Category: Inspiration

Will Smith: The Semantics of Success Cover

Will Smith: The Semantics of Success

Nik

In the summer of 1985, the king of Philadelphia’s DJ scene threw down at a house party. That night, his hype man was missing. You know, the dude shouting around, getting folks excited, and prompting chants. Luckily, a local MC lived just down the street and offered to fill in.

The name of that MC was Will Smith. He and DJ Jazzy Jeff instantly hit it off. So much, in fact, that Jeff sent his former sidekick packing and the two joined forces. Less than a year later, they dropped their debut single “Girls Ain’t Nothing but Trouble” just in time to take the 1986 prom season by storm and allow Will to graduate high school as a rap star. Jeff recalls:

“Once Will and I made a record, we killed Philly’s hip-hop and ballroom scene. Nobody wanted two turntables. Now they wanted one turntable, a drum machine and some guy rapping. It wasn’t about Philly anymore. It was about conquering the world.”

And conquer the world they did.

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Why Silver Linings Playbook Is One of the Best Films About Love Cover

Why Silver Linings Playbook Is One of the Best Films About Love

Nik

“Hey!”

She almost runs into him as she cuts him off, then chases him down the street.

“How do you know when I run?”

“I wanted to clarify something. I just want us to be friends.”

He keeps running.

“Did you hear what I said? Why are you giving me such a hard time?”

“No, I’m not giving you a hard time.”

“I don’t know how to act with you when you do this shit.”

After a few more strides, he finally stops. On the building in front, it says ‘Llanerch’ in bright, red letters. He turns around.

“You wanna have dinner at this diner?”

The first time I watched Silver Linings Playbook, I was alone in my room. The second time was yesterday. Once again, it was just me, myself, and I.

In the five years between now and then, a lot’s changed. I’m about to finish my second degree, I make my own money, and I’ve finally upgraded the room to an apartment, even though it took moving eight times. The fact that I’m single is one of the few things that’s stayed the same.

Not that I didn’t have any relationships. There were some short ones, some long ones, and a great deal more that never really left the ground. It’s just that after this part of the journey, I’ve landed back in a familiar place. And yet, I’ve come a long way.

When I first saw one of 2012’s biggest surprise hit films, I was instantly swept away. But I couldn’t have told you why. Now I know. By taking us through the love story of two people with mental problems, Silver Linings Playbook lets us view the world through the eyes of the ideal lovers we all aspire to be.

More so, it shows us the price we’d have to pay: the world thinks we’re insane.

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The Delusional Optimist

Pat Solitano is the embodiment of the American Dream. He’s sharp, he’s honest, he’s upbeat. He’s a perpetual optimist and he always has a plan. Striving ever higher, even his personal motto is engraved on the official New York coat of arms: Excelsior!

Sadly, Pat suffers from bipolar disorder. In a fit of violent temper, he beat his cheating wife’s affair half to death. And so he returns from his stint at a mental hospital with a massive stigma: society has branded him insane. But Pat isn’t swayed. Neither this, nor his wife’s restraining order are going to keep him from making things right. From getting the love he deserves.

Pat is the hero of the movie because as lovers, most of us start out in his place.

We indulge in all these delusions about what we’re gonna do, about who we’re gonna be. How we’re going to be united with people we barely know and how our lives will play out. I know I sure did. I would fantasize about life with a girl I had a crush on and then go to bed high on that feeling. Even though most of the time, I never actually did anything.

The one thing Pat’s got going over most of us is that the world already knows he’s out of his mind. He’s free to say what he wants, to live his crazy plans, and to call out everyone else on their own. Because he’s the purest form of the delusional, optimist lover we’ve ever seen.

Until he meets Tiffany.

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The Broken Realist

Tiffany Maxwell is a more grown up version of Pat, who’s hopelessly lost in his dream. Her bubble popped just as suddenly, but in a more definite way. After her husband died, she became depressed and went on a hookup spree. She was fired and force-medicated, so now people believe she’s deranged.

Having been broken ten ways to Sunday, Tiffany is so sick of love, she doesn’t even want to try. Zero expectations. That’s why the second Pat meets her, his optimism cracks. From that moment on, he clings to his plan like a tempted child. Because he too feels the chemistry, but her realism pulls his focus away.

Tiffany is the lover we become when life strikes us down.

We learn the same, hard-earned lessons. Maybe not as rapidly, but also through countless mistakes. And sometimes, we get so frustrated that we too resign. That’s it, I’m out, no more dating, I’m sick of this game. But at least, because of her stained reputation, Tiffany is also free. If you have no expectations, there’s no one you need to please.

