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Life

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The Cost of Unnecessary Worrying

I hope you’re holding up okay in the new world order. Instead of talking to you about social distancing (I’m guessing you’ve heard about that already), today I’ll just give you a personal observation: Since I've started trying to worry only about things I can influence or change, I’ve been a lot less anxious.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t worrisome circumstances out there. It just means that, aside from what you’ve already heard about, there isn’t a lot you can do to change them.

Meanwhile, unnecessary worrying has a cost, without providing any benefit. Worrying about something you can’t control doesn’t make that thing any better.

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Life

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Opportunity Waits in the Time of Uncertainty

Wow, what happened to the world in the past week?

I’m writing to you from my sanitized desk in an underground bunker ... well, it’s not quite like that. But what a difference a few days makes.

All of a sudden, millions of people have found themselves working remotely or not working at all, unexpectedly arranging childcare because the schools have closed, and running over neighbors in the toilet paper aisle at Costco.

Well, guess what: I’m not going to say “life goes on” (even though it will) and I won’t claim this isn’t a big deal (it is). We should take COVID-19 seriously and do what we can to stay safe.

That said, there’s only so much you can control. Sure, you should wash your hands more often, but ultimately what happens next is out of those same hands.

If there's any good news, it's this: with uncertainty comes opportunity.

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Life

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Habits of Highly Effective Real People

Humans are not machines, and we don’t all want the same things. But we do want to do something purposeful, to use the time we have to the best of our ability—and we also long to discover our authentic selves.

If our lives consist of a series of choices, how do highly effective real people make them? Here’s a short list of characteristics for your consideration.

First and foremost, they know what’s important to them.

I’ve been saying for a while that the greatest productivity hack is to love what you do. It is much, much easier to be both productive and satisfied when you spend most of your time on something you find meaningful.

I often go back to this principle as a compass point. It really does no good at all to become efficient at the wrong things. On balance, it’s actually negative because the more efficient you become, the more likely it is that you’ll continue on the wrong path. Therefore, it’s better to fail quickly at the wrong things, so you can discover the right ones.

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Life

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Coming April 7, 2020 – THE MONEY TREE: Finding the Fortune in Your Own Backyard

Big news today! I wrote a new book! It's called THE MONEY TREE, and it comes out April 7th. 💰🌳⁠

I'm very excited to share this sneak peek of my first *full-length story* that will be published in the U.S. and Canada in April. Yes, it's fiction! Something I've never done before, but I got inspired and started outlining and ended up making something that I really like.⁠

The subtitle is "A Story About Finding the Fortune in Your Own Backyard." We decided to be as literal as possible with the cover. 😀
The Money Tree_front cover

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Life

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Start Your Resolutions on January 6th

Resolutions can be powerful, and they don’t have to begin on any given day.

If you want to form a new habit, just start doing it. The important thing is sticking with it, not when you start.

Just imagine: if you began an important new habit on January 6, and then managed to stick with it the rest of the year—wouldn’t that be much better than one you began on January 1, only to drop off within a few weeks?

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Life

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New Year, Same You

What if, instead of “New Year, New You,” you decided you were satisfied with the course you had already set?

What if you're already happy with who you are?

This doesn’t have to mean you have to stop improving. Change and growth are healthy. It just means: if you were already doing the right things in the “old” year—wouldn’t you want to keep doing them?

For me, challenge is one of my values. I want to set big goals and attempt hard things. But it's not a new value; it’s one I’ve had for a while. If I ever lose interest in challenging myself, I suppose that would be a new me. It’s just not a version of myself I’m remotely interested in.

Two years ago, I was in a dark place and feeling uncertain about a lot of things. Since then, I’ve made a number of changes in my life, both large and small. Many, many times in the months that have passed, I’ve looked up from whatever I’ve been doing with a sense of wonder.

I can’t believe I’m here, I think. I’m so glad I was willing to walk through that dark place.

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Life

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All The Things You Didn’t Do

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.

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Work

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Find Your Creative Calling: The Long-Awaited Book from Chase Jarvis

9231310911_aa5bd45c35_z Link: The Long-Awaited Book from Chase Jarvis

Life isn’t about “finding” fulfillment and success—it’s about creating it. You don’t discover your life purpose without trying a lot of different things.

But how can you be more creative? How can you cultivate a daily practice of creativity?

The answers to these questions can be found in a new book, Creative Calling. It’s out now and available wherever books are sold, including Amazon of course, but also your local bookseller. (I love to support local stores.)

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Et Cetera

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New “Hustle Up!” Experience Offers Resources for Students to Take their Side Hustle to the Next Level

MSFT 365 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.

The goal was to help students learn better ways of side hustling ... which, of course, is right up my alley! And they wanted to do it through a mobile-first experience that would be completely free for everyone.

That experience is called “Hustle Up!” The idea is that each of us have various strengths and weaknesses areas for improvement, in addition to differing interests, and it helps if you can get some direction in deciding what kind of hustle to start.

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Life

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The Three Conditions for Making Ordinary Magic

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.

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Life

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To Every Thing, A Season

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.

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Life

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Return of the Annual Review! Let’s Do This! (I mean, if you want.)

danielle-macinnes-222441-unsplash 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.

Last year I got a little off track and didn't finish for the first time in a decade. It wasn't pretty. Good news: just like Britney, I'm back.

For much of the next week I'll be working only half-time while I consider some of my successes, failures, and lessons learned from 2018.

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Et Cetera

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WDS Videos Are Now on YouTube!

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.

Check them out, and subscribe to the channel.

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