Observations

If you’re really doing work that matters, it’s likely that your work has been criticized or challenged. This is because you’ve decided to take a stand or adopt a position that is off-putting to others. Alternatively, if your goal is to be universally liked, your work isn’t nearly as meaningful, because you want to please the masses by hiding and avoiding criticism. Hiding and avoiding of course, miss the point. Hence the paradox: You don’t want to be criticized and [...]

I’ve examined procrastination from every angle – in general and in my own life – and I have concluded there are 2 reasons for it. We harbor fear regarding what we’re procrastinating about. We don’t want to do the work required to achieve the task, resolve the issue or face the dilemma. Procrastination results from either or both of these 2 reasons. And it’s all about the stakes at hand, that is, how daunting or challenging the thing is, or [...]

We act on something in our lives when… the desire for it is so strong that we don’t want to be without it; or the pain for it is so strong that we don’t want to be with it.

The easiest and sometimes the most convenient thing for us to do is to default to the negative in our lives. I’ve seen people, after being congratulated by dozens of others regarding an accomplishment chastise themselves for omitting something or second-guess the quality of their product, service or performance. There will always be something we should or should not have done. So, focus on the well-earned success that has been validated by reputable others instead of creating failure where it [...]

If you’re trying to lay out a rational, logical argument for a belief of yours or a course of action that you believe is proper, you’d best first consider how well and to what extent such logic will serve you. It’s very tempting to resort to doing this when what someone else has said or done just doesn’t “make sense.” But this makes you a jury of one. We all view the world in at least a slightly different way, [...]