Author: Nik

Writing books is about as solitary a job as one can find, and yet…

Psychologist Alfred Adler, one of the “three greats of the 20th century” next to Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, saw only three “life tasks,” as he called them, for each human being: tasks of work, tasks of friendship, and tasks of love. You might look at this trifecta and think, “Oh, sure, that makes sense. It is our relationships and our work that matter most,” but actually, Adler thought work, like the other two, is just another form of relationship.

You see, Adler also believed that “all problems are people problems.” Whatever our challenge might be, in one way or another, it would inevitably come back to our connection to other human beings. Someone who’s lonely is only lonely because they feel as if they don’t fit in with others — a group of friends, at work, or society at large. Addiction might be a way to rebel against one’s parents, and so on.

From this perspective, work is just a set of relationships with people you know a little (or a lot) less than your friends or your family.

Going back to writing books, on the surface, it seems like it’s the most solo gig there ever was, right? You’re sitting in a room, alone, trying to come up with words, alone, and then structuring it all in a way that makes sense, also alone. Forget editors, sources, or being a journalist. I’m talking about a hardcore self-publisher. Someone like Steve Scott, who, for a while, published a new, short book every month. What does that kind of work have to do with relationships? Actually, a whole lot — because at the end of the day, who are the books for? People.

As soon as I had finished my first blog post, I couldn’t wait to see what people might think. I showed it to my parents, my sister, and my friends. I posted it on Facebook and other social media. I’ve enjoyed writing from the first second I took it seriously, but from that same second, I also wrote so people might one day read my work. At first, I only had a tiny audience, but it was an audience nonetheless.

Today, a few hundred people read my work every day, but little has changed: I still write hoping more people will read my work, but I now also write so the people who already do may have something to read. I want people to say, “Oh, that’s a typical Nik post!” It’s the highest compliment.

In your work, the necessity of relationships might be more obvious than in mine, but the point is that, whichever relationships lie at its core, work has no purpose without its human element. Work is always for something — and, in turn, that something is always for people.

If all of our “life tasks” relate around people, and if work is nothing more than the tasks involving those with whom our ties are the loosest, that raises an important question: Do you really want to spend more time working? In essence, whenever you are working, you are working on your relationships with the people you might have the weakest connection with.

In my case, most of the time, it is a connection with literal strangers. I don’t know most of my readers. I know some, and they’re wonderful, but at the end of the day, I’m writing books for people halfway around the globe whom I’ll never meet, see, or hear from. There are also colleagues and peers, of course, some of which I’ve come to call friends, but none of whom are as important to me as my family.

Even if you’re very familiar with the people at work — after all, you spend close to a third of your time around them — chances are, you don’t dig as deep in your conversations with co-workers as you do with your best bud from high school or your wife. Whenever you choose to work more, to put in another hour, you are essentially prioritizing those people over the ones closer to your heart.

This isn’t to say that working more is always bad. It feels great to make something useful for others, and sometimes, especially the fact that those others are strangers adds to our sense of accomplishment. You can feel a sense of camaraderie with your co-workers, too, and some may even become friends. But it is worth reflecting on this dynamic.

All you have in life is relationships. Work is just one of three flavors — and most likely, it’s the least important kind.

You don’t have to do the steps in sequence to get the same result.

When you make carbonara, pouring in the cheese before the egg can be disastrous. It changes the consistency of the sauce. In life, changing it up may be the very thing allowing you to maintain consistency rather than destroy it.

In your daily routine, it sometimes pays to take out a step and do it later. I rarely work out early on weekends. The mornings are my recovery time. Today, I looked into the mirror and saw it was time to shave. But I don’t have to do it before I shower. I can skip it in the morning, then use it as a quick afternoon break.

In cooking, accounting, and a dance choreography, too much leeway compromises the results. Most elsewhere, flexibility is our very source of stability.

Don’t feel bad for going off script. Rewrite it as you need to keep walking your path.