She’s the broken realist that’d rather live with nothing than die for a lost cause. Despite her capitulation, Tiffany knows true love is built, not found. So while Pat keeps talking about a silver lining that’s not there, she can see he’s hers.

That’s why she starts literally chasing him down the street.

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The Fine Line Between Genius and Madness

Watching these two crazies is marvelous, because their social outcast status allows them to do and say everything we’re afraid to let ourselves be.

We’d love to swear whenever we feel like it, live our sexuality, call others on their bullshit, ignore people’s opinions and bluntly, relentlessly demand what we want. But we don’t. Because what would our friends and families say?

If even just for a few brief moments, Silver Linings Playbook allows us to escape. But that’s not what makes the movie so great. Its message is bigger than that. Occasionally, the two even allude to it. Like when Tiffany says that they’re “not liars, like they are.” Or when Pat suggests that “maybe we know something that you guys don’t know, okay?”

As it turns out, they do.

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Catching Up

To top the madness off, Pat and Tiffany briefly switch roles near the end of the film. Hope carries the broken realist away, while reality finally punches Pat in his face. The key scene, however, is not what you’d expect it to be.

After achieving a self-imposed, somewhat arbitrary score at a competition, the whole Solitano family celebrates. It’s when the puzzled looks of observers extend beyond our two heroes that we’re given a chance to understand:

Every character in this film is already insane. Crazy. Every single one.

There’s Pat’s friend from the hospital, who’s obsessed with his hair and constantly tries to escape. His OCD, choleric, superstitious, illegally bookmaking dad. The neighbor suffocating in a needless, crushing debt spiral. His wife, Tiffany’s consumerist sister. Even Pat’s mom, his straight-A brother and his therapist. The list goes on and on.

I fell in love with this movie not because of who it showed me I could be, but because it gave me the comfort that, in a world where everyone’s an idiot, staying true to yourself isn’t such a big deal. Life itself is mental. It is an absolutely crazy experience that no one survives anyway. Silver Linings Playbook reminds us that regret, not being different, is what’s insane.

We must love with all our heart and live life to the fullest. Because there are no normal people. Just those, who are crazy in similar ways. That’s the big lesson. One everyone — the characters, the audience, even the film’s creators — can take away. It’s also why in the end, it’s Pat’s turn to chase Tiffany.

Like him, the only thing I’m sorry about is that it took me so long to catch up.

The Simplest Way to Improve Your Life Cover

The Simplest Way to Improve Your Life

Nik

Two men visit a Zen master.

The first man says: “I’m thinking of moving to this town. What’s it like?”

The Zen master asks: “What was your old town like?”

The first man responds: “It was dreadful. Everyone was hateful. I hated it.”

The Zen master says: “This town is very much the same. I don’t think you should move here.”

The first man leaves and the second man comes in.

The second man says: “I’m thinking of moving to this town. What’s it like?”

The Zen master asks: “What was your old town like?”

The second man responds: “It was wonderful. Everyone was friendly and I was happy. Just interested in a change now.”

The Zen master says: “This town is very much the same. I think you will like it here.”

As humans, we have a fundamental, almost desperate need to make sense out of life. Our brains are obsessed with putting order to all things. One result of this is that we tend to sort problems by magnitude. While it allows us to get on with our day-to-day, it’s also one of our biggest flaws. Because all we have is our own little measuring stick.

Sometimes, those measuring sticks look similar. They might overlap among people of the same geography, status, or age, but not a single one works everywhere, all the time. People’s problems in affluent countries seem petty compared to those in places struggling to secure the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. But to the billionaire, the premature death of his child may be just as life-threatening as the scarce availability of food to the man in a third-world country. His ailment might not be physical, but it’s still there.

That’s the thing. We don’t know. We can’t. All we can do is entertain that idea. That’s called empathy. If you pair it with the will to accept other people’s problems as real, regardless of where they land on your personal, arbitrary scale, you make room for your perspective to change. You throw out the stick.

Take the story of the two men, for example. The Zen master shows us that how you approach an event will significantly impact its outcome. Even if you want change, it’ll be hard to achieve if it doesn’t come from the inside. But what if the two men came from the same town to begin with? What if their opinions are as random as their reasons for wanting something different?

There are many more twists to the story you can imagine and learn a new lesson each time. But the one I can see clearest is this: Often, changing your perspective is the simplest way to improve your life. Not the easiest. It’s hard. But the most straightforward. Does that always make it the best way? I don’t know. Probably not.

