What can I do right now to move the needle a little closer to my goals?

I don’t want to be perfect (perfect is boring) but I do want to challenge and improve myself a little every day.

Rushing never leads to Mastery. When was the last time you crammed for something and actually could remember it for more than a couple of days?

No. Learning is a steady swing of the ax.

The goal is to be a little better than yesterday. It’s not always glamorous, but it gets the job done.

A little more consistent.

A little more action less maybe’s.

A little more open, a little less ego.

A little more patience, a little less worry and stress.

A little more focus, less scattered.

A little more energy.

…

Forget about what others are doing or not doing. As long as I stay focused on that small, steady change, I’ll get where I need to go.

Use treads to your advantage, but don’t be mindlessly swept up by them.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1530

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify

Acting with swiftness is not enough if we don’t know why we are doing the things we are doing.

It’s easy to mistake *motion* for *progress*.

Simply taking action doesn’t add up to a whole lot if you don’t have a goal in mind and if you are acting on the wrong things (or the right things for the wrong reasons).

Where are you directing your effort *towards*?

Displaced effort often looks like doing too many things at once. Even if they are things we want to do, the more we spread ourselves around, the less potent our effort is.

It’s worth noting that displaced efforts are different from “wasted” efforts. It’s subtle but a big difference once you consider it deeper.

Displaced efforts are pointing your time, focus, and resources towards something you want but don’t value.

“Wasted” effort is going after something you love and unfortunately falling short or failing to reach your goals.

Wasted efforts are not really wasted. Everything you’ve learned along the way can be used and applied to your next idea. Think of it as continued efforts towards a life true to you and your passions.

We can learn from displaced efforts too, as long as we realize we are pursuing the wrong thing, and changing course to something we value and love instead. This usually takes massive change but it’s worth it to live the way we actually want to live, instead of the way others expect us or the expectations we put on ourselves.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1530

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify

It’s easy to put off the hard stuff that we have to do, out of reluctance, fear, or any other number of reasons.

But when we do so, we’re only contributing to the problem.

Hard things pile up after a while and eat away our focus.

Responsibilities don’t have to be burdensome, they can be gifts in the right perspective.

Failures can be moments of lift.

Broken pieces can become mosaics. (Cue poetry bongos.)

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1529

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify

Where does that innate rebellious fire inside the downtrodden and lowly come from?

Is it in the drinking water? Is it in our DNA? Or do hard circumstances build the spirit within?

And if it is hardship that creates spunk, resilience, and creativity, why do some people buckle under struggle, while others thrive?

If I had to guess, I would say the fire within is already there and needs a spark of something we experience that lights us up and wakes us to new possibilities.

Too much at once can break us. However, there’s also hope and life after things fall after.

Maybe a parent gets sick or a friend dies in a random accident, which shows us how fragile life is.

Maybe we find it ourselves in a book or experience it on the road.

Maybe someone (that looks a lot like us) shows us what life can be with a little effort and thinking differently.

Maybe a teacher believes in us.

Maybe someone shows us how NOT to live.

Or maybe we find out the hard way, through injury, failure, ruin, and the like.

Whatever the case: There is a fire that burns inside each of us. A fire made of creativity and ideas and originality and heart. All it takes is a match to let it loose.

Feed it right and nothing can stop you. You’ll blaze with energy and capacity.

And in so doing, become an example for the next kid, looking for something different from life.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1528

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify

“Your actions speak so loudly, I can not hear what you are saying.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ditto with kindness.

Kindness expands and, like light from the sun, warms everyone it greets.

Nothing says I love you like a kind act or genuinely kind words.

Do something kind for someone you love today.

Do something kind for someone you don’t know too.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1527

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify

Creative work doesn’t become great automatically. It takes intentionality and persistence energy to make something really good.

Most of the time we are just iterating, and it doesn’t feel like we are creating something meaningful. Piece by piece. 500 words. A few dozen brush strokes. A day’s worth of code.

However, iteration has another form—refinement.

Refinement takes high-quality focus (and usually a lot of time to get right. Not always, but usually.)

Derivative is on the lower end of the spectrum, with iteration in the middle and refinement on high end.

Iteration is typically an addition—adding more work to something. And refinement is usually a subtraction—finding the essence of an idea.

Sometimes we have to move through derivative days to get too refined days.

The Derivatives days are my least favorite, naturally, but sometimes these low moments show us what’s real and what matters.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1527

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify

Ideas are a type of currency. Or maybe I should say that money tends to be a byproduct of great ideas.(Not that every idea is about making money.)

