Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
Hey friends, happy Sunday!
No new video this week as I've been full steam ahead on client work. I've noticed that every year August seems to be my busiest month, anyone else find that?
I do however have a few things I want to share with you:
Why NOW is the best time to be a FREELANCER: Now is a great time to build a profitable independent business, here's why.
Build your project graveyard: Every entrepreneur who's built a successful business has a project graveyard - the collection of ideas and projects that never took off. Building your project graveyard is a vital first step to take as a creator.
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
Most of us don't know what we want, so we imitate each other.
Instead of having our own desires, we desire the same things as other people.
Cars and houses are the obvious culprits but we can also try imitate other peoples lifestyles, goals, and businesses.
This idea is called mimetic theory of desire and it's really difficult to avoid.
When we're constantly seeing what other people have and what they are doing it becomes hard not to want the same things.
The challenge then becomes separating what you intrinsically want (ie the things that will make you deeply happy) and what you want because of others (the things that will make you shallow happy).
As Naval Ravikant says 'If you play stupid games, you'll win stupid prizes'. So to avoid playing stupid games I set aside 90 minutes every 8 weeks to reflect on what I want to achieve and why I want to achieve it. Once I'm clear on my direction I set mini goals to achieve in the next 8 weeks and get back to work.
This practice has saved me wasting so much time working on things because of other people and consistently come back to building the things I intrinsically want.
I.
Cheap dopamine is the most distracting force in the world.
II.
News is to the mind what sugar is to the body. — ROLF DOBELLI
How I regained concentration and focus: Every few months I feel like I need to reset my focus. I start checking my phone too much, get distracted from work by Twitter and check email 20 times per day. This week was one of those weeks and this article was a great reminder to setup some guide-rails to regain concentration and focus.
Dangerous Dreams: When you start a company you have big dreams and a lot of assumptions about how things will work. 99% of those will change as you start building. In this article Ben Issen shares how his assumptions and outlook on business has completely changed in 15 months.
I lost my passport in a foreign country: The storytelling in this video is exquisite. The vulnerability, pacing and narrative are incredible, what’s even more interesting is that this is only his 4th YouTube video, ohh and he’s the dad of Youtuber Nathaniel Drew
END NOTE
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Have a fantastic week!
- Stephen