But it sure should be the first thing you try.

Peace of Mind Analogy Cover

Use This Analogy to Cultivate Peace of Mind

Nik

China’s first north-to-south express highway is the G4. It is over 2,200 km long and you can use it to drive from Beijing all the way to Hong Kong or Macau. On a busy day, it looks like this:

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Your mind has more than a mere 50 lanes, but on a busy day, the level of traffic is just the same. Each car in each lane represents a different version of you. A version that would make an alternative choice, behave differently, or think another way. But there’s a catch:

Only one lane is called ‘the present’ and only one version of you can drive on it at any given time.

As a result, there’s a constant, massive traffic jam from all these alter egos fighting over who gets to lead the convoy. Each one is trying to squeeze into the present lane, shove itself ahead and cut off everyone else. When 50 cars clash, who ends up in front is anyone’s guess. It’s impossible to hand any one version the reigns with all these options, desires, and arguments pulling you in opposite directions. But that’s not the worst part.

Imagine how present-you feels with this huge, pent up mob in its back. Everyone trailing slightly behind is honking, shouting, tailgating, just waiting for their chance to overtake. How could present-you possibly focus on driving, let alone drive calmly or look ahead?

Too Much of a Good Thing

Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish 19th century philosopher and one of the founders of existentialism, developed a rather dark view of the world at a young age. Born into a wealthy family, he lived in constant fear of death and regret, both of which he saw waiting around every corner.

Eventually, he decided that humor was the only adequate response to life’s madness. He claimed that once he saw reality, he started laughing and hadn’t stopped since. In one of his most famous works, he also gave us a new word to capture the struggle with our own insignificance, a word that’s survived verbatim in both English and German to this day: angst.

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” he would remark. It perfectly fits the image of the mental traffic jam we’re faced with in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Not just because the car is the pinnacle of personal freedom, but because the sheer availability of all these lanes to drive on can literally make us dizzy. All these choices about who to be and what to do, we’re actually free to make them, unlike Kierkegaard and his contemporaries, who were much more limited, yet plagued by the same issue still. It seems it’s gotten worse.

So how can we stop being dizzy?

The Road Ahead

When I was younger, I would race my Dad on the 15-minute drive from the city to our home in the suburbs. Eventually, we realized that even if you go 50% over the speed limit on the highway stretch, you only save one minute. Imagine how much you save going through the toll booth two cars ahead in line.

Most choices in life are like that. You raise all kinds of hell to go 50% faster, only to end up one day earlier at the same finish line. Often, switching lanes feels much more efficient in the moment, but, ultimately, doesn’t make a big difference. Gauging the impact of your decisions beforehand like that is one way to dissolve the mind’s massive traffic jam. Another is realizing that part of each alternative version lives on in you, even if that car gets left behind.

But the best one, by far, is having faith in present-you. Don’t look left and right so much. Life is full of chances to look back and say: “Oh, I should’ve taken that exit.” But if you take them all, you can never focus on the road ahead.

In rallying, one of, if not the biggest determinator of success is how much the driver can trust the co-driver. The person in the passenger seat announces directions and the driver acts. That’s why, when talking about their greatest wins, rally legends like Walter Röhrl don’t mention times, but the state of flow, of effortless performance, they were in. Because if you trust present-you completely, the road ahead always looks like this:

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You might take a few detours, but eventually, that trooper will always take you home. For most of us, life is a long drive on a free highway. The anxiety is something we, like Kierkegaard, create in our heads. There’s no real need to rush. Cultivating this view takes time. But it helps to practice. Maybe that’s why later in his life, the angsty philosopher changed his mind:

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” 

— Søren Kierkegaard

This Question Will Make You Immune To Failure Cover

This Question Will Make You Immune To Failure

Nik

On Monday, a guy cut in line at the hairdresser. Not the grocery store, the hairdresser. Where you already wait for some 30 minutes and each person’s treatment takes forever. But just as I was about to get angry, I finally got sick of my own bullshit.

I was angry a lot over the past three months. At people, at events, at myself. Often for valid reasons. But having a good reason to be angry does not make being angry a good reaction. It almost never is. I remembered a Buddhist quote:

“Anger is a hot coal you’re holding, waiting to throw it at someone else.”

Since I had a little more time to pass, I started digging: Why was I holding so many coals?

The Third Option

Looking back, I realized most of the times I was angry came from some sort of failure or rejection. It was never anything major, just obstacles on the road towards my goals. Unexpected speed bumps, paid for in money, energy, and time.

