Love Your Work

Each November, writers around the world make a commitment. They commit to writing a novel within a month. It's called NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writer's Month. Since 2013, software developers have also been making a commitment. They've committed to generating a novel within a month. It's called NaNoGenMo – National Novel Generation Month. The novels these programmers create – if you can call them...

Subject: "IMMEDIATE Action Reqeusted [sic]" They misspelled "requested," which had the unintended effect of highlighting that this email was urgent. There were some documents attached to the email. They wanted me to review the documents and sign them. Then, I would get a wire of money to my bank account – from Google, Inc. I had no idea this email was coming. It was a nice surprise, since it was m...

In New York City, sometime around the beginning of the twentieth century, a young art student sat for a portrait. The artist who painted this portrait won a prestigious award for that portrait. The young woman who sat for the portrait suddenly became a sought-after model. She could actually earn money sitting for portraits. She needed that money. Her family was poor, and art school -- especially a...

Here's a brain teaser for you: Imagine we've got a room full of people. We're trying to figure if any two people in the room have the same birthday. For us to reach a fifty-percent probability that there are two people in the room with the exact same birthday, how many people need to be in the room? I told you this was a brain teaser, so suffice to say that the answer -- to how many people need to...

When I was working with Timeful -- the productivity app co-founded by behavioral scientist and Love Your Work guest, Dan Ariely -- we had a great feature. You could put todo items on your calendar. You could estimate how long a todo item was going to take, and then you could drag that todo item onto your calendar. It would be right there on the timeline, along with any other events you had planned...

Before I moved to Colombia, I lived several "mini lives" in Medellín. I came and lived here for a few months. I escaped the very worst portion of the Chicago winters. There was a phenomenon I experienced every time I came here, which taught me a lot about how I think about time. It always happened right around the three week mark. Getting used to a slower pace of life The pace of life in Medellín...

Maya Angelou was right, "People will forget what you said...but people will never forget how you made them feel." Because I don't remember what this woman said to me, but I do remember how I felt: Attacked. My heart was racing. I had two options: Lash out and defend my position, or excuse myself from the conversation. My brain hastily searched for the best way out: Slip into the kitchen to get ano...

When it came time for me to choose a college, I had no idea what I was doing. For reasons I still can't explain, I chose to go to The University of Nebraska at Kearney. At least until I recognized my mistake. Kearney is a town in the middle of Nebraska. I grew up in Omaha, a city on the east edge of Nebraska. You may laugh, thinking, What's the difference? It's a flyover state. But to most of my c...

I used to be a time management enthusiast. I say "used to be," because time management eventually stopped working for me. How I became an accidental author It all started with an email. It was the kind of email that would trip up most spam filters. I wasn't being offered millions of dollars from an offshore bank account, true love, nor improved performance in bed. I was being offered a book deal ....

Sometimes people tell me, "Hey David, The Heart to Start is a great book, but now that I've figured out how to start, how do I finish?!" If you're anything like me, finishing is tough. You can always find a good reason not to finish what you've started. It's not fun anymore, you don't want to paint yourself into a corner if it goes well, or – my personal favorite – now you have an even better idea...

One day, I was in a coworking space, here in Colombia, writing in my Moleskine notebook. One of the other co-workers came up to me and asked me a question. He said, in Spanish, and with a sense of earnest curiosity, "Why are you writing in your notebook? Your computer is right in front of you. You can write much faster on your computer. Why aren't you writing on your computer?" That question reall...

Offer expires soon. You don't want to miss it! It's the investment of a lifetime! It's going to be the party of the century! Can you feel the anxiety piling up? You know what it is – it's FOMO. The Fear of Missing Out. In a hyper-connected world, FOMO is more intense than ever. Our friends are sharing amazing travel photos on Instagram, people are talking about the hot new investment opportunity o...

To get exceptional results, you need to do exceptional things. Most things that are normal are normal only because very few people can resist them. Just because it's normal, doesn't mean it's good for you. It often means the opposite. It's like the Ancient Chinese proverb says, "If five million people do a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." Don't let them get a piece of you If you want t...

