
How to Reduce Your Anxiety about the News & Protect Your Psyche
There are two kinds of anxiety: neurotic anxiety, which is characterized by over-rumination, looping thoughts, and generally unproductive worrying, and normal anxiety, which is what Kierkegaard talks about — the anxiety that we are able, the fear of our own potential,...

Stop Letting Strangers Dictate What You Do With Your Day
Do you leave your front door open, allowing anyone who chooses to walk in and command your attention? I highly doubt it. And yet this is exactly how our email inboxes function. Your email is the front door for access to your work identity. And anyone who has access to...

Music to Play When You Want to Get Focused
There are a handful of albums that I listen to obsessively when I want to get focused on creative work. Below, you'll find the ones that have gotten the most play, organized into calm, atmospheric music and high-energy, upbeat music. Calm, Atmospheric Music: From...

Make Tomorrow’s To-Do List Tonight & Other Tips for Getting Sh*t Done
Most of us love to make to-do lists, and yet we very rarely cross everything off. This happens because it's easy to overlook context. By context I mean things like: clarifying what you want to accomplish in the grand scheme of things, understanding how to coordinate...

30 Insights That Will Change the Way You Live, Work, and Create
Over the past year, I've shared over 500 articles on how to find more meaning and creativity in your daily work through my weekly newsletter. Below, I’ve whittled that list down to my 30 favorite pieces of writing across the categories of productivity, creativity,...

Forget about Finding a Wise Elder, Mentorship Is Ageless Now
Mentors are like careers. We still want them—yearn for them in fact—but they don’t exist anymore. I probably spend at least 20-30% of my time talking to other humans about their careers. What people are working on, what their struggles are, what they hope to do next,...

13 Apps for Managing Email Overload, Anxiety, and Distraction
When it comes to distraction in the workplace, email overload is public enemy #1. A new study of 1,000 knowledge workers found that employees spent an average of 4 hours a day processing their email. The state of our inbox addiction is so bad, in fact, that the...

How to Relieve Your Post-Election Angst & Take Action Right Now
I’ve been trying to pinpoint the feeling that’s overtaken me since Hillary Clinton’s loss in November, and the closest I can come is: Bereft. The feeling of being deprived or robbed; lacking something needed, wanted, expected. Women across the country thought we were...

Take a Load Off: The Missing Key to Productivity Is Reflection
Most people equate being busy with being productive. As long as we’re “getting things done,” we feel like we’re headed in the right direction. We think that doing something must be more productive than not doing anything. That action is more powerful than reflection....

Habits Are Statements About the Past, and the Past Is Gone
It’s a red flag for me when someone says, “I always like to say…” and then offers some piece of advice. It makes me wonder if they’ve stopped examining their beliefs, if active thinking has been transformed into passive habit of mind. Over the past few years, I’ve...

This Is How Social Media, Distraction, and Addiction Can Undermine Your Art
A few months ago, a colleague of mine told me about meeting a young woman who was “passionate” about writing. He asked her what she had written recently, and she said nothing. In recounting the story to me, he said, “How can you say you’re passionate about something...

Quick, Easy-to-Finish Tasks Build Momentum in the Morning
People are obsessed with morning routines. What was Ben Franklin thinking about when he started his day at 5am? How does Stephen King get into the rhythm for writing? What question did Steve Jobs look in the mirror and ask himself every morning? (Apparently, it was:...