It’s normal to feel empty upon completion of a big project. You’ve just given everything you’ve got, so naturally, you’ve got nothing left. You need to refuel! Take a breath. Take a day. Take a week, even. The Force will return.

When we feel our body slumping, collapsing in on itself, our natural tendency is to push against gravity, to try and erect ourselves under great strain. Sometimes, that’s the right answer. Often, however, it is much easier to just go with the momentum. Lay out some pillows, then let yourself fall.

If the body wants rest, why not just lie down? Go horizontal for a bit. Stretch. Take a nap. Eat some tacos. Watch a movie at 9 AM. Soon, the slump will morph into a sprinter’s starting position.

They say the best thing you can do after finishing a book is to write the next one. That’s true, but nowhere does it say that the epilogue of one piece must also be the introduction of its sequel. You’re allowed to add as much white space as you need for the story to make sense. You’re allowed to breathe.

The next time you feel the slump encroaching, invite it right in. Let it have its 15 minutes of fame, and it’ll better prepare you for the next leg of the journey than forced persistence ever could.

I once sent out a newsletter sharing several stories about oppression, minorities, and individuals overcoming extremely unfavorable odds. A man named Bob replied and said: “What a depressing email! Nothing but past wrongs with nothing highlighting hope for the future of mankind.”

One of the stories was Trevor Noah’s biography, Born a Crime, an aptly titled book since, as the son of an interracial couple under the South African apartheid regime, Noah was an “illegal” child and went through a lot of trouble to not be snatched away by the authorities. Today, Noah hosts The Daily Show, a staple of American night-time TV, and is beloved by millions. If that’s not hopeful, I don’t know what is.

In a similar vein, the other stories pointed out how old problems like slavery and racism still cast long shadows today, and what we can and must do to eliminate those shadows once and for all.

Now I don’t know if Bob actually read those stories or only glanced at the email, but it appears that when we looked at those stories, Bob and I saw very different things.

I’m always excited and hopeful when I send out a newsletter — after all, I believe and hope it will do something good — and so I guess no matter what’s in the email, I assume it to be a positive thing. Maybe Bob had a bad day. Maybe he’s been sad for a while. Maybe he felt offended by some of the ideas in those stories because he happened to be on the lucky side of history. Regardless of the reason, however, like me, Bob only saw what he wanted to see. Something to feed his misery rather than overcome it.

It is important to note here that Bob and I — and you — are equally biased. The questions are whether we’re aware of it, what filter we use, and whether we’re courageous enough to swap those filters when another would do better.

When I send a newsletter to thousands of people, I don’t want to put on my misery-glasses. That’s not part of the values and ideas I want to spread. If Bob hoped for me to change my choice of stories, the misery-filter was probably not a bad one to pick! It is the opposite of the one I want to use, and by saying, “look, this is all some downer stuff,” he surely got me thinking. Maybe that week’s mix was too one-sided. But if Bob didn’t have a specific goal with his email, if it was just “a shot from the hip,” as we say in Germany, then that filter didn’t exactly serve a purpose.

When you see only drama and pain, ask yourself why. When you think everything is perfect right before it falls apart, ask yourself why. We see what we want to see, but we can learn to filter reality better by deliberately choosing what we want.

If you want a change to come effortlessly, you’re gonna have to pay a heavy price: First, you must become someone you can no longer stand looking at in the mirror.

Like many superstar DJs, Laidback Luke heavily relied on alcohol to function, both in and outside the booth. During a barbecue with his family, he eventually shouted at, then threw his two-year-old son on the floor. That was the moment he knew he had to quit.

Things worked out for Luke’s mental and physical health, and his relationship with his son turned out okay, but the memory and regret will always stay with him — and he’s one of the lucky ones.

How far will you let habits go before you overturn their momentum? Sure, quitting cold turkey gets easy when you feel you’ve become a monster, but what will that monster do before you can incinerate it into dust with your newfound light? Not everyone walks away with a scratch. Some damages can never be undone.

