One hour a day. That's how you get started. That's how you achieve your goals. Fix a time. Fix a place. Set a timer. Then, no matter what, spend one hour a day on the goal you want to achieve.
The ghost behind the curtain. Fear is the real enemy. It stops us from doing things we want to do. It stops us from living the life we want to live. It stops us from being our best selves. The only counter to fear is taking action. Once we take action, once we remove the
Those who show up. Those who show up, face rejection, face ridicule, face criticism. But... they are the ones who make things happen. They make things better by making better things.
Doing nothing. Doing nothing is different than trying to do a lot of things and getting nothing done. Doing nothing means that you are creating space, that you are trying to be mindful about what you do, that you are not just being busy for the heck of being busy. It'
We need more impresarios. We need people who take initiative, who raise their hand up, who connect, coordinate and lead without anyone asking them to. We need people who put themselves on the hook, who take responsibility and who bring about change. We need people who don't wait, who are not afraid
Bet on yourself. And keep betting. Don't play safe. Don't sell yourself short. There would be people who can't afford you. And that's okay. You are not for them. Do your best work. And charge accordingly.
Time Casinos. Casinos are designed to make people addicted. You never start in a casino by saying that you would gamble most of what you have. They tempt you to incrementally keep putting in more money until they have taken everything they can take from you. There are apps, now, that do
Action is the antidote to anxiety. Anxiety shows up in many forms and one of the forms it takes is that of decision-making or, in particular, the illusion of decision-making. We become busy choosing this path or the other and feel as if everything will start falling into place once we take the all-
Driving to a city. That's how goals are achieved. That's how situations are resolved. You need to pick the road that leads to the destination and keep driving until you reach there. You need to get out of the comfort zone. And you need to stick to the road. Along
Cash-flow. Many times we feel that the need to generate cash-flow is a burden; that it is something that makes our work unnecessarily more difficult. We wish to be in a position where we could do our work for free without needing to worry about the money. But money makes
10,000 iterations. You have most likely already done 10,000 iterations of something that you can build your career on. If you like doing it and people pay for it, there's nothing like it. Keep compounding. If you don't like doing it or people don't pay
It doesn't need to be hard. We are ingrained with the doctrine of hard work since school. If you are not working hard, or worse, if you enjoying your work, you are not doing enough, you are doing something wrong. The martyr in us wants to celebrate the struggle, the loneliness, and the tough times. And
First, write. Then, edit. And finally, ship. There are 3 phases to any task: Writing, Editing, and Shipping. We tend to procrastinate when we try to do all three at the same time. The three stages need different areas of our brain to work and hence need to be done separately. The writing phase or thrashing (as
What do you do? No, not your designation. Or your company. No, not that. What do you actually do? What change do you bring? And for whom? And if I may go a bit further, what change do you want to bring? And who do you want to serve? Are these the same? And
Distractions and displacement activities. They seem harmless to begin with. We might even feel that we have earned them. But when they start extending into our prime work time, when they affect our work schedule, they do more than simply distract. They take our focus away from our work and make it hard to
Achieving goals. Select one goal. Identify the action steps that lead to that goal. Take the action steps. Repeat.
Tackling fear. Fear is like the warning light on your car dashboard. Apart from telling you that something is wrong and needs attention, it doesn't help much. When we focus too much on fear, we become paralysed. When we keep ignoring the flashing light, things keep getting worse. The only
Where are your customers? And if you aren't there, where are you exactly? Nothing else matters. Not investors, not networking, not anything else. You need to be where your customers are, understanding their needs and building products to fulfil those needs. That's it. That's what an entrepreneur does.
Trust Your Self. There's hardly anything to be gained from doubt in creative work. It only slows down the work or makes us do sheepish work. It doesn't help us or the people we are doing the work for. What helps is showing up as your best self, your
Neither too high, nor too low. As professional creatives, we have to be consistent with our work. And the biggest challenge in being consistent is how to handle our emotions. We generally focus on handling emotions coming out of rejection: when our project doesn't work the way we want it to or when we
Your best work is the one only you can do. Yes, there are job descriptions on spec, and yes, we have been trained to saw off our edges to fit into them. And yes, we might even be congratulated when we get "selected' in such a generic role. But soon our individuality will feel suffocated, the same as
For granted. The human mind, by default, focusses on what we don't have or where we lost. It doesn't spend much attention on the wins we have earned. It's good to look forward and focus on what you want next or where you are going towards,
Spaceship or traffic? You choose. Just don't expect that you'd reach the moon while stuck driving in traffic. PS. #700
The belly of the beast. Steven Pressfield introduces the belly of the beast in his book Do the Work. When we are making progress towards our goals, when we are taking action and moving forward, when we are finally feeling that we are getting somewhere, we get struck by lightning. It happens with every creative
Hard-found resources. Here are the select most effective resources that I have found over the last 10 years that have helped me level up as a creative. I wish I could have known about them when I started. Lesser known books and other learning resources: 1. This is Marketing by Seth Godin
