Often, a specific panic sets in when I feel like I’m not making good use of my time. Suddenly, I start to experience my work as a race against death. Every second wasted not making something that will go into the world is a waste of the tiny amount of life I’ve been allotted. I […]
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Yesterday morning, I went out, ordered my coffee, sat down, and started working. This morning, when I was ordering my morning coffee at the shop where I work, the person at the counter looked directly at me and asked me how I was doing. Often, I’d just say “Can I have a…” without even replying […]
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Some coffee shops are forgettable: standard music, generic art, mediocre coffee, cold baristas, clientele who hold no interest to you. Some, on the other hand, are bohemian bliss: Edgy wall art complements sublime indie tunes. You overhear snippets of conversations about politics, philosophy, urban life, cool projects. The baristas are open and willing to take […]
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As a person who spends a lot of time in the creative zone, there are two main kinds of work I do: quiet work and work with beats. Quiet work is idea stuff. It’s pre-idea. It’s conceptualizing and visioning. Work with beats is what follows. It’s “cranking it out.” It’s making it happen. I do […]
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You may have read on my Facebook page this week that I completed a draft of my forthcoming book Spendshift. Because I’ve been able to focus on writing it intensively, it took me just over two months to complete the manuscript, which is my fastest ever. I woke up the day after I saved the […]
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In my forthcoming book Spendshift, out July 1 on Amazon, I share strategies and tricks I learned as a starving student to stretch my money a long way past where it should have gone. Many of these have continued to be useful well into adulthood, but I’ve also learned that sometimes the best thing you […]
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Disclaimer: There are so many reasons why you shouldn’t read this post: You don’t have time You’ve never heard of the author It blurs in with the 1000 other blog posts and articles people will ask you to read today You should be working on some other project/life goal/meaningful activity It piggybacks off another, smarter […]
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“Be so good they can’t ignore you.” – Steve Martin “When it comes to idea generation, quantity is the most predictable path to quality.” – Adam Grant I’ve always loved the above Steve Martin quote for its boldness and sass. Its motivating in the sense that, if you feel your work is being ignored, the onus […]
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When I was working on my doctorate, my supervisor would constantly ask me a question that was as infuriating as it was useful: so what? You’ve come up with a great idea here, so what? You’ve argued this point intelligently, so what? This part is completely groundbreaking, so what? You’re way off the mark on […]
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“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they […]
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