Once upon a time, you had the chance to be brave. Your name was selected, your number was called. You were the chosen one, at least for this particular moment on planet Earth. All eyes were on you, and the stakes were high.
It was a big moment. So what happened? Not to put too fine of a point on it, but what happened was ... you caved. At the critical moment, you turned your back on the task at hand.
On Friday, I hit a milestone of sorts: Side Hustle School, my daily podcast, published Episode #1,000. Whoo hoo!
Link: The Long-Awaited Book from Chase Jarvis
Aside from advertisers for the podcast, I do very few corporate partnerships—in fact, I think the last one was more than a year ago, when I worked with Alexis Ohanian on launching 1850, a new coffee brand from Folgers. But when Microsoft Store asked me to be part of creating a new resource for higher education students, I was intrigued.
Magic is all around you. Maybe you’ve even made some magic of your own.
What you might not realize is that there’s a formula for such a thing. This formula requires three conditions to be met before magic can occur: 1. You have a crazy idea. 2. You can’t stop thinking about the crazy idea. 3. You decide to do something about it. Note that all three conditions need to be met. Merely meeting one or two of them isn’t sufficient.
You probably know the song, the one that borrows its lyrics from the book of Ecclesiastes: to every thing, there is a season for every activity under the heavens.
Seasons have been on my mind lately, as I’ve been transitioning from my busiest month of the year into a time of more focused creative work. I’m grateful for both of these seasons—I wouldn’t want to choose between them—but my life and work in each of them feels very different. In my creative work season, I’m working on a new book and I take joy in writing every day. I’m able to exercise more and feel less stressed about being behind on a million things. So is this fundamentally better? I don’t think so. Because last month I visited 14 cities, speaking to readers and the media about 100 SIDE HUSTLES—and then I hosted a weeklong event in Portland for 1,000 people. All of that was fun, too. Almost every day I thought, “Wow, I can’t believe I get to do this! I feel so fortunate.” The challenge comes if you try to apply the same rules of order or general expectations to each season.
I’ve had a wonderful time visiting my first batch of cities for the 100 SIDE HUSTLES tour. I'm on to San Francisco next, and I hope to add several more stops before the summer is over.
Over the past eight nine ten! years, nothing has helped me to accomplish big goals and stay on track more than a single exercise I complete each December: the Annual Review.
For the past eight years, I’ve been part of producing an annual celebration called the World Domination Summit. It’s one of the few things I’ve made that holds up over time. I love everything about it, even though we’re choosing to end it after 10 years in 2020.
A lot of people have asked how to watch the talks that our main stage keynotes have given. Since year one, we’ve had a bunch of them online… but never before on YouTube! Well, guess what: now whenever you’re watching cat videos or teenage makeup videos, you can also check out keynotes from some of our most popular speakers.
I've had a few people write in to ask me if I've stopped blogging. Nope—but I'm sorry! It sure looks that way.
I've just been on hiatus while writing a new book. I'll tell you about it soon, and I very much look forward to getting back to regular posts here. (In the meantime, the daily podcast continues.) For now, I thought I'd pop up and express something that's been on my mind. Every now and then, I see a post offering "Advice for My Younger Self," and I've been asked to share mine in interviews from time to time. The question I've learned to ask, when working through various issues, is, "What is six-year-old Chris feeling right now?" It's an interesting practice, at least to someone like me who doesn't naturally think this way. If I could go back in time to talk to a younger Chris, though, I'm not sure it would be the six-year-old version. I think it would be a version somewhere in the 11-14 age range.
Way back in 2011, 400 adventurers gathered in Portland, Oregon to consider an important question, "How do we live a remarkable life in a conventional world?". Embracing the core values of Community, Adventure, and Service, the event was called the World Domination Summit.
This week I went to see Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and found it as heartwarming and uplifting as I expected.
If you’re able to see it in a theatre, don’t hesitate. At the screening I attended, everyone applauded at the end. This doesn’t happen much in Portland, Oregon. It felt like we were on a flight landing in Miami from Central America (it’s a thing). Afterwards I stumbled on an article that details the level of precision that Fred Rogers put into editing the language used on his show. The man was relentlessly focused on connecting with children. He would go back and edit previous episodes if he found they no longer stood up, or if language had changed and required an update.
For the past two weeks I’ve been tracking every 15 minute interval of my life. I’ve borrowed this time-tracking practice from Laura Vanderkam, who writes helpful books including 168 Hours, which outlines the practice in a lot of detail.
One of Laura’s principles is that “you have more time than you think.” Through her research, she’s found that most people who claim to work more than 50 hours a week tend to over report their work hours, sometimes dramatically so. In other words, a lot of the time they think they’re working, they’re not. It’s not just that their priorities are out of order; they also waste a lot of time.
I wasn’t always an Anthony Bourdain fan. My first exposure to him came when I read a critical comment he’d made that didn’t sit right with me. But that was evidently just a passing comment, and I didn’t even know the context, so a couple of years ago I started paying more attention to him. I enjoyed his show whenever I saw clips of it in hotel lounges and airports around the world.
Then I read a New Yorker profile that radically shifted my early perspective. I loved it! I remember reading it more than once while traveling in some country or another, no doubt one that he'd been to as well. I liked the article so much partly because I identified with his style and approach. I could see parts of myself in how he lived. Not in terms of the level of success, since I am no Anthony Bourdain in that department, but in terms of his work ethic and willingness to keep pushing himself over and over.
One of the best things about having more than one source of income is that it provides security when something goes wrong. You’re not dependent on your employer—so that even if a job loss would be a major problem, at least it wouldn’t be an all-out disaster.
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