Month: March 2022

All I Know

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” Socrates

The more I know the less I know.

That’s the excited (and occasionally overwhelming) thing about knowledge and skill.

The deeper you go towards mastery, the more things to know, the more secrets there are to uncover.

The thing is, mastery isn’t a finite state.

It’s a continuous curve that never quite touches the sides.

Discover is endless. Which keeps things interesting if you stay flexible and curious. There’s always another mountain to explore after you get to the top of the one you are on. There’s always another puzzle to solve.

Mastery is also a choice. We can’t learn everything, mostly because we don’t have the time.

Also, time changes what is possible to master.

Computers as we know it are less than a hundred years old (two hundred if you start with Babbage). Think of all of the wonderful ideas and things we can learn since the invention of the Internet.

Part of learning is realizing that we can’t know it all. But knowing everything isn’t what learning is about. It’s discovery and what we do with the knowledge we learn that matters in the end.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1580

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Don’t Be Somebody Else

Everyone will tell you what to do with your life. For good reasons, personal reasons, even out of fear.

But at the same time, everyone is figuring out their path as they go. Nobody really knows. Even save bets aren’t 100% safe over the long run. Things like gravity and compound interest aren’t likely going away anytime soon. But most things in louder are continuously changing.

This means we must continuously change too.

Forget what everyone else is telling you to do. Do you. Pick the things that make you feel alive.

Your gut (instinct) is already telling you what you should do.

When you feel it pulling you in a certain direction, why is it so hard to listen to it?

Because it’s likely going against the grain. Of other people’s expectations. Of other people’s motivations.

Maybe they are right (particularly if they are wise and experienced in what they are talking about) or maybe they’re wrong.

Sometimes the only way to know is to go with your gut and find out the hard way.

Whenever you feel the urge to lend a hand or help someone, do it.

Whenever you feel called to choose one career decision over another, do it.

Whenever you feel the pull of standing up for your values and principles, do it.

And if all else fails seek the advice of someone smarter than you that might can help from personal experience.

If we don’t stick to who we are and who we want to be, then who are we?

Somebody else.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1579

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Feeling Overworked?

When we feel overworked, the natural desire is to figure out how we can work our way out of the situation.

But working more isn’t the answer. We can’t solve overwork with more work. That’s like trying to cure alcoholism with more alcohol.

Working more has diminishing returns (and usually negative returns). The more we work, the less energy we have toward other aspects of our lives.

We are likely overworked for a good reason.

Beyond the obvious ones (like unrealistic deadlines, crowded schedules, and too many todos), there’s usually something that is driving us to work more.

Sometimes it’s as simple as never shutting it off when you clock out, and then automatically finding yourself finishing one last thing, or answering a few emails after hours.

Or maybe it’s something more complicated, like having unrealistic expectations of what we can do in a single day.

Or perhaps we are trying to make a name for ourselves and have to put in the extra hours on top of our day job to build our future. A lot of us live in the busy world of side hustles and businesses that demand our time and energy. This isn’t a bad thing! But it’s good to build healthy limits in our day. Because if we overwork ourselves to the bone we’ll end up burning ourselves out, or miserable, or inevitably start hating the work that we love.

Whatever the reason, it’s good to figure out the variables that are motivating us to work more and decide whether it’s good enough for our time.

Working more doesn’t create fulfilling work. Working on things we love does that. Staying focused and getting things meaningful things done is satisfying.

We need to be ruthless with our time and focus on the things that matter. Because there’s always more work we could do. We could work 24/7 and still not work enough. Or we could work enough, and do our best to get done what can get done in the hours we have to give, and spend our time enjoying life, friends, and family instead.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1578

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Creative Outlet

Observation and awareness are the lifeblood of creativity. From painters to rappers, to comedians, being finely in tune with your surroundings, your craft, and culture opens up the door to many clever ideas.

We experience life through one lens: our own. Our own shoes. Our own eyes. Our hands.

But with creativity, we can experience other perspectives and worlds, and we can create our own. We can highlight injustices in the world, or make the mundane extraordinary.

The more we can create, the more we can learn to see.

Artists know this. Photographers know this.

They see something about the world, view things like no one else does, and use their tool to make something magical.

Find an artistic outlet that enhances your ability to see the world, and yourself.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1577

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Failure is Improvement

Nothing is easy the first time. It likely won’t be easy the second or third time either.

