Yesterday, I stumbled upon a picture of me, writing, nine years ago. I looked at the photograph, then my surroundings. I was in the exact same spot I had been back then: Sitting on the couch, legs extended, with a cup of coffee next to me and a laptop on my lap.

Sure, it was a different city. A different couch. A different apartment, in whom I’m living with a different person. But the basics? They’ve stayed the same. I don’t need to sit in a fancy coffee shop to write. Or an office. I don’t need a breathtaking ocean view or a height-adjustable desk. I just need the basics.

Chances are, whatever your work, you do, too. Especially when times are tough, it’s tempting to want to change everything, but actually, the basics are the source of comfort you need. It’s much more reassuring to remember that the fundamentals still work a decade later than to go on a bold campaign trying to champion new habits, unsure any of them will stick.

The comfort zone is where work gets done—and comfort feels effortless when you stick to the basics. Don’t forget them.

I savor my espressos more than my regular cups of coffee. Why? Because it’s a smaller cup.

For one, if there’s less to drink, every sip matters more. I pay attention every time I swallow. But a smaller cup also makes the whole experience more fragile. I can fit the entire cup into my hand. It feels vulnerable. Worth protecting.

A lot can get lost in a big cup. Especially time. In a small one, you see everything that lies ahead. It’s almost as if you can look straight at its bottom. The end is always near. So let’s make it count!

The same applies to smaller portions all around. Of food. Of leisure. Of spending. Buying a $2,000 handbag rarely feels more special than finding a unique pouch at a thrift shop for $20.

That’s the problem with pleasure: It never lasts regardless. So you might as well use smaller cups.

A good writer will use an image you’re familiar with to get you to feel a certain way. A great writer will do the same, except she will use the picture you already know as a metaphor for something else.

In The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway demonstrates both the strength and aimlessness of his post-WWI generation, often at the same time. The friend group around Jake Barnes, consisting of Robert Cohn, Bill Gorton, Mike Campbell, and Lady Brett Ashley, travels from Paris to Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls. As at least three of the four men are in love with Brett, she makes for the emotional dynamite in the gang, and sure enough, things rarely fail to get awkward when she enters the room.

During one of many alcohol-infused lunches, a drunk Mike—Brett’s current elected suitor—verbally attacks Robert, who went on a steamy vacation with Brett before, for now following her around like a lapdog. The situation escalates and stops just short of a fist fight, yet everyone finds themselves at the same table again for dinner. Ugh, just imagining the thickness of the air makes me shudder.

To his surprise as much as everyone else’s, narrator Jake notes that dinner went better than expected:

“Brett wore a black, sleeveless evening dress. She looked quite beautiful. Mike acted as though nothing had happened. I had to go up and bring Robert Cohn down. He was reserved and formal, and his face was still taut and sallow, but he cheered up finally. […] Bill was very funny. So was Michael. They were good together.”

This is where a good writer would stop. We’ve all sat through awkward dinners. We all know that conflicting mix of feelings. But Hemingway continues and, with just four more sentences, reminds us why we still read his work today:

“It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.”

When I read these lines, I instantly saw it: Hemingway in uniform, sitting around a fire with his comrades. The whole company has just had their first enemy encounter. So far, they’ve gotten away with a scare but their lives and limbs intact, but in secret, they all know it won’t last. Discussion topics turn trivial, there’s laughter and canned beans, and before long, everyone’s asleep—but tomorrow’s another day of war, and no one knows who’ll be alive by the end of it.

It only took four sentences to add this second, much deeper layer to my reaction to Hemingway’s writing. The scene would have been fine without it—but great artists don’t stop at “fine.” It is exactly this kind of attention to detail that separates them from the good. Now, the emotional turmoil of the dinner is much richer, and I’ll likely remember both images for a long time.

Look at your work. Find the line where you reach “fine.” Then, cross it and don’t look back. Choose quality, make art.

Getting rewarded for good work is like pushing a button and then waiting for your results to come—except with this button, you really have to push. You’ll huff and puff and press and strain, and eventually, it gives way and clicks into place. Then, you wait.

You wait, wait, and wait some more. Then, you get bored. “Where are my rewards?” To pass the time, you go and find another button, and the cycle starts anew.

