“Unfortunately, many people avoid discomfort. They do everything they can to avoid it. They are just too comfortable to be pushed or bothered to make a change or improve their lives. This is perhaps the biggest limiting factor for most people, and it’s why you can’t change your habits.”
“By using a title without still doing the work, you fool yourself into thinking future success is assured. (‘This is who I am!’) That premature sense of satisfaction can keep you from doing the hard work necessary.”
“Ask someone if they like a product. Then ask them if they like it at a price point, say $20. The whole conversation changes.”
“Most people need to go back and forth between focused and diffuse modes in order to learn a topic. When you can’t solve something in the first focus, you’re not stupid — you just need to allow time to toggle to the diffuse mode.”
“Negativity is the enemy of creativity.” – David Lynch
When we experiment, we improve.
Just ask Facebook.
The social juggernaut operates 10,000 different versions of its platform at all times to enable a constant state of experimentation.
That ongoing testing of algorithm tweaks, copy edits, and design alterations has fueled Facebook’s product improvements and driven it to an unprecedented level of success.
When I heard Mark Zuckerberg discuss Facebook’s approach to experimentation in a recent podcast interview, it made me wonder how we can use experimentation in our own lives to drive personal improvement.
There are infinite experiments we can run on ourselves to do things like stop checking our phone, have better conversations, or the countless things I share with The Interested.
But you’ve got to start somewhere, so here are five simple ones to try.
“A good weekend isn’t about turning off the brain and checking out. Instead, it’s about corralling that precious free time for meaningful pursuits — the harder the quest, the more rewarding the bounty.”
“Leadership is for other people, it seems. Leadership is for someone who has unusual amounts of courage, insight or perhaps arrogance. Except that’s not true. That’s a myth perpetuated by folks who’d rather have you comply with their instructions.”
“There is no ‘voice’ to find, no voice that belongs to the true you, because there is no true you, only ever versions of yourself you have learned to perform, and the voice of the character you play on the page is up to you.”
“When we push our creativity and productivity to its limits, we can easily find ourselves teetering on brink of burnout. And there’s a fine line between being in the zone and falling down the slippery slope of mental, emotional and physical exhaustion.”