Procrastination

The limitations we’re trying to avoid when we engage in this self-defeating sort of procrastination frequently don’t have anything to do with how much we’ll be able to get done in the time available; usually, it’s a matter of worrying that we won’t have the talent to produce work of sufficient quality, or that others won’t respond to it as we’d

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Perfectionism rarely creates perfection. You procrastinate because you’re terrified of falling short. You abandon projects because they don’t live up to insurmountable standards. You spend more time frantically burying flaws than creating something authentic.

When I get nervous about a talk or new project at work, I remind myself that I’m nervous because I care. A friend gave me this advice and it always helps me reframe my nervousness into pushing throug

I've started to see imposter syndrome not as a personal failing but as a natural response to the gap between our interior lives and our exterior presentations. We all contain multitudes—contradictions, uncertainties, half-formed thoughts, questions we're embarrassed to ask. But the versions of ourselves we present to the world are necessarily... See more

Painter and visual artist Chuck Close on inspiration:

"The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are... See more

The Ju/’hoansi, for example, were often content to spontaneously take a day off from foraging simply because they didn’t feel like it. Even if they were hungry, they knew that putting off the food quest for a day would not have any serious ramifications. For farmers, by contrast, taking a day off just because they need a rest is rarely an option.

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