Ship something. Keep moving. Energy needs movement. Whether it is within atoms, or in space, things keep moving. Nothing is stationary. Nothing is settled. Change is the only constant. Get busy living or get busy dying. - Shawshank Redemption.
Putting yourself out there. Whether it is our career, health, relationship or anything else, the more we put ourselves out there, the more likely it is that we make progress toward our goals. It's not easy. It's definitely not comfortable. But it's the path that leads to the
Chaos, not order. When we seek to pursue our creative ambition, we seek order, clarity, and certainty. But that's exactly what we are not going to get. Instead, we will get chaos, excitement, surprise, delight and whatnot. Possibility is very different from certainty. You can have one or the other, not
Pursuing multiple goals. It's tempting to strive to reach multiple goals at the same time. It gives us the illusion of progress. The most likely symptom of this is that we are busy all the time. But this is hardly effective. In terms of input, there is a lot of work.
Get something done. Ugly done is better than perfect in progress. When we take action, when we make something live, we put ourselves on the hook. There is tremendous learning there. The more we do that, the better things become. It's easy to fall into the trap of planning and organising
Eventually. Eventually is not a time-frame. It’s a way to procrastinate on your dreams, on your ambitions. When you put your desires on an eventually timeline, you are not taking action. “I will do it, eventually.” is a safe place to hide.
Letting go of the past. Seth Godin talks about letting go of sunk costs: things we have invested time, money or energy in the past that do not serve us in the future. This is one of the most difficult skills to build. If you had to choose from scratch, which habits, people and projects
Getting to a calm mind. No child has ever stopped crying when someone shouts "Stop Crying" to them. Similarly, our mind never calms down when we order it to calm down. Similar to a child, we have to let the mind be, we have to ask it what's wrong, we have
5 blogs a day. Seth Godin told Tim Ferriss in a podcast interview that he writes 5 blogs every day and publishes one. For him, writing the blog is not a chore, it's a privilege. A privilege to observe something interesting and to put that in words. It also creates a mindset
Starting with the problem. As entrepreneurs, many times, we are in search of problems that can be solved by the solution we have in our minds. In the process, we end up wishfully inventing problems that might or might not exist. The challenge, instead, is to leave the comfort zone and talk to people.
Actions and decisions. Decisions happen when we act, when we take some action which makes the situation irreversible or at least inconvenient to go back. Without action, there is no decision. If you can't decide on something, the way forward is to identify the action that needs to be taken.
A dollar saved is a dollar saved, not a dollar earned. Saving is a finite game. There is an upper cap on how much you can save. Earning, on the other hand, is infinite in nature. It's not a zero sum game. The more value you create, the more you can earn. More than the act itself, it'
Routines and repetition. Typically, we end up making hundreds of decisions every day, most of which do not make our life better: what we'll eat (at least 3 times a day), what we wear and so on. The irony is that no matter how many times we repeat them, they persist.
What are we having for dinner? You can ask this. Or you can ask, "How can I double my income in six months?" You can't ask both.
What gets done matters. There can be a hundred things we can do, big or small, meaningful or meaningless, selfish or generous. We can spend hours and days debating these, but the only things that matter are the ones that get done, that get shipped. Steven Pressfield talks about Resistance being the highest when
People like us. We are all on different journeys in different spheres of life. Sometimes these overlap, many times they don't. We expect our close ones, our friends and family, to empathise and relate to our project, our challenges, or our wins. But, unless they are enrolled in a similar journey,
Showing up as our most ambitious self. We usually don't. We are mostly afraid to do so. To show up with our ambition without any caveats, without smoothening the edges, without defending our dreams. There is magic in being unashamedly, unabashedly your best self, your most ambitious self. Maybe, we can start by writing it
One push-up a day. Tim Ferriss once asked Matt Mullenweg (Founder, CEO of Automattic (The company that made and runs WordPress) about his workout habits. He replied that his goal is to do one push-up every day. No matter how tired or busy he is, he can get that done. Most days, he gets
The power of one. Focus. Select. What's the one over-arching goal that you can be committed towards? Everything else becomes secondary.
What we want and what we need to do. Goal: Lose weight [Book reference: The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss] 1. Eat a low-carb diet. 2. Maintain a food log. 3. Workout/walk at least 20 min 3-times a week. 4. Sleep at least 8 hours a day. 5. Drink at least 3 litres of water every day. 6.
Getting back on the road. When we are driving from one city to another, there are many distractions along the way: restaurants, billboards and whatnot. Sometimes, we take a break from the journey and spend some time with these distractions. But we are quite cognizant of the fact that we need to get back on
Action steps, not goals. It's easy to become obsessed with goals: lose x kg weight, earn y amount of money, get a score or rank of z. But that doesn't really help us in reaching the goal, does it? Rather, it creates a kind of vacuum with the present situation
What happens when the amygdala is in charge? I have written about the amygdala earlier. But it's too important to leave it at that. The amygdala is a small almond size part of the brain which is the centre for emotions, particularly fear. Specifically, the amygdala is concerned with 2 things: that you stay alive and
Deadlines The SpaceX spaceship Falcon which took the astronauts to the International Space Station had to be launched at the exact millisecond for the mission to be successful. That's what a deadline is supposed to be like. The launch date. No earlier, no sooner. As creatives, setting deadlines and
Finding the neutral gear. In the hustle culture, especially made popular in the last decade, we are expected to be speeding all the time, pushing ourselves to do just a little bit more. This keeps taking us closer to the last straw that broke the camel's back. Instead, if we invest in