Speed bumps are a good analogy, because the people who set them up are only doing their job. Most of the time, they do it at someone else’s command, and they never do it specifically targeting you. So when you see one coming up, it’s your decision to go full throttle and potentially blow out your suspension. Or, you can just slow down.

There is a scene in How I Met Your Mother, in which Ted is chasing his ex-fiancée in a cab, ready to confront her. After leaving him at the altar, she moved in with her ex-husband, having previously told Ted he’d have to come live with her. That’s a very good reason to be angry. But then, Ted slows down:

“So I got out of the cab, ready to say all of that stuff. Ready to explode. But then…it all just went away. And that was it. In that moment, I wasn’t angry anymore. I could see Stella was meant to be with Tony.

Kids, you may think your only choices are to swallow your anger or to throw it in someone’s face. But there’s a third option: you can just let it go. And only when you do that is it really gone and you can move forward.

And that kids, was the perfect ending to a perfect love story. It just wasn’t mine. Mine was still out there, waiting for me…”

While I found letting go to be a great solution in the past, it’s often hard to do in the midst of failure, when the sting of rejection is still fresh. It hurts. And, as humans, when we’re hurt, we want to do something. Getting yourself to where you can let go is a process and that process takes time. Inaction makes it feel drawn out, while doing things distracts us, usually just enough for our subconscious to begin dealing with everything.

By now I was sitting in the chair, looking in the mirror. I asked myself: “What else can I do here? How can I use these failures, these rejections, these objective and indifferent speed bumps, really, to get to the next level?”

Then, I remembered another quote.

The Simple Ethos of a Billionaire

All humans have desires. Growing up is fulfilling our duty of separating the good ones from the bad. The template we then use to chase those desires is as follows: We alternate between taking action and waiting until we hit either failure or success. If we succeed, we can pursue another desire. If we fail, we need to go back and restart the cycle.

Every time we get angry is a sign that the waiting part is broken. We want our rewards now and we can’t stand the thought of resetting the cycle. It’s almost as if slowing down itself hurts, regardless at what speed you end up taking the bump. But if you load up on coals, eventually, your car will stop altogether.

As I was thinking about what I want the most and how I can do more than just let go, I remembered an idea from Charlie Munger’s 2007 USC commencement address:

“I got at a very early age the idea that the safest way to try and get what you want is to try and deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea, it’s the golden rule, so to speak. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. There is no ethos, in my opinion, that is better for any lawyer or any other person to have.”

Deserve what you want. A simple idea indeed, but a very nuanced one. I first heard it four years ago, but I used to focus too much on the getting part. Now, I finally realized that even someone who deserves to have certain things might still never get them. Note also that Munger didn’t call it a sure way, just a safe way. Except death, there are no guarantees in life.

But if you give your best to deserve what you want every step along the way, something funny happens to your template for fulfilling desires. Suddenly, every iteration of the cycle reroutes to success.

One Question to Rule Them All

The difference between when I first heard Munger’s quote and now is that this time, I don’t see it as a shortcut in the goal-setting process. I see it as an upgrade.

Think of it as charging all your actions with integrity. To do that, you can either imagine virtue as your highest desire or a filter to run all your wants through. Whichever perspective you choose, if you practice it successfully, the result of every action will be the same.

Once the waiting begins, you’ll eventually detach from the outcome, knowing you’ve done the best you can. The right thing, whatever it may have been. That in itself is a success. Because regardless of what’ll happen with your goal, you’ve fulfilled your desire to be virtuous. That, you can take pride in and then restart the cycle. You’re not immune to failure happening to you, but to much of the self-inflicted stumbling, falling, and cursing that usually follows.

You create this sort of moral contrast to a vision of your future self. A self you can aspire to. And while it’ll never exist in its purest form, if you get close enough, you’ll inevitably attract what you desire. I was already on my way home, but still thinking about how I could implement this idea in my life. Eventually, I came up with a daily reminder, a question:

“What would the guy do who deserves everything I want?”

Like the idea itself, it’s simple, but nuanced. When I say “everything I want,” I have a few specific goals in mind, but it applies to all of them and they’re free to change. When I use “the guy” instead of “the person” or “someone,” it’s easier to imagine the virtuous ideal as my future self. But above all, I like this question for three reasons.

1. It is always relevant.

You can ask this question right after waking up in the morning, as you’re about to leave work, or at 3 AM during a horrible fight with your wife. It doesn’t matter whether you just failed, succeeded, or learned a certain path is blocked altogether. The answer will be useful at any time, always and forever.

