Die Empty: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day

The goal is to recognize the things you admire about others so that you can tap into those qualities,

Make a list of five people you admire. Are there any qualities they exhibit that intimidate you? Make a list of these qualities, and consider any overlap between them. Do you notice any patterns? If so, how would you begin to cultivate those qualities in your own life?

“You are worth only what you create.” This is a common narrative that I discover in the lives of creative professionals, especially those who specialize in the arts, such as designers, writers, musicians, and other professions where their work is on public display. Their worth is often tied up in the things they do or make, and it’s hard for them t

You can strategize all you want, but in the end, you have to do something about your plans. While it’s often difficult to measure in the moment how effectively you plan or strategize (Mapping), you can count at the end of the day how many tasks you checked off a list, how many words you wrote, or how many calls you made. As a result, it’s easy to g

If you were to put a blindfold on me, then hand me a bow and arrow and ask me to shoot at a target, I would have absolutely no clue where to aim my shot. If I knew the general direction of the target, I might get lucky and hit it once out of a thousand attempts, but there would be no way to replicate the effort because it would be quite literally a

What do you know you should be doing, but have been ignoring? These are forgotten battlefronts. They are things that have been weighing on your mind for a while now, and things that you care deeply about, but you’ve been ignoring because either (a) you fear that you won’t have time for them or (b) you haven’t defined them enough to know your next s

when I come across someone with extreme conviction about their work, it pushes me to the edge of my comfort zone. I think it’s because I crave that kind of precision in my own work, and I feel a little like the ground I stand on is being challenged.

Mapping + Making − Meshing = Driver

Where are your “open loops”? These are the unfinished projects, the halfhearted efforts, or the unreconciled relationships. They are the projects that you’re afraid to say no to, but deep down you know that you can’t commit to. These must be either acted upon and made a priority, or immediately closed and put aside. If you have too many open loops