Simple, but not easy
Heyo, I've spent all week surfing the web 🏄🏻♂️ finding interesting ideas to help you become healthier, wealthier and happier.
Let me know if this edition of The Sunday Filter is riding waves 🌊 or eating them 🙃
Simple, but not easy
If it sounds too simple to be true, it probably is true (wait what?). It just won’t be easy to implement.
It’s tempting to believe that in order for something to have an impact it needs to be complex, but usually, it's the simple, more obvious concepts that make the biggest difference.
When I first started running my freelance business I did a lot of things I like to call “playing business”.
I spent my time creating elaborate plans, following complex routines, and trying to stack habits out of my a**.
But for some reason, I’d avoid doing the simple things that actually mattered (like pitching clients).
After one particularly stressful month, I realised where I was going wrong, I was drawn to complexity when simplicity always wins.
Since that point, there’s only been a few lessons that have actually made a difference in my life and they are all incredibly obvious, but not easy to practice.
1) Start before you feel ready - everyone feels unprepared, unqualified and uncertain when they start something. The difference is that the winners in society hear all this self-doubt and decide to start anyway.
2) There is no ‘best’ time to create - if you only do things when you feel inspired you’ll never make sustained progress. You need to master the ability to put in the work even when you’re not feeling inspired, over time that inspiration will be more likely to come.
3) Play your own game - when everyone is playing wildly different games you shouldn’t try to imitate them by building the same skills or following the same strategies.
Nothing about these lessons is unique or sexy. They're all obvious yet they’ve taken me years to fully understand.
If you have more simple, but not easy advice I’d love to hear it (just reply to this email).
I.
Failing at something you care about > succeeding at something you don't.
II.
Most people get caught up trying to make the 'best decision', when they'd benefit more from making a decision and taking massive action.
Little Rules About Big Things: This is one of those posts where I found myself highlighting 50% of the article. Morgan Housel is great at distilling and synthesising human behaviour into simple sentences.
There is rarely more or less economic uncertainty; just changes in how ignorant people are to potential risks.
A big takeaway from economic history is that the past wasn’t as good as you remember, the present isn’t as bad as you think, and the future will be better than you anticipate.
18 semi-controversial thoughts on the future: This thread predicts some interesting future trends but the one that resonated with me was the idea of 'slowmading'.
In my experience being a nomad is stressful. So much of your mental energy is wasted on thinking about where you're heading next. You're in this constant state of flux because you never stay anywhere long enough to form habits + routines.
But by traveling on a much slower time horizon, you can make nomadism way more fun and sustainable.
Don’t specialize, hybridize: Most people try fit into the ‘specialist’ or ‘generalist’ bucket, but as with most things in life I think the best place to be is more nuanced.
Stephan Ango shares the idea that more people should hybridize their skills, go deep in a couple areas and gain a level of competence in a few other areas. This way you’re able to take a unique angle on solving problems seeing things other people miss. Plus from my experience this way is also way more fun!
**BONUS FIND**
Hours of Sunshine in Europe + USA: The grey winter has settled in this week and pairing that with this map makes me want to move somewhere with way more sunshine 🤨
END NOTE
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Have a fantastic week!
- Stephen