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Getting Serious
The great Japanese Train Trip of 2013 is over, and everyone has left Tokyo besides Sebastian and myself. Making up for the week of decreased productivity, we meet in an office in Shibuya every day and work. During meals and in between blocks of time, we talk about life and work and habits. Getting Serious…
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What I Do When I’m Stuck
A quick little post today on my routine that I go through when I’m stuck. Let’s say that I’m programming and I’m hitting a wall, maybe I’m getting frustrated that I can’t figure something out, and I feel like I’m spinning my wheels. Despite being a supreme genius of the universe, this happens to me…
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The Upside to being Stubborn
Back when I used to help Mystery run workshops, we had a division of labor. He did most of the teaching, I did most of the organizing, and he made most of the decisions. Our program was three nights in the field: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and two days of seminar. At one point Mystery…
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The Possibility of Being a Horrific Failure
You can’t control definitively whether you’ll succeed or fail, but you do get to set the parameters. The way I live my life, I will either be an big success or a huge failure. There are a variety of potential paths ahead of me, and zero of them lead to comfortable success or minor failure.…
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The Opportunity Cost of Working Hard
When you’re working, you’re not out seeing a new city. You’re stuck in a room, probably at a computer, churning away. When you’re working, you’re not out meeting new people. You’re stuck with your coworkers, or possibly no one at all. When you’re working, you’re not out in the sun enjoying the weather and the…
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First Temptation
The coefficient of friction is a number that describes the friction between two objects. A combination like rubber on concrete would have a really high coefficient of friction, whereas a greased baby on a slip-n-slide would have a really low coefficient of friction. There’s more to it, though– every pair of objects has two coefficients…
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The Jagged Upwards Line
I like the Bell Curve. It’s one of those universal principles that can be applied in millions of different ways throughout your life to help make sense of things. Along with the bell curve, I think there’s another graph we should all internalize and use to understand life: the jagged upwards line. Just as the…
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What You Are, What You Do
You know when I was the most productive? The day before I started writing about how productive I was. You know when I was the least productive? About a week after that. You know where I am now? Still trying to get back to the pinnacle. What went wrong? I started to believe not that…
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The Combo
I’m pretty good at a lot of things. I’m a good programmer, a good blogger, a good writer, a good poker player and so on. Am I one of the BEST programmers in the world? Nope, not even close. Best bloggers in the world? Again, no. Writer? Not within miles of it. Poker player? Middling.…
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“Total Focus; Total Enjoyment” by Tynan
I’m thrilled that Tynan is coming to you with two things — first, he’s offering a breakthrough session through GiveGetWin. It’s geared around doing more of the kind of excellent work you want to do, becoming more internally focused with your emotions, having a more enjoyable life, building great habits, and producing a lot of value…
