Published by Comments Off on The Great Resignation: If Your Job Sucks, Now Is the Time to Stop Doing ItIf you don't like your job, what would happen if you walked away?
I've been asking this question off and on for over a decade. Unless you plan on living forever, why in the world should you devote the majority of your productive hours each week to something you don't enjoy?
All that time, I haven't exactly been speaking into a void. I hear from people almost every day who have followed through on some sort of exit plan.
It's clear, however, that something is different now. Very different. What's different is that millions of people are actually quitting their jobs! Four million Americans just in April 2021, according to government statistics, and many millions since.
Published by Comments Off on Change Your Future to Rewrite the Past
“People think that only the future can be changed, but in fact, the future is continually changing the past. The past can and does change. It’s exquisitely sensitive and delicately balanced.” -Keiichiro Hirano, At the End of the Matinee
When we think about time, we tend to divide it into three dimensions: past, present, future. We also tend to accept certain beliefs about each dimension without much questioning.
The present time is the "here and now." It's what's currently happening. The future, alternatively, is what will happen. It's what will come to be.
Unlike the present and the future, the past is locked in ... right? Short of inventing the elusive time machine, there's not much we can do to change the past. We simply have to accept it and move on. Or do we?
Published by Comments Off on Time Anxiety Is the Most Pressing Problem of Our Age ⌛️
Time is running out, and you should be doing something about it … but you don't know what it is.
That's what this post is about: something called time anxiety. I've been dealing with it for years, and maybe you have, too—even if you've never heard the name.
I believe that time anxiety is the most pressing problem of the modern world. Once you work your way through Maslow's hierarchy and your basic needs are taken care of, you start worrying about time—and you never stop.
You worry that time is passing you by
You worry you're too late for something—you missed your chance
You worry there's something you should be doing right now, but you're not sure what it is
Published by Comments Off on Lessons from an Errant Rocket Ship
From time to time, it's good to be reminded of your insignificance. Last week provided an opportunity in the form of a Chinese rocket that was falling to the earth.
Perhaps you heard about it. Thankfully, all was well in the end, but until it landed, no one knew where the rocket would touch down. It could have been anywhere on earth! Just think about it: for all the advances of science and technology, we had no idea where on the entire planet a rocket would decide to return.
Published by Comments Off on Do Hard Things Because They Are Hard
Last week I went to Utah to run an unusual marathon. My time was well over two hours slower than any marathon I've done, but that was by design—I was running with someone who was doing a series of extreme events back-to-back, every day for 100 days in a row.
The pace, therefore, was slow.
His name is James Lawrence, more popularly known as the Iron Cowboy. I'd heard of James a year or two ago after watching a documentary of his previous quest where he attempted (and accomplished, with a few small variations along the way) 50 Ironman-distance triathlons in 50 states in 50 days.
Published by Comments Off on The Present-Day Time Machine
Most of us can think of times in our lives that we'd like to relive.
When these moments occur in the first place—the original events that become memories—we don't always realize realize how significant they'll become in our internal story.
That's only natural, because sometimes ordinary moments can take on much more meaning after the fact.
Published by Comments Off on Regret Is an Unreliable Emotion
I have long believed that thinking about regret is a powerful motivator for action. When you're feeling indecisive, trying to figure out if a particular step is a good one, consider how you'll feel if you don't take the step. Often this leads you to what seems like the right direction.
But while mental models can be helpful, most of them also have limits. Lately I've realized there's a flaw in the logic of focusing your attention on the avoidance of regrets. Simply put, regret is an unreliable emotion.
Think about that for a moment—what does it mean?
It means, in short, that regret is both difficult to anticipate and even harder to characterize in retrospect. If you feel certain about your choices in either direction—either looking back or looking forward—you may be basing your interpretations on selectively chosen information.
Published by Comments Off on The Greatest Story Ever Sold 💵
Two weeks ago, I wrote about how money mistakes are temporary. My main argument was that unlike other kinds of mistakes, money mistakes rarely have permanent consequences.
I'll return to that in this post, but first let's consider a few things that have happened this month:
We've all been hearing about NFTs, also known as "non-fungible tokens," also known as digital art that can be reproduced over and over but sells for a ton of money. The NBA has sold $230 million on these intangible "items." An artist sold one for $69 million the other day, and I'm sure that record will be broken soon.