2. It is limitless.

Maybe you want to be the first human being on Mars. Maybe you’d like nothing more than a stable, five-figure job. Maybe you dream of making it on broadway. Or, maybe you want to pick up your son and get a haircut yourself, without losing too much family time. Whether you have a single, ubiquitous mission, or a dozen small goals, this question has room for them all. It doesn’t care if what you want is possible, because behaving morally always is.

3. It is detached from all outcomes.

You can always choose to act with integrity, right now. Deciding in the present moment does not require what you did over the past ten years, or last week, or even five minutes ago. Your moral compass usually has a clear answer, too. And it’ll still be the right answer, even if you should fail. There’s no need for what-ifs.

The Road Worth Taking

Every morning, I look at my phone and sit with that question. It’s an experiment that’s just beginning, but I already feel a lot better about my decisions.

There’s one caveat though: Aspiring to more integrity is not a substitute for sacrifice. It’s a layer on top. You’ll find that, often, what is right, what is hard, and what is the most beneficial to your goals are one and the same. Especially in the long run.

For the few times they differ, you’ll never regret taking the high road. It has a lot less speed bumps. But, most importantly, you won’t spend your life holding hot coals.

Say No To Free Stuff Cover

Why It’s Important to Say No to Free Stuff

Nik

Last week I got hoodwinked. Walking out of the school canteen, a friend and I passed a guy standing next to his car’s open trunk, handing out free drinks and note pads. Except they weren’t free. As soon as he’d offered us his ‘gifts,’ he made us sign trial subscriptions to a newspaper. To his credit, we didn’t need any payment info and he was a nice guy.

But he still blindsided us. Most of the time, however, I do it to myself.

Free Lunch All Over the Place

Whoever says there’s no free lunch has never been to a German college. We don’t pay insane tuition, yet there are still more freebies than anyone could handle. Drinks, food, events; young people will build the future and these are the things they covet. But that doesn’t mean we want our lives to be a 24/7 pitch fest in which we’re the prize.

So when yet another poor devil hands out flyers, the result is often the same: trash cans full of paper, littered floors, and shreds of parchment flying through the streets. 19 out of 20 times, 19 out of 20 people aren’t interested. And yet, we end up with an ad in our hands anyway. Why is that?

Sometimes, we get blindsided. We’re too startled to say no and boom, we agreed. Sometimes, we don’t want to be rude. And sometimes, it’s straight pity. It speaks volumes about your product if the best buyer motivation you can hope for is people wanting to eliminate some of the inherent discomfort in your sales process. A friend says she often takes flyers to make the other person feel better and help them get on with their unrewarding job.

That’s a noble goal, but I think there’s a hidden price we pay for it. Because now, the joke’s on us.

The Scales Inside Your Mind

Taking some stupid flyer doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is. Now you’re not just responsible for the piece of paper, but unless you really wanted to take it, which, let’s face it, almost never happens, you’ve also just broken a previous deal with yourself: “I will do what I trust is best for me.”

This deal isn’t explicit. It’s not one we sign and one we rarely voice out loud. But it’s built into us from birth and rightfully so.

Acting in our own best interest is, on a long enough timeline, the only way to act in everyone else’s best interest also.

Deep inside your mind, there’s a scale. Every time you break or live up to that deal, you throw a small stone in one of its trays. One side is confidence — complete and utter trust in yourself. The other is insecurity. A constant scratching at your decisions, full of self-doubt and second-guessing yourself. And whichever side is heavier tends to make your next decision.

Throwing the First Stone

Also last week, I went out to grab drinks with friends one night. Around 10 PM, our metaphorical Thursday night camel train wanted to move on. There was a midterm party hosted by the school, but the group wanted to go pregame at another place first.

I fancied the party, but what I didn’t wanna do was drive all across town to sit in someone’s apartment and drink first. Especially since I’m not in the mood for alcohol these days. So I decided to go home. Of course the usual ‘come on’s and ‘just an hour’s ensued. You know how it goes, you’ve been in that situation before.

See how similar this is to the people handing out flyers? Except it’s all intensified. Because now you’ve made an actual deal with yourself and it’s not a stranger pitching, but your friends. The scale in your mind, however, remains the same. It doesn’t matter what’s reasonable or what’s fun. The only important question is:

Which tray of the scale will you throw the next stone on?

