Month: April 2021

Creative Gold

You probably already know this, but the best way to get a job is your connection: who you know and who they know.

The second best way is excellence: be good at what you do and be passionate about it.

If there has to be a third, I’d give the trophy to attitude and tied it with learning to come up with good ideas.

None of these ideas are new. But what’s interesting is when you mix and match and combine them together.

Great friends and peers. Exceptional work. Resilient attitude. Big ideas. Talk about setting yourself up to more likely to succeed.

This applies to find clients too, we often use different words to describe it: word of mouth, professional, self-leadership, and enthusiasm.

Heck, they apply to all aspects of life.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1269

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R & R

I’m heading to Mexico next week for decompression after a particularly stressful year so far. I’ve been vaccinated, so I’m not really worried about that, but I am curious to compare how things have changed with travel after a year of the majority of us staying at home.

I’m not sure what the internet situation will be like where we are staying (we are supposed to have internet) so I’ll still be freelancing some and blogging. If worst-case scenario I end up not being able to post consistently, you better believe I’ll still be writing every day (and will have to post them when I get back).

Writing daily for so long has taught me that there’s always time (even when you have to make it) for your habits, as long as you give yourself the space to do them and commit to it no matter what. Life isn’t always in our control so missing a day or having to compromise a little doesn’t matter as long as you are focused on the real goal: real growth and improvement, and always striving to be better.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1268

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Candor

I find it good to have a friend or two who always tells it like it is. Frankness isn’t necessarily a quality you want to be around 24 / 7, but in the long run, it’s more painful without it than with it.

Candor keeps our ego in check and helps us avoid mistakes and errors of judgment we aren’t noticing.

We don’t grow when everyone tells us yes, or gives us only praise and compliments, or fibs to not hurt our feelings. (We don’t grow when all we get is criticism either. We need a healthy balance of critique and celebration.

Critiquing and honesty are nuanced skills. The best critiques show us a path forward (sometimes an alternative path than we are currently on) to be better, rather than just putting us down. Honesty isn’t about regurgitation all your thoughts aloud, rather it’s about using truth to help us be better friends and better human beings.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1267

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Healthy Avoidance

I try not to learn/start things with the potential for bad habits.

Sometimes that’s less about the act and more about the frequency.

For example, I’d love to dive into mixology, but if I did I would 100% more likely to drink more. Unless I was trying to make a career from it, I would personally see a negative net benefit despite its appeal, because health comes first for me. Even though it would be a cool thing to know (and a great party trick), and fun to learn.

To each their own, of course.

My goal is to avoid habits that lead to bad outcomes.

Of course, there are always interesting alternatives to think about. What if you want to prioritize health but still what to learn mixology? You could learn how to make mocktails with kombucha and healthier syrups (made with coconut sugar and fruit, for example).

Ask Yourself:

Does X habit lead me to where I want to go?

What’s an alternative I can do that aligns better with my goals?

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1266

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Why so Serious?

I find it really easy to get lost in the daily motion of life and lose track of what’s most important. It’s easy to be too serious about the wrong things and not serious enough about the right things. Especially when all you do is go-go-go and never slow down enough to pause and access the direction and your decisions.

Too serious about the wrong things and not serious enough about the right things.

College is a good example (in many ways). Grades are important, but learning practical and valuable knowledge is more important. Choosing a major is important, but exploring wide to find new passions is rewarding.

Where (if) you go to college is a big decision. Most of the time, the emphasis coming from parents and teachers are on the wrong things (in my opinion).
Figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life, SAT scores, and scholarships. All important,
also a lot of pressure for a tweenager to figure out.

College should be taken seriously and should begin with culture fit. Our environment is one of the biggest influencers on who we are. Does this place have what I need? Will this place make me a better person? Will I make a lot of connections and opportunities in the fields I’m interested in? Does the location provide opportunity? Or maybe you don’t want to go the traditional college route. What are some alternative environments you can learn and find opportunities in?

College is just one example. Sometimes we are too serious about our looks and not serious enough about our health. Or we’re too serious about work, but not serious enough about cultivating great friends.

The thing about being too serious (or not serious enough) is—

Sometimes we just don’t know, until we figure it out the hard way.

Sometimes we get lucky and someone shows us the way. Other times we have to stop and figure things out ourselves.

Ask yourself: are you serious about the right things or the wrong things right now?

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1265

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Make it Tangible

Have you ever found yourself feeling completely incapable of finishing a (school, work, andor personal) project, or even knowing where to begin?

Ambiguity contributes to procrastination.