Ari Meisel ( @arimeisel ) created a productivity system out of necessity. He was suffering from a chronic and life-threatening illness that was so severe, he had no choice but to make the most out of every ounce of energy he had. He took everything in his life and he applied what he now calls "OAO." He Optimized, Automated, and Outsourced everything he could. Through his own system, which is now c...

As the nineteenth century was turning to the twentieth century, Frederick Taylor grabbed a stopwatch. He stood next to a worker, and instructed that worker on exactly how to pick up a chunk of iron. Over and over, Taylor tweaked the prescribed movements. Grip the chunk of iron in this way, turn in this way, bend in this way. Once Taylor found the optimal combination of movements, he taught the pro...

Andrew Mason ( @andrewmason ) started a little website called The Point. An investor friend of his gave him a million dollars in seed money. The Point failed, but Andrew then used that seed money to pivot his idea into the fastest-growing company in history. Groupon hit a $1 billion valuation in only sixteen months. For someone with no entrepreneurial experience at all, this was crazy. Yahoo! offe...

First of all, I hope that you are taking good care of yourself during these unprecedented times. I hope that you and the people you love are safe and healthy.   I have something I've been working on for a looong time. And it's very relevant to what we have going on today. Many people are working from home. They're thrust into unstructured days, and trying to make the most of them.   So, I don't wa...

Many businesses have "SOP's" It sounds very official as an acronym, and what it stands for sounds even more official: Standard Operating Procedure. It's a document which outlines a process within a business. What's the purpose of the process? What are the steps to follow? Who will do different parts of the processes, and which parts can't begin until another part is finished? I was telling a frien...

Megan Devine ( @refugeingrief ) is the author of It's OK That You're Not OK , and runs the Writing Your Grief workshop. It wasn't until Megan, a therapist, experienced grief herself that she discovered how we as a culture utterly fail to support the grieving. As loyal listeners know, I experienced a tragedy several months ago. My healthy, active, 69-year-old mother died suddenly. An abnormal blood...

What are you doing?! Didn't you read the title of this episode? I'm begging you: Stop listening to my podcast. You're still here? Okay, I'll see what I can do to persuade you to stop listening to my podcast. I'll admit it: It bums me the fuck out that there aren't more people listening to my podcast. I've been delivering an episode every week for the past four years, and I haven't seen any growth...

Dylan Evans ( @evansd66 ) had an intense experience with uncertainty. He was fifty percent certain that civilization would collapse within several years. So, he sold his house, gave up his job, and set out to learn how to survive the apocalypse. He tells the story in his book, The Utopia Experiment . He and a team of volunteers constructed yurts on the Scottish highlands, and started growing their...

In the 1600s, Penelope Kent boarded a ship from Holland to the New World with her new husband. Their ship wrecked off the coast, but still, Penelope and her husband made it to shore. There, they were attacked and tortured by the natives who lived on the land. By the time the natives were done with them, Penelope's husband was dead. Penelope was still alive, but partially scalped, with her stomach...

Dr. Aziz Gazipura is author of a great book, Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty... And Start Speaking Up, Saying No, Asking Boldly, And Unapologetically Being Yourself . What does it mean to be a "good person?" If someone asks you to do something, do you have to do it? If someone invites you to hang out, do you have to make the time? If someone shares an idea, do you...

When I was writing my first book, Design for Hackers , I developed a ritual. I would lay all of my research materials on the floor. Graphic Design history books were splayed out. I had research papers or articles printed out and stapled. There were highlights and sticky notes everywhere. In the center of all of this, I had a whiteboard. Well, it wasn't actually a whiteboard. Whiteboards were too e...

Demir and Carey Bentley are co-founders of Lifehack Bootcamp , where they help professionals make more of their time and energy, to get more results. They once found themselves getting sucked into the prevailing values of the place they lived. The place you choose to live can have an outsized influence on how you choose to live. If where you live is a bad influence on you, you'll do things that ar...