If you get home gym equipment and cancel your membership, you might find you work out less.
When you belonged to the gym, you had to put things in place to get a workout. Find the time, pack your gym bag, schedule your other errands for your drive to or from the gym.
You had to create what behavioral scientists call an “implementation intention.” The more specific your implementation intention, the more likely you’ll follow through.
But when you have a home gym, your implementation intention gets weaker. You don’t schedule a workout because you can do it whenever. When you do think about working out, your brain conveniently reminds you it’s time to change the air filter on your furnace.
I propose a cognitive bias, heretofore unknown, called the “pool table paradox.” It’s the paradox that sometimes when it’s more convenient, it’s harder to do.
As most people who have had a pool table know, pool tables are lots of fun when you’re at a bar or a friend’s house. But then you buy a pool table, thinking you’ll play all the time. Somehow, you never do.
Sometimes, by making it a little harder to do, you do it more.
Aphorism: “The great difficulty of writing is to make the language of the educated mind express our confused ideas, half feelings, half thoughts, when we are little more than bundles of instinctive tendencies.” —Helen Keller
Cool:StayFocusd is a simple Chrome extension for blocking yourself from distracting sites.
Best, David P.S. Join the Patreon to support the newsletter and access a bunch of bonus videos and screencasts I created this year.
In Paris in the 1800s, if you wanted to “text” a friend, you’d send them a note in a pneumatic tube.
Yes, the kind the teller used to send you a lollipop when your mom drove-through at the bank.
This old and primitive tech was drastically affected by new tech. The electric telegraph quickly connected the globe, just by sending short electrical charges through a wire. Once the transcontinental telegraph was installed in the U.S., the Pony Express, which could send a message from New York to San Francisco in two weeks, went out of business in two days.
But the electric telegraph didn’t cause reduced demand for pneumatic tubes. It caused demand to skyrocket.
Once a telegram reached a station, it needed to be printed out and delivered to its destination. The streets became jammed with messengers. But pneumatic tubes could send messages more efficiently than wires or people.
Networks of tubes sprang up in major cities around the world, such as New York, Rio, and London. But Paris’s was the most extensive.
Once the network was in place, yet another piece of old tech rose in demand: hand-written notes. Electric telegrams, you had to pay for by the letter. These telegrams were printed on paper anyway, so Paris’s Pneumatic Post offered these little blue notes.
For one low price, you could write anything you could fit on one of these notes. It would get across town in a couple hours. If someone sent you one of these notes, they were sending you “pneus.”
We expect new tech to decrease demand for old tech, but sometimes it has the opposite effect.
Computers in offices increased demand for paper. The internet has increased demand for shipping. Music streaming services have increased demand for vinyl.
You can bet that while AI decreases demand for some things, it will increase demand for others.
Book:Cattle Kingdom (Amazon) tells the story of the gold rush that was cattle farming in the wild, wild, western U.S.
Cool: This Fluance turntable (Amazon) is a great introduction to audiophile-level vinyl-record listening.
Best, David P.S. I’ve created reels of this story on Instagram and TikTok.
Millennials and gen Xers were either taught this lesson by their dads, or they weren’t.
This is never more clear to me than when I see how quick some creators are to build their businesses on all-in-one platforms – something that is their email list and their blog and their payment processor and hosts their courses. Or, when authors build their entire businesses on Amazon.
The lesson I bet these creators weren’t taught was, Never buy one of these.
My dad told me to never buy a TV/VCR combo, in slightly more recent years a TV/VCR/DVD combo. The basic logic behind this advice was: If one thing breaks the whole thing breaks.
If the TV or the VCR stops working, you have three choices: Take it in for repairs and have neither a TV nor a VCR while it’s fixed, or get rid of it and buy a new TV and VCR.
The third choice was, Frankenstein together a monstrosity like my grandpa had in his basement: A TV on which only the picture worked, on top of another on which only the audio worked.
It’s easy to see the appeal of the TV/VCR. It’s convenient and often cheaper, if not in money, in time and mental energy. But if one thing breaks, the whole thing breaks.
