It’s not an iron-clad rule, but in general, if something is manufactured for sale then at least one person is buying it.

So it stands to reason that if there’s a twenty-nine thousand dollar couch shaped like a cactus that exists for sale, at least one person has bought it.

If you can’t fathom the state of mind or existence that would be required for the purchase of a twenty-nine thousand dollar cactus couch to seem like a great or even normal idea, then just remember how vast and varied the human race is.

Most people sort of have this conceptual idea of an “existence space” that covers the range of possible human experiences, and they think of themselves as roughly in the middle of that. That is, they recognize that other people are different, but they think the range of those differences only extends about as far out as their local knowledge.

The reality is, most humans on Earth might as well be space aliens to you.

Take that for what it’s worth – but for me, I’m glad of it. It’s interesting, for one. And it generates a whole lot of interesting energy that mostly gets put towards solving problems, from which I benefit tremendously. And while I probably won’t ever buy a cactus couch worth twice as much as I’ve ever paid for a car, I’ll certainly do a lot of weird things that I can’t imagine today, and which someone else in the world might think ludicrous.

The world is rich, and we are richer for it.

The easiest lie to fall for is an incomplete truth.

Take a picture of a rainbow. Zoom in on the red part. Then show that zoomed shot to someone and say “this is a picture of a rainbow.” It’s true! You haven’t lied! But you’ve given people – quite intentionally, I might add – the impression that rainbows are all or mostly red.

This is what’s happening to you pretty much every second of every day. Every time you receive information, at least.

Context is hard! And when you don’t have it, you extrapolate and assume and you do that in exactly the way the person sharing the information wants you to. People can do this to you without every saying a single lie.

Some people would rather have no choices than have to regret making the wrong one. People are relieved when a choice is made for them by fate or circumstance.

If someone has the option of choosing one of two meals at a restaurant and they can’t decide, they’re thrilled when the waiter says “I’m sorry, while you were deliberating we ran out of one of the options. You can have the other one.” Even if the meal ends up being terrible, at least they didn’t “make the wrong choice.”

Except of course they did.

They waited. They gave up power to the universe. That’s always the wrong choice.

Do you know why the restaurant ran out of the better option first? Because it was the better option, duh. And people who made choices for themselves picked it. And then what was left over went to people who didn’t.

Making choices, intentionally, gives you the opportunity to make good choices. Whatever life leaves you with as the passive result of avoiding choice is rarely the thing you would have picked if you took the initiative. But avoiding choice isn’t avoiding responsibility for the decision.

It’s just being responsible for a bad one.

Making a point to express respect, gratitude, and admiration frequently is of an enormous benefit to you. Not just because people will generally like you more, but also because it’s a fantastic thing to think about when you get stuck.

Sometimes in my work, I work with clients who feel a little lost and purposeless (or very lost and purposeless). They want more meaning, or more respect, or more admiration. They don’t know how to get it. I’ll ask them, “well, let’s look for a different model – who’s the last person you expressed those things to?”

If they have an answer, we’re off to the races. It’s easy to then ask questions like “why do you respect that person so much?” We get all sorts of brainstormed ideas about what causes a life to have meaning or what causes work to be respectable in their eyes, etc.

If, however, they answer that initial question with “I can’t even remember the last person I expressed such a thing to,” well… that’s another thing, isn’t it? You don’t show respect or gratitude to anyone around you and you don’t feel like you’re respected or admired by anyone around you. I promise those things are correlated.

Taking frequent note of what you admire in others is an engine that can drive you towards admirable traits in yourself. It’s nearly costless as a habit, and has tons of other benefits besides. In other words, when you esteem someone – say so.

There’s a thing called the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. It works like this: person A says “No Scotsmen eat porridge.” And then person B, who is a Scotsman, says, “I eat porridge, and I’m a Scotsman, so that disproves your statement.” And then person A replies: “Well, no true Scotsman eats porridge.”

Basically, the fallacy is when you define category X as not doing Y, so any examples of X doing Y automatically eliminate themselves as counter-examples, because by your definition they can’t be X if they’re doing Y. Therefore you can’t ever be proven wrong. Hence, the fallacy.

We need more of that!

