I’m not going to lie to you… 2022 was a fucking hard year. It was my second full year of building a film and television writing business in Hollywood with my wife, and it was a year that kept on asking us: “are you sure you want to do this…?? Are you really SURE!?” That’s why I’m calling 2022 the “Year of Perseverance.”
Read MoreBuilding a business or product is a process of iteration. You create something, test it in the real world, get feedback, iterate based on that feedback, test it again, and so on until you have something that works. And the hardest part of this process isn’t the initial creating (that’s the most fun!). It’s interpreting and then implementing feedback from the real world. Because this isn’t an exact science. As Naval Ravikant says, if you took all the advice from everyone in the world, it would all cancel out to zero. You alone must decide what feedback to use and what to ignore. So here are some ways to help you take constructive feedback and use it to make your work better.
Read MoreNo one cares about what you’re doing at much as you do. While your project - whether it’s a software product, novel, graphic art, screenplay, piece of code - whatever - is the most important thing in your life, as soon as you send it out into the world, it becomes the 10-20th most important thing to the person you sent it to. This is why, even if your work is obviously good, you must market it aggressively.
Read MoreEverything you desire creates a fear of not getting it. The same is true with wanting to “win” or find “success.” You want to be successful so badly that the fear of failing actually hurts your chances of succeeding. That’s the paradox of success. To win big, you have to let go of the outcome.
Read MoreMost people never think about designing their lifestyle. So, society designs it for them based on the incentives of those with the most power: corporations and governments. Where does that leave the mass majority of us? Living for the evenings and weekends, spending our money on cheap dopamine, and forgoing what actually makes us feel alive. And we live this life because we settle for it. You get only what you settle for.
Read MoreAnyone can read a book about a subject and apply what they learn. But that isn’t going to give you the success of the true masters in the field. To master something, you can’t just learn it. You have to practice it with your natural instincts guiding the way.
Read MoreIt feels good to collect intellectual prizes. When you finish a book, bookmark a Twitter thread, or watch a YouTube video, you feel like you’ve accomplished something. And you have. But the danger is that you keep collecting these intellectual prizes at the expense of building something - at the expense of creativity. Learning is great. But doing is better.
Read MoreWhere you focus your time, so goes your life. And one of the big decisions you have to make is whether to go really deep into one topic / subject / skill / profession or to jump around and take shallow slices from various domains instead. Should you specialize or diversify?
Read MoreEveryone wants to be lucky, but few know specifically what kind of luck they are after. There are actually four different kinds of luck. Some luck you have no control over… but others you can influence with your actions. If you want to get rich, you need to learn to capture luck instead of waiting around for it.
Read MoreYou are weird. That’s not an insult - it’s the best compliment! Because you have something strange and exciting to offer the world. You just have to embrace your strangeness and use it to fuel your creativity. The last thing we need is more of the same. We don’t need more sequels, reboots, and repetitive sludge. We need you to lean into your “strange” and create whatever it is that keeps you up at night. Embrace what’s weird about you. The world needs it.
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