Novelty is almost impossible to predict because it’s a moving target. What’s new this year will be old next year. And you can’t just aim your artistic rifle to outer space and hope you hit novelty–you’ll find obscurity.

I think he was wearing sketchers, and a baggy sweater. His posture was not great. He wasn’t that tall. He greeted everyone softly, with a much smaller voice than I imagined. I was surprised that this was the guy ESPN chose for their commercial.

You can write about something life-changing, something really monumental, in such a boring way that it changes no one’s life.

I would be hounding Amazing for a refund right now. But hounding an independent writer who is packing and shipping his self-published book on his own? I don’t feel so good about that.

I wish I could say that the blog has been a great success, and that I’m amassing a huge audience, and that I’m getting a lot of opportunities from it. But I’m not.

If you want to produce consistent and compelling work in a creative space, you need to consume content in that space every day.

He always used to pitch me on a quick workout routine. A few times through a circuit that only took 35 minutes or so. But I knew that 35 minutes really meant 45 minutes, and that he wasn’t accounting for the changing time, the travel time, the warm up time, the cool down time, (or all the breaks I needed to take).

If you want to make good art, you have to take risks. Safe art isn’t art. It’s a corporate video, or a picture you buy at Home Goods.

I sat across the dinner table from a man who had been on the moon, and I was racking my brain, trying to come up with something to ask him.

It’s hard to “get in” as a producer. But once you’re in with a few directors and production companies, a few connects is more than enough to keep you busy. So how do you get in with these people?

If you can make a great first impression, people won’t see you that way. They’ll just see you as someone doing your job.

“Instead of feeling that you’ve blown the day and thinking, ‘I’ll get back on track tomorrow,’ try thinking of each day as a set of four quarters: morning, midday, afternoon, evening. If you blow one quarter, you get back on track for the next quarter. Fail small, not big.”

“It’s good to be frugal, but if you don’t spend your money to make your life or your relationships or your work easier, what exactly are you going to spend it on?

YouTube TV has been running an ad during the NBA Finals, featuring an old lady obsessing over the NBA Finals, even while her family throws her a birthday party. This is an unexpected choice of talent. Why would YouTube do this? The numbers don’t lie: the people who watch the NBA the most are males in their mid-30s.

Similar to fake humility or the unwillingness to accept a gift, imposter syndrome is rooted in our need to save face, and be perceived a certain way. We’re so afraid of people finding out that we don’t know something. So we communicate vaguely. We pass the blame. We say yes to things we’re not sure we can accomplish.

The same question always rattled around in my head: Who buys this stuff? It’s not that his merch wasn’t cool. It was, and I put a lot of work into it to make sure that it was. It was that I could never see myself buying a $40 t-shirt from a digital creator.

I opened up this browser thinking I would write one word. Just to keep the streak alive. But that’s the funny thing about habits. Once I wrote one word, the next one followed pretty easily, and then they started flowing. And now I’m done.

In 2016, I started a social media management business with my cousin. We went 50/50 on it. A little over one year later, we stopped working together.

If you feel stuck, it’s probably because you’re thinking about a masterpiece. You’ve got an invisible audience standing over your shoulder. You’re thinking too much about your brand, and your reputation, and what people will think.

“I imagine a world where my day contains no unclosed sessions. No mental ovens or stoves left on accidentally.”
-My Brother