Be cognizant of time as a finite resource, understanding how much time is in the day and how it’s spent. This awareness is hugely important for making conscious decisions about how to allocate your time before it’s too late.
Regularly ask yourself what one thing you changed your mind about recently (e.g., today or this past week). This practice helps separate your identity from your thoughts and encourages intellectual flexibility.
Consciously decide if the benefits of sharing personal information on social media platforms are worth the associated costs to your privacy. This helps you determine your comfort level and strategy for managing your online presence.
Identify the point where a project yields diminishing returns and be willing to move on to new endeavors. This prevents over-investing time and resources into a project that has peaked its effectiveness.
Make conscious decisions about how to use your commute time, considering what activity (e.g., audiobook, observation, reflection) will be most effective for that day. This ensures you leverage otherwise passive time to advance your goals or well-being.
Direct your observations and thinking towards your current short-term goals, even during seemingly mundane activities like commuting. This helps you gather relevant insights and maintain focus on your objectives.
Carry a physical notebook and prefer writing in it over a computer to capture thoughts and observations. This provides a dedicated space for ideation and reflection.
Periodically review your older notes, as ideas that didn’t make sense previously might gain new relevance due to changed context or circumstances. This allows you to leverage past insights and connect disparate thoughts.
Understand that the medium through which you present information (e.g., website vs. book) significantly changes the audience, their expectations, and how they interact with your work. Account for this when planning communication or creative projects.
For creative projects like books, consider maintaining an open-source online version alongside a print version. This allows for continuous contributions and improvements from the audience, treating the artifact as a work in progress.
When teaching complex or abstract concepts like empathy, consider using formats that appear simple (e.g., children’s book style) but are designed for adults. This approach can make difficult ideas more accessible and engaging.
For effective communication and engagement, combine illustrations with prose and consider the physical packaging of your product. This multi-modal approach can reach a wider audience and enhance the message.
If you prefer a less public online presence, focus on sharing content related to your projects and outputs rather than personal details. This allows you to engage professionally without constantly being in the spotlight.
Adopt a work style where you spend significant time (e.g., a year) working on a project in private before presenting it publicly. This allows for deep focus and refinement, followed by feedback and improvement.
Define empathy as recognizing people and things that are not always easily seen, acknowledged, or are in the background. This broader understanding encourages a more comprehensive and compassionate perspective.
When encountering content generated by an algorithm, question what inputs were used to create it and how those inputs were selected. This critical thinking helps you understand the biases and limitations of algorithmic outputs.