How To Survive as a Writer

Nik

Being a writer is hard. In an interview, storytelling legend and screenwriting teacher to the stars, Robert McKee, explains:

“Your job as a writer is to make sense out of life. Comic or tragic and anything in between, but you have to make sense out of life. You understand what that means? Making sense out of life? And this is why most people can’t do it. Because they can’t make sense out of life, let alone make sense out of life and then express it in writing.”

As writers, it’s our duty to live in our heads. And there’s no place more enticing, more exciting, yet at the same time more dangerous and more terrifying than the human mind. Time and again, we have to venture into this place from which some never make it back. Whatever we bring home we have to process, to shape, to form. Until somehow, something worth saying emerges, which often never happens. And so we have to go back.

For the times we do go “oh, that’s interesting,” we then have to chisel an arrow out of the marble block of messy information. An arrow loaded with emotion, dipped in reason, and wrapped in gold. Because otherwise, it’ll never land in the reader’s heart. And at the end of it?

After all the turmoil, the struggle, and the pain, the best we can do is fire the arrow into a sea of dark faces. Because even if we don’t play for the applause, in the end, our fate lies in the hands of the audience. Always. So the best we can do is show up, shoot, and pray.

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The Most Important Lesson From Stephen King Is Not One About Writing

Nik

In the early 70s, Stephen King had just graduated college with a teacher’s degree. He was recently married, had two kids, and no money. Unable to find a teaching job in small town Maine, he worked at New Franklin Laundry. In On Writing, part memoir, part writing advice, he shares what it was like:

“The greater part of what I loaded and pulled were motel sheets from Maine’s coastal towns and table linen from Maine’s coastal restaurants. The table linen was desperately nasty. When tourists go out to dinner in Maine, they usually want clams and lobster. Mostly lobster.

By the time the tablecloths upon which these delicacies had been served reached me, they stank to high heaven and were often boiling with maggots. The maggots would try to crawl up your arms as you loaded the washers; it was as if the little fuckers knew you were planning to cook them.

I thought I’d get used to them in time but I never did. The maggots were bad; the smell of decomposing clams and lobster-meat was even worse. Why are people such slobs? I would wonder, loading feverish linens from Testa’s of Bar Harbor into my machines. Why are people such fucking slobs?”

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The Strange Law of Love

Nik

I met my ex-girlfriend on Tinder. We matched, we met, we were together for almost two years. We broke up two years ago and I haven’t been with anyone since. What I learned is that even when you feel ready, you can’t skip to the end.

You cannot find love by looking for it.

The moment you start searching, you’ve already twisted yourself into a pretzel that’s nothing but a poor copy of the awesome you you actually are. That’s why online dating rarely works out in the long run. Because from the beginning, something felt ‘off.’

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What Skills Should You Study at School To Become Rich?

Nik

If you want to be rich, the worst thing you can do in school is studying. Nothing on that syllabus is going to make you millions. The point of high school, even college, to a degree, is neither the subject matter, nor winning the game of good grades.

Looking back, what defined who you were in high school is all the stuff that happened while you weren’t there.

As long as you can pass, forget studying. Come up with a crazy idea. Do it. Try to sell it later. Build a satellite. Write a book and print it in your basement. Start a Youtube show interviewing local businesses. Don’t think. Do.

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Habit Tracker: Which One’s The Best? + 100 Habits To Track

Nik

“What gets measured gets managed.”

That’s a quote from Peter Drucker, considered the father of modern management. Contrary to what you’d think, he wasn’t a big fan of complex business models or convoluted strategies. He mostly talked about habits. Businesses are run by people and people run on habits. That’s why managing our habits is important. Measuring them, however, is hard.

That’s where habit trackers come in. Read More

The Cost of Being an Employee

Nik

“Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world.” That’s Archimedes. It would take us another 2,300 years, but eventually, we invented the lever. The internet has changed our economy and society more than any other technology before. In The End of Jobs, Taylor Pearson explains how it’s transformed the job market in the past 20 years.

The book is divided into five sections, the first two of which describe the demise of traditional jobs; the last three make a case for being an entrepreneur. To me, it creates a picture of a scale that’s slowly moving from very imbalanced to almost tied, maybe even slightly tipped towards the new side. As such, I think the central message is this:

The gap between entrepreneurship and traditional jobs is closing.

Broadly speaking, Pearson describes this gap in three aspects:

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7 Ways Bitcoin Will Make You Rethink Money Forever

Nik 
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I am not a financial advisor. What follows is my personal, subjective, biased opinion.

There’s a persistent rumor in the cryptocurrency space that even the Queen of England wanted to get on board. Apparently, it didn’t go too well…

Maybe try again after tea.

