Imagine being a 7-year-old and waking up one morning to an empty house.
Your parents are gone. Nowhere to be found.
Sure, you’d fend for yourself for a while. But, eventually, you’d venture out to find them.
And some food.
Now, imagine being a 1-year-old dog in the same situation.
Nothing is wrong with you. You just got unlucky.
Surely, you’d be so grateful if someone would adopt you, right?
Right?
Intuition says you should give your haters something to try and win them over.
But that doesn’t work.
Instead, ask for a favor from a hater — something he’ll be compelled to do (for one reason or another).
His brain will force himself into thinking you are a friend (and not a foe).
Why?
Who does a favor for anyone but a friend?
Your best work is inspired by your travels.
It’s kinda like a bag of chips.
Snack on the same bag for long enough and eventually they’re gonna get stale.
If your back hurts, try sitting up straight.
Same recommendation if you’re:
It’s about the best cure-all, second to “drink more water.”
Sit up straight.
Posture, baby.
If you had a perfect body, would you weigh yourself every day?
If you had a massively popular blog, would you check your traffic stats every day?
If you had a consistently busy (and profitable) retail store, would you check sales totals every day?
No, no and no.
So while most of us aren’t quite there yet, why not act like we are by forgetting to check daily numbers?
When you’re struggling to find inspiration, motivation or purpose in your work, what do you do?
Wallow in your wandering spirits?
Or, do you find ways to inspire, motivate and deliver purpose to others around you?
Yup.
The latter is a win-win.
Great way to think about stuff.
You know, decluttering.
When then “Would You Miss It?” rule doesn’t really work, and the “Take a Picture” method doesn’t really apply, use the Utility Score approach.
On a scale of 1-10, how valuable is the thing in question to you at this very moment? Then, on a scale of 1-10, how valuable is that thing to someone else at this very moment?
If the value is greater to someone, give it away immediately.
Today, I can finally give away my old AV receiver that’s been sitting in a closet for months.
For those keeping score, that’s probably a net 9. Value of 10 for them, value of 1 for me.
What do you do when people think you take yourself too seriously?
Not sure what the answer is, alas.
But, when you wholeheartedly agree with “the people,” you end up publishing crazy shit like this.
Denying and embracing.
All at the same time.
For every 100 times you make a genuine, positive impact on someone’s life, how many times do you get any recognition?
So for every piece of recognition you got, multiply it by a hundred.
Because most people keep it to themselves.
And that’s okay.
You just gotta keep doin’ what you do.
Question 1:
Per day, how much time do you need on your phone to check social media?
That’s Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
10 minutes?
Not nearly enough.
30 minutes?
Well, that’s only ten minutes on each of my top three.
An hour?
Yeah, an hour should be enough.
Cool.
Question 2:
Per day, how much time do you need for exercise?
Think about your immediate reaction.
And realize…
Something is really fucked up about that.