This is my blog. I can write whatever I want. Any word, any phrase, any sentence. Any sentence! Picture this freedom. Try to imagine it for a second. I can’t. Can you? It’s too big! Where do I even begin imagining? The vastness of it is overwhelming.

On some days, the freedom of what to write about drives me mad. The choice is a great burden. How do I pick among thousands of topics and trillions of word combinations? At the same time, it is only from this chaos that beauty can emerge. If I pick the right words, if I make the letters sing, it’s a feat for the ages. “How did he wrestle those lines from infinite possibility?” Usually, I’m the one least inclined to have an answer.

Beauty is what happens when we look square at the madness and bring something back. Without madness, there can be no beauty — and vice versa.

You don’t have to wear old rags and live in the woods to be a great painter, but if you want the potential for beauty, you must also accept the potential for madness. Will the painting you imagine make it onto the canvas? Or will your mind distract you too much with its constantly moving images?

Every day could be the day a sprinter breaks her personal record. It could also be the day she trips, falls, and will never run again. Where there’s beauty, there’s madness.

Humans aren’t built to run organizations with thousands of people. Does the CEO go with this proposal or that, this schedule or that one, her gut or her trusted advisors? She must get thousands of tiny decisions right in sequence, but if she does, the resulting product will be astonishing.

Chaos, chance, and choice all start with the same two letters. Coincidence? Maybe they’re the madness side of the equation. The oppressors trying to get the best of us. But a chance can also be a break. A gap in the chaos. An opportunity.

Composure, conviction, and compassion. Those also start with the same two letters. Are they the stewards of beauty? We need to be patient, passionate, and forgiving. That’s how we fly through the hole in the chaos, first to steal from it and then to return home safely with our loot.

When you see beauty, remember that, at some point, a sacrifice was made to attain it. And when you’re making beauty — and, every day, you are making beauty — don’t step too close to the madness.

A friend of mine does a lot of cycling. He recently did a long tour with two of his friends. Let’s call them Björn and Barbara. For some reason, Barbara was cycling as if the devil himself was chasing her. At one point, my friend caught up with her and asked: “What are you cycling away from?”

Barbara thought about his question for a second. There was a lot going on in her life. She was moving flats, had a busy job, and struggled with some health issues. But she didn’t feel unhappy.

Barbara relayed the question to Björn, who was even further ahead than she was. “Hey Björn, why are we cycling 200 kilometers in a day like madmen?” And Björn only said three words: “Because we can.”

You don’t need a reason for everything you do, and you especially don’t need a reason to do something great. What a magnificent achievement of the human body, to cover 200,000 meters in a day, using nothing but one’s legs and a simple device. How awe-inspiring that we can do that! So why wouldn’t we?

Later in the day, Björn elaborated on his stance: “We are free. We are here. We are awesome. We have the power to pull off this feat, and that’s why we’re doing it. To have fun. To enjoy the challenge. To remind ourselves that we can.”

“Because we can” is the best motivation there is. It is not clouded by incentives or worries or regret. It acknowledges the infinite genius, inspiration, and creativity of the human spirit. It reminds us to be playful, to stay curious, and to not prematurely give up on things that have never been tried.

The next time you catch yourself chasing the wind, don’t doubt your intentions. You’re not doing it for some ulterior motive. You’re doing it because you can — and that’s the best part about it.

We use the word “weekend” all the time, but we rarely think about its transformative power. Every seven days something is ending — and it brings with it the magic of a new beginning.

But that’s where the problem starts, isn’t it? When does the old week end and the new one begin? Is it Friday? Saturday? Sunday? When you launch a WordPress website, there’s a setting for you to choose between new weeks starting on either Sunday or Monday. In the US, many people would say Sunday. In Europe, it’s mostly Monday.

In Jewish culture, each week’s resting day is the Sabbath, Saturday. In Germany, church services are held on Sunday, which is also when shops are closed. Other geographies seem to never break business hours at all.

