Life — Work | Mitch Schwartz

 There’s a saying that hell is meeting the person you could have become. …As in one day you meet the best-timeline version of yourself and realize you’ve squandered your newly-seen-as-meager existence. “Aww, he’s so great and I’m crap and wasted my life” you would think. …And that would be your own personal hell. Except I’d like to argue that a truer hell is to live constantly worried about keeping up with that guy. It’s worth saying that everyone’s hell is different. Everyone’s motivation is different. One person’s “just do it” is another person’s toxic bro advice. One person’s motivational messiah is another’s cringe factory. It’s also said that competing with yourself is the healthiest competition. I think this is more about comparing to our past records and achievements instead of the world at large, in which there is always someone ahead of us. But if we can engage in toxic competition with someone who is always ahead of us… our future self or our best timeline poten...

Thought I would share a few recent breakthroughs. It's been said that finding inner peace isn't about doing something new but rather doing less and connecting with what we already are.  It's described as a wordless experience that can't be described so much as pointed to. A teacher of mine, Joe Hudson's favourite pointer is to 'Drop the resistance'. While the phrasing 'drop the resistance' is a great pointer. I've been missing a piece needed to more fully with his teaching. I've recently noticed myself spinning in resistance loops. I came across Adyashanti's framing of meditation as simply 'not trying to change anything' and It's been amazingly powerful. It feels exactly how I would expect 'dropping the resistance' to feel. It also reminds me of 'the great perfection' that so many Buddhists have referred to, Naval Ravikants preferred 'drop the intention' meditation, and the state I get into when I medit...

Welcome! If you're anything like me, you're looking for a system that helps you feel focused and on top of things.  Many productivity systems create resistance and get in our way. Our habits break, we feel shitty. There's a stress loop that forms and we stop enjoying what we're doing.   If you're feeling anxious about your productivity, your organization, your focus, or your habits, Leo Babauta's modified version of GTD — Zen-to-Done , is a great place to start.  I recommend starting with the minimal ZTD and building from there.   Though his ebook isn't long (77 pages) I've done my best to condense them into actional steps and tips. To read those notes, click here

I used to think my wants needed to be explained. Like all of my feelings. Like most western people, I've appointed my brain as the judge and manager of my entirety, and of everything around me. I want whatever my brain says. My mind is logical. It knows what is rational and what isn't. It knows when something is dangerous. Millions of years of evolution have created my brain. It prevents me from following paths that could lead to destruction. It filters all of my wants and decides which ones are valid. It finds out why I want things so I can explain it to others so that they will see me as rational. My rational mind keeps me safe. It helps me know what is about to happen. it separates me from the animals. It separates me from the underclasses and the unsuccessful. It separates me from the people around me. It separates me from my feelings. It separates me from myself. In return, I get to think I feel like things around me are controlled. Each week, in the AoA course,...

An arrangement of notes I took during the Art of Accomplishment Course: Artistry requires self awareness; Your consciousness comes through in every product you create. When we use a product, we are consuming also the consciousness of it's creators;  Consciousness is part of creation, this is what makes it an art form. If a product is made in scarcity and fear, we'll feel that when we use it. Software developed by a team with poor communication, running around trying to complete a huge backlog, will bring this level of consciousness into the product. Trust your full expression. Trust what's coming through you. When we see this full expression in others, we want to follow it. If we're judging and questioning ourselves, we can't be in a flow state. The only way we will see that we're inherently good is by knowing who we are; Artistry comes from this place. I know what I am and I'm committed to fully expressing it Is the state which drives the purest creation. T...

🧠💗🦸‍♂️ Our 3 Intelligences Today we'll delve into the much overlooked idea that we have more than 1 intelligence. Let's start with the obvious one...   🧠 The Brain Culturally, Western society values analytical intellect highly. One of the reasons is that it is strongly associated with control. If we know what something is, and we know all of the trivia about it, then we can predict what it will do. That helps us feel less fearful.  Example: if you know what kind of insect you are looking at, you know if it is likely to bite you. This concept generalizes into most aspects of our lives. One issue here is that analytical intelligence is low bandwidth. Analytical intelligence tend to come to us in words. I'm looking at a tree right now; you've read the word tree and probably imagine one, but it's not the same tree I'm looking at. If I wanted to describe that tree to you so that you could form an accurate image of it in your mind, it would probably take pages, ma...

The mind trap is simple:  The way to "solve" emotional issues is to let them go but this isn't actionable advice; they seem to come right back

Inner Peace sounds great. We tend to be pretty aware of outer peace, which we know because most people are easily disturbed by noises, smells, or moving visuals in our environments. What's incredible is that most of us have a neurotic person chattering non-stop in our heads. Worse, we listen to all of its advice, without even wondering about its track record. If this was an external person, who was always getting us riled up, whispering to us in the middle of the night about everything worrisome, and so often shouting to us about anything but the task at hand, we would never accept their calls. Since it's always been this way though, it seems normal to us. Lately, I've been acutely aware of the voice in my head —the one so many of us have; it's been there as long as I can remember. When I was in my teens it felt more like 2 voices: my analytical and emotional selves. I experienced dialogues between different parts of my mind. There's an analogy tha...