By the time you get your rewards from the first button, chances are, you’ve pressed 17 other buttons hence. Sometimes, three of them send you a prize at the same time. It feels like a sudden windfall, but actually, you did push all those buttons. It just took some of them longer to react than others.

Ship good work, and wait. Rest, restart, and ship some more. Spend most of your waiting time shipping, and not only will you never be bored, you’ll also redeem your karma points as fast as karma will allow it.

My girlfriend loves rollercoasters. I don’t. I don’t mind them, but I have both a limited appetite and capacity for going sideways at 100 kilometers an hour. Sooner or later, I will tap out.

Naturally, on our first theme park date, we saved the one with the looping for last. We had just shared a portion of salmon tagliatelle, and I was about to make a two-hour drive to get us home. Needless to say, at this point, riding another rollercoaster, especially one I’d never ridden before, wasn’t the first thing on my list. But we got a quick-access slot via the park’s app, and so we went.

When I stepped up to the gate, I wasn’t terrified but definitely nervous. Then, I saw them: kids. There was one more group going ahead of us, and the first three rows of two were all taken by humans no older than twelve. The youngest was probably six—and in the very front row, of course.

While we were quickly stuffing our sunglasses and wallets and could-fall-off items of all kinds into our bag, they were sitting there, wearing their glasses, using their phones, chatting with each other as if they were hanging out in a café overlooking the Seine instead of dangling in a plastic seat about to accelerate violently to highway speed in the next 25 seconds. “Damn!” I thought. “These kids are fearless!”

Caught between “How inspiring!” and “If these little gremlins can do it, so can I!” I remembered: Actually, most kids are fearless, and, once upon a time, so was I. It was easy to get on after that, and, as it turned out, that rollercoaster wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was less intense than the one we had ridden earlier in the day, which I knew from way back when and remembered as being “pretty chill,” but that’s a story for another day.

As long as there are kids sitting in the front row, the train is headed in the right direction—and it’s not too late for you to reawaken your inner pioneer.

I’ve been writing about self-improvement for a decade. People don’t like this term. “Self-improvement.” Especially the people running the platforms where one might share their writing. I’m not sure why, but there seems to be an actual disdain for the topic, at least under its most common moniker.

Perhaps it’s because “self-improvement” sounds egoistic. As if the people reading self-improvement stories only care about themselves and their own advancement. Maybe it’s because the word has come to be associated with all kinds of fake gurus, grifters, and scamming trying to extract many dollars for little to no value in exchange, and platforms don’t want their readers exposed to such threats.

Whatever the case, self-improvement is often muted or even absent where other topics shine in their full glory, from business to finance to relationships, when, in fact, self-improvement affects our potential to do well in all of those things. On Medium, self-improvement articles are subject to much scrutiny. When they ran their own publications years ago, Forge, the one dedicated to the topic, launched later than other verticals and somewhat reluctantly, but it ended up being a huge hit. Substack still does not have a self-improvement category on its page where you can explore all kinds of topics. I told them about this five years ago. It’s still not there. There are pages for Philosophy, Wellness, and dozens of other subjects—but not self-improvement.

The thing about self-improvement is that…the people want to know. They love learning how to be more productive, how to communicate better, how to put themselves first, discover their own traits and abilities, and become better people for the ones they love—and why shouldn’t they? It’s a noble and worthy goal, and it deserves better treatment from the media.

You can ignore a hot topic, even pretend it doesn’t matter, but that won’t make it go away. It’ll just make it go elsewhere. So why reject something when you can rebrand it?

Years ago, Medium introduced a “Self” category. Slight change in terminology, big change in perception. “Self” sounds more wholesome. More like “wellbeing.” When it’s about the self, an article could be about self-awareness, self-care, or self-esteem. It feels like an umbrella term that sits above “self-improvement” when, actually, it’s basically the same. That was a brilliant idea, and it helped give the topic a better standing on the platform. But, as always, more work needs to be done.

Every week, people around the world lose millions of dollars to financial scams, yet “personal finance” is more than alive and well in all major media outlets. Why is that? It’s because we don’t let a few bad actors keep us from learning more about a topic that so intimately affects us all: money. Why can’t we do the same with self-improvement? Because after all, one of the few things affecting us even more personally than money is our relationship with ourselves.

