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Category: Thinking Clearly

Life Drinking

Published on February 28, 2023

When outlining the tasks of your day—identify how many you’re doing for others vs how many you’re doing for yourself.

A day spent only doing tasks for others will leave you empty.

A day spent only doing tasks for yourself will leave you wastefully overflowing.

Like a cup you pour your favorite drink into on a scorching hot day, you want to carefully fill it up first… and then carefully pour out from it second.

Maintaining a mindful balance of both actions—which hold equal importance—is how we quench the thirst of our lives.

P.s. I also published: 34 Will Smith Quotes from Will on Hustle, Happiness, and Love.

Relaxed Confidence

Published on February 20, 2023

When you learn to relax inside tense moments with other people, you allow yourself to notice things you’d otherwise miss.

Things like ulterior motives (what’s the real driver behind the actions), underlying beliefs (what’s being said that’s usually being protected by formality), hidden character traits (what’s different in people’s actions when tension is present)—all while keeping a heightened sense of awareness of the environment you’re in.

Letting tension tense you up is a mistake.

When you find yourself in a tense environment, practice relaxing by slowing your breathing, dropping your shoulders, relaxing your facial muscles and tongue, and pausing before responding—right to the point where the silence is starting to feel awkward.

Then, respond with clarity; respond with patience; respond with a more complete understanding of the situation—respond with a relaxed confidence that the best leaders and speakers do when inside some of the most tense moments fathomable.

P.s. What To Do When The “Weight Of The World” Is On Your Shoulders.

Mind Weight

Published on February 19, 2023

Thoughts drain energy like movement drains energy.

Anyone who has sat at a desk for an entire day knows. You could have not gotten up once—not have spent a single calorie from physical movement—and still finished feeling like you unloaded an entire house’s worth of furniture from a moving truck that day—by yourself.

Which is simply to say: if your thoughts are rushing, bustling, and heavy—you’re going to tire more quickly.

And so if you want to do more inside your days—or maybe just do the things you’re doing better/ with more alertness and vitality—you have to learn to let go.

…Let go of the arguments you’re no longer having. Let go of the feelings of comparison that are making you feel like you’re not good enough. Let go of the self-limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs that do nothing but add weight to your mind.

In a world that’s obsessed with increasing energy levels through inputs… coffee… espressos… energy bars/ shots/ gummies/ etc… Maybe focusing on lighting your load is where you’ll actually get the greatest results… through meditation… journaling… therapeutic conversation… etc.

P.s. In case you missed it, you can read the best of what I posted to MoveMe Quotes last week, here.

Full Send

Published on February 17, 2023

One of the best feelings in the world is the one that immediately follows a 100%, fully committed effort.

I can’t think of a single time when I’ve regretted doing my absolute best.

But, I can think of countless times when I’ve regretted holding back.

Time-Set Your Desired Mind-Set

Published on February 14, 2023
  • At 8am: “Every day I exercise is a great day.”
  • At 9am: “I become what I consume.”
  • At 1pm: “Daily writing is one of the best things I’ve ever done for my mental health.”
  • At 4pm: “Teach like it’s the most important class you’ll ever teach—for someone, it might be.”
  • At 11pm: “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.”

It’s easy to get lost in the busyness of the day.

Setting a timer on your phone to ring when you’re supposed to be doing a high-priority task—and making the title of the timer a reminder of the “why” that stands behind the task—can help you cut through the noise and refocus your energy, in the moment, on what’s important.

Better that than laying your head down on the pillow at the end of the day, only to realize that it was all a blur and you were barely conscious for anything that happened since you left the pillow earlier that morning. Why rush so quickly through this already short enough life?!

Imagine waking up to a timer in the morning that said: “If I died yesterday, this would be the greatest gift imaginable.” Maybe that would reframe how you went about your day. Because here’s the thing: some did die yesterday. And here you are.

Why not do everything you could to fully embrace the moments bundled inside this gift you’ve been fortunate enough to receive?

P.s. Here are 25 way daily writing improved my life.

The Tasks That Touch Deep Work

Published on February 7, 2023

One of my most important daily tasks is writing.

Like most deep work tasks, writing is best done in longer, uninterrupted blocks of time vs smaller, interspersed blocks. 1 hour of uninterrupted writing, in my opinion, is NOT the same as four, 15 minute chunks of writing.

That said, one adjustment I’ve made to increase my writing time block is reschedule some of the tasks that touch my writing block.

During a typical 2 hour afternoon time block, for example, I would spend 40 minutes curating content ideas at the outset and 20 minutes meditating at the end—leaving 1 hour of writing time sandwiched in between (on a perfect, uninterrupted, no curve-balls kind of day).

Now I’m working to move my 40 minutes of curating into my morning routine and the meditation into my evening routine so that I can effectively have 2 hours of uninterrupted writing time in the afternoon.

Even if I don’t get this done perfectly, the big takeaway is this: if I move 10 minutes of curating to the morning and 10 minutes of meditating to the evening, that’s 20 minutes of writing—my top priority task each day—back that I otherwise would’ve lost and *wouldn’t* have been able to make up in the morning or evening.

Because, worth saying again, writing in a single 10 or 20 minute block of time is NOT the same as writing in a long block that’s extended by 10 or 20 minutes instead.

Whereas the other tasks I moved—curating and meditating—can be done just as well at any point throughout the day.

Worth considering for the deep work tasks in your day as well.