Month: January 2024

“This person lives in a bubble,” we say. Usually with a bit of disdain. Echo chambers, social spheres, living in one’s own world — these phrases suggest naiveté, bias, and a disconnect from reality. Sometimes, that’s exactly what they lead to, but what if, every once in a while, it’s also exactly what we need?

When I’m sick in bed with my nose blocked and my head ringing, the music coming out of my headphones sounds dampened. Filtered. As if the songs had to pass through a layer of cotton before making it into my ears. It’s not what I’m used to, but it’s interesting. I can notice different aspects of the music than I usually do. The bubble shifts my focus, and when I re-emerge, I’ve learned something new.

Illness is a particular kind of bubble, but of course, the cotton padding extends well beyond one’s ears. When you don’t feel well, it’s easier to shut out thoughts about work, push to-do lists and social obligations aside, and focus solely on recovery. That, too, comes with lessons. Perhaps some of the things you deemed important before your ailment turn out to be hardly relevant at all. Maybe, you’ll never return to them and be better off for it.

Not all bubbles are bad bubbles. The right escape taken at the right time — and for the right duration — can make us a better player at the game we were perhaps unsure we should play. Wrap yourself in cotton when you need to — just make sure you come back enlightened to wherever you’re truly needed.

…is waking up. No matter how bad the story gets, eventually, it ends. Of course, while we’re in it, we can’t see that end coming. We don’t know when, if ever, it will arrive. Very rarely, however, we’ll realize we’re in a dream, and when we do, usually, our sudden return to our bed is not far away.

Even while we’re awake, it’s easy to forget that the end is always coming — but life is not a dream! Time keeps flowing, and everything in it only gets a finite amount of passage on this river. Things always end, and if sometimes, that’s the only good part about them, that’s okay.

If what you’re going through seems designed particularly to annoy you, it might be training. Hold on. Wait. Endure. And remember that even the worst nightmare is followed by waking up.

When you’re walking on ice, every next step counts. You must focus on the ground right in front of you. Where will you tread? Which spot will provide secure footing? Allow your eyes to drift too far ahead, perhaps even marvel at the horizon, and whoops! Here comes the slip. You might not fall, but the message is clear: Let’s take this one step at a time.

Life has more room to gaze into the distance, to make plans and paint a big picture, but day-to-day, it’s much like walking on ice: What most needs your attention is right in front of you. Give it the concentration it deserves, and once you’re standing firm, look for the next place to leave a footprint.

During your 15-minute breakfast, just have breakfast. Don’t break out your calendar or open your inbox. Those can be their own steps, and they’ll offer plenty of ground for you to cover. Half an hour of writing can be half an hour of only writing. Usually, that’s when it’s most effective. Take the day like a frozen lake: step by step, task by task, one tiny but focused push after another.

Every step matters. Try too hard to get ahead, and you’ll only fall behind.

When I first discovered prolific novelist Cai Emmons’ work on Medium, I didn’t know that my hitting the “Follow” button would last less than two weeks. On January 2nd, 2023, Cai ended her life via Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, a little less than two years after receiving a terminal ALS diagnosis, at 71 years old.

What struck me most about her last essays and words was the clarity and nonchalance with which she wrote them. It was as if dying was just another to-do item on her list, and not even a dreaded one. She fully acknowledged that death would untimely interrupt her career that was just picking up, but she refused to let that interruption keep her from what she was here to do — sharing her thoughts and learnings from the previous week, just like any other.

“I have no idea what awaits me,” Cai wrote on her last day on earth, “my only regret is that I won’t be able to share it with you.” When I cleared out my “Following” list the other day, I realized as much — where Cai has gone, I can no longer follow.

Death seems pretty definitive, but if you think about it, life offers little difference to this follow/can’t-follow dynamic. We all do a finite number of things while we’re alive, and for all of them, we hope to bring a certain number of people along. Sometimes, everyone we ask to do so will follow, and sometimes, we have to venture out all on our own. Arguably, the latter times might be the most interesting — because once we return, we bring home a story. An anecdote. A souvenir. A weekly blog post, perhaps.

Don’t fret about the journeys on which no one can follow you. They’re a chance to be generous. To bring back a story. Share your gifts with us as long as you can, and if one day, you must take a trip you might not come back from — be it moving to another country, leaving a company you love, or, yes, dying with dignity — you’ll be able to do so without regrets. Lost is not gone, after all, and wherever you are leaving, your spirit might linger a lot longer there than you think.

