The Daily Stoic BONUS | No One Is Coming to Give You Permission
7 snips
Feb 5, 2026 
Brent Underwood, owner of Cerro Gordo and author known for Ghost Town Living, shares how waiting for permission and perfect conditions becomes procrastination. They cover deadlines vs open projects, using accountability and consequences to finish work, fear that success will overload future bandwidth, and practical habits like one hour a day and iterating early.
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Schedule Small Daily Blocks
- Set a small recurring time block (e.g., one hour a day) to work on a long project like a book.
- Use that routine to chip away consistently rather than waiting for perfect conditions or external approval.
Open-Ended Work Breeds Excuses
- Open-ended projects create excuses because lack of external deadlines removes pressure to finish.
- Getting a third-party deadline or commitment often forces completion by removing optionality.
Publisher Ultimatum Forced Completion
- Brent delayed his book multiple times until the publisher threatened to cancel the contract.
- That external ultimatum suddenly produced the work and finished the manuscript.