Thinking more deeply about this joke, a big factor in why we can spend the money that’s in our wallet actually is whose face is on it. Or which flag. You and I agree that the $1 bill with George Washington on it has a certain value and hence, we can use it as currency. If you now offer to sell me a pretzel for one dollar and I agree that that’s a reasonable substitute compared to what else I could get for Mr. Washington’s face, then we can make that trade.

Bitcoin is about to change ALL of that. And that’s why we’re here.

Bitcoin for Beginners

1. Why Should You Care About Bitcoin?
2. 7 Ways Bitcoin Will Make You Rethink Money Forever
3. How Does Bitcoin Work?
4. Why Is Everyone Investing in Bitcoin?
5. Why Market Predictions Are Almost Always Wrong
6. Where Is Bitcoin in the History of the World’s Greatest Bubbles?
7. 7 Big Obstacles to Mass Adoption of Blockchain Technology
8. 3 Potential Paths Cryptocurrency Regulations Could Take (and Which One’s Most Likely)
9. The 15 Best Resources To Learn More About Bitcoin
10. Granny’s Bitcoin Cheat Sheet

The memory of my first trip down the cryptocurrency rabbit hole is still very fresh. I’ve spent countless hours clicking, scrolling, and reading, never knowing what to believe. Hopped up on caffeine, I vibrated in my chair, anxious about where to put my money and whether I’d ever see it again. And yet I came home with only more questions.

With Bitcoin for Beginners, I hope to spare you at least some of that trouble. In 1668, Thomas Hobbes wrote in Leviathan that “knowledge is power.” That’s precisely why it’s such a great weapon to deal with curiosity, skepticism and fear. The key to understanding anything, whether that’s a natural disaster, historic event, or huge price action of a new currency, is to learn what lies behind the facade that’s in the news.

That’s why I want to show you seven core features and themes of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. It’s a short introduction for beginners to make crypto feel a little less cryptic.

Let’s go!

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The #1 Way You Underestimate Yourself

Nik

Recently, a writer imagined what it’d be like if Paris had a proper, inner-city, high-speed train system:

“A vector tube some twenty centimeters in diameter and two millimeters thick ran the entire length of the track between the two rails; it enclosed a soft-iron disc, which slid inside it under the action of several atmospheres of compressed air provided by the Catacomb Company of Paris. This disc, driven at high speed within the tube, like a bullet in its barrel, drew with it the first car of the train.

But how was this car attached to the disc inside the tube, since this disc would have no communication with the exterior? By electromagnetic force.

In fact, the first car carried between its wheels magnets set on either side of the tube, as close as possible without actually touching it. These magnets operated through the walls of the tube on the soft-iron disc, which, sliding forward, drew the train after it, the compressed air being unable to escape through any outlet.

When a train was to stop, a station employee opened a valve; air escaped and the disc remained motionless. As soon as the valve was closed, the air pushed on, and the train resumed its immediately rapid progress.”

The name of this writer is Jules Verne and ‘recently’ is the year 1863.

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303 Life Lessons We All Learn But Keep Forgetting

Nik

I used to think beyond 7th grade math is only useful for physicists and statisticians. After the rule of three, which allows you to calculate discounts on prices, diminishing returns start to kick in fast.

I’ve remedied that view a bit; geometry and calculus have led to some of histories strongest philosophical insights, but I still like to imagine a world in which our high school table of subjects includes:

  • Human behavior.
  • Relationships.
  • Communication.
  • Body language.
  • Personal finance.
  • Etiquette.
  • Career discovery.
  • Work habits.
  • Creativity.

Until that happens, however, I’m grateful for people like Alexander J.A Cortes, who compile the curriculum of such a school of life for us to learn it now, as adults. On February 25th, he shared a tweet storm previewing his next book titled Untaught Truths of Adulthood, which went viral.

As I read through his nearly 100-tweet-long outpour of life lessons, many examples from my own life popped up in my mind. It’s only natural, for all of us learn many of these things, but we never articulate them. I reached out to him and asked whether he’d be up for a collaboration: The result is his treasure trove in long-form, with my experiences as backup to his insights.

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Use This Storytelling Framework to Craft Amazing Narratives

Nik

There is a class of entertainment that is underrated, in spite of its external success: stories about telling stories. Hit shows like How I Met Your Mother, Suits, or Gilmore Girls and blockbusters like Ocean’s Eleven, the Bourne movies, and Fight Club all thrive on their characters’ abilities to launch into enchanting monologues at a second’s notice.

Whoever asks Barney Stinson about his playbook, platinum rule, or Valentine’s Day can expect a full-fledged fake history lesson. Despite what the gang might say, they love it. Because who tells stories like that?

Sometimes, life throws us the same opportunity to tell a story however we want to tell it. It might be an essay for a job application, a speech to your old class, or a new acquaintance asking about a childhood experience. But we’re not a character in a movie, so we never have those stories locked and loaded and often butcher them as a result.

How can we change that?

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