As a self-employed creative, my weekends often look rather similar to my weekdays. Lately, I’ve been so busy, I’ve mostly turned them into “days for admin tasks with slightly shorter to-do lists.” I might change the order of my daily routine a bit or play some video games, but that’s not enough to mark a real break from what happens Monday through Friday — a real weekend that can symbol a new beginning.

In the end, I don’t think it matters much which day we think comes first or which one we pick to deviate from our usual patterns. But the weekly ritual of deliberately soldering one week shut and pausing to form a conscious plan for the next? That feels rather important.

When our weekends merge quietly into the blur of repetitive weekdays, that’s when months seem to suddenly turn into years. “Where did the last half year go?” Well, you never paused! You rushed through it without looking at your map. But did you end up at the right destination?

To my defense, I do love “the magic of Monday.” That’s when I feel I get a fresh start. I might think about the coming week a bit on Sunday night, but Monday is when the next chapter truly begins. Monday always seems full of potential. How far will you go in the next five days? What surprises will you look back on by Friday? It’s not perfect, and I need to work on my recovery, but at least it allows me to acknowledge the door-like mechanic that lies somewhere between each week and the next.

Whether you throw your laptop into a corner and hit a big pause button for 48 hours or practice a quiet tea ritual on Sunday afternoon, ask yourself: What does it take for a week to end for me? What will help me feel satisfied about the seven days that have passed, and what must I do to feel properly prepared for the seven next ones coming?

Life is never short on second chances. Each year, 52 of them are printed right onto our calendars. In reality, we get thousands more, but it still won’t hurt to turn each weekend into whatever springboard it needs to be. Let’s make sure our endings enable the right beginnings.

Sometimes, I message other creators out of the blue. Maybe I’ve watched their Youtube channel for a while or just stumbled across their blog and ended up reading six posts in a row. My emails to those people usually go like this:

“Heyo! I’m Nik, a writer from Germany. Just found your blog and wanted to say hi. I loved the story about your grandma’s weirdly delicious recipes. It reminded me of my grandma’s odd but tasty meals. She has one where she stuffs a chicken with knödel and then you eat it with apple mousse. Sounds wrong, but works. Anyway, just happy I found your work. Thank you for doing it. Keep at it!”

It’s the equivalent of someone you’re not entirely sure you even know coming at you on the street with open arms, yelling: “There you are! SO nice to finally meet you!” The initial hug might be awkward, but usually, if you realize the person’s genuine, you might strike up a meaningful connection.

Most people, however, are not like that. Not in their private life and especially not in business. I think that’s sad. I don’t want to walk on egg shells wherever I go. I want to be myself everywhere, not just at home.

If a potential friend, business partner, or peer creative thinks me talking about my grandma’s stuffing in my first email is a dealbreaker, then, actually, we both win: They don’t have to reply, and I don’t have to play some weird social game to try and get them to like me. We can either meet at a similar level of trust and open-mindedness or not at all.

Sometimes, people will send reserved, nondescript answers to my emails. “Thank you! It’s always nice to hear from fans.” Actually, it’s always sad when a fan showed the courage to reach out to you, and then you lumped them in with 10,000 other people and showed them that’s what you’re doing. On the other hand, I get it. People are busy. “Better to answer than not answer at all,” they might think. We’ve all gotten burned too, so it’s not everyone’s cup of tea to walk around like an open book.

The best connections often emerge when those people come around later. “When we first met, I thought you were a weirdo, but then I realized: This guy’s legit!” To the person who initially reached out, that’s both satisfying and heartwarming. They handed you a big trust advance, and though you were skeptical, you eventually returned the favor.

There’s a lesson in here about how to react when a big teddy bear stumbles into your life and knocks you over. You can catch them in your arms, take a careful step back, or turn around and run away. It takes courage to reciprocate an awkward hug, but when in doubt, a somber handshake at least keeps all doors into the future open.

