(Significantly less than) 986 lessons I learned this month.
On August 14th, I wrote a piece titled: Today, I Write. It was about beginnings. It was about stepping into something new, even though I didn’t fully understand what that even meant.
I wrote about wanting to commit to something and see it through, even though in the past, I have been more interested in ideas than execution.
In that piece, I wrote about the fear of publishing my ideas, about the anxiety that comes from knowing that anyone can read what I’ve written.
Don’t read it. It’s a waste of your time.
But since then, a lot of what…
Over the last couple of years, I’ve been reading and researching a number of different topics, including AI, relationships, content creation, podcasting, email marketing, Twitter, Instagram, Medium, starting and building a small business, personal growth, self help, the job search, and personal finance.
More precisely, even rather than trying to succeed at each of those platforms and topics, I’ve been researching how to succeed at each of those things. This subtle shift has given me a huge breakthrough.
They’re all the same.
The topics are different in nearly every fathomable way. From growth on a social media platform to personal…
We made it.
2020 is in the past. It was, in a lot of ways, the hardest year of my life. There were lots of deaths, hardships, financial stress, relationships lost, and more low-level anxiety across the entire year than any before.
But we made it.
And 2021 may be no different. It’s going to be what we make it. The calendar saying January 1st, 2021 rather than December 31st, 2020 doesn’t solve racial issues. It doesn’t cure the pandemic. It doesn’t bring anyone back who was lost.
But we can learn. We can grow. …
I thought applying to jobs when my latest internship ended would help me stay active and land in a new job quickly. After all, I’ve never been sharper than I am today.
Instead, I rolled into job interviews sluggish and worn out. I wasn’t able to be prepared properly, and I couldn’t find energy or interest in nearly any position.
I would scroll LinkedIn Jobs and Indeed for hours on end, searching with different keywords and filters to find the perfect fit for me and my skillset.
But instead of finding something I wanted to be doing, I just got…
The rollercoaster of life is an adventure with ups and downs, twists and turns, feasts and famine.
The sweetness of new relationships and the pangs of heartbreaks that end them.
But through it all, life keeps powering through.
No matter what’s going on in this journey, we always are moving through life and powering forward — that’s the beauty of it all.
There are things many of us miss, though, when we are young and impressionable. These things are a part of our journey, and we may all find them eventually.
1. Calmness can lay great things to rest
In the hardships and the pain, a steady approach and a stable mind can put great hardships…
Don’t You Wish You Could Do What You Were Hired For?
Before getting into the practical takeaways of the book, it’s important to address the biggest complaint with Deep Work.
It’s not written for the real world. It’s written for academics and writers who can lock themselves away for hours on end, shut away from the world, and unreachable by any distraction. And there is no consequence.
It assumes that you are already an aficionado at your craft and that the only thing missing from your legendary productivity is time.
Sadly, most of us don’t get to live in that world and most of us aren’t in the top percentile of…
“The Obstacle Is The Way”
The blame game started as far back as anything can start. In the Christian story, the blame game began with the first two people, Adam and Eve.
You know the story, Eve took the fruit from the forbidden tree, ate of it, and passed it to Adam, who also ate. When Adam was confronted by God, he blamed Eve, who blamed the serpent who had tempted her.
Since the first people, humans have been shirking responsibility and complaining about the hand they were dealt, and some very rightfully.
2020 has rekindled that mentality in our society from the beginning of…
How Taking Ownership Will Save My Life
During the Iraq war, Jocko Willink led a team of Navy SEALs in the war-torn city of Ramadi, an epicenter of insurgence at the time. Early into the deployment, Jocko’s squad conducted a large operation with some other branches of the US military and some friendly Iraqi Army soldiers.
There were a lot of variables moving on the battlefield, and in the fog of war, a miscommunication led to a hellish battle of friendly fire between a squad from Jocko’s SEAL unit and one of the friendly Iraqi army units.
One Iraqi soldier was killed, and there were wounded and…
Young adulthood is one of the most turbulent times in a person’s life. If you’re anything like me, you no longer live with your parents, you’ve moved around a few times, and you’re figuring out where to settle and put down roots longer-term.
This is the time to be figuring out political beliefs more solidly, and it’s challenging to walk that journey when political identity formation is contrary to the beliefs you grew up in with your family or friends.
It’s the season to start the first stage of a career, whether that first stage includes secondary degrees, low-paying jobs…
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. — Lao Tzu
But instead, our journeys of a thousand miles begin with mapping out the path, preparing for the journey, and telling enough people about the journey that it doesn’t begin at all.
With so many stories on Medium and the self-help world focusing on goals and productivity, both of which I am guilty of myself, we often lose focus on what’s important.
We diversify and don’t put all of our eggs in one basket to make sure that no single task or goal could become our downfall…