The more impactful the idea, the more people gravitate to it.

Ideas are change-makers. Even a small idea that personally changes your life for the better is a powerful thing.

Ideas are also force-multipliers. Meaning, ideas inspire other ideas. Your ideas potentially inspire my ideas (and others.)

One idea that changes your life has the potential to influencemany lives.

Of course, the big difference between money and ideas is you can save and invest your money, and money compounds, but you can’t necessarily save your ideas.

We can sit on them, but not forever. We can give them, use them or lose them.

The longer we carry an idea, the harder it is for us to do it.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1526

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” — Leonardo da Vinci

A deadline is one way to give a project finality and urgency. That goes for not just work and school but also our personal projects.

If we don’t have our ideas goals and plans to reach those goals, we’ll likely never finish them.

The universe expands. Work expands.

We also fill out our spaces by the size and type of environment we live in.

Physical and mental spaces.

Consider physical spaces.

If you are used to traveling around the world with just a suitcase and a backpack, you naturally limit what you carry and get rid of everything else. An extra pound is nothing after 30 minutes, but a burden after a couple of days.

Most of the time we sidestep this when we travel because we have a destination, a hotel, an Airbnb, a friend’s place, somewhere to place and keep our belongings.

Imagine it, there you are with your two suitcases, backpack, Fanny pack, and a paper bag your uneaten sandwich, touring a city, lugging your baggage around (literally) focused on protecting your possessions versus enjoying where you are.

What would you do if the stuff you took with you had to be on your person the entire time?

Our environment, the city, and the culture we live in have a dramatic effect on our lives.

But it’s not just the big spaces we live in that pull us in different directions. The small spaces change us too.

Physical space, size, and shape have a strong determination of what we put in it and therefore can have a dramatic effect on our lives.

If you have a giant empty house, you’re going to naturally want to fill it with things. If you have a tiny apartment if the smallest case of disorganization makes your place look like it was hit by a tornado.

This is something I find wildly soothing and gives me peace of mind. I think it’s because it’s a small sign that we’re not always naturally crazy.

What we are talking about here is boundaries.

We are constantly being pushed and pulled, poked, and proved to do things and to be convinced to do things by everything around us. This is also a space we haven’t given ourselves boundaries in.

It’s also something we can use and hone to our advantage.

I built a giant bookshelf so that I would have the desire to fill it up with books. Books to learn and improve. Books to challenge and explore. Books to be better and teach me how to be wise.

Want to be really good at something? Create the space for that something to exist and thrive.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1525

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify

Limitations should be respected.

To know our limits, we must push your limits. This pushes us beyond what we think is possible.

But to push your limits, there’s always the risk of going too far over the edge.

Whether that’s physical (unintentionally) injuring ourselves or mentally stretching ourselves so thin we no longer enjoy what we are doing.

For me, I have a hard time knowing when I’ve gone over the edge until it’s too late.

Injury, burnout, pain… unnecessary problems that could be avoided. But then again maybe not.

It’s hard to know what’s your limit until you go over the edge.

Which is a lesson most of us need to learn ourselves… the hard way. Be honest with yourself—would you really have stopped if someone told you otherwise?

Perhaps if someone explained it well, in a nonjudgmental way.

Some limits are meant to be broken and trained to be improved. Some, however, need to be respected.

Sleep, exercise, diet, purpose, time. all needed to be respected with mindfulness and care, otherwise you end up in situations you don’t want to be in (or where actually trying to avoid).

Otherwise, we are causing more harm than good… Eventually.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1524

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify

Is it possible for someone to read every book that’s been written?

Or watch every movie? Every YouTube video? Listen to every podcast?

According to a very quick and lazy Google search, there are 130 million books (and counting). And 97 million songs out there.

There are so many creative voices, all seeking connections to be heard and seen—including you and me.

As creators, we aren’t just competing for others’ interests with just all the amazing artists and creatives today — we are competing with everyone in the past who managed to make something great and that has stood the test of time.

How does someone compete with that?

By doing it for the right reasons.

First. You’ve got to create for the sheer love of the craft.

Second Compete against yourself.

It’s never you versus them. Everyone can create, but compare your flaws to someone else and you’ve already lost.

And Third: Stay bold. Keep pursuing your craft. Go past failure and fear. Build something valuable.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1523

Join the Renaissance:

Newsletters: Considerations | Practices | Bookaholics

Subscribe: Renaissance Life on Apple Podcast| Renaissance Life on Spotify