Don’t wait for the change to feel easy. Chances are, the price will be too steep. Take the hard but high road. Start now. You might have to fight for your new direction, but at least you won’t drag the people you love down into your eventual abyss.

Today, I had my first coffee in two months. A quiet Saturday seemed like a good time to dip my toe back into the water, and the excellent coffee in the café across the street provided the perfect opportunity.

Besides being shellshocked from the once again increased price tag of £3.50, however, I have to say: Even this arguably great cappuccino tasted better in my head. It’s funny what a few weeks of different behavior can do. You think you cultivate habits that will serve your desires, but actually, that’s a two-way street — your desires will also follow your habits.

I find it impossible to determine which side of this equation is stronger, but I’m pretty sure either one can dominate our lives if we let it. Imagine someone steered entirely by impulse, someone who behaves only in whatever way will serve their next-immediate want or need. This is how addicts tend to alienate those around them. If someone were to use habit design to eliminate most of their desires, however, we would call that person a monk.

This isn’t to say that desire is invariably bad and habit design invariably good. There’s a time and place for both. It has, however, tremendous implications about what you might think are “your natural tastes.” As it turns out, most of those tastes are learned in ways quite similar to how you learned to ride a bike, behave at the dinner table, or do long division.

If you are exposed to a certain situation long enough (or often enough), you will find an efficient, repeatable pattern that allows you to navigate it. You will learn to move your feet along with the pedals, to use the fork with your left hand, and to carry over the remainder.

Similarly, if you were forced to listen to house music for 24 hours straight, eventually, you’d find something good about it — if only so your brain could protect itself from going insane. The same is true for any food, drink, art, or other subject in which you can have “taste.” If you tried hard enough, you could acquire — or drop — any taste you choose.

You can learn to love steamed broccoli without any sauce or seasoning. You can learn to dislike alcohol, cigarettes, or coffee. You can even learn to love a job you used to hate.

It won’t always work easily and almost never immediately, but if you find your preferences no longer serve you, remember: Your tastes are up to you. You can only choose them slowly, but that’s all the more reason to choose them wisely. Enjoy your dinner — and try not to overpay for a beverage you don’t need.

While you can indeed go sledding to gather the momentum you need to tackle your taxes, you can also vow to write ten invoices, then call it a day. Chances are, you’ll write eleven, 20, or even 50 of them once you’re in the zone. The important part is to not pressure yourself to get into the zone in the first place. If it happens, that’s awesome, and if it doesn’t, you’ll step back into the batting cage tomorrow.

The strategy behind “one puzzle piece a day” is twofold: First, you’ll indeed move the mountain by carrying away small stones, and if you make enough trips, you’ll completely transplant Mount Everest. Second — and this is the dynamic you’re betting on most of the time, especially when your screenplay comes with a deadline — each at-bat provides another chance at finding the wind that’ll carry you downhill. On some days, you’ll do two times, five times, ten times more than you had committed to, and it is on those days that the puzzle truly comes together.

If you can’t do it fast, do only a fraction of it. Then, do it again. And again. And again. Set the bar so low you’ll clap even if you fall over it, and eventually, you’ll stumble your way to success — which is a perfectly fine way to arrive.

This is not a universal rule by any means, but it is one that can help tremendously when we feel overwhelmed by the daunting nature of our goal. Sometimes, we just need some momentum, and it usually doesn’t matter where we find it.

You don’t need to get the inspiration to sit down and work on your book from sitting down and working on your book. While this is the kind of paradox that works — you will likely feel inspired once you get going — it is often impossible for us to muster the courage to dive in. A paradox has no beginning and no end. It is just one blurry, murky truism, and so we can’t pick it up carefully on either side. We either jump or we don’t, and when liftoff is the problem, sometimes, “Just Do It” simply won’t do the job.

If “writing a book” is the very thing that makes writing your book seem impossible, you should probably do something else — if only until “writing a book” changes its color to something more enticing. Inspiration is inspiration, and if it gets you to crank out a few sentences late at night, a round of tennis will count just as much as cleaning the kitchen, sorting your bills, or calling a friend.

