Consistency compounds

If it takes 2 minutes or less, just do it now. Dont put it off.

30 years training to create in 30 seconds

As the story goes, Picasso was walking though the market one day when a woman spotted him. She stopped the artist, pulled out a piece of paper and said, “Mr. Picasso, I am a fan of your work. Please, could you do a little drawing for me?”

Picasso smiled and quickly drew a small, but beautiful piece of art on the paper. Then, he handed the paper back to her saying, “That will be one million dollars.”

“But Mr. Picasso,” the woman said. “It only took you thirty seconds to draw this little masterpiece.”

“My good woman,” Picasso said, “It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty seconds.”

 

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In any creative endeavor you have to give yourself permission to create junk. There is no way around it. Sometimes you have to write 4 terrible pages just to discover that you wrote one good sentence in the second paragraph of the third page.

Creating something useful and compelling is like being a gold miner. You have to sift through pounds of dirt and rock and silt just to find a speck of gold in the middle of it all. Bits and pieces of genius will find their way to you, if you give yourself permission to let the muse flow.

 

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Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.
—Chuck Close

Amateurs create when they feel inspired. Professionals create on a schedule.

Finish something. Anything. Stop researching, planning, and preparing to do the work and just do the work. It doesn't matter how good or how bad it is. You don't need to set the world on fire with your first try. You just need to prove to yourself that you have what it takes to produce something.

There are no artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, or scientists who became great by half-finishing their work. Stop debating what you should make and just make something.

Practice Self-Compassion

Everyone struggles to create great art. Even great artists.

When I write, I feel like an armless legless man with a crayon in my mouth.
—Kurt Vonnegut

Share Your Work

Share your work publicly. It will hold you accountable to creating your best work. It will provide feedback for doing better work. And when you see others connect with what you create, it will inspire you and make you care more.

 

How to Find Your Creative Genius

Finding your creative genius is easy: do the work, finish something, get feedback, find ways to improve, show up again tomorrow. Repeat for ten years. Or twenty. Or thirty.

Inspiration only reveals itself after perspiration. 