The biggest takeaway, however, is not about what you do when someone super-authentic appears in your life. It’s about how you should walk down the street. Reservations are for restaurants. You can’t go through life holding back 50% all the time. The only thing that guarantees is regret.

Be the open book that gets others to break out of their shell. If we all overshare a little, being more honest will become the new norm. See the opportunity in every genuine interaction rather than the risk of exposing one of your quirks. We’re all special in our own ways, and life is about discovering those mutual idiosyncrasies, not hiding them.

The next time someone strikes you — with their work, their charm, or their curiosity — tell them exactly why you felt connected. It may not be the email they wanted, but beyond the chance of making a new friend, it might be the very message they need.

Christian Green was a contestant on the latest season of MasterChef. Hailing from New Orleans, Louisiana, the passionate chef made sure his southern roots showed in his food.

On his way to the finale, Christian cooked bourbon-glazed salmon, crusted corn chip snapper with beer chili sauce, and cajun-blackened pork chop. The meat. The spices. The condiments. It all tied back to Christian’s origins with every dish — and that alone is a feat worth commending.

For his three-course menu in the finals, Christian prepared a fried green tomato, cajun-rubbed filet mignon, and, to top it all off, his late grandmother Dorothy’s southern banana pudding. In a MasterChef finale, every meal will be first-class, but behind closed doors, the judges must still make a decision. In Christian’s case, they went back and forth about whether his dishes were “elevated” enough.

One of the judges had a gripe with Christian’s dessert: “It was Christian’s grandma’s banana pudding, not Christian’s banana pudding.” Gordon Ramsay took issue with another “missing ingredient,” as he called it: risk. He thought Christian played it too safe. And then, judge Joe, usually the most critical of all, said something surprising: “But his currency is not risk. His currency is honesty.”

Joe thought they should evaluate Christian on how honest he was in his cooking more so than how much risk he took. “Honesty is his highest value. So let’s assess him based on how well he managed to live up to that,” Joe seemed to say. It’s a fascinating, and, especially in this environment, refreshing idea.

Christian did not come into the competition with the goal of putting it all on the line with each meal. Instead, he hoped to stay true to himself while still rising to the level of each next challenge. Authenticity was his strongest trait, and by relying on it, he bet on himself.

Some of his fellow contestants, like Michael, who also made it to the finale, did go all out every time, and for them, their boldness was their currency. Christian, however, just put as much of himself on the plate as he could. The result? Christian was never placed in the bottom three of any one round, and he made one of the top dishes a whopping five times.

The world will judge you six ways from Sunday. You have no idea, let alone control over, which yardsticks people will use to form their impressions and opinions of you. You can, however, make an effort to deal in your natural currency. To become self-aware, and then rely on what you know.

What’s your currency? Is it honesty, like Christian’s? Is it courage? Mine is imagination. Write down your values. Chances are, it’s either in there or close by. Your currency may not be the attitude you aspire to the most, but it’ll be one you hold in high regard. Yet, it must also enable you to get things done.

In Christian’s case, his cooking worked better when he was honest. He could have tried to stray far from his comfort zone, plate like a French Michelin-star chef, or make dishes full of exotic ingredients — and on some days, he did. Most of the time, however, the overall composition of his food came out perfectly balanced when he stuck to his guns.

In that sense, dealing in your currency is a lot like eating: Sometimes, you’re excited to go out of your way for a fancy meal, but usually, nothing can beat a good old steak with a proper dash of pepper.

Find your currency. Bank on what makes you bankable. And even if it forces you to take the long route to success, don’t let anyone tell you you’re doing it wrong.

My dad is 57 years old. When he started working, the official retirement age was 65, but actually, most men retired at 62. Today, the official retirement age is 67, and most men retire at 64. Politicians are even discussing pension at 70! Who knows when he’ll actually get to drop the proverbial hammer.

