The Woolgatherer’s Handbook — Selected Thoughts
Thank you for reading. This series contains excerpts from my writings spanning back 2 years or more. They represent what I consider the most useful thoughts I’ve written down and published.
My sincere hope is that you find value in these
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Just because you can do anything, doesn’t mean you should.
Be judicious in what you choose to take on; if it doesn’t fit in the outline of your goals, you probably shouldn’t do it. You’ll end up with a lot of things you just aren’t doing, but now, you can feel good about not doing them.
from “Outline Your Life”
You define what it means to succeed.
This is unequivocally true because success is by definition to achieve some goal. A goal is something that is set or accepted by you. Therefore, you decide what it means to succeed.
If you have set impossibly high goals, fail to achieve them, and are a miserable as a result, consider adjusting your goal, at least for now. If the goal was set externally by someone else, and your failure to achieve it keeps you up at night, you’re not off the hook — you accepted and internalized that goal. You can just as easily renegotiate that goal — if you are willing to work at that.
from “Stop Thinking There’s One Simple Trick”
What Hacking Gets Us
Hacking is dangerous because we believe we are changing or bending the rules of reality, but we are not.
Rather, in many cases, we are merely shifting around the effort we think we’re saving or settling for a lower quality outcome.
from “Our Dangerous Obsessin with (Life)Hacking”
On Comfort as a Motivator
I’m constantly hearing attempts at motivation that tell us to push outside of our comfort zone. To an extent, this is good advice, but it is only part of the story.
If you are constantly outside of your comfort zone, you will wear yourself out, because human beings crave comfort. Rather, strive for a new comfortable — a new normal — but do so in steps.
from “The Power of Ritual”
The Light of Possibility
The struggle to change or the struggle to make peace can be the struggles that sow the seeds of great art. But fear — whether fear of failure, fear of judgment, or fear of finding out what’s really down there — must not be allowed to win. When that happens, that light of possibility for true creativity, truly inspired work, dims once again.
from “Listen to the Quiet Voice”