Love Your Work

First of all, I hope that you are taking good care of yourself during these unprecedented times. I hope that you and the people you love are safe and healthy.   I have something I’ve been working on for a looong time. And it’s very relevant to what we have going on today. Many people are working from home. They’re thrust into unstructured days, and trying to make the most of them.   So, I don’t want to delay. I want to get this thing in the hands of people ASAP.   It’s my next book, and it is a BIG one.   Since you’re a loyal podcast listener I want you to have the first chance to read it.   It’s called Mind Management, Not Time Management, and it chronicles my decade-long quest to find the keys to the future of productivity.   Learn how to: Quit your daily routine. Use the hidden patterns all around you as launchpads to skyrocket your productivity. Do in only five minutes what used to take all day. Let your “passive genius” do your best thinking when you’re not even thinking. And, very relevant to today’s world, Keep going, even when chaos strikes. Tap into the unexpected to find your next Big Idea.   If you feel like you have the TIME, but you struggle to find the ENERGY. If you feel like the more time you save, the more overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted you feel, then this is the book for you.   Mind Management, Not Time Management, will help you learn faster, make better decisions, and turn your ideas into reality.   I’m offering a very special Preview Edition of the book to my loyal listeners. Read the chapters that are available right now, and get the rest of the chapters as I finish them. The First Edition is scheduled to come out in Fall, so this is a chance to overhaul how you get things done before anybody else does.   Learn more and buy at kdv.co/mind This is a limited-time offer, so do it now. That’s kdv.co/mind

Many businesses have “SOP’s” It sounds very official as an acronym, and what it stands for sounds even more official: Standard Operating Procedure. It’s a document which outlines a process within a business. What’s the purpose of the process? What are the steps to follow? Who will do different parts of the processes, and which parts can’t begin until another part is finished? I was telling a friend about the process documents I have for running my business, and he said, “oh, you mean SOPs?” I could feel a visceral reaction to that term. It made the muscles in my back and neck tense up. “Yeah, SOPs,” I said. “But they aren’t Standard Operating Procedures. They’re Sloppy Operating Procedures.” Processes make businesses possible Every business has processes. The employees of that business follow these processes to build a product, or perform a service. Processes make businesses possible. Processes help the business create a consistent product, at scale. Through repetition, processes allow businesses to create more of their product, at higher quality, with lower expenses -- to increase profits. Each time a process is followed is another opportunity to reduce error, or to simplify the process. It took me a really long time to realize that processes are important for creatives, too. I thought that process was the enemy of creativity. I’ve come to learn that process is creativity’s best friend. For creativity, forget the Standard Operating Procedure -- try the Sloppy Operating Procedure I wasn’t completely wrong in thinking that process was the enemy of creativity. My problem was that I was thinking about process in the wrong way. I was thinking of process as an SOP -- Standard Operating Procedure, when I needed to be thinking of a process as the other SOP -- Sloppy Operating Procedure. Whenever I sat down to try to writing a Standard Operating Procedure, my brain would shut down. It wasn’t until I gave myself permission to suck -- permission to create a Sloppy Operating Procedure -- that I really made progress. The Sloppy Operating Procedure is not a neatly-edited list of steps and standards and dependencies that help you deliver a product. No, the Sloppy Operating Procedure is a living document. It’s disorganized. It has free-written paragraphs that might be incomplete or end mid-sentence. It’s full of grammar and spelling mistakes. The Sloppy Operating Procedure is, well, sloppy. Sloppy Operating Procedures kill procrastination There are two important mechanisms that make the Sloppy Operating Procedure powerful. One is that the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination. It does this in a couple of ways. One way the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination is that it gets you started on creating a process document. If you’re expecting to sit down and crank out a polished Standard Operating Procedure document, you’re going to put it off. The second way that the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination is that it makes it easier to do things that are boring or repetitive. This point requires some more explanation. SOPs kill boredom and drudgery I may dread collecting data for my monthly income reports, but the reason for the dread can be found in a document called “How to Be a Hacker.” A document dating back to 1996, which outlines the values of the “hacker” -- a word which has gained a lot of baggage over the years, but which to me still means someone who likes to know how something works, who will tinker around to find new ways of doing things. I shared this hacker credo in my first book, Design for Hackers, and rule number three of this credo explains the second way that the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination. That rule is as follows: Boredom and drudgery are evil. Boredom and drudgery are evil. Anything that you’ve had to figure out one time, you shouldn’t have to figure out a second time. And this, I’ve found, is at the root of why I procrastinate on some tasks in my business. So the reason I used to dread collecting the information for my income reports is that I’ve already figured out how to collect information for my income reports, and I don’t want to figure it out again. I don’t want to ask myself again, “are book sales cash-based or accrual-based? What are all of the places my books are published again? How do I get a report from this aggregator?” I’ve already answered these questions once. I don’t want to answer them again. Since I create Sloppy Operating Procedures, the second time I do a process, I don’t have everything all figured out from the first time I did that process. I have some sloppy notes. My notes might say: “Collecting Amazon book sales: Have to convert currencies from each country into USD. Maybe there’s a way to automate this?” That’s what it might say after the first time I collect Amazon book sales. And because it says that, the next time I have to collect Amazon book sales, there’s just a little less boredom -- just a little less drudgery. In fact, it makes the task more interesting. I know that as I do the task again, I’ll have a little less boredom and drudgery, but I’ll also have a new task: I’ll improve a little on these