Luckily, my dad likes his job. Ever since a publicly traded company bought his medium-sized firm, however, they’ve been accelerating the pace. Calls with China in the morning, calls with Europe after lunch, and calls with America at night. More revenue! Higher share price! Faster, faster, faster!

I don’t think at 57, you want to be accelerating. You want to slow down. Transition gently into the second half of your life. You needn’t stop working altogether, but cranking up the heat probably isn’t the best idea. At my dad’s company, the entire management team is around his age. Some have already quit for health-related reasons. Others are showing signs of burnout. Within ten years, they’ll all be gone, but I doubt any of them will get a golden watch.

Nowadays, the golden watch is a meme. Millennials often make fun of boomers for aspiring to so little. “How boring is it to work for one company for your whole life? You shouldn’t work for any company! You should be an artist/freelancer/entrepreneur!”

In my third semester of college, I saw a video called “All Work and All Play.” The narrator spoke of a “forever-beta” world in which nothing is ever finished. Work is now permeating every aspect of our lives, he said. We must adapt, travel lightly from gig to gig, and maintain up to date social profiles. If we do all that, we’ll get to do what we love. That was the message.

Ten years later, I look around the world, and I can’t help but think that, right now, a lot of people would probably kill for the prospect of a golden watch. They’d take a portion of golden fries, I think, if only they could count on the promise of job security.

“Prior to the 1980s, it was common for people to work a lifetime for one company,” Simon Sinek writes in The Infinite Game. “The company took care of them and they took care of the company. Trust, pride and loyalty flowed in both directions. And at the end of their careers these long-time employees would get their proverbial gold watch. I don’t think getting a gold watch is even a thing anymore. These days, we either leave or are asked to leave long before we would ever earn one.”

My dad has been at his company for 23 years. I’m fairly certain he’ll get to stay for another ten, or however long he needs to stay until retirement. That’s more than most people starting to work now will ever get to say. “Screw the watch! Just tell me my laptop will still be on my desk tomorrow, please.”

All work and all play. That life can be fun for a while. But not at 57. And unless you feel financially secure, the party ends pretty quickly in any job.

Life is a cycle of cycles. Everything returns. What once represented a steady, slow-growing, meaningful career came to be known as a symbol of drudgery and oppression — until any stability whatsoever went out the window. Suddenly, the golden watch once again seems like a dream.

Whether you’re set to retire in 30 years or three months, remember: There’s always someone who thinks the grass is greener on your side of the fence, but if we want the ups and downs to balance out, all we have to do is water the ground right where we stand.

I’m beginning to understand why so many people view publishing a book as the crowning achievement of one’s life. It is an accomplishment revered beyond most others, sitting on a pedestal way, way up there. Why? I think it’s because few other pursuits will remind you as strongly that what you’re trying to do is absolutely impossible.

When you write, you must filter, structure, group, sort, clarify, and polish your thoughts. Given the tens of thousands of ideas floating through our head on any given day, many of them making little sense at all, every single one of these steps borders on a miracle. How did you pick that line to write down? Why do these paragraphs work so well together? And that’s just writing.

To write a book, you’ll need thousands of paragraphs. My guess is that the scope of any book surpasses the comprehension of its author. You just can’t hold on to that many words at the same time. You’ll need plenty of work, sure, but also luck for every piece of the puzzle to end up in exactly the right place.

Nowhere is it more clear to me, however, that writing a book is doing the impossible, than in the last round of editing a manuscript. I’m doing it right now. First, I printed a proof copy of the book, because looking at it any more on the screen wouldn’t have gone anywhere. Then, I tried reading my own words through the eyes of someone else — and that is, by definition, impossible.

Sometimes, I got lucky. For a sentence or two, I saw my writing with neutral eyes and could point out sensible corrections. But as soon as I did my initial pass of a paragraph, I was right back in my own head. If you want to torture someone, make them read the same sentence a hundred times. It becomes hard to focus. The words blur together. It’ll always sound the same, and yet, it’ll start feeling totally incomprehensible.