And if you’re one of the bereft ones, remember that it pays to never stop paying attention: “I have a feeling that I’ll be returning to haunt a number of people,” Cai said. “In a good way.” She sure paid me a visit today — and so will you to whoever you’ll leave behind. I guess despite no longer following, I shall remember her last words a little while more, and perhaps so should anyone finding themselves forced to let go: “Be on the lookout for me!”

One of the first lessons I’m re-learning after deciding to make 2024 “The Year of No More Bullshit” is that it’s better to do nothing than something that makes no sense. Not just sometimes, but often. Almost always, in fact.

To someone with plenty of motivation, doing is the easy part. Busy is the default, and there’s always another project to complete, another person to meet, another hobby to pursue, game to play, or cool event to organize. But if you only take breaks when you need them, you’ll have no time to ask whether what you’re up to actually adds up. Usually, that’s exactly what we want: to escape the emptiness rather than face it. Why sit and wonder when you can just keep going?

The problem with not looking where you’re driving is that if not off a cliff, at the very least, you’ll drive yourself mad or into the ground. The alternative is tolerating nothingness. Which one is easier? That’s hard to say. But sooner or later, everyone gets tired of being tired. Perhaps dropping the external fight for an internal one is worth it. Sit. Meditate. Learn patience. Filter everything through your excellent bullshit radar, and whatever smells funny, let it float right by — like a piece of driftwood on the river of time.

It can be hard for me to sit and watch. To complete only two tasks in a day and accept that it was still a productive one. To watch a movie without taking notes or thinking about some work issue. Occasionally, however, I receive a reminder that it only takes a few good moments per year to make the progress you’d like to make. Some amount of daily increment on the right priorities, sure, but beyond that, more carefully chosen, deliberate bursts of effort than a constant stream of wasted busyness.

I’ve worked less since my traffic took a hit, but my revenue hasn’t moved all that much. I’ve had small investments made years ago blossom into good chunks of money much later. And sometimes, people message me out of the blue to compliment me on a piece I published years ago.

Doing more only wins when what you’re doing is essential to your mission. You’ll never be able to filter out all the noise, but if you’re unsure about a task’s purpose, chances are, it doesn’t have one. Choose nothing over nonsense, and learn to convert emptiness into inner peace. Whether you use the extra space for more reflection, family time, or simply to enjoy the moment, in the long run, we tend to regret running around more than sitting around — especially if the latter happens with the right people, and the former is done at the behest of the wrong ones.

The first installment in the Kingsman movie franchise more than earns its subtitle — “The Secret Service“ — via lots of spy action and cool gadgets, but its most honorable and indeed hidden service it performs for us, the watching public: Though Eggsy and his agent-friends are impeccably dressed at all times, they remind us that manners are what “maketh man,” not clothes.

In shifting our attention from one well-known idiom to another, the film teaches us a lesson we seem to keep forgetting: It’s not the outfit that matters, but what’s underneath.

Reader Sue, a Honolulu realtor now in her 70s, had to insist on this lesson many times throughout her life. From sewing her own clothes as a young agent — albeit a real estate rather than a secret one — to being scanned head to toe by local newspaper writers, one experience sticks out above all others.

When she was ten, Sue attended a military function with her parents. Literally there to shake hands with the bigwigs, one well-dressed woman asked her while doing so: “And who are you?” Sue gave the only answer she knew, which, to this day and forevermore, for everyone from Honolulu to Hiroshima, is the only answer that makes sense: “I’m me!”

You are neither your Gucci t-shirt nor your worn-out flip-flops. Be nice, shake hands, but never apologize for your uniqueness. That way, whenever someone asks you, “And who are you?” you’ll have something better to say than, “The guy in the tuxedo” — perhaps even a line as daring as “I’m me!”

If a steel sword is to exhibit the right balance between hardness and flexibility — to be well-tempered, as a blacksmith might call it — it must be heated to the right degree, then allowed to cool. Depending on the tool being made, the process might even be repeated multiple times. Crank up the temperature too much, and you’ve ruined your previous work. Heat it too little at the wrong end, and your sword might break upon first use.