notes. I’ll improve a little on this process. The first time I did the process, I didn’t have the time or energy to think about automating the process of converting currencies. I just wanted to get the task done. A Sloppy Operating Procedure was all I could muster. But between doing the process the first time and the second time, maybe I’ve heard about reporting software that can automate it for me. Or maybe I’ve tasked myself to look up some spreadsheet formulas. So the second time I do the process, I have to think less about some parts of the process, and so I have more mental energy leftover to better automate and document other parts of the process. Ideally, the first time you do a process, write some quick notes; the second time you do a process, write instructions and make a training screencast; the third time you do a process, delegate it. Now, I don’t even collect the Amazon book income for my income reports anymore. I have instructions and even a screencast showing how to do it. My assistant does this process now. So, the Sloppy Operating Procedure kills procrastination because it gives you permission to suck in writing your SOP, and the mere existence of that SOP removes the boredom and drudgery from the task. SOPs help you produce more with less I mentioned that there were two mechanisms that make the Sloppy Operating Procedure powerful. The first mechanism is that it kills procrastination. The second mechanism is that the Sloppy Operating Procedure helps you produce more work with fewer resources. How does it do that? You’re doing the same amount of work, after all. Eventually, your Sloppy Operating Procedure is a clean and clear list of steps to follow in order to produce something. At this point, it’s not so different from a Standard Operating Procedure. What’s different, is how you produced it. But once you have a process that you can follow, without fail, to produce your product, that process does much of the work for you. This is especially true if you use the process in order to delegate the task, but it’s also true if you use the process simply to assist yourself in doing the task. This is especially important with the most creative parts of your work. Your own mind is the secret sauce -- the proverbial secret mix of eleven herbs and spices -- that make your product special, and you want your process to highlight your secret sauce, not to water it down. SOPs take you from “front burner” to “back burner” As your Sloppy Operating Procedure evolves into a Standard Operating Procedure, the task evolves, too. The task evolves from requiring Front Burner Creativity, to requiring only Back Burner Creativity. I talked about the distinction of Front Burner Creativity and Back Burner Creativity back on episode 194, but here’s a short refresher. Front Burner Creativity takes your very best creative energy. It’s like you’re stir frying some vegetables, and you want to get them just right. Back Burner Creativity still requires creative energy, but it doesn’t necessarily require your very best creative energy. It’s like you’re boiling some pasta. You know about how long to let it boil to get it al dente. You’ll stir it here and there, and you’ll check in on it in about seven minutes. As your Sloppy Operating Procedure becomes a Standard Operating Procedure, the tasks involved in creating your work go from needing Front Burner Creativity to needing only Back Burner Creativity. And when you can keep a project cooking on the Back Burner, that frees up your Front Burner. When I started this podcast four years ago, it was Front Burner Creativity -- big time. It took my very best creative energy, every day, just to keep it coming every week. But now it’s Back Burner Creativity. My Sloppy Operating Procedures have become Standard Operating Procedures. I have a checklist I follow every time I record. I have a spreadsheet I use to share the relevant information with my production team. My production team has a detailed checklist and standards document to follow. Finally, I have a spreadsheet that generates the relevant tasks for each episode, and my assistant has a screencast to follow to upload those tasks to my task manager. Even though each episode still requires creative energy, it requires much less creative energy. My SOPs save that energy for me, and I even keep some of those SOPs a little sloppy. I let myself mix things up, creatively, so long as they don’t screw up the process that helps me keep this show coming each week. Sloppy Operating Procedures boost your creative output, bit by bit So now that the podcast is a Back Burner project, I’ve been able to develop other projects on the Front Burner. I’ve published a book, several short reads, and I’m writing another book. Along the way, I also brought my Love Mondays emails from Sloppy Operating Procedure to Standard Operating Procedure. I keep those coming each week, too. I’m still one person, one creative, but I’m able to create more, with the same -- even fewer -- resources. The next time you find yourself in boredom or drudgery, try making a Sloppy Operating Procedure. I hope it helps you cook up something delicious. Image: Still Live with Gingerpot 2, Piet Mondrian Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/sloppy-operating-procedure/

Megan Devine (@refugeingrief) is the author of It’s OK That You’re Not OK, and runs the Writing Your Grief workshop. It wasn’t until Megan, a therapist, experienced grief herself that she discovered how we as a culture utterly fail to support the grieving. As loyal listeners know, I experienced a tragedy several months ago. My healthy, active, 69-year-old mother died suddenly. An abnormal blood vessel – which she was born with, but didn’t know she had – burst in her brain. I lost my grandparents long ago, but losing my mother was by far my most profound experience with grief. For the first time, I found myself on the receiving end of attempts to acknowledge my own deep state of grief. Some attempts – which you’ll hear in today’s conversation – made me feel supported. Other attempts – which you’ll also hear – not so much. I also went to some grief support groups with my father, and was shocked at what I discovered: It was like a hidden underworld of grief. People who lost someone six months ago, or six years ago – all in pain, all struggling to feel supported by friends, coworkers, or even family. It helped me realize how poorly I, myself, had handled other people’s grief. Which is okay. Grief is by definition impossible. But we can always do better. If we’re going to love our work, we have to be kind to one another. And part of being kind is supporting others when they’re hurting. In this conversation, you’ll learn: What are the top things to never say when trying to support the grieving? The list could get impossibly long, so Megan will share a quick shortcut. You may have heard of five stages of grief. I won’t bother listing them, because these stages are horribly misunderstood. Learn why thinking of grief according to stages just makes things worse. The #1 thing that’s broken about how we respond to grief is that we treat it like a problem to be fixed. There’s one simple mindset shift that can help us do better. Chances are, you’ve had grieving people in your life. If you haven’t, you most certainly will. Now is the time to build these skills, so let’s get started. Photo Credit: Stephanie Zito My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/megan-devine/