After six years of writing on Medium, I felt I had a decent sense of how an article’s lines would feel in a reader’s mind. Either I was wrong or I reset my gut with books, and now I just need more time to train it. Regardless, going through my book one last time with a fine-tooth comb felt pretty hopeless. As easy and obvious as it is to me what I like and don’t like about any, literally any, other person’s writing, as impossible is it to tell what other people might like or not like about my own — and that’s the whole point! Were the impact of art not unpredictable, it wouldn’t be art.

If getting into a reader’s mind was as easy as peeling a carrot, writing wouldn’t be the universal, incredibly valuable, all-penetrating skill that it is. Written works would be a commodity, which, today, despite what it may look like, they are not. Some of us may try to treat them as such, but in the end, great creative work still outshines mass-produced drivel, often dramatically so. Why? Because the writer pulled off the impossible! They put themselves in their readers’ heads, and they got it right! At least right enough for the work to spread.

Your work may not give you as many stark reminders that what you’re doing is pushing a boulder up an insurmountable hill, but you too are doing the impossible. Wherever you summon your imagination in hopes of achieving a result in the real world, you are facing unbeatable odds. Will your daughter like the gift you got her for her birthday? Is the design you chose the right one for this presentation? What will people think about your next podcast episode? You don’t know, but you’ll march on anyway — and that is exactly as life should be.

We do the impossible, and then we get lunch. May your ideas always find their invisible targets, and if you ever write a book, don’t despair: Others have succeeded before you. You are not alone, and you are fighting one of life’s most honorable fights.

When we want to say someone’s a little cuckoo but endearing, we might call them “a free spirit.” In my parents’ generation, a lot of “68ers” — people involved in the civil movement of 1968 — fit that description. Initially, they might have made their own laundry detergent, stopped washing their armpits, or refused to eat anything that’s not green. Later, they were instrumental in bringing about social change.

A free spirit is someone who can’t be contained. They will live by their own rules. It’s a tempting attitude, especially for the young, but it bears consequences.

If you keep sampling the dating market because new relationships and casual sex are so much fun, you might stay a bachelorette forever, even if you don’t want to. If you always insist on being the square peg in a round hole at work, be it via your outfits or your contempt for “the man,” you might forever struggle to make ends meet. Free spirits are free to be everything but consistent. Any “system” rubs them the wrong way — but sometimes, systems are both comfortable and useful.

I was never a free spirit. I usually choose compliance. Whenever there’s a path to avoid hassle, stress, and confrontation, I try to take it, sometimes at my own expense. I enjoy systems. I like my routines. I don’t mind quiet and repetition. That, too, has its ups and downs.

If you marry the first person who seems into you, you might end up in a long yet unhappy marriage. If you keep your head down at work too much, everyone will start dropping their unwanted tasks in your lap. When consistency feels comfortable, it’s hard to know when to break it, but sometimes, change is the only good way forward. Systems are great as long as they function, but when they fail, they usually fail altogether.

So, what are we to do? A free spirit or a compliant worker bee? Too much freedom or too little? I can only speak for myself, but I feel there is a third path: Even if we decide to fall in line, we can still be free in spirit. We don’t need to wear all of us on our sleeves at all times. We can practice freedom in private and, maybe most of all, in our imagination.

I don’t travel as much as I used to. Every change of location puts a serious dent in my output, and I’ve got books to write. But I explore the world all the time. I listen to Korean pop music, a China-themed movie soundtrack, or go to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl right on Youtube. I can see pictures from other people’s travel experiences, and when I want to visit a zen garden, all I have to do is close my eyes as the little waterfall ripples along in my WeWork’s back yard.

Your thoughts are yours. No one can tell you where to go or what to do in your mind. Sometimes, it’s important we demand a change for all of us. In moments like that, people like the 68ers must come together. Most of the time, however, it’s perfectly okay to swim with the crowd, yet be free in spirit.