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Bits of Advice - My best of January 2025

Some nuggets I picked from some of the articles I read in January:
  1.  Most success is built on the back of long, painful periods of extremely disciplined, boring routines. If you need novelty to stay interested and motivated, you won't make it very far. To shine in the light, you have to embrace the boring work in the dark

  2. The most beautiful things in life are made beautiful by their impermanence. The vibrant sunset, the smile from an old friend, the high from a hard workout, the perfect silence during a walk, the smell after a summer rainstorm, the laugh of a baby...all of these things are special precisely because they don't last. It’s natural, but it’s a dangerous game—one that you will lose, eventually. Time is your most precious asset and the present is all that’s guaranteed. Spend it wisely, with those you love, in ways you’ll never regret. "Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now.

  3. Farmers who wait for perfect weather never plant. If they watch every cloud, they never harvest." - Ecclesiastes 11:4. There is no such thing as a perfect moment. There are just moments—and your actions determine the outcomes. Go make those moments perfect through your actions.

  4. Whether a decision is good or bad can change based on how you act after the choice is made. You can't learn all the lessons beforehand. You learn a lot about what you want in a marriage after getting married. You discover what type of career you enjoy after doing a lot of work. And so it goes in nearly every area of life. In many cases, what you wish you knew ahead of time can only be learned after the decision is made. So there is nothing left but to pay attention to what you like, continue to iterate, and commit to making the most of each opportunity. There is no perfect decision. Good decisions are made right after the fact."

  5. If you make lists of lofty goals, it can be easy to leave them to accumulate, as happens sometimes, into a mountain of to-do's and notes and half-forgotten plans. Dreaming alone is seductive, even a little sweet, since it lacks the pain of trying. So it feels proper to prize attempts more than dreams. You should have ideals, but you cannot only love an idealized future, you must cultivate a love of effort, too. If you really want something, then the soul must make demands of the body.

  6. Beware the student of one teacher. A good idea spirals into dogma when it gets applied to everything and stretched beyond the areas where it is useful. Remain open and embrace a lot of teachers.

  7. Your best performances will come when you are working in a way that is a full expression of you. The work becomes a natural display of your personality. This is when you not only get better results, but also love the activity — because in doing the craft, you feel alive.

  8. People can sometimes be held hostage by their expectations. They have a dream of something they would like to achieve or a path they intend to follow, but their mindset falls apart when things don't work out how they had hoped. The key is to reach for an extremely high bar, but to be adaptable enough to reframe the failures, disappointments, and defeats into fuel for the next thing. Give your best effort, but no matter how it works out, trust that life will be good for you. Focus on how the world is working with you, not against you. Everything you are given is material for the next move. Everything.

  9. Nearly everything awesome takes longer than you think. Get started and don't worry about the clock.

  10. In theory, consistency is about being disciplined, determined, and unwavering.In practice, consisteitt being adaptable. Don't haIf you don'tch time? Scale , scale. Don't haIf you don'tch energy? Do the, doy version. Find different ways to show up depending on the circumstances. Let your habits change shape tothe demands of the day. Adaptability is the way of consistency.

  11.  A surefire way to make a bad situation worse is to continue replaying it in your mind.The damage is done. The only thing that matters now is making the best choice given your current position.Next play mentality."

  12. Nothing bad ever comes from working hard on things you care about.


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