Big goals are always a marathon, not a sprint, but for humans, quick wins are the power-ups that keep refueling our tanks. Don’t be afraid to use a clean slate to release some dopamine into your system, for once it’s there, it may just give you the speed you need to knock over a big domino.

If you can’t do it fast, go do something else. Just don’t forget to come back later and return to the slow grind of monumental progress.

Ten years ago, we used to stay out till the sunrise. We’d wait for the lights to come on at the club, and whenever we met at our little high school reunion summer festival, we didn’t go to my friend’s house to eat our customary after-hour cheese platter until at least 4 AM.

The last time we went, however, it was closer to 1 AM. At midnight, the first people moaned about being tired. At 12:30 AM, the streets seemed dead. Instead of an entourage of 20 people, only a core four of us remained. Most of us weren’t even hungry. We snacked on the cheese a bit, one guy passed out on the couch, another almost fell asleep in his seat, and the host could not wait to go to bed.

Had it been a movie scene, any viewer could have guessed the next line: “Yup. That confirms it. We’re no longer 20 years old.” Usually, such moments are accompanied by sadness, a sense of nostalgic longing for a past that’s no longer there. Personally, I found it liberating, not least because I still had a 30-minute drive home ahead of me.

When the roar of youth goes quiet, what are we really missing? Is it the time wasted at the pub, the dancing until our legs can barely carry us, or the hangover turned morning-pint, possibly with a quick throwing up interval? I don’t think so.

I think what we grieve when our youth sails into the sunset is the feeling. The feeling of having so much time, we could handily waste 12 hours at the pub and not lose a second’s sleep over it. The feeling of unlimited energy, of being able to bounce back from any hangover. Most of all, however, we miss the feeling of having our whole future ahead of us.

In our 30s, much of that future has already turned into our past, and usually, it all went very differently than we imagined. But how exactly did we imagine it? To be honest, most of us probably didn’t have a very precise vision, but everything seemed possible, and what reality can possibly live up to such high expectations?

The beauty of aging gracefully, should we allow ourselves to do it, is that the more reality you pile up, the fewer alternate futures you feel you need. It’s okay to be a lawyer instead of a painter, single instead of married, a little chubby instead of The Rock, because it’s never too late to go after those things if we really care about them — and if we don’t need them, all the better.

“Wisdom is knowing the long-term consequences of your actions,” Naval says, and as we get older, we tend to take those consequences more into account. We get comfortable planning on longer timelines, and if those timelines include going to bed at 12 instead of 4, that’s a good thing.

A roar feels powerful while you’re roaring, but as soon as there’s no air left in your lungs, the volume fades, and so does the feeling. The quiet ones, however, always have the option of speaking up. Better yet, they don’t need to use that option to feel strong. They trust in their tomorrow because they’ve survived a lot of yesterday, and they know that, as long as they’re having cheese with friends, today will always be enough.

On any given day, I have some 20 drafts sitting in a folder on this blog, another 60 or so on Medium, and hundreds of notes, bookmarks, and saved little tidbits from around the web, scattered across my laptop and various cloud storage accounts. In short, when I write something, I never have to start from scratch.

While it is helpful to have a big stack of go-to projects, at times, it can also feel overwhelming. Which of these hundreds of pieces should I finish first? What’s the most important one to ship? What if I waste a whole month finishing stuff that should have been abandoned?

As your career progresses, you build an ever-growing portfolio, not just of works completed but also of threads you’ve began to pull on. This web of threads can easily become the Matrix, a machine with countless cables, ready for you to plug in at any time. But should you? Often, we forget to ask the question, and swoosh, another year has passed.

After a few years in the working world, you too will likely never have to start from scratch. There’ll always be someone you can call, a project you can pick back up. But sometimes, grabbing a clean slate will still be the right thing to do.

You’ll approach problems differently when you can’t lean on what you already know. You also won’t feel any of the weight of your past, and yet, your past experiences will all find their way into your new pursuit, just more indirectly.

