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    #265 Dance the barbell balance of life

    Living a balanced life doesn’t mean living average experiences.

    It’s more like a barbell, or a seesaw, where you go all in on complementary actions.

    Work hard, rest hard.

    Write with total focus, then fully let go when you’ve hit your word target.

    Work out with full intensity, then let your body fully recover.

    So when you’re out of balance, the solution is not to come closer to the middle.

    Instead, you start doing less of what you’re already doing or add more of the polar opposite of what you’re already doing.

    Figure out your polar opposite pairs, and give them both the attention they deserve. That’s how you dance the barbell balance of life.

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    #86 Practice daily, measure progress on average

    The article I publish today may be worse than one I wrote 2 months ago.

    I may struggle today with a guitar piece I played effortlessly last week.

    And when I meditate today, my mind may be all over the place, even though last week it was calm as water.

    On any given day, I may feel that I’m making progress, that I’ve reached a plateau, or even that I’m going backwards.

    But it doesn’t matter.

    Progress isn’t always visible in daily practice. But without daily practice, there is no progress.

    If I stick to daily practice, on average, I’ll get better. I’ll start having more good days than bad. And slowly but surely, my ‘bad days’ will start being better than what I consider a ‘good day’ right now.

    Progress, averaged out is what it’s all about.

  • #331 Building habits the lazy way

    Some people think they can’t build habits because they’re lazy.

    Maybe we all are – so we might as well make laziness the key to building habits.

    I write only one short daily post because I know I won’t stick to writing long-form posts – and when I feel like writing long-form, it doesn’t feel like an obligation but a treat. Laziness built the writing habit, and laziness makes me feel good when I write more.

    I do 5-minute daily meditations because I know I won’t stick to 30-minute meditation as a habit – yet when I DO meditate for 30 minutes, it feels like a treat. Laziness built the meditation habit, and laziness makes me feel good when I meditate more.

    If you are so sure you won’t stick to anything overly ambitious, what’s the laziest way you could implement a behavior change? Can you use that as your starting point to build life-changing habits?

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    #282 You can write every day

    If you truly believe you can write every day – not that it is generally possible to write every day, but that YOU can write every day – you would be doing it already.

    So if you’re not, ask yourself:

    Do you believe YOU can write every day?

    If not, why not?

    Is it physically impossible for you to write something every day? A page, a paragraph, a sentence… a word?

    Deep down, you know the answer to that question.

    And now we’ve established you can write every day; what other excuses come up?

    That the work won’t be good?

    That the words won’t capture what you want to say?

    That you’ll disappoint others?

    That you’ll disappoint yourself?

    Put words to your fears, then ask yourself: what would happen if they all came true?

    Would that stop you from writing? Or would it liberate you?

    Would you maybe be just fine?

    What would it be like to have overcome your fears and still be writing anyway?

    Only one way to find out…

    Write. Every. Day.

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