Why do I say this? Well, this is actually going to be one of my extremely infrequent topical posts. Yesterday, a police officer was found guilty of murder for the death of a man he was in the process of arresting last year. I’m not going to take a stance on how you should feel about police in general. But I’ll say that there are definitely some people who hold the institution in high regard, and who (as a result of that stance, perhaps combined with several other political viewpoints) will defend virtually any actions of a police officer simply because they are one. I would prefer something else. I would prefer even the most ardent defenders of the police to behave thusly:

Person A: “No police officer murders people.”

Person B: “Well, a police officer was just found guilty of murder, so that disproves your statement.”

Person A: “Well, no true police officer murders people.”

In other words – if you hold a particular group in high regard, then you should not defend all members of that group no matter what. You should take members of that group that violate the principles that caused you to esteem the group to begin with, and you should expel them. Even if just from the category in your mind that carries respect.

I used to always want to write my daily posts late in the day. My thinking was that it would often be a reflection on the day’s events, an unpacking. Sort of like the end of an episode of Doogie Howser, M.D.

But more and more I realize that this passive approach, journaling the day’s events, is counter-productive. My creativity is at its best earlier on, when my writing can be more than just a reflection. It can be a proactive creation of ideas, a spark to set other things in motion.

There’s always tomorrow for reflection. When I can, I’d rather create.

Motivation is measured in terms of your distance from the very bottom. Put simply, the closer you are to the flames the harder you’ll climb.

Opportunity is how far you are from the top. If you have nowhere to go but up, your life is filled with practically nothing but opportunity.

Taken together, most people who aren’t in a position of great fortune already have lots of opportunity and lots of motivation – at least naturally.

What they often lack is means.

“Means” can mean a lot of things. Finances. Education, or skills. Social capital; a network.

With enough motivation and the right opportunity, you can overcome the lack of means – or gain means, for that matter.

But if you are a person of moderate fortune yourself, consider the impact you can make with just a very small investment. A tiny percentage of your means, invested the right way – teaching a skill, lending some finances, introducing someone to your network – can do absolutely tremendous things for someone who has everything but.

If you have the opportunity to improve someone else’s means – I hope you’re motivated to do so.

By default, I think most people assume that they have less power than they do, and that other people have more power than they do.

We think that changing our own fates is very difficult, but we sort of unconsciously imagine that other people have the ability to influence our circumstances almost effortlessly. Hence the common refrain that so many things are someone else’s fault!

The vicious trap here is that often in the belief that others hold power over us, we give it to them. Let’s say you and a co-worker both go for the same promotion, and the co-worker is the one that gets it. In reality, this is one tiny factor in the vast timeline of your life. Your career will continue on its trajectory – there will be promotions you get and promotions you don’t, and this was just one of the latter. You haven’t lost your home, your livelihood, your skills, your ability to work. But if you start spinning your wheels thinking about how badly you’ve been wronged by this co-worker, and how everything is their fault, and how if only they’d never existed your life would be fantastic – then you’re giving them power.

That co-worker probably isn’t thinking about you at all. They’re expending zero effort on you. And yet here you are, stressed and upset and distracted and far below your best self! All because you invested power into the specter of them in your mind.

Don’t do that. Don’t give away your power – recognize it for what it is. Your brain is incredibly strong when fighting on home turf; i.e. thinking about your own life. When you focus too much on the lives of others, you give that power away.

Sometimes, if you show up enough, you get what you want. You win, you find your prize, you get happy.

If you don’t show up to life, you never get it.

Those are your choices – it’s a mix between chance of success or certain failure.

Sometimes, maybe, if – or never.

If you want certainty, quit. That’s the only way to get it.

I absolutely love diminishing marginal returns.

Life wouldn’t be possible without them. If things didn’t just gradually decrease in effectiveness without a reset period, opportunity cost would cripple you.

I think about working out. After a certain point, if you do another rep you’re just hurting yourself, you’re not building muscle. You then have to give your body time to rest and repair before you can come back. Thank goodness! The universe gives you built-in breaks.

If you grind without limit, you’re not just damaging other aspects of your life, sacrificing them to the grind. You’re actually damaging the grind.

Be ambitious. Be goal-oriented. Be driven. These are excellent things.

But for the love of all that is holy, be efficient. And that means naps, people. Food. Strolls in the sunshine. Lunches on the beach. Reading things because you want to.

Don’t feel guilty! The rules of the world are tipped in your favor, here. Sometimes, in order to be the best you can be, you need to get the rest you deserve.