Write more. Write about your audience, your craft, your challenges. Write about the trade-offs, the industry, and your genre. Write about your dreams and your fears. Write about what’s funny and what’s not. Write to clarify. Write to challenge yourself. Write on a regular schedule. Writing isn’t the same as talking, because writing is organized and

If we choose to do work for generous reasons, and not for reciprocity or a long con but simply because we can, we stop believing that we are owed by others. The feeling of being owed will destroy our ability to do generous work. If the audience delivers a standing ovation because they’re supposed to, it’s hardly worth listening to or remembering. T

Who are you trying to change? What change are you trying to make? How will you know if it worked? Three simple questions, all easily avoided. We avoid them because purpose has a flip side, and the flip side is failure.

Anchors can drag us down. That’s their job on a boat. But for a creative person, an anchor can also be a beacon, the thing we work toward, relentlessly. Not because it’s perfect. But because it’s 11:30. We promised. The process, not the outcome. That’s the heart of our practice. Good process leads to good outcomes.

Go too far to please the audience and you become a hack. Lose your point of view, lose your reason for doing the work, become a hack. Focus only on the results, become a hack. On the other hand, if you ignore what you see and simply create for yourself, you’ve walked away from empathy. If there is no change, there is no art. The professional unders

The practice seeks to make change, but the process demands originality. The practice is consistent, but only in intention, not in execution. Every creator who has engaged in the practice has a long, nearly infinite string of failures. All the ways not to start a novel, not to invent the light bulb, not to transform a relationship. Again and again,

Desirable difficulty is the hard work of doing hard work. Setting ourselves up for things that cause a struggle, because we know that after the struggle, we’ll be at a new level. Learning almost always involves incompetence. Shortly before we get to the next level, we realize that we’re not yet at that level and we feel insufficient. The difficulty

if you and I are exchanging our best work, our best work gets better. Abundance multiplies. Scarcity subtracts. A vibrant culture creates more than it takes.

Learn to juggle. Draw an owl. Make things better. Without regard for whether it’s going to work this time. The practice will take you where you seek to go better than any other path you can follow. And while you’re engaging in the practice, you’ll honor your potential and the support and kindness of everyone who came before you.