Love Your Work

As I kicked and punched at the man, I glanced at the knife in his right hand. And I felt it dig into my side. It all started as I crossed paths with the man. He reached in his pocket, and pulled out the knife. I then did what surely only an idiot would do. I began to fight him. A few seconds earlier, as the man approached me on the path, he stared at me fiercely. He charged toward me, and bared hi...

Things were not going well for Neil Pasricha ( @NeilPasricha ). He came home from work one day, and his wife told him she no longer loved him. Around that same time, Neil's best friend committed suicide. Neil needed something to lift his spirits. Something to remind him, every day, that there was something good in the world. That's when Neil started his blog, 1,000 Awesome Things . At the end of e...

There's an expression, to burn your boats. It originated with a military strategy. Hernán Cortés famously "burned the boats," after arriving in the New World to conquer the Aztec empire. (He actually "scuttled" his ships. He sunk them.) I recently burned my boats, when I killed off a $150,000 passive revenue stream. The birth of a passive income muse In March of 2007, I was sitting with some frien...

How's it going? Really, how are things going for you? If things are going pretty good, you might want to tear everything down, and start all over again. Nick Kokonas ( @nickkokonas ) is Co-Owner of The Alinea Group and CEO of Tock . The Alinea Group is a collection of restaurants Nick started with world-class chef Grant Achatz, including their first restaurant, Alinea – a three-Michelin-star resta...

Four years ago, almost to the day, I moved to Colombia. Four years ago, I decided to become a writer. Four years is how long it takes to get a college degree. Today, I'm graduating. It might seem strange that I didn't think of myself as a writer. By the time I set out on this mission I had already written one best-selling book. But writing was still frightening to me. Every time I sat down to writ...

This is the time of year when we make resolutions. Very few of us will actually keep them. The reason we can't keep resolutions is that resolutions don't work. We would be better at reaching their goals if they built habits, instead. BJ Fogg ( @bjfogg ) is a behavioral scientist at Stanford University. He specializes in "Behavior Design." BJ has a new book coming out, right now in the beginning of...

Socializing is good. But socializing as a default – out of some Fear of Missing Out – is not good. David's voice double fills in for him once again – and it's getting better. Image: Still Life With a Burning Candle , Pieter Claesz Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of inspiration to help you make it as a creative. Sign up at: kadavy.net/mondays About Your Host, Dav...

Twelve years ago, David met Rob Hunter ( @vegashacker ) on Craigslist. They had both left their jobs at the same time. They were both determined to make it. So, David and Rob spent several months wandering from cafe to cafe in San Francisco. They put in twelve hour days, not making a dime. David says it was one of the most exciting times of his life. Today, David has this podcast, best-selling boo...

Here's an essay from a few years ago. It helps explain why David likes to step back from his work during the final weeks of the year. Puny humans. Also, for the first time ever, hear David Kadavy's voice double, created using Descript's "Overdub". Image: Pere Magloire on the Road to Saint-Clair, Etretat , Gustave Caillebotte Our Weekly Newsletter: Love Mondays Start off each week with a dose of in...

I decided last December that I would be taking this December off. I like to give myself some space toward the end of the year so I can recharge, and come into the New Year with a fresh perspective. So, I'm reaching into the vault of more than 200 episodes, and pulling out some of my favorites – especially ones that are good for this time of year. This is a fantastic conversation with Sean Stephens...

In the 1840's Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis noticed a pattern. He noticed that too many new mothers were dying of a fever. And it didn't seem like a coincidence to him that many of these women who were dying shortly after childbirth had something in common. The doctors who delivered their babies had just performed autopsies. The death rate – by this fever – of new mothers, whose babies were delivered by do...

On July 4th of this year, I was finally hitting my stride. After a year of visa troubles, I had secured a three-year visa. I was finally back in the writing rhythm I had been in before my visa troubles started. Things had been fucked, and they had become unfucked. Little did I know, everything was about to get even more fucked than it was before. One thing that got me through the fuckedness that e...

