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“No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility.
Be careful what (and who) you say yes to. It will shape your day, your career, your family, your life.”
Today I’m focusing on why you say yes to things you don’t want to do.
There are a lot of reasons people say yes to things they don’t want to do. …
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.”
Are you the kind of person who gets a high from cancelled plans? Yeah, me too. You also say ‘sorry’ a lot when it isn’t your fault, right?
Problem is, getting excited about cancelled…
Working alone means you inevitably find a millionty zillion other things to do than the one thing you’re meant to be doing; especially on a big job you’ve been given lots of time to do. Also when you have a tonne of different things to do and you don’t know which one to start.
1. Make a really cool excuse for not doing the thing you’re meant to be doing. Impress yourself with how cool you are.
2. Use the trick I’ve found works 100% of the millionty zillion times I’ve done it:
You have a bunch of things that…
5 years ago, my friend Naomi Brockwell and I collaborated on a children's book about Bitcoin for young kids. It explains cryptocurrency in a very simple and understandable way through the story of a young schoolboy who gets bullied on his way to school. You can buy it on Amazon or Apple Books.
Here’s a little teaser video about the book:
(I don’t work for MUD or anything. I just like the idea and it’s giving me exactly what it said it would.)
Mud Water. It sounds revolting. Whomever came up with the name needs a hard slap across the face with a sack of Matcha, but they’re definitely on to something.
The point at which Mud water (or MUD\WTR as it’s known) slid into my DMs, was the exact same point at which I’d just consumed my fifth doppio espresso for the day. It wasn’t pretty. I was a jittery, caffeine-addled sleepless mess.
The caffeine spiral happened after returning from…
Every day for the past 13 years I’ve kept a digital diary of what I did that day. It’s part daily review, part ‘separating the days for each other’, part written memory to aid my faulty in-built one. It sends me an email asking, “What did you do today?” I reply. It goes into a secure cloud-based platform and gets stored. (I used to use OhLife.com, but now I use Maildiary.net)
It’s nothing fancy — I don’t go into detail about my feelings unless someone died, or I got a cartoon published in the New Yorker, or I get the…
“You can’t really hear yourself until you’re able to turn down the volume on everyone else.”
~ Cal Newport
In writing about an article by Arthur C. Brooks about Beethoven’s deafness, Cal Newport expounds on the vital importance of blocking out the noise of the crowds in order to hear your own voice.
The TL;DR of the article is that once Beethoven had gone completely deaf, his work became more original and innovative. It is surmised that this was due to his inability to be influenced by prevailing compositional fashions. …
December was an eventful month in an eventful, horizonless year, so you can be forgiven for not catching the best show on television amid the fray!
Luckily for you, I’ve strung together something of a ‘best bits’ compilation for you to take a look at before you dive whisk-first into the series.
Buddy VS. Christmas was so much fun to shoot. I was hosting and judging alongside Courtney Quinn (@ColorMeCourtney) and haven’t eaten so many baked goods in my life. It’s a miracle my pants fit by week 4.
Between the Broadway set-designers, Glass-blowers, Lego Masters, and Animatronic puppet-masters…