The price of a single Bitcoin, another modern invention, has risen to more than $60,000. Like NFTs, Bitcoin is also completely digital. There is no such thing as "a Bitcoin" you can carry in your pocket or store in your safe deposit box at the bank. Everyone who trades Bitcoin or other digital currencies simply accepts that it exists.
The U.S. government has passed a law enacting a $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Put another way, the U.S. government has printed $1.9 trillion more dollars. This was on top of another $2 trillion they printed last March. And presumably there's more where that came from!
Published by Comments Off on Money Mistakes Are Temporary
A common TV trope features someone who's down on their luck and forced to borrow from someone with questionable moral scruples: a loan shark, the Mafia, a representative from Wells Fargo.
As fate would have it, they fall further and further behind, until they're in an even greater bind. Soon they're being pursued by the loan shark, who threatens to break their legs, or by Wells Fargo, which forces them to remain on hold for hours. The rest of the story unfolds as the protagonist desperately tries to resolve their dilemma. What will they do? How will they get the money?
"Getting the money" makes for a good plot foundation, since money is something that everyone wants. And when you don't have it, it becomes all that you think about.
But what if you didn't have to "get the money"? What if you just decided to not care?
I haven't been writing much about travel recently, for reasons that are probably obvious. Travel doesn't exist at the moment! At least not in the same way it used to.
But it will again, especially with all that we've learned in the past year and vaccination well underway. I'm convinced that when it does, there will be some amazing deals and opportunities.
Published by Comments Off on Do This When You Visit a New Place
Pandemic life has taught many of us to appreciate moments in life that might otherwise pass us by. I've been trying to pause and take note of how I feel at the end of the day, often as I walk in the park or one of my nearby neighborhoods.
With that in mind, here's a tip inspired by The Art of Stopping Time, a book by Pedram Shojai: whenever you visit a place that's new to you, consider the sense that you might never be there again.
Just imagine: this might be it! Your only opportunity in one lifetime to visit this particular place. How might this make you feel?
What, you say you aren't traveling much now? That's okay.
This "new place" could be anywhere: a part of the woods you've never seen on your next nature hike, for example, or even a street in your neighborhood you've never driven before. The point is to create awareness and appreciation.
Published by Comments Off on How to Conduct an Annual Review (2020 Edition!) 🗓
Every December for the past fifteen years, I've completed an exercise I call the Annual Review.
This year is different in some ways, but then again, so is every year for one reason or another. In fact, that's one of the things that's so beneficial about the Review: in the midst of whatever craziness is happening, it helps to ground your attention and give you something to work on over the next year.
This post contains an overview of the process, along with links that might be helpful for your own review. If you'd like to go waaaaay back to the original post from 2008, you can do that too. Enjoy!
Published by Comments Off on Thank you, 2020. It was terrible and wonderful.
I started writing this note by trying to take stock of a few things about this year that were good.
The process was easier than I expected. Sure, 2020 has been a dumpster fire year in many ways. But when I really stopped to think about it, it wasn't hard to identify several things in my life that wouldn't have happened were it not for the world coming to a stop.
It's always possible to find silver linings, and in a brief examination I found several.
Published by Comments Off on What Would You Say If You Could Go Back in Time?
Welcome to the beginning of the strangest year the modern world has ever known. You don't realize it now, but life as you know it is about to change drastically.
Remember how you've been talking to everyone about "working from anywhere" for the past decade? Well, now the entire workforce will be leaving their offices and telecommuting. One problem: they can't actually go anywhere. Working remotely usually implies freedom, but in this case it points to constraint. Simply put, the workforce is working remotely because it's not safe to work together.
Most of the world's borders will have closed, though if you want to visit the Maldives, you can buy an unlimited pass to a luxury hotel for all of 2021.
Published by Comments Off on We did it. Now what? 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Friends and readers, we did it. It actually happened!
I'm reminded of the quote that's attributed to Winston Churchill: "You can always count on America to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all other options."
The monumental U.S. election results won't change everything, but they do send a clear signal of most Americans' wish for change. We have slain the dragon, for now.
When I wrote about the election a few weeks ago, I got more response than anything I've shared in years. In fact, in ten years of writing online, I don't think I've ever had more negative comments (though, fortunately, the positives outnumbered the negatives 3-to-1). Well, here we are now, and the world is a very different place.
Pandemic life has taught many of us to appreciate moments in life that might otherwise pass us by. I've been trying to pause and take note of how I feel at the end of the day, often as I walk in the park or one of my nearby neighborhoods.