You are what you surround yourself with. When your environment changes, your mind changes with it. We recently talked about how your environment can put you in a creative mental state, when we talked to Donald M. Rattner, on episode 201 . But what about the objects you surround yourself with? They're a part of your environment, too. The devices we use are a part of our environment, and the devices...

Dan Ariely ( @danariely ) has more opportunities than he knows what to do with. As a James B. Duke professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University and author of New York Times best-selling books, such as Predictably Irrational , he has lots of demands on his time. Dan has to say "no" to a lot of opportunities that don't have a clear payoff. But, surprisingly, he also says "no"...

Over the past four years, I've been trying to "make it" as a creator. Yes, I was on my own for another eight years before that, but this past four years has been when I really doubled down on creating. To make the things I create not just a marketing tactic for some other thing. For the creations themselves to be the thing. Each month for the past two years of this journey, I've been reporting my...

Donald M. Rattner ( @donaldrattner ) is an architect, and author of My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation . I've talked a lot on this podcast about matching your work to your mental state. If you're in the mood to do the work you're doing, everything is going to be easier. But you can also match your mental state to the work. You can change your mental...

If you had asked me when I first started Love Your Work why I was doing it, I don't think I could have given you a straight answer. I simply felt compelled to create a podcast. Sometimes it's through the act of creation that we discover what it is that we're creating. This is a special 200th episode of Love Your Work . Over the past four years, I've been on my own creative journey in making this s...

Scott H. Young ( @scotthyoung ) is best known for learning the entire MIT Computer Science curriculum, on his own, in only a year. He did it through "ultralearning" It's a way of organizing your learning so each moment you spend learning is much more effective than it would be otherwise. If you're like me, you love to learn new things. If you're like me, you'd also like to learn more in a shorter...

  If you're going to get an edge, you have to be aware that the prevailing wisdom is almost always wrong. You have to know when to go against that wisdom. One place I'm glad that I went against the prevailing wisdom is in my decision to not buy a house – especially when I was in my early twenties. The prevailing wisdom was that a house was "the best investment you can make." Instead, I decided to...

When something bad happens, it's tempting to think that you made a bad decision. But the quality of your decision making doesn't always align with the quality of your outcomes. Sometimes you make a good decision, and you have a bad outcome. Even more dangerous, sometimes you make a bad decision, and have a good outcome (you'll learn why). Annie Duke ( @AnnieDuke ) is a former professional poker pl...

We hate to lose. But if we don't take risks in life, we never win. The more we protect ourselves from loss, the more we stagnate. Like economist Tyler Cowen told me, if you want to be "dynamic," you have to develop a thick skin. I've been thinking more and more lately about the importance of having a thick skin. The importance of being – Antifragile . I'll tell you more about it in this week's epi...

What if your smartphone didn't distract you? What if your focus couldn't be shaken by social media, by the latest news story, or even by your coworkers? What if you could be indistractable? Imagine what you could accomplish. Nir Eyal's (@nireyal) new book will help you do just that. Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life will lead you away from dis -traction, so you can...

To make it as a creative, you need to make the most of very limited resources. Your most valuable resource as a creative is your creative energy. You only have so much creative energy, but if you use that energy wisely, you can be leaps and bounds more productive than you could be otherwise. To manage your creative energy well, be intentional about how you use it. One way to be intentional about h...

Robbie Abed (@robbieab) is author of Fire Me I Beg You: Quit Your Miserable Job (Without Risking it All) . Robbie is also one of the early influencers on LinkedIn's publishing platform, he's had over 500 coffee meetings, and he's one of the key catalysts – along with James Altucher – behind why this podcast exists at all. (You'll hear the story.) How would you feel if you got fired today? If the a...

Have you ever wondered to yourself: How the the hell did I end up in this situation? I asked myself this question once. I was changing my clothes in the bathroom of a filthy Fuck My Life laundromat in Chicago. It was a terrible situation. But I learned an important lesson. I'll tell you about it in this week's episode . Image from: A Bar at the Foiles-Bergére , Edouard Manet New Weekly Newsletter:...