Figuring out what you want

One reason is that much of the time, we don’t actually know what we want. Checking out our options lets us figure out what matters and what doesn’t to us. Most of us start dating anybody who will go out with us; we might have a list of “requirements”, but over time as we meet people, we figure out what we actually need, and what is more of a... See more

How to look is to go back to Explore in 3X: Explore/Expand/Extract. The rules of exploration are that it’s a numbers game. More experiments, more value. Try a little bit of a lot of things. One of those experiments will have dramatically more impact than anything to date. Follow up that.

Think about what you’re struggling with and ask yourself:

1. Why am I not excellent at this? I’m using “excellent” on purpose. NBA All-Star Chris Bosh once told me, “We don't work to be average.” It’s true—we work to be excellent. Because excellence gives us purpose and excitement. And excellence is worth sharing. Other people deserve our... See more

“Ok, but what if you think more concretely about what you want to do? Like, what are the precise day-to-day activities that make you feel alive and proud of yourself?”

Regarding music, the activities he actually likes are (1) coming up with new songs and (2) performing live.

“What would be the most effective way to design your life so that you get to... See more

“For anyone,” Amy Krouse Rosenthal once wrote, “trying to discern what to do with their life:

PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO.

That’s pretty much all the info you need.”

When I was first thinking about leaving my physics PhD program, I didn’t know what to do with my life. I was talking to a friend about the possibility of taking a few months off to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. He said that was the stupidest idea he’d ever heard of, and explained that I’d never figure out what I wanted to do by... See more

“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.”

―

Joseph Campbell

You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one who does what you do.

I read this book when I was growing up. Pat Riley was invited to coach several basketball teams successfully and then became the general manager of the Miami Heat. He wrote a book in the 1990s called "The Winner Within," which is kind of cheesy, but... See more