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How To Invest In Real Estate While Writing Poetry: The BRRRR Method

One of the gifts that I got was the ability to stay positive. I am grateful to my parents, my wife, and my genes (and anyone else responsible too). It is such a superpower. I don’t just mean optimism. I mean saying nice things about people. I mean keeping a smile on your face. I […]

Define, Refine, Automate, Delegate

Back when I wrote about my wishlist for Drafts 5.0, I wanted to have a custom syntax for the editor in Drafts. At the time, this was based on my usage of other text editing apps, and I wanted a the…

How did the debate over commercial radio reflect American attitudes toward technological change in the 1920s?

A reader recently pointed me toward a fascinating post on Kevin Kelly’s CT2 blog. It concerned the fan mail received by the famed science fiction author Robert Heinlein. Unable to keep up with the deluge of incoming correspondence, Heinlein devised a form letter (pictured above), which included responses to twenty-one common questions and requests. These canned […]

One needs an Arbitrary Stupid Goal: A goal that isn’t too important makes you live in the moment, and still gives you a driving force.

Content that converts must first persuade, so content marketers would do well to learn from professional persuaders: lawyers.

Have you ever noticed that nearly all relatable founders have a compelling backstory? It's commonly referred to as a "founder story" and it's the narrative of how a startup company came to be. The story often helps build deep brand loyalty among the company's user base...

The World War II fighter pilot who sold 250 million copies of children’s books

A bit of inspiration (and some hopefully actionable advice) for folks who are still working at day jobs.

In this article, I equate the limited supply of Bitcoin, to the limited supply of land. Let’s look at the numbers to see how they compare.

I once asked Jerry Seinfeld about the Seinfeld Technique, the amazing productivity secret that supposedly explains his prolific joke-writing and consequent global success. It goes like this: every day that you manage to spend at least some time on your most important creative work, you mark a big red X on your calendar. The goal is not to break the chain of Xs. It turned out he'd suggested it, once, to some guy in a comedy club, then largely forgotten all about it. "It's so dumb it doesn't even seem to be worth talking about," he told me. "If you're a runner and you want to be a better runner, you say, well, I'll run every day, and mark an X on the calendar every day I run. I can't believe this was useful information to anybody! … Really? Are there people who think 'I'll just sit around and do absolutely nothing, and somehow the work will get done'?" I was struck by this exchange, because in productivity-world, the Seinfeld Technique has come to mean "work on what matters most to you, every single day, without fail." But to Seinfeld himself it mainly just seemed to mean that you have to put in effort, repeatedly, over the long haul. No wonder it didn't strike him as a particularly astounding system. In fact, I've come to believe that the every-single-day version of this advice (which novelists are especially guilty of dispensing) is actively terrible. You can guess why: an every-single-day rule is so rigid, so intolerant of the vagaries of life, that you'll inevitably soon fall off the wagon. And once that's happened, you lose all motivation to continue – so you end up doing less, in aggregate, than if you hadn't been quite so exacting in your demands. Instead, I'm a proponent of Dan Harris's excellent alternative, offered in the context of developing a meditation practice, but relevant to many other important goals in life: aim to do it dailyish. If you're prone to making yourself miserable by holding yourself to unmeetable standards, like me, "dailyish" probably sounds a bit self-indulgent. But it's the opposite – because it involves surrendering the thrilling fantasy of yet-to-be-achieved perfection in favour of the uncomfortable experience of making concrete progress, here and now. Besides, it isn't synonymous with "just do it as often as you can"; deep down, you know that if you never average more than a day or two per week on your novel/fitness plan/meditation practice/side business/whatever, then you won't acquire the momentum to move forward. "Dailyish" involves applying more pressure to yourself than that. But (crucial distinction coming up!) it's a matter of pressure rather than of forcing. The appeal behind much productivity advice, I think, is the bewitching idea that there might be a technique or set of techniques that would force accomplishment to occur, making it automatic and inevitable. But there isn't – and in any case the yearning for such techniques usually arises from some buried insecurity or other psychological agenda. Maybe you don't know how to do the work in question, and you're hoping relentless effort might serve as a substitute for that knowledge. 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 foot wrong. "Dailyish", on the other hand? I'm not sure I quite have the words for this, but something about "dailyish" shifts the focus away from your particular smorgasbord of psychological problems back to the thing itself – to the creation you're seeking to bring into existence, whether that's a piece of writing or work of art, a happy family, healthier body, meditation habit, or anything else. It's a reminder that in some fundamental way, real productivity – provided you're working on something worth producing to begin with – isn't about you. It's about what's being produced. What matters, in the end, is what gets created, not whether the person doing the creating has an impeccable record of red Xs. Did anyone ever really think Seinfeld owes his success to a productivity technique? Clearly, he owes it to talent, perhaps also to luck – and then, on top of that, to showing up and doing the work, more days than not. So, yes, holding yourself to a more flexible standard, such as "dailyish", is more forgiving than the alternative. But it's not solely a matter of being kinder to yourself. Crucially, it's also about getting you – with all your weird hang-ups and neuroses and ulterior agendas and other psychological nonsense – out of accomplishment's way. • For an entire philosophy of creativity based on the idea of getting yourself out of the way of the creative process, see Robert Fritz's book The Path of Least Resistance, which (I just realised!) partly inspired this post. • I'd love to hear from you – just hit reply. (I read all messages, and try to respond, but not always in a timely fashion: sorry!) If you enjoyed this email, you'd be doing me a big favour by forwarding it to someone else who might like it, or mentioning it wherever you emit opinions online; the "View in a browser" link above will take you to a web version. And if you got this from a friend and would like to subscribe yourself, please do so here. 540 President St, Brooklyn, NY 11215, United States

We all want a big audience — except for the people who have one. They want a bigger audience. That desire— whether we acknowledge it or not — colors what we create, how we create it, and how we promote it. It influences our decisions and combines with a mistaken belief that social media makes it “easy” to attract...

Most people, and most businesses, have no idea what their north star is. They are often guided by short-term outcomes that fail to transcend

If you want to fall asleep faster, reduce stress, and boost your mood, join us as we Read

The sitcom star shares the secret of his comedy – and what he can tell about you from your driving – with Oliver Burkeman

Editor: When software developer Brad Isaac told us he had productivity advice from Jerry Seinfeld, we couldn't turn down the chance to hear more. Read on for the whole story from Brad.

How to iterate your way to quality

As a creator, your fans have different willingness to pay. In this post, I’ll describe how you can use the creator demand curve to maximize your earnings.

Instead of trying to be fully "authentic" online, play up certain aspects of your personality. Lean into the best of what's already there.

The personal website of author Neal Stephenson, unless it's been hacked.

I found this letter in a folder of old correspondence from my days when I was editing at the Whole Earth Catalog. It is from the science fiction master Robert Heinlein. Heinlein engineered his own nerdy solution to a problem

In some cultures, kids roll their eyes when asked to do chores. In others, they'll pitch in without even being asked. Researchers have identified two key practices to raise helpful children.

issue no. 0011

More than ten, actually. Millions of books will be published this year and for good reason. People rarely regret the effort. Everyone has their own, but here are some of the reasons to get you star…

Matt D’Avella on creator burnout and building an audience for the long run

This is the (new) monthly series where I update this public journal about the various goals I'm working towards.