Another friend says she once met someone who’d always joke she was “a weak person” when it comes to going with the group consensus. It’s a fun anecdote when you’re actually indifferent about an outcome, but I told her I’m worried about what happens if she tells it too many times. Humans work in funny ways. The more you tell yourself you’re the type of person who throws stones on the doubt-side of the scale, the more you’ll end up actually doing it.

For 99% of our decisions, it doesn’t matter all that much, but in 1% of moments, the state of the scale is everything.

Seconds of a Lifetime

There’s one last thing that happened last week. We were watching the Germany vs. Sweden world cup match at a burger place. For every goal Germany scored, we got free shots. I passed on the first one, because again, I don’t feel like drinking these days. But since we won in the last minute, we got another round.

Once more, I declined when the waiter offered, but as we were all about to toast, a friend noticed I didn’t have one, while another friend had ended up with two. I said it was alright and that I didn’t want it, but my buddy was adamant I take it. After a short, but suddenly intense “YES!”-“NO!”-yelling-match, he handed the shot over, I set it down and saluted with my Sprite.

Imagine how awkward that is. Twelve people with raised glasses, with two dudes arguing over who takes the last shot in the middle. Moments like these only take seconds, but unlike listening to sales pitches or deciding where to eat, they fundamentally impact who you are. And yet, the shots are just like flyers. You either cave and take the damn thing or stick to your guns and make things awkward.

No one will even remember, let alone care about the situation two weeks down the line. But you will. Because taking the shot, or the shitty job offer, or forgiving the asshole boyfriend who cheated is like ripping that trust contract you have with yourself to shreds. With a snap of your fingers, you’ve dropped an anvil on the scale. Self-doubt all the way.

What all of this comes down to in the end is this:

The reason I can say no to drinking in a room full of people with raised glasses is that I’ve practiced saying no to people with flyers for the past 10 years.

Getting ambushed by a guy selling newspaper subscriptions is bad. But blindsiding yourself is much worse. We tell ourselves these little, mundane decisions aren’t important, but they are. Because everything you do matters. Life isn’t a collection of fragments. It all ties together into who you are.

The choices you make when no one cares are the ones that determine what you’ll do when you care the most.

So, I’m sorry if you ended up with one of those crappy promotion jobs. I feel for you. But no, I don’t want your flyers.

A Strong Vision Is the Best Way to Be Productive Cover

A Strong Vision Is the Best Way to Be Productive

Nik

Last week, some girl at school knocked over her juice and killed the power for a whole group of tables. As a funny result, I get to enjoy my friends’ confused looks whenever they enter the library, because they’re startled not to see me in my usual seat. I might as well carve my name into it, because every week, Monday to Friday, from 7 AM to 7 PM, I practice Charlie Munger’s version of assiduity: I sit on my ass and do stuff.

And yet, barring a few mini jobs, I never worked a day in my life until I was 19. You could say I’ve come a long way with productivity — or that I’ve become a workaholic. But I’m neither proud nor ashamed of either of those things. Because what’s changed even more in the past eight years than how I approach productivity is my perspective of what it means.

I’d like to share some of that perspective with you. Hopefully, it’ll help you find the right balance at the right time.

One Hundred and Twenty Pounds

In On Writing, Stephen King tells a great story from his childhood about the time he helped his uncle fix a broken window, using his grandfather’s toolbox:

“We finally reached the window with the broken screen and he set the toolbox down with an audible sigh of relief. When Dave and I tried to lift it from its place on the garage floor, each of us holding one of the handles, we could barely budge it. Of course we were just little kids back then, but even so I’d guess that Fazza’s fully loaded toolbox weighed between eighty and a hundred and twenty pounds.

[…] When the screen was secure, Uncle Oren gave me the screwdriver and told me to put it back in the toolbox and “latch her up.” I did, but I was puzzled. I asked him why he’d lugged Fazza’s toolbox all the way around the house, if all he’d needed was that one screwdriver. He could have carried a screwdriver in the back pocket of his khakis.

“Yeah, but Stevie,” he said, bending to grasp the handles, “I didn’t know what else I might find to do once I got out here, did I? It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.”

Productivity is a behavior. Humans tend to label behaviors as either right or wrong and most of us file productivity under ‘morally correct.’ Regardless if such categories even exist, this leads us to feel we should always be productive. We turn the behavior into an end when it’s nothing but a means. We collect as many tools, tricks, hacks, and tactics as we can, but ultimately, productivity is just a toolbox.

You can decide when to bring it and when to leave it at home. How big it should be and what tools you want to include. You can even take out certain tools temporarily and bring a lighter version. Clearly, there’s a lot of choice involved in productivity. But making it the default is not something you should do lightheartedly.

