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personal development

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personal development

Everything Is Offense or Defense

“For parents, this is a Shackleton moment.”

This according to Tim Armstrong, CEO of the DTX Company (I’m paraphrasing).

“Your family is frozen in time. You have to spend more time with each other. During this time, I’ve gotten to know my kids 25% better.”

His interviewer, Scott Galloway added:

“You’re going to look back at this time as historic. You hope your kids and family look back on it positively.”

What Tim and Scott are saying is: play offense. Everything we do, we can frame as either offense or defense:

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career

The Good Bones To A Good Life

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:59 am

A house with “good bones” is one with the potential to go from “frumpy-to-fabulous.” She is structurally sound, regardless of the missing shingles, broken windows, and peeling paint.

She may look beat, but like Tyson Fury in the 12th round against Deontay Wilder, she’ll weather the storm.

It doesn’t require a master architect to list the ingredients of a house with good bones: a solid foundation, a strong frame, put together with thought and care.

It made me wonder: what are the common ingredients of a good life? What does a life with “good bones” look like? 

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career

Career Habits: How To Control Your Destiny at Work and Life

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:57 am

Recently, I spoke to three different students from my alma mater.

They wanted advice on getting started in filmmaking, developing online courses, and marketing.

They asked good questions, and most of it centered around a central theme: “what skills should I focus on?”

Skill development is crucial, no doubt. You must have the chops. However, looking back at my career thus far, in the 3-4 industries where I’ve done well, I focused a lot less on skills and more on habits.

I like to think this served me well, despite a scattered career trajectory, for a few reasons:

  1. Skill sets change but the ingredients to build skills — your habits — remain the same.
  2. Habits are always under your control. Control your habits, control your destiny.
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career

3 High Leverage Life Changes You Should Make

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 03:28 am

My friend Michael Alexis keeps a running list of life lessons, the way others might keep a list of half-baked business ideas or ex-lovers. He started compiling this list 3 years ago.

The entire list is worth a deep read. Here’s one I’ve been thinking about a lot:

“I am constantly blown away by how little I know.

If you roll back to any ‘six months ago,’ I thought I knew a lot, but in hindsight I’m surprised I was even functional.

I expect this cycle to continue indefinitely into the future.”

I find this inextricably true in my life as well. I’m confused about how I got anything done six months ago. That’s doubly true if we rewind to a full year.

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career

What Will You Accomplish This Year? A 2019 Recap

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 02:58 am

At the end of 2018, I decided there was a large “skill-gap” that I wanted to bridge. Some skills I wanted to improve were more technical:

  • Excel
  • SEO
  • SQL

Other skills were softer, but equally important to me:

  • Email automation
  • Food photography
  • Instagram marketing

I didn’t see a way to work on these skills without making certain sacrifices. So I made a decision: I’d give up blogging for a year.1

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career

2019: The Year of Becoming a Practitioner

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:56 am

My every career opportunity came because of my writing habit.

I wrote my way into my first Hollywood internship, covering entire book manuscripts in a day — that’d take others a week. I wrote a cold email that landed my job with Dennis. An article on how to get health insurance opened the door to working with Ramit for 2 years.

The quality of that writing fluctuated over the last 10 years, but the work ethic never wavered.

Until now.

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marketing

Slow Is Sexy

Last updated on November 3rd, 2021 at 07:59 am

Before 2012, the term “growth hacking” wasn’t a thing.

According to the mythology surrounding Facebook,[note]https://www.recode.net/2016/3/21/11587128/silicon-valleys-homogeneous-rich-douchebags-wont-win-forever-says[/note] Chamath Palihapitiya coined the idea of the first growth team during a meeting with Sheryl Sandberg.

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