How To Enjoy The Process

When I go into a situation, I try to keep a mindset of baseline optimism.

• When starting the day: It’s going to be a good day.


• When meeting someone new: I’m going to like them.


• When trying something challenging: It’s going to work out.

Problems will inevitably arise and I’ll deal with them as the situation demands, but my preference is to assume I’m... See more

Once you choose a project, you are confined to a relatively narrow band of impact (

Figure 1

B); barring an unexpected surprise, the solution to a mediocre problem will have incremental impact, whereas solving an important problem will have greater impact. Even if you execute well, it is hard to make the solution to a middling problem interesting. In... See more

What I call temporal curiosity is the practice of actively directing our curiosity across time – past, present, future – to gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, others, and the world around us.

Past curiosity. Directing our curiosity towards the past can help us understand our origins and learn from history. By exploring past experiences from... See more

The most common disguises of procrastination

Learning, researching, organizing, and building systems are the most tempting forms of procrastination. You can tell yourself that you're "making progress" only to avoid the point where you need to make a decision on what to do next.

Even having to get feedback on every action you take is ultimately a form... See more

My entire philosophy of how I organize myself as a working painter can be summed up by something George Carlin said: “Just keep movin’ straight ahead. Every now and then you find yourself in a different place.”

You hear a lot in art school about how painters must continue to “grow” and “evolve”—but I think those are such bullshit words. There is... See more