Emily

Don’t be a donkey

Life / /

A few years ago, I was chronically distracted. I won’t bore you with the details, but I remember having a list of all the things I wanted to do—earn my degree, start a blog, change careers, change myself, buy a house—and feeling completely overwhelmed because I thought I had to do all of them immediately. I was focusing on everything, so I wasn’t progressing in anything.

Then I read the advice Derek Sivers said he would give his 30-year-old self: Don’t be a donkey. I realized I didn’t have to (and couldn’t possibly) do everything at once. All I had to do was focus on one thing at a time.

In Tools of Titans he explains,

“Don’t be a donkey . . . I meet a lot of 30-year-olds who are trying to pursue many different directions at once, but not making progress in any, right? They get frustrated that the world wants them to pick one thing, because they want to do them all: ‘Why do I have to choose? I don’t know what to choose!’ But the problem is, if you’re thinking short-term, then [you act as though] if you don’t do them all this week, they won’t happen. The solution is to think long-term. To realize that you can do one of these things for a few years, and then do another one for a few years, and then another . . . don’t be a donkey. You can do everything you want to do. You just need foresight and patience.”

10 things I learned, found interesting, or used this month

Monthly Top 10 / /

1. We don’t procrastinate indiscriminately. Read my super short blog about this here.

2. How to guarantee you have a good day: do good, unselfish things.

3. Put each day up for review: “Anger, [or any vice], will abate and become more temperate if it knows that it must come before a judge every day.” -Seneca

4. More doubt and curiosity, less rigidity and certainty. “Cling to certainty, if it makes you feel better. Just be aware that what you’re clinging to is the opposite of life.” -Neil Strauss

5. It’s all temporary, no need to stress. “It would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress,” Marcus Aurelius said. “Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.”

6. The world paradoxically expands when you narrow your focus.

7. Reading and thinking are useless without application. This sounds obvious, but for someone like me who loves to read, I need a reminder that reading is for life, not the other way around. A reminder to take the best ideas from what I’ve read and use them—not mull them over endlessly in my head.

8. Have a schedule when you’re not busy. When you have a schedule for when you’re not busy, you don’t waste your free time trying to figure out what to do. Or worse, waste it on easy defaults like checking social media.

9. Develop pathological empathy for your audience. As Ann Handley talks about in Everybody Writes, you must have pathological empathy for your audience and users. Time is our most valuable non-renewable resource. We should be highly aware—pathologically empathetic—of our user’s time and attention. (An idea I use in my newsletters).

10. Keep your mind clear. In warfare, one side would overwhelm the other with information—trivial, anything—because it caused confusion. When we watch one TikTik video after another, view one status after another, read one headline after another…our minds become confused. Clear thinking goes out the window.

The greater the urge to procrastinate, the more important the task

Life / /

It’s human nature to procrastinate. But here’s the thing: we don’t procrastinate indiscriminately. We procrastinate doing the things that would have the biggest impact on our life. (That’s why we don’t procrastinate on things like checking our email or brushing our hair). When the urge to procrastinate is strongest, it’s usually a sign that it’s something we should lean into. 

Steven Pressfield calls this urge Resistance.

“Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to write my symphony.” Instead we say, ‘I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.’”

It’s important to note that Resistance is inside you. It has no power except for the power you give it. 

And there’s only one way to make it powerless: sit down, and do your work.

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