Taglife

Anything You Want

Cover of the book "Anything you Want" by Derek Sivers

I tend to take things seriously, more seriously than I’d like, and more seriously than it is good for me. Anything You Want by Derek Sivers is a good lesson on taking most things as they come, but taking your core values seriously:

Make sure you know what makes you happy, and don’t forget it.

Page 73

It also reminds the reader to focus on what they want to do and not what they want to have.

The whole point of doing anything is because it makes you happy! …its about what you want to be, not what you want to have. To have something (like an album, or a million dollars) is the means, not the end. To be something (like a good singer, or just plain happy) is the real point.

Page 58

The book also had tons of advice for small business owners, while I couldn’t agree with all of it, some points really stuck with me:

  • The customers are more important than the business itself. The business’ objective should be customer satisfaction, not survival.
  • Tiny details of design and customer experience delight and thrill people enough to make them tell their friends about you.

It was a very quick read, and I’d recommend it to anyone thinking of starting something of their own and have an hour to spare 😊

The Backlog

All of us have a bunch of different backlogs — emails, todo tasks, articles to read. New backlogs get added all the time too — recipes to make, podcasts to listen to, places to see. While we keep working on our backlogs, the problem is, that we add to them faster than we subtract.

The book you just finished reading references others that are now on your reading list. After releasing your new project you already have a list of things that you need to fix in it. As you constantly move closer to death – the time you have is decreasing, but, your backlog is increasing, often exponentially. This is not sustainable!

the backlog graph
I wish I had better memory of this day

So what are we supposed to do? Prune? Prioritize? Panic? I’ve been practicing an unhealthy balance of these three for a while and am increasingly getting comfortable with its constant hum bothering me. As long as I keep making new spreadsheets and projects on Todoist, I’ll be just fine 😅

To dwell

There are but two choices —
To follow the heart,
Clockwork you never understood.
Or to follow the world,
Why dream, even if you could?
No bread playing Soul out on the streets,
No soul spending days balancing sheets.
Earn the bread first, the heart can wait,
Play Soul today, the bread will come late.
Follow the heart and the world cries,
Follow the world and the heart dies.
The heart is dead,
The world moved ahead.
But the decision is simple —
Where do you often dwell?
The world or the heart.
Where do you go for solace?
Your wallet or your art?

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

Samuel Johnson