. If we are unable to see time, we will not be able to invest in and leverage assets.

A professional, 24x7

No one can be a professional 24x7. Taylor swift is a professional when she’s on stage or in the recording studio. But she can’t be a professional all the time. It takes a lot of emotional labour to show up as a professional with consistency despite how we

Freelancing is not a job.

It's a business. And a business requires you to build assets. Assets, not only of skill and portfolio and online presence. But assets of trust, reputation and credibility with your smallest viable audience. These assets are built drip by drip with intention. These are the relationships you build

Decoding emotional labour.

Physical labour is tangible. It takes time. It makes us sweat. You can see and touch a brick wall building when you put in the bricks and the cement. Mental labour is less tangible. The effort happens in the brain. On a sheet of architectural design, a wall is just

The skill of making sales.

As freelancers and entrepreneurs, we invest a lot in becoming skilled at what we do, whether it is art, design, coding or anything else. But few of us intentionally invest in becoming skilled at marketing and sales. If we don't consider sales as a key component of our

The impatience of forward motion.

When there is a way forward, what is the point of waiting and not going through the door?

A better boss.

A better boss makes space for her team to take ownership and make strategic decisions. A better boss ensures there is enough high quality work for the team to feel engaged. A better boss makes time for them to learn skills and become better. A better boss doesn't

People who fill your cup.

There are people who fill your cup by their mere presence, the connection, love and warmth they exude when you are in their company. Finding such people and nurturing your relationship with them is one of the best gift you can give to yourself. And it's worth letting

What are you selling?

If you think you are not into sales, maybe you need to think deeply about what you do. At the end, all we are doing is selling. But, what is it that we are selling? You may say that you sell a software, or a service, or an experience or

The independent project.

Is your project independent? Does it work without you? If not, when can it become independent? What needs to happen to make it independent? A hobby is different from a project. We should be clear which one we are working on.

Fear in fancy shoes.

Perfectionism is nothing but fear in fancy shoes. It stops us from shipping, from putting ourselves on the hook, from doing what needs to be done. It makes us feel that we are doing that not out of fear but rather out of care. Because we want everything to be

Hustle doesn’t compound over time.

Hustling or working hard is a symptom of linear thinking. Compounding, on the other hand, relies of assets and systemic advantages, and mostly gives returns passively. A day trader is hustling, trying to make a buck with every movement of the stock, while successful investors invest for decades and don’

Low battery notification.

When our phone gives us a low battery notification, we become conscious of how we use it and we know that we need to plug it in soon. Our body also gives us similar notifications. But, in the prevalent hustle culture, we have learned to ignore these signs: low attention,

No one owes you anything.

No one owes us anything. Or, if they do, it’s in our interest to act as if they don’t. ~ Seth Godin, The Practice When we choose to show up generously in the world, we are not playing a reciprocity game, a quid pro quo game. We are in

Doing their best.

Everyone is trying to do their best, with what they have, the resources, the skills, and especially the story that they are telling themselves. What we can do is to do our best to change the story that helps us show up as our best selves. Working on your own

Systemic advantage.

If you setup an autopay where $100 from your account goes into a compounding fund automatically, you will keep building an asset effortlessly. Most of our thinking is linear. Most of our training is linear. We study for an exam and then we forget what we studied. We work on

Elegant hustle.

Elegant hustle is an oxymoron. Either you are aligned with an effortless strategy, or you are not. You can’t hustle your way into elegance. Elegance is simplicity, efficiency, and effectiveness. It’s not only a solution that gets a result. It’s arguably a better solution—the least complex

Games people play.

People play different games, and some even play the same game with different rules. You can adapt and try to win their game, or you can choose whether it's a game worth playing and if there's a better game for you to play. It takes emotional

Does it fit the box?

If you want to send something through Fedex, it has to fit into the Fedex box. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t ship, at least not through Fedex. We have our own boxes, our own perceptual maps. Our brain perceives only the sensations (stimuli) that we are programmed to

Systemic advantage.

Systemic advantages compound. They get better over time, with every iteration. In contrast, linear systems stay as they are, irrespective of how much effort we put in them over time. Systemic advantage beats heroic effort over the long run, every time.

Emotional rest day.

Exerting your body physically, in the gym or otherwise, without taking sufficient rest is counter-productive. There's not much debate about it. What about emotional labour, though? Emotional fatigue is more challenging to acknowledge even though we can feel the signs. If we want, we can push through our

The minimum viable action step.

Something that can lead to the next version, the next iteration. Something that can be made better. Something that gets us from zero to one. The minimum viable action step takes us away from planning and perfectionism and puts us where we need to be to move forward.

Courage in many forms.

Some days, courage would take the form of shipping stuff that scares you, of raising your hand, of doing what you didn't think you can do. And on some days, courage might be just to let go and to get through the day. The latter might be more

Who else will be there?

That's what determines, for most of us, whether we will show up for the party or the conference or the meeting, especially when we have a choice. This also gives us agency as the impresario to design our projects with intention. People mostly seek affiliation and status more

See what you’ve never seen before.

When was the last time you did something for the first time? HT to Rosamund Zander for the game in Pathways to Possibility that inspired the title for this blog.