The human body works in equally fickle ways. Walk outside when it’s -10 Celsius wearing only one glove, and even if just your right hand is freezing, you’ll shiver from head to toe. It only takes a single, ill-tempered part for the whole system to shut down — including your brain. Hold your icy hand under warm water, however, and within seconds, everything will recalibrate into equilibrium. This, too, is a process we must repeat many times.

Temperature is an underrated tool because we can’t see it, but if you’ve ever tried to sleep in a room that’s too hot or work in an office where your fingers are frozen to the keyboard, you’ve already witnessed its power to make or break our day. Stay well-temperatured, stay well-tempered. Adjust your clothes, drinks, and the thermostat, and you, too, shall maintain the right harmony between toughness and pliability.

If you’ve ever paid $10 for a bad drink at an overcrowded bar, you know there’s a difference between making something people want and making something people will buy. You’ll cough up the money because you’re already there, and so are your friends, but if there was a better or cheaper drink available, you’d choose either over what you’re currently stuck with.

If 90% of your customers are sourced from paid acquisition, you don’t have a business. You have a marketing machine. Would anyone buy your product if you didn’t bribe them? Will they return after you’ve done so? Turn off the money faucet on the front end, and you’ll quickly find out.

It’s easy to make something people will tolerate. Something agreeable, or at least not objectionable enough to cancel the subscription. “Look, dear investors! For every $1 you throw in, you’ll get $1.10 at the end. What an ingenious machine!”

Choosing to create value is ten times harder, but also ten times as magical when it works. Multiplying dollars is only fun for so long when, at the end of the day, you’re still playing a zero-sum game.

Don’t waste everyone’s time — including yours — just because everyone will tolerate having their time wasted up to a certain point. Give us what we really want. Chances are, it’s the very thing you want too, and that way, there’ll be far more winners than just your bank account.

You, like all of us, probably have a certain picture in mind — and yet, actually, there are no rules. Criminals can be pretty, and every dictator still has a mother. Oscar Pistorius is a Paralympics sprinting legend. He also shot his girlfriend dead. Did he do it on purpose? We might never know, but it’s important we allow ourselves to ask the question.

Jeremy Meeks is a committed felon who was convicted of gang violence and grand theft. He’s also rather good-looking. His mugshot went viral, and he emerged from prison with a million Instagram followers and a professional modeling contract. Can a person redeem themselves? Of course. But are fame and money the first two things we should hand someone who clearly has a lot to make up for? Another question worth asking.

When the author who made him famous, Ariadne Oliver, is the first to appear at yet another murder scene demanding Hercule Poirot’s legendary detective-skills, she finds herself at the end of the master’s piercing gaze. “Don’t you dare look at me like a murder suspect,” she says. “We’re old friends.” Rational as ever, Poirot only knows one response: “Every murderer is somebody’s old friend.”

Sometimes, things are exactly as they seem at first glance, and sometimes, they are so far from anything you could even have imagined, you’ll find it hard to blame yourself for misjudging them. The important part is to not give too much importance to the seeming. Let “seem” seem as it may. Watch, wait, and place a question in the middle of the room. You might have to stew in it for an hour or for a year, but eventually, the truth will emerge.

Appearances aren’t always deceiving, but don’t take everything your eyes — or any other sense, for that matter — transmit at face value. Not all gangsters have scars, and not all homeless people are alcoholics.

Open my to-do list at any given time, and you’ll likely find a hundred tasks, waiting to be completed. Sometimes, I knock out a good chunk in a week, but often, for every one I cross off, I add two more.

Usually, I’m quite enthusiastic about most items, and not just when I put them on the list. Some, of course, I wish I didn’t have to do at all, but by and large, I’m excited to make things, to complete projects, and to improve existing work for fans and readers.

Every now and then, however, I wake up, and my gut says: “No. Not today.” It might be because I’m ill. It might be because I just shipped a big project, and I need to inhale. After I posted my longest essay ever, I needed two full days of emptiness to recover. But sometimes, I don’t even know the reason. I just know I need a break — so I fire up the Nintendo Switch, let emails be emails, and watch the day unfold.

When you’re not motivated to do anything, the challenge is to find something inspiring. When you’re motivated to do everything, the trick is to not burn out — for regardless of how many activities you complete, you’ll never do more than scratch the surface of the endless lives you could possibly live.

It’s okay to take a break from infinity. Pause when you need it, not when it’s convenient, and sooner or later, your well will be refilled, more boxes will be checked, and the energy will flow again.