If their email deliverability tanks, you have to live with it.
If they get acquired and start squeezing out every dime they can, too bad.
If Amazon randomly shuts down your account, there goes your whole business.
Like much advice, there’s a time and a place. If it’s your first apartment and you can’t even afford a garbage bin with a lid, fine, get the TV/VCR at the thrift store. Or if you live dangerously and don’t mind taking the hit if disaster strikes.
But not me. I will not buy a TV/VCR.
Aphorism: “Books…are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with ’em, then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidence of our earlier stage of development.” —Dorothy L. Sayers
So if you say you’re gonna smash 3 pizzas today and watch all of Breaking Bad, and you do it, you’re disciplined.
Though discipline usually has a value judgement attached to it. You gotta exercise and eat healthy. The more “boring” it is, if you do it, people think you’re disciplined.
Sustainable discipline has to lie somewhere in-between. Few of us can stand to be pure hedonists, and if you aspire to only do boring stuff, you’ll fall off the rails. If “discipline” takes a great deal of willpower, you’ll have a hard time staying disciplined.
But if you set up your schedule and environment to make it easy to do the things you intend, and hard to do the things you don’t, you’ll have automatic discipline.
The archetypal example is Ulysses having himself tied to the mast of his ship, so he wouldn’t be tempted by the song of the Sirens. If you want to eat fewer sweets and less alcohol, tie yourself to the mast – don’t keep candy or beer in your house.
But besides making it hard to do the things you don’t intend, you can also make it easier to do what you do intend. If you want to exercise, you’re better off joining the gym on the way home from work than the one twenty minutes away.
90% of discipline is making desired actions easy and undesired actions hard.
Aphorism: “In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.” —Albert Camus
Cool: This pumpkin seed protein (Amazon) is a plant-based, legume-free protein powder. The only I’ve found I can tolerate.
One of the loneliest things about being a creator is, you can’t borrow self-worth.
If you have a degree from a prestigious university, work for a big company others have heard of, and have a title that means something, you have a lot of borrowed self-worth.
Other people know a PhD is a big accomplishment. They know that university has a great reputation. They’ve heard of your employer, and “VP of Sales,” they surmise, is just one step behind President of Sales.
If that isn’t enough to make you feel worthy, you might have lots of well-known clients you can list off. It sounds impressive.
I’ve had a job before. I know, this stuff feels good, and it’s real – it comes from a lot of hard work.
But a lot of that self-worth is due to the hard work of others. It can come from sources as borrowed as the city you live in. How many wannabe screenwriters feel good about themselves just for living in Los Angeles, for example?
Everybody needs self-worth, but that need stands in the paths of many would-be creators. Because to go down the path of creator, you have to leave borrowed self-worth behind.
It takes a while to gain another form of self-worth. Because as a creator you aren’t your degree, your job title, or your clients.
You are only what you make.
Aphorism: “The innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.” —Niccolò Machiavelli
Book:Madame Bovary (Amazon) is an incredibly well-written classic, an allegory for the conflict between romanticism and rationality.
There’s what you say is important, then there are your actions.
You may say you want to be a writer, but if you don’t spend time writing, you don’t.
Economists call this “revealed preference,” but it’s also described by the adage, “Actions speak louder than words.”
But actions work in a cycle. How you spend your time shapes your preferences so you spend more of your time that way.
This is why your first hour is so important.
You may say you hate the drama on social media, but if you spend the first hour of your day doomscrolling, you love the drama on social media. You’ll spend much of the subsequent hours doomscrolling, if not physically, mentally.
How you spend your first hour is a revealed preference of what matters to you. But if you make a conscious decision to change how you use that first hour, not only will you affirm what matters to you, you’ll do so all day.
Put your moments where your mouth is.
Book:1491 (Amazon) tells what is known of the civilizations in the Americas before Columbus.
Cool:truInside: Election is a fantastic documentary about the making of the greatest film in the history of the world: Alexander Payne’s Election.
The recent breakthroughs in AI have been around long enough we now know better than to simply tell ChatGPT, “write a book.”
