🌱 How to pay attention (hard vs easy mode)

Here’s your 3 insights (in 2 minutes, 53 seconds).

👀 Professional Observer

"A writer is someone who pays attention to the world — a writer is a professional observer."

— Susan Sontag

Great observations can save poor writing.

But great writing can’t fix poor observations.

So how might you improve your ability to observe…?

🤔 Independent Thinking

The essay Solitude and Leadership beautifully illustrates how leadership requires the ability to think independently, which can only be developed through solitude.

The entire essay is worth reading, but here’s my favorite part:

William Deresiewicz, “Solitude and Leadership”

Here’s how I think of introspection:

1. Follow your intuition to learn interesting things and do interesting stuff

2. Evaluate how you feel

3. Get feedback from people you trust

Then repeat step one and the cycle continues.

🔁 Self-Reinforcing Life

Love this idea of building a “self-reinforcing life.”

Christine offers a great heuristic for things you love vs. things you do for money.

Here’s how I think of this:

Hard mode:
Everything you do is separate, doesn’t compound, feels heavy and uninteresting

Easy mode:
Everything is you is connected, compounds, and feels light and interesting

Check out her post here.

Salud,
Mitchell

Ps. My “Woo Score” was 21. What are you?
(scorecard here h/t @christineist)