In school, effort for the sake of effort gets rewarded.

After all, what's an honors course but an opportunity to do more work in order to prove that you're a person who is willing to do more work simply for the sake of doing more work?

And once you show yourself to be the kind of person who puts in effort for effort's sake, you get more opportunities to demonstrate your work ethic at ever higher levels.

Read More

You will never, ever be able to see your own face.

(Unless you’ve mastered astral projection, I guess.)

You can see a reflection of your face. You can see a reflection of a reflection of your face and see how you look to other people. You can see a photograph of your face. But your own eyes can’t perceive themselves. All they can do is get a glimpse of part of your nose, if it’s big enough. We can never truly see ourselves as others see us—or as we see others.

Read More

It is embarrassing to go back and listen to recordings of mastermind sessions I’ve been part of.

In a mastermind, a group of entrepreneurs takes turns being coached by each other. When it’s my turn to be coached, my current self cringes as I hear my past self blather on about my business and deflect useful ideas and feedback. It is so hard to believe that I couldn’t see in the moment that I was doing this.

Read More

When I was in my early twenties, I loved a succession of musical artists that I had only discovered through nerdy magazines.

I loved music that I had heard about from friends, too. And music I found about from the hipsters who worked at the record stores I frequented. But my appetite for new music could never be sated. I was always looking for more. Whenever I traveled, I was on a quest. Then, the expanding Internet made my job easier, but endless.

Read More

Parkinson's law is the well-established idea that the time it takes to do a task expands to fit the time allotted for it.

We must be aware of this potential pitfall if we want to get more work done in a shorter period of time. 

However, this is awfully tricky to do. Because of the way our brains automate our habits to make us more efficient, we will just do what we’ve always done. Without conscious intervention, nothing changes. We have a set point that we return to when we’re not actively pushing against it. To make the shift to do things differently and overcome this set point requires us to see what we don’t see, a skill that usually requires the help of a trusted teacher or coach.

Read More