What are you doing?! Didn’t you read the title of this episode? I’m begging you: Stop listening to my podcast. You’re still here? Okay, I’ll see what I can do to persuade you to stop listening to my podcast. I’ll admit it: It bums me the fuck out that there aren’t more people listening to my podcast. I’ve been delivering an episode every week for the past four years, and I haven’t seen any growth at all for the past three of those years. If anything, my stats tell me I get fewer downloads than I did three years ago. Before I get to why I want you to stop listening to my podcast, I have to be clear: Sometimes it makes me sad that more people aren’t listening to my podcast. And it’s not that I want to be rich and famous. I decided what I wanted when I made the decision, four years ago, to double down on being a writer and a podcaster. I told myself, “I want to make a living creating. I don’t want creating to be merely a marketing strategy for other things?” So, I sold everything I owned, and moved to the “third world”. I knew I would struggle to make money for awhile, but I never knew the struggle would take this long. I never knew it would be this hard. That’s the reason I wish more people listened to my podcast. I don’t need to make enough money to buy a Bentley, or even a Toyota. I just want to make enough money from my writing and podcasting that I can do more writing and podcasting. I wrote my first book ten years ago. I moved to South America four years ago. I don’t want to write so I can make money, I want to make money so I can write. And that’s the only thing that makes it fucking heartbreaking about not having more people listening to my podcast. What I learned on my media fast But there’s no denying that people shouldn’t be listening to my podcast. At the beginning of this year, I tried an experiment. I went on a “media fast.“ I stopped listening to podcasts. I stopped checking Twitter. I even stopped reading books. I stopped multi-tasking, and I started uni-tasking. At first, it was agonizing. I felt like I needed more stimulation. But I powered through it, and it was like rummaging through the junk piled up in your dead grandmother’s dusty attic. I was surprised what I discovered underneath all of that clutter: My own thoughts. Instead of listening to a podcast while cooking and eating lunch, I simply focused on cooking and eating lunch. If I was chatting with a friend on WhatsApp, I wasn’t switching to Instagram between messages. I was only chatting with that friend. I watched the sunset almost every day, and I didn’t post pictures of those sunsets to Instagram. I just sat there and watched the colors change, like some enlightened Neanderthal. Eventually, things started bubbling to the surface. After lunch, I would jot down ideas on a little whiteboard. While watching sunsets, ideas would come to me for my next book, or for podcast episodes like this one. Creating is better than consuming It was hard to admit it to myself: Creating is better than consuming. The more you consume, the less you can create. Some people will protest: “If you aren’t consuming, where are you going to get inspiration!?” “Inspiration” is bullshit. You’ve seen enough things in your life, and you’ve had enough damn ideas -- you never did shit with most of them (neither did I). Your need for “inspiration” is a fear of your own thoughts. It’s a fear of doing the hard work of processing what’s in your head, breaking out of the bullshit scripts that society writes for you, and having an actual thought. A true, sometimes uncomfortable, original thought. You don’t need inspiration. You need action. I can’t deny, from my own experience of going on a “media fast,” that much of the time, when I was consuming, it was standing in my way of creating. And wasn’t “creating” what I wanted to do in the first place? This was an uncomfortable realization. I even had a couple of friends point out that reading books is a form of procrastination. Sacrilege! But, they’re right. How many books have you read? Can you recite what you learned from those books? Have you truly taken action on what you learned, or did you just move on to the next book? Everyone’s trying to get a piece of you As you can see, for me, as someone who creates, as someone who writes books, and makes a podcast, this was a tough realization. I had to search myself for why I create what I create. I concluded that, more than anything, I create for my own self-development. In this world, everyone is trying to get a piece of you. Facebook wants your eyeballs, and your browsing history. The news media wants your attention. They’ll manipulate your emotions. They’ll try to fool you into thinking there’s something virtuous about “being informed.” But it’s all bullshit. On top of it, addictive substances are all around us. How many lives have been destroyed by alcohol, or addictions to prescription drugs? Go to a hospital and look in the vending machine: Sugar, sugar, and more sugar. It’s so pervasive, we assume sugar isn’t putting us in the hospital. And how many of us swear we can’t function in the morning unless we have a piping hot Thermos of a psychoactive drug? Yeah, caffeine. This shit ain’t right. Stoicism is not the cause of meaning. It’s the effect of meaning. You’re probably wondering what the fuck the news, Facebook, and coffee have to do with my podcast. As I said, I primarily make this show and write my books to help myself. Because it brings me meaning. That meaning is strong enough to motivate me to take a break from listening to podcasts and reading books, to say fuck the news, fuck Facebook, fuck alcohol on every corner, fuck the sugar all around us, fuck the caffeine in every cup. Some people would describe my mindset as “stoic.” My unpopular opinion is that Stoicism isn’t useful as a philosophy. It rings hollow in my ears. Stoicism is not the cause a meaningful life. A stoic mindset, instead, is the effect of a meaningful life. All of the things I described can be pleasurable. You could call my media fast a “dopamine fast.” As Dr. Robert Lustig taught us on episode 185, pleasure -- which is triggered by dopamine, is different from happiness, which is triggered by serotonin. In fact, pleasure and happiness are polar opposites. I don’t shun pleasures by way of stoicism. I don’t shun pleasures for the sake of shunning pleasures. I do it because none of that “pleasurable” stuff will help me be the human I want to be. None of that will help me with this journey. This journey of creating. I create so that I can create. If you don’t consume, maybe you’ll create? And so who would I be if I expected you to listen to my podcast? I’ll reiterate: Yes, I want podcast listeners -- and Patreon supporters. Yes, I