"Mindset - How you can fulfill your potential" - Carol Dweck

• "I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures... I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners."
• It's breathtaking how many reject an opportunity to learn.
• "Becoming is better than being." The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.
• When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don't define them. And if abilitites can be expanded - if change and growth are possible - then there are still many paths to success.
• We endow our heroes with superhuman abilities that led them inevitably toward their greatness. [...] People with the growth mindset, however, believe something very different. For them, even geniuses have to work hard for their achievements.
• They must not be as smart as I am, I thought to myself. It never occured to me that they might be just as smart and more hardworking! For me it was either-or.
• Seen through the lens of the growth mindset, these are stories about the transformative power of effort - the power of effort to change your ability and to change you as a person.
• Nothing is harder than saying: "I gave it my all and it wasn't good enough."
• Many growth-minded people didnt even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It's ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it's where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do. This point is also crucial. In the fixed mindset, everyhing is about the outcome. I fyou fail - or if you're not the best - it's all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they're doing regardless or the outcome.
• Praise like this: "You must have worked really hard." They were not made to feel that they had some special gift, they were praised for doing what it takes to succeed.
• The effort-praised students still loved the problems, and many of them said that the hard problems were the most fun.
• Girls are often so perfect, well behaved, they're so cute, they're so helpful, and they're so precocious. Girls learn to trust people's estimates of them. (...) Boys are constantly being scolded and punished.
• The fixed mindset, plus stereotyping, plus women's trust in people's assessment: I think we can begin to understand why there's a gender gap in math and science.
• What's their secret? Is it passed down in the genes? I believe it's passed down in the mindset. It's the most growth-mindset family I've ever seen. (...) Their heads are not filled with limiting thoughts, a fragile sense of belonging, and a belief that other people can define them.
• Do you label your kids? (...) Find a growth-mindset way to compliment them.
• He used to leave the house at six in the morning to go practice before school. The coach was taken aback by his willingness to work harder than anyone else. Practices his shots for hours. "a genius who constantly wants to upgrade his genius". Success stems from the mind. "The mental toughness and the heart are a lot stronger than some of the physical advantages you might have."
• "There is something about seeing myself improve that motivates and excites me."
• "I believe ability can get you to the top,  but it takes character to keep you there." It takes real character to keep working as hard or even harder once you're there.
• Those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best, in learning and improving. "For me the joy of athletics has never resided in winning. I derive just as much happiness fron the process as from the results. I dont mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel I've done as well as I possibly could. If I lose, I just go back to the track and work some more." "After every game or practice, if you walk off the field knowing that you gave everything you had, you will always be a winner."
• Hard as it is, perhaps he should admire the fact that her father went for it, instead of being contemptuous that he didnt quite make it.
• True self-confidence is "the courage to be open - to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source."
• "I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and feel sorry for myself!" (Perhaps this phrase should be the mantra of the growth mindset)
• In your partnership you can have a fixed mindset about three things:
1. You can believe that your qualities are fixed
2. your partners qualities are fixed
3. and the relationships qualities are fixed
• The growth mindset says all of these things can be developed. All - you, your partner, and the relationship - are capable of growth and change.
• As a legacy of my fixed mindset, I still have an irresistible urge to defend myself and assign blame when something in a relationship goes wrong. "It's not my fault!" To deal with this bad habit, my husband and I invented a third party, an imaginary man named Maurice. Whenever I start in on who's to blame, we invoke poor Maurice and pin it on him.
• I remember when we were kids and did something dumb, like drop our ice-cream cone on our foot, we'd turn to our friend and say "Look what you made me do." Blame may make you feel less foolish, but you still have a shoe full of ice cream - and a friend who's on the defensive. In a relationship, the growth mindset lets you rise above blame, understand the problem, and try to fix it - together.
• "Oh no. To me the whole point of marriage is to encourage your partners development and have them encourage yours."
• It can be a fixed-mindset message that says:" You have permanent traits and I'm judging them. Or it can be a growth-mindset message that says: You are a developing person and I am interested in your development
• Praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and its harms their performance
• You learned so quickly, youre so smart
• look at that drawing martha is he the next picasso or what
• translates into
• if i dont learn something quickly im not smart
• i should try drawing anything hard or theyll see im no picasso
• id better quit studying or ghey wont think im brilliant
• "youre brilliant" - I mean to say:"You searched for strategies, kept at it, tried all kinds of solutions and finally mastered it"
• If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. 
• I asked questions that made her reflect on the effort she put into studying and on how she has improved from the year before.
• We should keep away from praise that implies that were proud of them for their intelligence or talent rather than for the work they put in.
• We can praise them as much as we want for the growth-oriented process - what they accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies. And we can ask them about their work in a way that admires and appreciates their efforts and choices.
• So what should we say when children complete a task - say, math problems - quickly and perfectly? Should we deny them the praise they have earned? Yes. When this happens, I say, "Whoops. I guess that was too easy. I apologize for wasting your time. Lets do something you can really learn from.
• If your kid didnt win: Tell her she didnt deserve to win
• It seems hardhearted under the circumstances. And of course you wouldnt say it quite that way. But thats pretty much what her growth-minded father told her.
• "I know how you feel. Its so disappointing to have your hopes up and to perform your best but not to win. But you know, you havent really earned it yet. There were many girls there wove been in gymnastics longer than you and whove worked a lot harder than you. If this is something you really want, then its something youll really have to work for.
• A growth mindset dialogue:
• Gee. I am so clumsy
• That not what we say when nails spill
• What do you say?
• You say, the nails spilled - I'll pick them up!
• Just like that?
• Just like that
• Thanks, Dad.
• Children learn these lessons early. Children as young as toddlers pick up these messages from their parents, learning that their mistakes are worthy of judgement and punishment. Or learning that their mistakes are an occasion for suggestions and teaching.
• Next time youre in a position to discipline, ask yourself. What is the message I am sending here: I will judge and punish you? Or I will help you think and lear?
• "If Tiger (Wood) had wanted to be a plumber, I wouldnt have minded, as long as he was a hell of a plumber. The goal was for him to be a good person. Hes a great person." Tiger says in return: "My parents have been the biggest influence in my life. They taught me to give of myself, my time, talent, and, most of all, my love."
• What are they teaching the students en route? To love learning. To eventually learn and think for themselves. And to work hard on the fundamentals.
• Some educators try to reassure their students that they're just fine as they are. Growth-minded teachers tell students the truth and then give them the tools to close the gap.
• If you have room on your mirror, copy them over and tape them there, too. "What are the opportunities for learning and growth today? For myself? For the people around me?

What is financial planning?

What is financial planning?

Planning is a mix of
- lies
- politics
- wishful thinking