Here's the advice I wish I had heard when I started working on my book last year:
You're going to get depressed because your sense of self-competence is overly reliant on FAST RESULTS.
Writing newsletters, tweets, video scripts, those all earn you a sense of competence in… Show more
Here's the advice I wish I had heard when I started working on my book last year: You're going to get depressed because your sense of self-competence is overly reliant on FAST RESULTS. Writing newsletters, tweets, video scripts, those all earn you a sense of competence in… Show more
July 2023
If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.
Partly my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field. But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection. And one thing this exercise sh... See more
If you collected lists of techniques for doing great work in a lot of different fields, what would the intersection look like? I decided to find out by making it.
Partly my goal was to create a guide that could be used by someone working in any field. But I was also curious about the shape of the intersection. And one thing this exercise sh... See more
How to Do Great Work
Maybe you don't really want to do it at all, but just think you ought to want to do it, so you're using "productivity" to try to force the missing desire into being. Or perhaps you think you need a flawless record of achievement in order to justify your existence on the planet – and if the stakes are that high, clearly you can't afford to put a foo... See more
Oliver Burkeman • Why you should aim to do new habits 'dailyish'
When you work on something significant, something significant is working on you. I’ve yet to meet someone who describes their happiest or most fulfilling moments as being hurried or rushed.
Brad Stulberg • The Practice of Groundedness
“I think writers’ expectations of these two kinds of progress are usually backwards: They believe their talent is basically static, and progress will come mostly in the form of their talent being gradually more recognized. But the healthier and more realistic way to think about your career is that your writing will probably get better over time — i... See more
You should be far more concerned with your current trajectory than with your current results...Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.3
Celine Nguyen • in praise of writing on the internet
learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job of a creative person. If you want to be an artist of any sort, it seemed to me, then handling your frustration is a fundamental aspect of the work—perhaps the single most fundamental aspect of the work. Frustration is not an interruption of your process; frustration is th
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