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What to Do When You Don’t Know What You Want
Everyone tells you to follow what you want, as if you’d been issued a list at birth. If you weren’t, here’s how to find out without waiting for a lightning bolt.
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If You Can’t Write It Down, You Haven’t Thought It Through
I used to believe I’d thought about a problem because I’d worried about it. Then I tried to write the problem down in one paragraph and discovered I didn’t actually know what it was.
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Write the Honest Email. Then Wait Twelve Hours.
The email you’re afraid to send is usually the one that fixes things. The trick isn’t courage. It’s writing it fully, sleeping on it, and then cutting everything that was really about you.
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Three Lines a Night: The Only Journal I’ve Kept for More Than a Month
Every journal I started with great intentions died by page nine. The one that’s lasted takes ninety seconds and asks three questions I can’t dodge.
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You Do Not Need More Time. You Need a Decision.
Most people who say they are short on time are actually short on a decision. The hours are there; they are being spent on not choosing.
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The Five-Year Test for Any Decision
One question has saved me from more bad choices than any amount of pros-and-cons lists. It takes ten seconds, and it works because it moves you out of the room you’re standing in.
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The Anti-Goal: What You Refuse to Become
Knowing what you want is useful. Knowing what you refuse to become is more so, because it filters every decision before ambition can distort it.
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The Cost of Almost: Half-Commitments and Why They Drain You
Sort-of doing five things costs more than fully doing two, and produces less. The half-commitment is the most expensive thing on your list.
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Discipline Is Remembering What You Want
Discipline is usually framed as force: making yourself do what you do not want. It is more accurately a memory problem, and it gets easier when you solve the right one.