Because the nature of this relationship is not unilateral.

Another Uncle’s Advice

Unlike Stevie’s, my uncle isn’t too great at fixing things around the house. But he’s a partner at a big consultancy, and that’s pretty rad too. So when I asked him after graduating high school, he told me what degree he’d get at which college, and off I went. There, I first learned the meaning of hard work. The schedule and studying kept me busy a good 60 hours a week, especially during exam season.

Another part of the career plan he gave me was to study abroad, but in the US, college is different. More recurring assignments, less pressure to ace finals. Suddenly, I found myself in a small town in Massachusetts with lots of time on my hands. I didn’t need to work as much and eventually, I used my freedom to start questioning the map I had asked him for.

Even if you know your productivity toolbox inside and out, many of the choices about its nature, size, and contents, are choices you make elsewhere in life.

To a certain degree, you can influence how productive you are, regardless of your current task. You can figure out different behavior hacks, become more self-aware, and scour your work for shortcuts. But to a much bigger extent, the larger mission you’ve dedicated yourself to inevitably impacts how and how much you work. Most of all, it changes how much you want to work.

Your toolbox is a natural byproduct of the choices you make not just in your career, but in life. Therefore, the straightest path to changing how productive you are is changing your life. This may sound either obvious or really obscure, but for me, it’s a hard-earned lesson eight years in the making.

Let’s just say it took me a while to see.

Cedar Dell Lake, Umass Dartmouth

My Favorite Synonym

Besides wandering off into the woods and around the lake, I spent a lot of that fall in the US reading. Blogs, like James Altucher and Zen Habits, and books like The Alchemist. The more I read, the more I thought “why can’t I do that?” Read a lot, write a little, and make a living that way. It sounded easy. It felt like fun. And if I was gonna work a lot, I’d much rather do this than design slides to help some corporation squeeze 0.2% more out of their EBIT.

It would be another two years before I ever put pen to paper, but that was the first time I dared to imagine something different. I found the courage to dream. Whether you call this fantasizing, career planning, or crafting a vision doesn’t matter, as long as you remember it’s the most powerful way you have to control that toolbox.

The strength of your vision is the single greatest predictor of your productivity.

Vision is a wonderful word, because it contains two things: what you can imagine and what you can see. If you’re really honest with yourself about what kind of work you want, no matter how ridiculous it may sound, you get a clear image of your dream job. Maybe for the first time. And if you’re then really honest about how far away you are from that image, or that you might be headed in the wrong direction, gears start to click.

Of course, there are cases where the fog won’t clear. Sometimes, you can’t see ahead more than a year, or it might take the better part of a decade to figure out ‘your thing,’ but that’s okay. Because if you let your productivity follow your vision, you bake life’s imbalances into your expectations of work.

This is not only natural, it’s healthy. It’s not about always being productive, it’s about always being productive enough. Enough for that current stretch of the road, wherever it may lead.

Here’s where mine lead me.

One More Tool in the Box

When I finally started writing in 2014, I set goals left and right. Write 250 words a day, publish once a week, get 10,000 subscribers, make $1,000 in a month, whatever you could quantify, I would put on some physical or digital sheet and pin to the wall. As a self-starter, this helped me a lot at first, but eventually, I realized goals are just another measuring stick. One more tool in the box. But it’s no good to bring your hammer each time, when sometimes, your vision requires nothing but screws.

Gradually, my goals transformed into themes. This was a subconscious process and to this day, I still use goals, though I do it much less and they quickly wander to my mind’s back burner. But looking back, I can pinpoint that in 2015, my theme was ‘commit.’ I learned to stick to things and see them through, even though no one told me to do them. In 2016, my theme was ‘invest.’ I wrote daily summaries of book summaries, and while that may sound stupid, I somehow felt the returns would come later. They did. In 2017, my theme was ‘grow’ and in 2018 it’s ‘leverage.’

None of these indicate anything about my level of productivity, because instead of dictating desired outcomes, they help me cultivate a mindset. A mindset that lets me deal with my work in whatever way makes the most sense at the time. And whenever my vision changes, which is about twice a year, so do my themes and what they mean. Sometimes the changes are small, sometimes they’re big. But they always come from a good place.

I’m not in a rush anymore, and even though I work a lot these days, I feel calm while I’m doing it. For example, I took a ten-minute break between that last sentence and this one. Not because I needed it, but because it’s good to get fresh air and talk to a friend. It’s in line with my theme, because once I publish this post, it’ll be out there forever, working for me. That’s the leverage part, the part that matters. Not whether I can finish this ten minutes earlier. And while the theme itself is just another tool, it helps me lift the box.

