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.