If you don’t know the bounds of what you want/need to do, then the task will feel like an endless overwhelming blob of obscurity.

The simplest way to get clear on what needs to be done is to break the project down into its smallest pieces and outline a checklist. That’s not original advice. But you’d be surprised how often we (including myself) completely skip this step because we want to dive right in or don’t think we need it.

But the humble outline or checklist will highlight the way. Because the biggest feature of a checklist is it shows us what our next task is. We cross off one thing, and then we go to the next. Of course, the task has to be something doable/actionable. If the todo is “world domination” it’s gonna be pretty up in the air on how you are going to manage that. That’s why it’s important to break it down into small components as much as possible.

The more tangible a project is, the less we will get in our own way.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1264

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Playtivity

“The heart and soul of the company is creativity and innovation.” — Bob Iger

“Curiosity is one of the great secrets of happiness.” — Bryant H. McGill

Money. An agreed-upon collective idea of trust and value. Some use it as a measuring stick. And others see it as a means to an end. Like many things, it’s not something that’s good or bad, rather it’s how you use it that counts.

What I find interesting is that some of the greatest inventors and artists of humanity made things not for the money, but for the love of creativity, curiosity, and the joy of figuring things out.

Sure money was the periphery—you can’t have the Italian Renaissance without the Medici—but money was never the motivator.

Apple wouldn’t have been Apple without both Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. And Jobs was superb at marketing and selling, but he didn’t make things just to make a profit.

Creativity was the goal. Or play. Or solving. Or exploration. Or enjoyment. Or any number of meaningful reasons we do what we are driven to pursue.

Money is an amplifier. When you have enough (‘enough’ is a loaded word) to not worry about it, then you have greater flexibility to play. But even without it, we can still make time for more play and curiosity in our lives, we just have to fit it in where we can.

Takeaways:

  • Don’t make money the main reason you do something.
  • If you are doing something just for the money alone, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it. (Unless it’s a means to an end.)
  • Money is an amplifier
  • Create because it feels like play to you.
  • Make room for play no matter how old you are or what’s going on in your life.
  • The best kind of play is about making and discovering—not just consuming.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1263

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Write Your Future

We live and die by the choices we make (or don’t make).

It doesn’t always feel like it because those choices are usually small or go unnoticed.

Like choosing what to eat for lunch. Or choosing who you work for/with. Or choosing what others say you should do over what you feel you should do.

Because everything adds up, good and bad, to who we are. And who we can be is determined by this moment. And the next. You can’t rewrite your history, but you can write your future.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1262

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How Can I Be More Consistent?

“Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” — John Wooden

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Lack of consistency is often a sign of lack of priority. (Procrastination, fear, and inaction also get in the way, but priority-lessness is the main culprit.) It’s kinda hard to be consistent if you don’t know what you want, or if you go after too many things at once.

Lack of priority, on the other hand, is tricky. It could mean that you aren’t clear on what’s important to you, or that you’re trying to do everything (and therefore aren’t accomplishing anything). But lack of priority is also a sign of lack of autonomy over your life.

Sometimes you don’t have the luxury to prioritize what’s important to you. At least not immediately or the way you would like. For example, I’ve been inconsistent lately with my podcast, not out of desire or laziness, but because I’ve been dealing with some jaw/TMJ pain and it’s been difficult (and honestly demoralizing) to record long conversations. It’s something I have to take care of so that I can reset my momentum and be consistent.

Lack of time is also another big cause of lack of priority (and therefore inconsistency). If you are overbooked, you’ll be running from one thing to another (usually late) without enough time to give each thing you do the breathing room it needs to flourish. Or maybe you aren’t doing well financially so you have to spend a lot of your time working on things that wouldn’t be your first choice (beggars can’t be choosers, as they say.)

Of course, these limitations are final or fatal. It just means we’ve got work to do. If we want to be consistent, if we want to have priority over our priority, then we have to solve the immediate problems in front of us first. Pining over something we can’t have (yet) only slows us down. It’s better to do what you have to now so that you can do what you want to as soon as possible. Every step in that direction takes us a little closer to that reality.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1261

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Momentum starts small

Momentum is hard to pick back up if it’s lost. It’s possible though.

You have to start small. The problem with picking up lost momentum is the expectation that you can jump right back where you were. But that’s usually not possible. It’s like the difference between stepping onto a stationary train versus one that’s going full speed.

Momentum needs to be small and deliberate.

This reminds me of the quote by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Think of it as a fresh start.

Don’t aim for what you were—the glory days of the past—aim for something better. Aim for what you could be.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,

— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1260

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