Field Notes for Life

Working Wisdom: Field Notes for Life

Strive for Your Actions to Have a Single Tenor

Remember the Cosmic Joke

Write to Escape Your Default Setting

Write to Pool Your Shifting Selves

Write for Exposure (But Not That Kind)

Write to Improve Your Career

Everything is Undergoing Constant Reassembly (Evolution)

Life Evaporates When Taken Too Seriously

We Change Memories When We Remember Them

In the Midst of a Great Big Thing

The Struggle Alone Is Enough to Fill Your Heart

Listen More Than You Speak

The Richest Aspects of Life Are Often Those Spent In Service of Others

If You’re a Parent…

The People You Love Most…

Fiction is a Reality Accelerator

Know What You Really Truly Like

Speak to Yourself in Full Sentences

Honor Your Ancestors and Your Giants

Station Your Canaries (Leading Indicators and System Interrupts)

Grow Inherently, Not Apparently

Do the Right Things Quietly

Batch Like Tasks and Binge On a Schedule

Be Impatient With Short Tasks

Work Swells to Fill the Time Allotted for It (Parkinson’s Law)

Fire and Advance

Small Moves Lead to Massive Shifts (Compounding)

Be Irrationally Patient (Delayed Gratification)

Recite the Serenity Prayer Often

Eliminate Noise In Your Mental Bandwidth

Reduce Your Decision Fatigue

Increase Your Optionality

Rules Clobber Goals

Your Actions Become Your Inner Monologue Becomes Your Identity

Move Toward What Makes You Flinch

Sleep, Diet, and Exercise are Your Body’s Flywheel

Iron Never Lies

It’s Good to Quiver Under the Bar

Pursue It With Vigor (Enthusiasm)

Stamina is a Quiet Advantage

Pay In and Be Grateful to Do So (Grit)

Books Restore Focus

Avoid What Feeds You Without Nourishing You

Your Presence is Inversely Related to Your Hunger for Distraction

Decide What’s Human

Beware of Black Butterflies

You’re So Quickly Forgotten

Bankrupt Your Soul by Being a People Pleaser

No Opinion Needed

Your Life Follows Your Attention

Walk the Shoreline of Your Ignorance

Seek Unwelcome Truths to Widen Your Base of Understanding

Never Be a Victim

Fear and Loneliness Cause People to Act in Self-Contradictory Ways

See the Hands That Shaped the Clay of Hardened Beings (Empathy)

Excessive Criticism is a Sign of Internal Conflict (Projecting)

Your Unfair Advantage (Modesty)

Leave the Bucket

Start at Zero

Painfully Correct Clichés