I can never undo the experience of having written anything I’ve written, but I can choose to leave my notes aside. To open a new tab and say, “Okay, what do I want to talk about today?” Even if I do, however, all of my past writings will still act as a sort of subconscious filter. Whatever I come up with next will run through many layers of stones before making it onto the page, no research needed.

On some days, this is, ironically, the faster path to writing a daily blog. Where I might otherwise skip from draft to draft for hours, here I can take a breath, reflect, and then crystallize an idea in one fell swoop.

I know you have a lot to do, but remember: There’s always a clean slate waiting for you in the supply cabinet. All you have to do is walk over, pick it up, and you can color outside the lines.

When I bumped into an old friend two days in a row, on the second day, he told me he had tried to remind his mom of who I was after seeing me the first time.

“It’s Nik, from fifth grade. Remember? Blond hair, glasses?” “Not a clue,” his mom said. “We used to hang out even outside of class, don’t you recall?” “Nope, nada.”

“Come on, mom,” my friend said. “He’s the guy with the video game.” Now at that phrase, her face lit up. “AH! The guy with the video game. Oh, I remember!”

As my friend relayed to me, I had loaned him my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64. It was a long game, and quite scary to play for ten-year-olds, we remembered. Therefore, my friend had spent forever trying to finish it. Every day, he would play for hours, hoping to beat the game before he had to return it to me.

Ironically, this exact behavior prevented him from doing so, because — as parents tended to do back in those days — his mom got so worried about his excessive playing that she forbade him from playing any more, and promptly made him return the game to me.

I laughed my ass off when my friend told me this story, but I had to admit: “I have no recollection of any of this.” It’s a memory that seems to have happened without me, and yet, I was there. It felt marvelous to have my friend repeat back the incident to me and get to laugh about myself as if I was someone else, a character in another story.

As adults, we often spend a great deal of energy trying to massage other people’s perception of us. We worry about it at night, and we get extremely frustrated if our efforts don’t fall on fertile soil. Children know no such habit as “cultivating a reputation.” They just do what they feel like, and if that happens to make them the subject of a funny story later, all the better.

You can feel sad about the fact that you forget, and you can desperately try to control what other people will remember from their encounters with you — or you can let life unspool and enjoy whatever comes back at you. “Wow, so that’s what you remember. Interesting!”

The human mind is fickle. We all sow plenty more seeds than we can harvest. If a few stray ones find their way back into your hand, don’t read too much into them. Enjoy the extra strawberries, and then lend the game to your next friend.

After a covid-induced two-year break, 2022 marked the ten-year anniversary of a local festival tradition I share with some friends: After pregaming at one guy’s place, we all walk down to the festival — but not before taking a group picture in front of a bunch of dumpsters.

Every year, this picture has happened on the same weekend, in the same place, using the same method: We try to get someone driving by to stop, pull over, and take the shot for us. The only thing that keeps changing is the people.

Some people, like one of my best friends, appear in every picture, in the exact same outfit, in the exact same pose. That’s some remarkable consistency, and yet, he too has, of course, changed a great deal in the decade that has passed.

Others, like me, only appear in half the shots. That’s the price of starting your own business, of long-distance relationships, of traveling the world and a whole bunch of other choices: You can’t dance at every wedding, as we say in Germany.

Some people only appear once, then never again. Others show up every other year with a new partner. The tradition is both fun and highly emotional. You can’t scroll through those pictures without reflecting, and thankfully, our host keeps an updated feed on his website.

As someone who hasn’t been there for all the photographs, I can’t help but wonder: What happened in the years that I wasn’t there? Where was I and why? Ultimately, however, I’m just grateful to be part of something larger, even something as small as a group of friends taking a picture.

Just like every stranger’s photo album contains lifetimes of memories of people you’ll never meet, you can’t be in all the pictures of even the people you know and love. There’ll always be photos you don’t make it into, and that’s okay.

We each must follow our own path, and if they lead us to the same crossroads every once in a while, that will be enough — as long as we stop to take a group picture, of course.