The decade of the freelancer. Technology has evolved. The next decade is going to be the decade of the professional freelancer. Not because of Uber or Upwork or Fiverr but because of tools like Zoom, Discourse and Basecamp and learning platforms like Akimbo, Creative Live and Masterclass. Seth and Tim Ferriss host their blogs on
Perspective. The brain perceives us in relation to something else. When it has to choose between a stranger and a friend, the friend becomes us and the stranger becomes the other. When it’s between the friend and ourselves, suddenly the same friend becomes the other. And when it comes between
Stay. Stay with this idea. The one you are working on. Yes, the other one seems tempting. Yes, this one doesn’t seem to work, at least for now. There is a time to pivot, but mostly it’s not when we believe it is. Change takes courage but staying also
Visual clutter. Are you unable to focus and get things done? Look around you. What do you see? How many things are there that you want to see? What all is there in your field of vision that is not put there with intention? Removing this clutter from your view, whether physical
One by one. Is the brain able to process more than one thing at a time? It definitely gives the illusion that it can. But choosing/deciding is not something the brain is good at. That’s the job of the gut. So, when the pre-frontal cortex is at loggerheads with the
Writing a blog. Seth Godin nudges everyone to start writing daily. I agree with him wholeheartedly. On a dark day, the one minor blog entry can help you feel good about yourself. Some days, you can go through what you wrote months ago, and seek wisdom. It is an asset that keeps giving
Breaking the mental barrier. Our mind finds solace in the status quo. We get used to our ‘condition’. To break that mental barrier, we need to take action contrary to it. Taking these actions is where the highest kind of courage is needed. If we want one status quo, I may very well choose
Embracing cyclicality. Nature has cyclicality built in. Day and night, summers and winters, life and death. As creatives we can also embrace the cyclicality of creative work. Sometimes, we need to leave the creative soil vacant so that it gets replenished. Shutting the office at 5, taking the weekend off, these are
What you seek... We complicate life unnecessarily. Yes, we want this and that and that too and this too. Yes, I understand that. But let’s talk about which one do you want first. And why. Let’s keep asking ‘why’, not because it’s a hack, but because it may bring us
A few kind words. A few kind words can change the world. At least for some one, at least for some time. It doesn’t take too much time or effort. It doesn’t take anything away from you. Rather, both the speaker and the listener feel good. Oxytocin (love, bonding) is released in
Pebbles in your shoes. Yes, you can walk with them. They are irritating, but you can manage. You are in a hurry, no? Let’s keep going. It’s easy to put off the pebbles for later… But try taking 2 minutes to take off the shoes and take the pebbles out. Not only
The ideal status quo. That’s what we are sold. Do this and life will be perfect. Whether it is a test, or a job, or a relationship, that’s what we are told. Get this thing done and then everything will be perfect. Yes, these things do significantly change our life, sometimes for
Showing up... again. That’s hard. Yes, it takes courage to show up the first time. But when you fall into the Resistance traps, when your streak gets broken, when all seems lost… Just to show up again. To write another blog. To raise your hand. That takes another kind of courage.
The deadline. There was a time when I hated the deadline. I despised it. Now, I don’t think I can survive without it. The deadline helps me publish this blog. The deadline helps me run my company. The deadline gets me to complete the course I sign up for. If I
The symptoms are all the same. Overwhelm. Guilt. Multi-tasking. Not feeling like I am doing enough. Unable to show up consistently. Distractions. When we allow the shallow mind to run our life, we all feel the same symptoms. The medicine, therefore, is also the same. Establish a ritual to access the deep mind on a
Priorities or priority. One word that I’d like to eliminate from my life is priorities. If I say priorities, I am not putting in the effort of identifying the priority among the priorities. Having priorities is a way of hiding, of escaping the hook. HT to Essentialism by Greg McKeown for the
Typing to decide. Most of the time we do not do the work because we don’t know what we want to work upon. Our mind makes us believe that there is no point sitting down to work if we are not clear. So, we start thinking and deciding and talking and so
Be stupid instead. It might be better to be stupid rather than smart. Smart people don’t take risks. They are too smart for that. But stupid people ask ‘What’s the harm in trying this out?’ They are not much concerned with ‘What will others say?’ They are just having fun, learning
Shaping up a project. [For subscribers: Please open the blog in a browser to see the images if they are not showing in the email] One of the best tools I have used for shipping projects is Basecamp. I want to mention two tools (or processes) they have taught me that I find extremely
Creature of habit. Repeat something, anything, enough times and you wouldn’t even realise how easy and automatic it becomes. Writing this blog is not a chore anymore, it’s a habit. To build a habit, you can start it with a streak of 5. Similarly, if you stop doing something for multiple
Evil inside. There is an evil inside humans. We are attracted towards the evils and the distractions. That’s the downward slope, the automatic path. Our struggle is to fight against the evil. The evil that starts with procrastination and eventually creates wars and genocides. The battle that you fight every day
It's not about time. How much time does making progress in any meaningful task take? Mostly very less compared to the time we spend worrying or stressing about that task. It’s not about time. It’s the fact that when Resistance forces us to say later, it creates the habit of later. That
Pit-stop. You can’t service a moving car. Even if the car is in a race where every micro-second matters. You can’t perform a surgery on a walking human. The human has to surrender for the surgeon to do the work. It makes sense for us to identify our
Holding onto hope. Sometimes that’s all that we can do. Sometimes that’s all that we need to do. Find hope within you and hold onto it.
Fear driven decision making. ‘If we stay here, we’ll be safe.’ Will we? For how long? A conversation we need to have. The constant tussle between fear and courage has kept our ancestors alive enough for us to interact through this blog. The physical fear of falling off a cliff kept us and