Those of us with taste, anyway. Some see the outcome and think writers are doomed. ChatGPT is a bad writer’s idea of a good writer.
I don’t see AI yet as a viable alternative for creative work. It’s great at helping understand a subject better, through conversation. It can also supplement your own brainstorming.
The real “alpha” in AI is using it to execute complex processes you’d otherwise need to hire an expert for, but more likely wouldn’t have bothered with. AI has been indispensable for me as I piece together Shopify, Meta Shops, Google Merchant Center, and more to create a sustainable direct-sales channel. As Amazon gets inundated with a tidal wave of AI-generated crap, authors like me are using AI to “make our own Amazons.”
AI can help you execute your vision, but it’s not a substitute for taste. If you have poor taste, what you create with AI will be bland and unoriginal. If you have good taste, AI can help you quickly and effectively execute good ideas.
AI is a taste multiplier.
Aphorism: “success = talent + luck great success = a little more talent + a lot of luck“ —Daniel Kahneman
Before I pressed publish on Mind Management, Not Time Management, I took a moment to write how I felt.
I discovered I essentially wanted to become a baby, free of responsibilities, and have my parents take care of me again.
In other words, I was panicking, wishing I was wearing a diaper, yet shitting my pants anyway.
But this feeling was nothing new.
The first time you ship a big project, you inevitably come across some moment of panic like this. It more commonly comes towards the end, as you fear putting it into the world will be the social equivalent to having a giant piece of spinach permanently lodged between your front teeth.
You never stop having these feelings. You merely learn to recognize them as part of your natural process. When you were a kid and you got a shot, you cried. As an adult, getting a shot still hurts, but your perception of the pain has changed through experience.
I pressed publish on Mind Management, and it’s sold more than 40,000 copies. I’ve felt similar publishing How to Sell a Book, and I expect I’ll always feel this way when I press publish.
I know my panic patterns. Know yours, too.
Aphorism: “An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.” —Gustav Flaubert
Cool:LMNT (Amazon) is my favorite, salty af, electrolyte supplement.
Best, David P.S. How to Sell a Book is available now through my store.
You’re moving, but it’s not always clear you’re making progress. You need to have faith that a moment will come when you are done.
And just when you think you’re close, you find the last 10% takes 90% of the time and effort. Yet sometimes, all at once, everything comes together, and the door swings open.
Like cracking a safe, if you don’t finish, all you’ve done will mean nothing. Sure, you can rationalize that you’ve learned something, but that doesn’t change the fact that the treasure – the money, the recognition, or the simple sense of accomplishment – remains locked away.
Like cracking a safe, as you move, you’re listening carefully for things to fall into place. You need the right combination of passion, taste, and personal motivation to find the finishing combo.
Book:Aristocrats (Amazon) explains what they are, and their history in Britain.
Cool: The WHAM! documentary (Netflix) tells the story of the group that launched George Michael’s music career, with an inspiring story of how at only 20 he self-produced “Careless Whisper.”
Best, David P.S. This is the last week to save huge on all my audiobooks, on platforms other than Audible. For example Mind Management is only $1.99 on Apple, B&N, and Chirp.
Research shows a reward can trigger action. Rewards can also lead to complacency.
Research shows a punishment can kick you into gear. A punishment can also incite rebellion.
Research shows a goal can be a guiding beacon. A goal can also be a limiting barrier.
Research on motivation is essentially useless, when it comes to your creative projects.
Maybe freedom gives you energy, or you crave structure. Maybe you love competition, or you prefer collaboration. Maybe stress lights a fire inside you, or it burns you out.
It depends on the project or the stage of the projects. Most of all, it depends upon you.
You must become a master of your own motivation. Constantly attempt to motivate yourself, and see what happens. But when you fail to do what you intend, don’t be crushed – be curious.
Anything can be motivating, or de-motivating. Become the world-renowned expert on what motivates you.
Forget the research and do your own me-search.
Aphorism: “Learn from other people’s successes and failures, but do your own thing.” —Mark Zuckerberg