want to sell books. When I make money, I can do more work. But the thing I hope for myself is the same thing that I hope for you: I want you to break out of the “matrix” of bullshit that rules the thoughts and actions of so many of us. I want you to stop consuming, and start creating. And if you’re trying to escape the bullshit through your own discipline, A.K.A. “stoicism” -- you’re going to have a bad time. There’s nothing I can say to you, no “inspiration” I can provide, which will make it happen. So, yes, it makes me sad sometimes that I don’t have more podcast listeners. But then I tell myself, “David, if they aren’t consuming, maybe they’re out there creating.” I have no choice. That has to make me happy. The reasons that are strong enough to help you break free -- you can only find those in yourself. You have to listen to the voice inside your head, and have a conversation with it. And you can’t hear that voice, if mine is still ringing in your ears. So if you can find the meaning within you, if you have the motivation to become a better you, you have everything you need. Stop listening to my podcast. Go make your own podcast! But I’ll still be making mine, as long as I can. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/stop-listening-podcast/

Dylan Evans (@evansd66) had an intense experience with uncertainty. He was fifty percent certain that civilization would collapse within several years. So, he sold his house, gave up his job, and set out to learn how to survive the apocalypse. He tells the story in his book, The Utopia Experiment. He and a team of volunteers constructed yurts on the Scottish highlands, and started growing their own food and making their own clothes, trying to see if they could disconnect themselves from civilization. Civilization didn’t collapse within the period of time that Dylan had predicted, and as he looked at what remained of his life, he started to ask himself, “where did I go wrong?” This led Dylan to study what he calls Risk Intelligence – he now has written a book by that title. Risk Intelligence is the ability to navigate uncertainty. That is what we’ll be talking about today. Navigating uncertainty matters in creative work Imagine you serve coffee at Starbucks. Starbucks knows exactly how much to pay you each hour. They know exactly how much coffee you can make, they know exactly what that coffee costs them, they know exactly what profit margin they want. Creative work is not serving coffee. You never know how long it takes for an idea to brew. When a breakthrough does come to you, the results can be unpredictable. Sometimes a project takes off, and sometimes it doesn’t. Some of that is due to skill, a lot of that is due to luck. If you’re going to love your work, you need to know how to deal with uncertainty. If you write this book, what are the chances it will sell? When you launch this product, how much money will it make? Questions like these help you choose: Amongst the countless actions you can take, what actions are worth it? And when you do finally make a choice, and you look back at the results, do you really have a clear picture of whether you made the right decision? What can you learn from the decision you made which can make your future decisions wiser, more clear – better? When you’re trying to love your work, you’re dealing with uncertainty. Part of dealing with uncertainty is knowing how to be at least a little more certain in an uncertain world. It’s as close as you can get to predicting the future. In this conversation, you’ll learn: How can you make falsifiable forecasts on your creative projects? When you make falsifiable forecasts, you can start to score your ability to predict the future. If you improve your forecasting skills, you’ll make better predictions, and better decisions. Dylan says, "The difference between a good decision maker and a poor decision maker...is that a good decision maker will rate the quality of his or her decision by the actual thought process going into the decision, not 'Did it turn out to be the correct decision?'” Well, how do you rate the quality of your decisions? You may have fantasized yourself about unplugging from civilization. I was curious: What’s the one thing about civilization that Dylan realized he was taking for granted? Thanks for sharing my work! On Twitter, thank you to @CapeHornCHI and @analydiamonaco. On Instagram, thank you to @sonny_enslen. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/dylan-evans-utopia-experiment-risk-intelligence/

In the 1600s, Penelope Kent boarded a ship from Holland to the New World with her new husband. Their ship wrecked off the coast, but still, Penelope and her husband made it to shore. There, they were attacked and tortured by the natives who lived on the land. By the time the natives were done with them, Penelope’s husband was dead. Penelope was still alive, but partially scalped, with her stomach sliced open. She took shelter in a hollowed out tree. Days later, some other natives found Penelope. These natives were fortunately friendly, or at least enterprising. They sewed shut Penelope’s wounds with fishbone needles and vegetable fibers. What happened next depends upon the source you read. By some accounts the native tribe released her to New Amsterdam -- now New York. By other accounts, they sold her into indentured servitude. Somewhere way up my family tree, Penelope was my first ancestor to come to America. Given all she went through to make it to what would become the United States -- a hundred years later -- it’s astonishing that I would ever leave the U.S., in search of a better life. In fact, I moved to the so-called “third world.” Sorry, Penelope. In 2016 I sold my possessions and moved from the United States to Colombia, looking for a better life. Four years later, it’s safe to say that I’ve found that better life. The irony isn’t lost on me: Centuries ago, my ancestors moved to America for a better life. And in the twenty-first century, I moved to the “third world” for a better life. I use air quotes for “third world,” because I recognize that the designation of some countries as “third world” is passé and even offensive. I also recognize that many parts of Colombia -- even parts not far from my doorstep -- are very much “third world” by most people’s standards. Finally, as many Colombians have pointed out to me, if I were Colombian, I’d probably want to do the opposite: I would want to move to the U.S. for a better life. I appreciate my blue-passport privilege more than most Americans I meet, and I know that the U.S. has a lot going for it. I don’t write this article to gloat. This is not going to be about me working on a laptop on the beach, failing to mention the Malaria-ridden mosquitos that snuck under my bed net while I slept last night. I write this to offer some perspective: That if you’re clear about what you want in life, that you can often get those things -- as long as you’re also clear about what you don’t want or, more important, what you can live without. Why Colombia? First, why did I think that Colombia was