It takes practice and deliberate consistency to become great at something.

It takes a mountain of effort to become “so good they can’t ignore you”. Not to mention continuously challenging ourselves.

But it only takes a little effort to start today.

Being a beginner means you have room to try new things without the pressure of being great…

Unfortunately, we usually put high expectations on ourselves to do/be great immediately. But that’s not helpful.

Being a beginner (and becoming a professional) requires getting comfortable with failing.

Failure is—oddly enough—a way to quickly become great at something.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1576

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Where are your habits leading you?

Daily habits, and habits in general, add up to something. Whether that something is what you want is another story.

Actions direct habits, habits direct our lives.

Both actions and thoughts influence each other. Act a certain way, and you’ll think that way too. Or having a particular mindset will reflect in your actions.

Where are your habits leading you?

What does the sum of your habits say about you and what you respect and represent?

Do you like what you see? Where are the things you could improve? What areas do you need to go easier on yourself?

Having a solid direction of where you want to go, can refine your daily habits, which also clarifies and directs you even more.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1575

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Down But Not Out

When you end up where you don’t want to be,

When life pushes against you,

When you drift from the path you set out to follow,

When pain, failure, fear, despair, loneliness, and struggle greet you at your home,

It’s up to us to make the most of our circumstances, find a way to calm the storm and focus on our next stepout of the rain.

Actually, it’s our responsibility.

Because who else will?

We may not like something about where we are, but we can always change it.

This thing that you’re up against—this setback that’s been dragging you down—

this is your chance. This is your moment to be better. Today. Tomorrow. Every day we are alive is a chance to move forward.

To improve ourselves and create a life full of purpose and meaning.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1574

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Developing Quality

“A solid routine saves you from giving up.”

John Updike

Before I started writing every day, I would do it sporadically. Or more actually I would complain about wanting to do it, but something inevitably got in the way.

I intended to write when inspiration struck—which I assumed would be frequently—but in reality, I rarely put pen to paper. I maybe squeezed out a handful of (mediocre) blog posts in a year.

The interesting thing about inspiration is it rarely finds us—we have to go out and look for it.

It wasn’t until I committed to writing daily that I started having better ideas.

You may think habits would stifle creativity, but it actually does the opposite.

Creating a daily routine gives us structure and our imagination space to wonder.

It’s a foundation that allows us to create consistently.

Not that quantity of work is what I’m after.

However, sometimes the quantity of work can lead to quality.

Quantity leads to quality.

But not automatically.

Doing the bare minimum every day isn’t going to cut it.

The more we do something, the better we get at it. And the more ideas we have.

It’s a number’s game. One great idea out of ten so-so ideas might seem like a poor batting average, but if you keep creating them then those great ideas start adding up.

We’re trying to grow trees but planting acorns. The more consistent we practice the better we will be.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1573

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Enough

There’s always more to do, more we could do. This becomes obvious when you dedicate your life to multiple skills. Honestly, this applies to modern life as well.

There’s always more we could be learning, challenging ourselves, communicating, building…

But just because there is more, doesn’t mean we should accept more.

Quality? Yes. Quantity? To a point.

Go beyond the point of enough, and you’ll start to feel anxiety and overwhelm creep in. Anyone who’s clocked in overtime hours at work will tell you the dread that comes from working too much (even if in moderation we enjoy the work).

Enough is a fine line between “not enough” and “too much.”

Too much of anything can be a bad thing. And too much of everything can eventually burn us out, or—at the very least—keep us from doing the things we are truly great at (or potentially great at).

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1572

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Fear is a Signal

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Frank Herbert, Dune

What do you fear right now?

“Right now” because it changes over our lifetime (hell—it can change day-to-day).

It’s a difficult question to ask yourself, hard to say aloud, even harder to find the truth behind each fear.

My current fear is a mixture of inadequacy and complacency.

I feel like I haven’t accomplished a lot in my life so far, and have been focusing on surviving instead of thriving. Perhaps it’s all in my head. But regardless it drives me to be better.

I want my present to be better than my past (and therefore, going forward, my past be aligned with meaning and intentionality.

Fear is often a sign that something needs to be addressed. It’s like how pain is a signal that something is going on in our bodies that we need to take care of.

Fear can guide us like a horse and carriage, or it can drive us to look in, see what’s really going on, and find a way forward.

STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing — Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #1571

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