Because now I can approach it from the right angle, even if that angle is different each time.

My father’s toolbox

Two Handles

My dad has a toolbox too. Just like Stephen King’s grandpa’s, it’s old, leathery, and sealed shut with big latches. But it only has one handle. So whenever he let me carry it when I was little, I was struggling, because I could only grab it at one end with both hands. Life isn’t like that. Your toolbox is different.

In 2,000 year olds words, written by ancient philosopher Epictetus, translated for modern times in The Daily Stoic:

“Every event has two handles — one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other — that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.”

I’ve spent a lot of days working hard on things I didn’t care about and I’ve wasted a lot of days not doing enough for the things I love. There were seasons when I was always on and seasons when I was always off. But no matter whether I did too much or too little, each time was a result of trying to lift the toolbox at the wrong handle.

What I’ve learned about productivity in the past eight years is that it’s mostly a consequence of the choices you make about life. The only thing that should inform those choices is your vision, your big dream, your future so grand you barely dare to imagine. Once it does, this vision will trickle down into your every behavior. First in goals, then in themes, but it’ll sink in deeper by the day. Until your vision not only shapes how you do things, but who you are; who you’ll become. The person you were meant to be.

To this day, I’m my dad’s assistant when we fix stuff around the house. But now, carrying that toolbox doesn’t feel so heavy. Maybe, it’s because I’ve grown so much. Or, maybe, it’s because your productivity is a reflection of your courage to imagine.

The Most Valuable Skill in the World Cover

The Most Valuable Skill in the World

Nik

One day in the early 1920s, a four feet tiny man walked into a Ford plant near Detroit. His name was Charles Proteus Steinmetz. He was a mathematician and electrical engineer, called there to help fix a big generator.

From Smithsonian Mag:

Upon arriving, Steinmetz rejected all assistance and asked only for a notebook, pencil and cot.

Steinmetz listened to the generator and scribbled computations on the notepad for two straight days and nights. On the second night, he asked for a ladder, climbed up the generator and made a chalk mark on its side. Then he told Ford’s skeptical engineers to remove a plate at the mark and replace sixteen windings from the field coil.

They did, and the generator performed to perfection.

Henry Ford was thrilled, until he got an invoice from General Electric in the amount of $10,000. Ford acknowledged Steinmetz’s success but balked at the figure. He asked for an itemized bill.

Steinmetz responded personally to Ford’s request with the following:

Making chalk mark on generator: $1.

Knowing where to make mark: $9,999.

Ford paid the bill.

I’ve told this story before, but I can’t think of a better one to show:

The single most valuable skill in the world is judgement.

At first I thought great judgement would just make you rich, but that’s not true. It’ll also make you happy. Deciding who you trust requires judgement. Choosing who you marry is a judgement call. How you spend your time is a direct result of your judgement.

That’s why nature made it hard to get. The only way to good judgement leads right through experience, which you pay for in time, energy, and taking risk.

But, even more than all of those combined, you need courage. Because while life is one big judgement training camp, those who really embrace it must ask what the most important decision is, choose an option, and then see it through. Over and over again.

And that’s not a matter of judgement at all.

How to Be Kind in a World That Never Taught You to Be Cover

How To Be Kind in a World That Never Taught You to Be

Nik

“Well, some things you just can’t get for money.” The older I get, the more I think this is just something we, the not-yet rich and successful, tell ourselves to feel better. There is almost nothing money can’t buy. Because even for what you can’t trade straight for dollars, there’s almost always a proxy.

You can’t buy time, but not having to work 40 hours a week sure helps. You can’t buy health, but I bet your cancer treatment fares better if you can drop $2 million into it. You can’t buy happiness, but there’s a material sweet spot around $75,000/year.

Money makes the world go ‘round. I don’t think that’s bad, it’s just the way it is. Capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s helped us do good things, and I believe for many, the struggle for money is the right choice. But I also believe in being kind along the way. Work hard, be nice, win. There’s enough to go around for everyone.

And that’s where the road forks, because most people don’t think you can do both at the same time. Not every struggle is a battle, but if your only options are competing and conceding, they might as well be the same. If you tend to view the world as this dark place that you have to fight tooth and nail against to get what you deserve, I feel for you.

We don’t agree, but I have an idea where it came from. And it’s not your fault.

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