When your work forces you to handle an issue you don’t like, before you reject it, ask: “Can I rebrand this? What if I call it a project instead of a problem? What if I call it the ‘Help-Mike-Initiative’ instead of ‘the quarterly budget?'”

Language can solve more challenges than you think. Use it.

In an old Simpsons episode, Springfield’s citizens compete in a film competition. The resident business magnate, Mr. Burns, submits a terrible entry but finds other ways to convince the jury. When prompted by a fellow judge as to why he voted for Burns’ movie, comedian Krusty the Clown says: “Let’s just say it moved me…TO A BIGGER HOUSE!” Immediately, Krusty catches himself: “Oops, I said the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet.”

What makes for a great moment of TV is often awkward in real life. When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave a talk to Stanford students, he encouraged them to make TikTok clones using generative AI in case the US bans it—and then stealing all the existing content off the platform. He, too, said the quiet part out loud: “If it took off, then you’d hire a whole bunch of lawyers to go clean the mess up,” and “if nobody uses your product, it doesn’t matter that you stole all the content.” Wow!

The only time saying the quiet part out loud works? When it’s done with intention. Like when NYU professor Scott Galloway used the incredible far-reaching stage of a TED talk not to present himself as an expert but to tell the audience that America is waging a war on its young people, who earn less than past generations, pay more for college, and will never be able to afford a home.

Watch for the people who are saying the quiet part out loud. Was that a slip-up or a rare chance to reflect? Respect the ones who dare to speak up—and remember when it’s your turn.

At the fair, you might get three balls to knock down six cans. If you’re lucky and the vendor likes you, they may give you another toss for free. Woo! That’s a 33% increase in odds. Naturally, you gladly take it and try again. Will that extra throw get you the big panda? Who knows, but it’s worth the shot!

The internet has brought a lot of struggles to our work, but say what you will: Extra throws are always free. The problem is we don’t see them as such.

Whatever you post on LinkedIn, your blog, or Youtube generally stays there forever. It’s as if the can toss vendor had an eternal leaderboard with everyone’s performances right next to his stall. Would you go for your fourth round if you saw your name at the bottom three times in a row already? Maybe not. After all, “how would that look?” Actually, only slightly worse than before, even if you lose again. But publicity always ups the stakes—at least in our perception.

The internet, however, is not a crowded stall at a country fair. It’s not 17 curious bystanders whose eyes you must escape. In a sea of infinite information and connections, you’re basically invisible. You’re lucky if anyone sees anything that you publish, let alone remembers when you try again.

In ten years of writing online, I can’t remember a single instance of someone criticizing me for reposting the same stuff or putting a new spin on an old piece. If anything, people were grateful. “Oh, I missed this the first time. Thanks for sharing it again!”

Delete things. Rework old articles. Post the same thing again with different timing. Change the intro, the ending, or all of it. You have unlimited throws. Use them.

The closer you get to a deadline, the harder it is to resist its pressure. When you only have a day left to submit the final specs, report, or draft, panic can seem like the only option. But actually, even with 15 minutes left on the clock, you can still choose calm.

You can choose to let the deadline be just another minute on the clock. In many cases, you can let it come and go without serious consequences. But even if the deadline itself isn’t voluntary, running around like a headless chicken definitely is—and you may as well decide not to do it.

This very blog has seen plenty a time crunch. When you do something every day, perfection quickly flies out the window. On particularly time-constrained days, it’s hard to trust that the words will flow within the next ten minutes. Still, I sit there, and I choose to stare at a blank screen until the right idea finds me. The better I can resist panic, the quicker it arrives.

Don’t let time bully you. Not even when the stakes are high. Especially then. Let deadlines inspire you instead of intimidate you, and remember that when it comes to existential matters, most of them make little more than a whooshing sound as they go by.

At first, I was grumpy when they changed my train to one that leaves eight minutes earlier, but really, they did me a favor. As a result, instead of plain fields, we’re passing bridges, lush vegetation, and smooth waters.

We’re driving along a calm river, and besides making for a perfect mirror surface in which you can spot birds, water plants, and tree trunks, it’s just mesmerizing to look ahead and try to guess where it bends next.

It would have been easy to miss it, all of this. I’m glad I looked up from my screen.

Different routes, different views. Whether you chose the detour or not, make sure you’re there to see where it takes you.