the place where I could find a better life? My primary motivation for moving was to double down on my career as a writer and podcaster. It wasn’t just that the low cost-of-living in Colombia would provide me with the financial runway that I knew I would need, I also knew that the lifestyle that was possible in Colombia would support the habits and routines I needed to build in order to make it as a creative. Medellín, the Colombian city in which I live, is a popular destination for digital nomads. They spend the six months they are allowed on a tourist stamp -- depending on their nationality -- then they move on to other hotspots such as Bali or Budapest. While plenty of people have described me as a digital nomad, I don’t consider myself one. I’m committed to building my life in Colombia, if for nothing else, because I’m more productive staying here than I am scrambling around the world. I haven’t even visited many of the digital nomad hotspots, but the friends I’ve made who live that lifestyle all agree that Medellín is a fantastic place to build a consistent work routine. You can rent a furnished apartment for less than the price of an unfurnished apartment in most major cities, you can get just about anything delivered -- even a haircut -- for a fraction of the price of delivery in the U.S., and the temperature steadily stays at around room temperature year-round (In fact, Medellín is known as “the city of the eternal spring.”) One friend who was visiting commented that Medellín isn’t so much about seeing anything in particular, but rather witnessing the laid-back lifestyle. The cafes in the upscale Poblado neighborhood get packed at 3 p.m. every afternoon. A high ratio of the people are there talking to each other, rather than escaping into their devices. Colombians place a high value on spending time with family. They want everything to be tranquilo (peaceful or relaxed). If you’re taking a cab home after dark, there’s a good chance your driver will wish you to descansar (to rest, literally, to “un-tired” yourself). Designing my life around consistent writing About a decade ago, I got my first book deal, with little experience as a writer. I discovered through that process that writing is hard. I found that the more consistent I could be, the better my writing was. At the time, I was living in Chicago, where consistency is nearly impossible. If I could pick one word to characterize living in Chicago as a writer, it would be “friction.” Everything gets in the way. The rent is cheap for a major American city -- in fact, I moved to Chicago from San Francisco for that very reason -- but it’s still expensive for what you get. The public transportation is infuriatingly unreliable, and then there’s the weather. Don’t get me wrong: I love Chicago, and visit frequently. It’s just that, for what I wanted to accomplish with my life, Chicago got in the way. On one hand, there are lots of things to do, and bustling arts and startup scenes. On the other hand, there are lots of things to do, and bustling arts and startup scenes. There are lots of opportunities to distract yourself, and you pay for those opportunities with traffic, high prices, and lots of noise. After I escaped the worst months of a couple of Chicago winters -- a practice I call “mini lives” -- I found myself looking back at the work I had done while hiding away in Medellín. It was my best work. So, I moved. I love my “third world” health insurance By choosing the things that I wanted in life, I also had to make a lot of compromises -- what I call the principle of “good enough.” A good segue into compromises is healthcare. One of the things I like most about living in Colombia is having affordable healthcare. As a 40-year-old single male, I pay less than $140 a month for the best health insurance money can buy here. I suffer from chronic health issues -- part of the reason I’ve chosen writing as a career -- and I have gotten a ton of diagnostics. I rarely have to pay anything more than my monthly premium, and when I do, it’s like $9. I’m covered worldwide -- for stays less than a few months -- and pre-existing conditions are accepted, with a few major exceptions. Being a self-employed writer, getting health coverage in the U.S. is prohibitively expensive. One 30-year-old digital-nomad friend told me he investigated the minimum coverage if he moved to New York State: nearly $1,000 a month, and he’d have to pay the first $10,000 of any health expenses throughout the year. It wasn’t until I visited the doctor several times here in Colombia that the mental effects of having health coverage really sank into me. For the first time in my decade-plus self-employed career, I felt secure from a healthcare standpoint. If I noticed a symptom, I didn’t have to debate with myself whether it was worth a $300 visit to the doctor. If the doctor recommended a diagnostic, I didn’t have to decide whether to shell out $1,000, or play Russian Roulette with my prospects of having a serious illness. How many of us apply 80/20 to our lives? Healthcare is a good topic through which to introduce one of the key principles that make my life in Colombia a “better life.” That principle is the principle of the “good enough.” In the United States, we’re obsessed with making things “better.” We want faster cars, more convenient apps, nicer restaurants, a drug for every symptom under the sun, and faster service. This leads to lots of truly useful innovations -- innovations that the rest of the world can then easily implement for a fraction of the cost. But the problem with “better” is that it’s not always worth it. Sometimes, something that’s 20% better costs 200% more. If you can carefully pick and choose the 20% less good -- the “good enough” -- you can design a life where you get more of what you want, and less of what you don’t really need. The idea of the 80/20 principle gets a lot of lip service these days: Do the 20% effort that will get you 80% of the result. But when it comes to our lives, few of us apply the 80/20 principle, or the “good enough” principle. We can’t have the 80% mobile phone -- we need the 100% new iPhone. We can’t have the “good enough” clothes, we need the 100% most fashionable brand. We strive for the 100% healthcare, because so much is at stake, but maybe we’d be better off with the 80% healthcare? The healthcare I get in Colombia is great, in that I can afford it. Yet in many ways, it’s also merely “good enough.” Sometimes it’s hard to get an appointment. Instead of seeing the same doctor every time -- a doctor you build a relationship with -- you see whatever doctor is available. Prescription drugs are much cheaper in Colombia -- but sometimes they can be expensive, and you have to pay for them out-of-pocket. If you’re unlucky enough to end up with a rare disease that calls for a cutting-edge experimental treatment, Colombia is probably not the place to get that treatment. But established treatment protocols for common conditions are available, and affordable. My girlfriend’s mother had a heart attack a few years ago, and needed a quadruple