“Instead of asking ourselves what we got done on a given day, perhaps we should be asking if our time was well spent.”
—Srinivas Rao
Category: VOCATION
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“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
―Mary Oliver -
“Your mood can affect your level of motivation, but never let it affect your discipline. Successful people know what they need to do and do it, regardless of how they feel. Don’t miss out on possible opportunities just because you have chosen to be overpowered by temporary feelings.”
—@emma_vogt -
Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.
—Mike Jeffries, Former CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch -
And here’s David McCullough:
There’s an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing. When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book. In time I began to understand that it’s when you start writing that you really find out what you don’t know and need to know.
START BEFORE YOU THINK YOU’RE READY -
Quiet your thoughts and listen to your feelings instead. Decision fatigue is exhausting because it’s a side effect of living inside your thoughts. Circular thoughts are caused by the deep-seated belief that there is ONE RIGHT ANSWER. You want to know the correct course of action. Naps, good or bad? Exercise, good or bad? Food, good or bad? Booze, good or bad? Every action is a binary moral toggle.
Feel your way forward instead. Sometimes a nap is delicious. Other times, a nap is a way to avoid exercise or work. Sometimes work is delicious. Sometimes not working is not only necessary but sublime. If you work too much when you’re really, truly not feeling it, that can slow your productivity down a lot. You rebel against your own edict.
Yesterday, I woke up at 2 am and walked 7 miles on my treadmill desk while writing a new chapter of my book. I took at nap at 11 am. The day before that, I walked 8 miles, worked 12 hours, and finished the draft of huge chapter of my book. I don’t think I’ve ever tried to write for that long before, but it just kept coming. The week before that, I had been struggling to even look at either my treadmill or my book, but my writing (and my entire body maybe?) fell into a hallucinatory wormhole and I went with it.
ASK MOLLY | Glory – Maybe you want some for yourself. -
it’s easy for a depressed person to look like he’s not working when just lying in bed can feel like work for him.
ASK MOLLY | Hungry! -
In your life, you will be evaluated on your output. Your boss will evaluate you on your output. If you’re a writer like me, the audience will evaluate you on your output.
But your input is just as important. If you don’t have good input, you cannot maintain good output.
The problem is no one manages your input. The boss never cares about your input. The boss doesn’t care about what books you read. Your boss doesn’t ask you what newspapers you read. The boss doesn’t ask you what movies you saw or what TV shows or what ideas you consume.
But I know for a fact I could not do what I do if I was not zealous in managing high-quality inputs into my mind every day of my life. That’s why I spend maybe two hours a day writing. I’m a writer. I spend two hours a day writing, but I spend three to four hours a day reading and two to three hours a day listening to music.
People think that that’s creating a problem in my schedule, but in fact, I say, “No, no, this is the reason why I’m able to do this. Because I have constant good-quality input.” That is the only reason why I can maintain the output.
—Ted Gioia
Your output depends on your input -
I tend not to think of myself as a writer primarily. It’s something that I do from time to time—well, I hate writing. I hate, hate, hate writing. The only thing I enjoy about the writing process is being done with it.
Brandy Jensen, On writing, giving advice, and understanding yourself -
Where do you do most of your writing? Do you have a space in your home?
Yeah. There’s a room that would be too cruel to be anyone’s bedroom, but it’s the perfect size for a desk. I’m a ridiculously self-disciplined person, so I’m not tempted to do other things. I actually get dressed to go to work every day—that makes me feel like I’m getting ready to work—and then I don’t leave the house all day.
Myla Goldberg on inviting criticism, redefining success, and how parenting enhances your art
SO GOOD QUOTES 