bypass. This event, which would financially ruin many American families, cost this middle-class Colombian family -- which would very much be lower class by American standards -- essentially nothing. Today, my girlfriend’s mother is alive and well, toasting arepas, frying up empanadas, and playing with her grandchildren. The 20% that gets me 80% in Colombia Extend this principle of “good enough,” and you can see why my life in Colombia is a better life. There’s no Whole Foods in Colombia, but you can get organically-raised vegetables for a fraction of the price. Every zucchini isn’t the pristine green torpedo you’ll find at Whole Foods, but it’s “good enough.” If you need to buy something, Amazon (the website, not the river) is not the first place you’ll look. You have to go to a mall, and see what they have. It’s like a scavenger hunt. If it’s “good enough,” you buy it. If it just won’t do, then you order on Amazon. It will cost you 30% extra in shipping and import taxes, and will take two weeks to arrive. That’s not two-day (or same-day) Amazon Prime shipping, but it’s “good enough.” Just managing to stay in Colombia, as an immigrant, is sometimes extremely difficult. I had a visa rejected twice, and am in the throes of an apartment search with maddening requirements for foreigners. It can be a real productivity killer for periods of time, but in the end, it’s worth it for me. Isn’t Colombia dangerous? Most people’s first question about Colombia is about safety. They’ve watched Narcos, they’ve heard the horror stories about when Pablo Escobar and his henchmen ruled the streets of Medellín, and FARC ruled the jungles of Colombia. I won’t tell you that Colombia is a crime and violence-free utopia, but I will tell you that it’s “good enough.” This is an area where people are easily deceived, and I think it has to do with our perception of risk. When Americans do gain the courage to visit Colombia, they are amazed. “I never once felt unsafe,” they’ll say. Even expats who have been here a long time will say, “been here for twenty years. Never had a problem.” In actuality, Medellín has a homicide rate a smidge higher than my former home of Chicago. And the robbery rate in my neighborhood is fourfold that of Chicago as a whole. I’ve had at least one terrifying robbery attempt, as shared in episode 216. Things you do that are more dangerous than visiting Colombia So, yes, living in Colombia is more dangerous than living in most places in the United States. However, the risk isn’t much higher than many risks that Americans take on a daily basis. According to data.world’s crunching of State Department data, in the seven-plus years between October 2009 and June 2016, more than eight-and-a-half million U.S. citizens travelled to Colombia, and twenty-five were killed. That’s 0.29 deaths per 100,000 U.S. travelers. Contrast that with traffic deaths in the U.S. They aren’t 0.29 per 100,000 -- they’re almost 11 per 100,000 inhabitants, per year. More than thirty times the rate. If you assume that the average person travels 10,000 miles in a car each year, that makes traveling to Colombia as dangerous as riding in a car for 266 miles. Traveling to Colombia is about as dangerous as driving -- one time -- from Boston to New York City. The U.S. government doesn’t want you to know you could find a “better life” (or maybe they’re just clueless) Interestingly, when data.world crunched this data, they found Colombia to be one of the countries with outsized travel warnings. Some countries that people travel to, the State Department issues travel warnings that are about on-par with the actual danger of traveling to that country. Pakistan, Philippines, and Honduras, for example, are dangerous places to travel, and travel warnings are issued for them accordingly. Colombia, by contrast, gets about as many travel warnings as those countries, but is maybe one-tenth as dangerous. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a conspiracy: Scare people out of discovering that they can have a good life somewhere else, keep the U.S. economy chugging along. Then again, maybe it’s just blind hubris that the American government thinks Colombia is such a bad place. My girlfriend -- according to Colombian law, my spouse -- has been rejected for a visa just to visit the United States twice. (And no, it’s not a Trump thing. She was rejected during the Obama administration as well.) Each of these attempts, by the way, is a thousand-dollar roll of the dice. We have to hire a lawyer, pay the application fee, get on a plane and fly to Bogotá and stay in a hotel. The reason they reject her: She doesn’t make enough money. They think, “surely, when you see how much money you can make in the U.S., you won’t go back home. This is clearly more important than the job you have, the property you own, the businesses you’re invested in, and even your relationships with your friends and family.” Give me a fucking break, America. If you’d stop blowing yourself and look up for a second, you might be surprised what you see. What can you get that’s “better,” if you’re willing to accept what’s “good enough?” Living in a place like Colombia does carry some small extra risk. And repeated exposure to small risks can add up to big risks. Consider the fact that the average life expectancy for a man in the U.S. is 76 (women live longer: 81). Yet if you’re a 76-year-old man, what are your chances of dying in a given year? Only about 4%. It’s not being 76 that kills people, it’s repeated exposure to those small risks, which add up over time. But, that repeated exposure to small risk is part of my equation. I have things I want out of my life. I’m willing to forego certain luxuries to get those things, and I’m even willing to expose myself to other risks in pursuit of the things I want. Think about this for yourself. What do you want out of your life? Are there ways you can have those things, if you’re only willing to sacrifice other things? If you can settle for “good enough” in some places, and even take risks in other places, you can ultimately build a “better life”, not by “first-world” or “third-world” standards, but by the only standards that really matter -- your standards. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/third-world-better-life/

Dr. Aziz Gazipura, author of 'Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty...' discusses the negative consequences of being too 'nice.' He emphasizes the importance of authenticity, setting boundaries, and owning one's shadow. The podcast explores the impact of over responsibility, the physical manifestation of suppressed emotions, and the power of setting clear boundaries for a better life.

The podcast discusses the author's ritual of laying out research materials and using a makeshift whiteboard. It emphasizes the importance of preliminary work in the creative process and understanding the four stages of creativity: incubation, illumination, and verification. The chapter explores the significance of respecting these stages and immersing yourself in the source material to find creative solutions.

Demir and Carey Bentley are co-founders of Lifehack Bootcamp, where they help professionals make more of their time and energy, to get more results. They once found themselves getting sucked into the prevailing values of the place they lived. The place you choose to live can have an outsized influence on how you choose to live. If where you live is a bad influence on you, you’ll do things that aren’t good for you. If where you live is a good influence on you, you’ll do things that are good for you. The place you live can influence you through cost of living, through weather, through how you get around – even through through culture. If people in a place value one thing, it can make it hard for you to value another thing. To design your life, start with your surroundings If you’re going to love your work, you need to design your surroundings so you can pursue your values. One way to do that is by choosing the right place to live. The influence of place has long been an interesting topic for me because I’ve long felt like I was born in the wrong place. It wasn’t until after college – after I had traveled a small amount – that this feeling really hit me. “Nebraska” for many people is synonymous with “the middle of nowhere.” For me, until then, it was simply where I lived. As I struggled to find work after college and to set up a life somewhere, that was when I really started to feel profoundly unlucky for being born and raised in “the middle of nowhere.” As an aspiring designer, the design scene in Nebraska seemed nonexistent to me. I wanted to live in a cosmopolitan city such as San Francisco, or Seattle. Even Minneapolis was a bustling metropolis, in my mind. Yet I still felt stuck, because of family ties, a lack of social connections in other places, and simply because I was afraid of change. Now, I’ve lived in some big cities. I lived in the Bay Area. I spent a couple of months in the NYC area. I lived for eight years in Chicago. The sneaky influence of cultural mindset Now, I know that much of the fear I felt for leaving “the middle of nowhere” was cultivated by the mindset of the people who lived there. When I finally did leave Nebraska for California, it didn’t calm my nerves much to hear the fear-laden objections of the people around me. “The traffic is horrible,” “you’ll never buy a house,” or “the people are different” (to which I thought, yeah, that’s kind of the idea). Same thing when I moved from San Francisco to Chicago. I remember one guy said, “What’s in Chicago, besides a bunch of big buildings?!” Uh, you run a Ruby on Rails dev shop, genius. (That technology was invented by a Chicago company.) It took many years of living many places to recognize how, no matter where you live, you can get swept up in the concerns that prevail the culture. Those big cosmopolitan places where I was desperate to live were no exception. How to leave "New York" Which brings us to the topic today of lifestyle design. How to “leave New York,” or really anyplace that’s a bad influence on your behavior. Demir and Carey were living in NYC, working tons of hours, and paying the price with failing health. Now they live right around the corner from me, in Medellín, Colombia – when they aren’t traveling the world. I joined them in their home, just a few days after having their very first child. We talked about how they escaped the toxic mental distortions of the NYC lifestyle, traveled the world, and designed a new, better-balanced life, in another country. In this conversation, you’ll learn: Demir says he started doing “irresponsible things” when he finally hit his “Office Space moment.” What did he do that would have certainly gotten him fired? It’s a funny story, but there’s a lesson about lifestyle design in there, too. What’s the “champagne moment” exercise? If you have a vision of a better life, but don’t know where to start, learn a mental hack you can apply this week to make progress toward that vision. Looking for the next travel destination, and wondering whether you can get some work done? Learn about the “Pilates test.” What does Pilates have to do with finding reliable WiFi? Thanks for sharing my work! On Instagram, thank you to @amrassaid and @motherhoodandmerlot. On Facebook, thank you to the Hello Boss Girl Bossgirl Breakthroughs Group. On Twitter, thank you to @winterknit, @StefanHeineken, @SaraTaricani, and @jovvvian. My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Sponsors https://linkedin.com/loveyourwork Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/demir-carey-bentley-lifehack-bootcamp/

As I kicked and punched at the man, I glanced at the knife in his right hand. And I felt it dig into my side. It all started as I crossed paths with the man. He reached in his pocket, and pulled out the knife. I then did what surely only an idiot would do. I began to fight him. A few seconds earlier, as the man approached me on the path, he stared at me fiercely. He charged toward me, and bared his gritting teeth. His eyes reduced to snake-eye slits, and glowed under the harsh night lamplight. He shook his head from side to side, growling. When the man transformed from just another passerby into a mortal threat, I felt something I had never felt before, and that I haven’t felt since. A bolt of lightning rose from my stomach, to my chest. I heard a deep growl grow into a roar. An authoritative “NOOO!” It wasn’t until I heard that roar echo off the surrounding buildings that I realized -- it had come from me. It’s worth noting, I’ve never been a “tough guy.” I had never been in a fight. Yes, my older brother beat me up more times than I can count, but if someone at school threatened me, I would always meekly back down. So as I watched myself, from outside of my own body, kicking and punching at this man with a deadly weapon in his hand, I was saying to myself, What are you thinking!? But there was no going back. The struggle had begun, and for the first time ever, I was literally fighting for my life. Is this how I die?, I asked myself. But the snake-eyed man suddenly didn’t look so fearless and dangerous. His eyes widened, his eyebrows soared, his mouth gaped open -- its corners bending downward. I guess he thought he had picked an easy target. It turned out, he was wrong. As the man evaded my frantic kicks and punches, an economist took over my mind. I was fighting for my life. He -- was fighting for -- what? An iPhone? Some money? He still hadn’t said anything, so I didn’t know for sure. And that’s when I felt the knife dig into my side. Right between my left ribs. Only, thankfully, it didn’t happen. The knife was still by the man’s side -- dangling from his right hand, as he repeatedly grabbed at me with his left. I had only imagined him stabbing me. It must have been a simulation run by the economist that had taken over my mind. And that simulation had brought the economist to this conclusion: I had way more to lose than this guy. And that was my advantage. All I had to do was make some space, and this guy would cut his losses and move on. But the pavement was wet. I hadn’t run more than a few paces before I slipped, head-first, down the sloping sidewalk. The flesh of my left hand was being ground off by the concrete, as I used it as my brake pad. As I slid down the hill, I glanced over my left shoulder. I hadn’t gone far, but maybe this was enough distance to get him to give up. But he didn’t give up. He was following me. I still don’t know how, but I somehow got to my feet faster than he could catch me. I vaulted myself over one guardrail. I vaulted myself over another guardrail on the next path over. I scurried down a steep hill, slammed into a chain link fence, and ran like hell. When I arrived at home, only a couple of blocks away, my hand was bleeding, my toe was bleeding, my shoes were ripped, and a button was broken off of my favorite shirt. But, I was safe. We all know what you’re supposed to do when someone pulls a knife on you. Give them your wallet. Give them your phone. Do what they tell you to do. “Your life is more valuable than your iPhone,” people will say. Yeah, no shit. Just because I got away with my decision, doesn’t make it a good decision. Annie Duke would call that “resulting” -- rating the quality of your decisions on the outcome, rather than, well, the quality of your decision. You should not fight a guy who pulls a knife on you. That would be a bad decision. Except that, you aren’t making a decision. You’re merely reacting. It’s a non-decision. This is the error we make when we play armchair quarterback to other people’s “decisions.” “Why didn’t the cop shoot the assailant with the deadly weapon in the kneecap, instead of the chest?” “Why didn’t they just leave the room when the sexual assault began?” We know what the ideal action would be. We don’t know shit about what it’s actually like to be in that situation. That feeling I felt that night. That feeling I hadn’t felt before, that I haven’t felt since, and that I hope to never feel again, is a well-known phenomenon. It’s called “fight or flight.” It’s what happens when you are in a seriously dangerous situation, and your sympathetic nervous system takes over. I didn’t stop and politely ask the man with a knife what he wanted. I didn’t then simply hand it over. “Have a nice evening!” That would have been the right “decision.” But I wasn’t making a decision. I fought, then I “flought.” In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky introduce us to two different types of thinking. There’s System 1 thinking -- that’s the thinking that you do in the moment. It’s “fast” thinking. Then, there’s System 2 thinking. That’s the more deliberate thinking. That’s the “slow” thinking. Really, System 1 hardly qualifies as “thinking” at all. At least not what we normally think of as thinking. Not the “what were you thinking,” thinking. I wasn’t thinking. It was System 1. System 1 is your dumber self. Because of System 1, we make all sorts of bad decisions. They aren’t always as bad as fighting a man with a knife. Sometimes it’s simply checking your email while you’re still in bed in the morning, or buying that scone to go with your morning coffee. If System 2 had a say in the matter, it would remind you that checking your email is a bad way to start your day, or that eating a sugary scone for breakfast is going to make you feel like crap. The good news is that we can use System 2 to make decisions ahead of time. Before System 1 -- our dumber self -- has a chance to make its poor non-decision, System 2 can make sure it never even gets a chance. Colombians have an expression. “No dar papaya.” “Don’t give papaya.” You give papaya, someone will take it. It means don’t walk around with your cell phone out. Don’t wear a fancy watch. I’ve even heard a taxi driver use this expression when talking about someone who got robbed while in a taxi. He shouldn’t have had his cell phone out while in the taxi, the driver explained. “Don’t give papaya.” After four years in Colombia, it’s still not clear to me at what point someone is not “giving papaya,” but instead being robbed by a criminal. “Don’t give papaya” is what an American would call “victim blaming.” It’s a way of saying “if something bad happens to you, it’s your fault.” Deeper than that, “don’t give papaya” is a way of convincing oneself that there’s justice in what is sometimes an unjust world -- especially in a place like Colombia. Let’s be honest here. I don’t like the expression, but the Colombians have a point. Long before my System 1 was making poor decisions, my System 2 could have made better decisions. It’s not my fault that a man pulled a knife on me, but I’m the one who cut through the park at night. I’m the one who was seduced by the temperate air to walk home, instead of taking a taxi. Most important, I’m the one who has to live -- or not live, as it could have been -- with the consequences of each of those decisions. So, my fault or not, I’m going do things to prevent that from happening again. So, since that incident, I do things differently. I try to design so that System 1 doesn’t make bad decisions. I design for my dumber self. I took some Krav Maga classes, to help practice how I react in a panicked emotional state. I printed out paper backups of any two-factor authentication codes, so I worry less about losing my cell phone. I don’t walk through parks after dark, and I take taxis after 8pm. I don’t only design for my dumber self to prevent the situation I was in, but other potential situations. I only take taxis from apps, where I’ll have a record of the driver and plate. I’m sure to check the plate number on the app, and make sure it matches the car I’m getting into. This policy has led to at least one screaming match with an obstinate rideshare driver in the United States. I make decisions and policies with System 2, and I practice them. System 1 doesn’t get a chance to make a non-decision. I also design for my dumber self in matters that aren’t life or death. Habits, routines, and the way you shape your environment with System 2 can all prevent System 1 from making bad non-decisions. So, I deleted Twitter and Facebook from my phone. I use a newsfeed blocker on my desktop browser. I use the first hours of my day to do my most important work. Each Sunday, I plan my week ahead of time, to make sure I’m set up to address my top priorities. If I want to get some writing done, I don’t take my laptop to the cafe -- I only bring my iPad, and an external keyboard. I don’t give the papaya of my attention and focus to those who seek to juice it for all it’s worth. I use System 2, so System 1 won’t get me in trouble. I design for my dumber self. Image: The Age of Bronze, Auguste Rodin My Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, David Kadavy David Kadavy is the author of The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast and his Love Mondays newsletter, David helps you make it as a creative. Follow David on: Twitter Instagram Facebook YouTube Subscribe to Love Your Work Apple Podcasts Overcast Spotify Stitcher RSS Email Support the show on Patreon Put your money where your mind is. Patreon lets you support independent creators like me. Support now on Patreon »     Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/design-dumber-self/