Sometimes you have to work really hard to get what you want. Other times, exactly what you want just drops right into your lap. But as they say: “easy come, easy go.”

If you aren’t aware of how you got something, you’re less likely to know how to guard it and keep it. You won’t be as intuitively aware of its weaknesses. For example, if you scrimp and save for months or years to buy a car you desire, then you’re likely to be very appreciative of it. You’re also probably aware of its maintenance costs and habits, how it handles, and so on.

If you just won that same car in a game show, you have no idea. You don’t even know how to pay the taxes on it, let alone how to keep it well.

The point is, if you suddenly get what you want unexpectedly, and you actually want to keep it, then it’s time to work backward. Retroactively put in that same effort that you would have if you’d earned it the normal way, but steer that effort towards putting a bracket on it.

Don’t let something fall right into your lap, only to slip through your fingers.

There are two kinds of improvements you can make to any given situation, and they’re nearly impossible to think about – let alone pursue – at the same time.

The first kind of improvement is a “return to baseline” improvement. If your house is currently on fire, then it is below what you probably consider “neutral” for the situation of “owning a house.” You want to improve this situation! The improvement you are probably focused on is “make the house not on fire.” It’s probably a very pressing concern.

The other kind of improvement is a “raise the baseline” improvement. If your house is currently fine, you may be considering a variety of upgrades or alterations. Maybe you want to paint the bathroom a new color. Perhaps you want to get a new refrigerator. You might even be considering how to put another story or other addition on the house.

You are never, ever doing both of those things at once.

If your house is on fire, you’re not putting out the fire but thinking “You know, in this light I can really see how a breakfast nook would expand the room.” You’re either trying to get back to what your baseline is, or you’re trying to raise your baseline, but never both.

In a way, this is just the microcosm of Maslow’s insight. Maslow’s Hierarchy is just a series of baselines that you’re either trying to get back to or trying to improve, and you can’t do both at the same time.

Understanding this gives you a way to perceive and measure your own stress and happiness in a new way. Consider all the things currently occupying your mind; all the things you want to happen. Are they fixes or upgrades? If you’re thinking of a bunch of broken things that need to be replaced, you’re below your baseline. That’s fine; it happens. But you can reduce your stress by focusing on getting those things fixed and ignoring plans for vacations or new things for a while. Get yourself back to baseline without the added distraction of being sad about things you don’t have.

If, on the other hand, your current desires are mainly focused on new projects or adventures, then chances are good that you’re overall happy with your situation. Enjoy it.

You teach people how to treat you. Along the way, you might grant them a lesson on how to treat other people. But the best you can often do is create the treatment you want to receive yourself.

When you see someone else who is “more successful” than you (in whatever way you choose to define it), a lot of your brain rebels. You don’t want to mirror them or learn from them – you want to destroy them. You want to either destroy them in reality (though thankfully most of us resist this impulse), or you want to destroy the avatar of them that you created in your head. You took your perception of them as a successful person and got jealous of it, and then with your mind’s next impulse you attributed their success to fortunate circumstances beyond either of your control. It wasn’t that they had more discipline or drive than you, of course not. They were just born with a silver spoon in their mouth. And of course that means that even if you were to copy their actions exactly, you wouldn’t get what they got – which absolves you from the responsibility of trying.

When successful people actually do try to teach others to be successful too, that’s why they so often get labeled as scam artists. (And it doesn’t help that – yes – some of them are. Some people really are snake oil salesmen; almost all “get rich quick” types are this.) But clearly, some people do some things better than some other people. We shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss those lessons when we see them.

Wise people don’t necessarily try to push their best wisdom onto others; they just live a live of good example. So be wary of those trying to sell that snake oil – but when you see someone who is closer to one of your own goals than you are, pull yourself towards them. See what they know, what they’re doing. Learn how to treat yourself.

One of the best ways to fail is early.

If you’re going to screw up, it’s great to screw up at the very beginning of a project or endeavor. Because then, you’ve usually expended a very minimal amount of juice and so the waste is at its lowest point. You haven’t sunk anything in yet, so there’s little to lose by failing.

This means you should do your riskiest or hardest parts of any undertaking at the very beginning. If there’s something that’s especially difficult, it’s better to do it – and possibly fail at it, learning along the way – as early as you can. If you do, it’s easy to learn from your mistake and try again fresh. If you put of the trickest parts until the end, you’re tying all your previous work to the risk.

Two years ago today I got the worst phone call of my life. My father’s long fight had ended.

But maaaaaaaaan, while he was here, you should have seen him. There was nobody cooler, and there never will be. He loved those around him with ten times the fervor of anyone else. And he left us a few amazing parting gifts, that we might always remember him as he was.

This one is my favorite.

If you really want to be a minimalist, there’s a certain skill you need to develop. It’s an incredibly helpful skill regardless; the people I know who had this skill were worth their weight in gold.

The skill is knowing where the world keeps its spare junk.

There’s this long-standing joke about dads always keeping some random, odd-shaped piece of wood in their garage for thirty years hoping for the day it becomes useful. I know lots of people like that; I’m even prone to it if I don’t catch myself. But I used to know this guy and if you said to him “Oh, I need a random piece of wood that’s seven inches by three inches in a trapezoid shape,” he would just take you on a long walk to some weird part of town and bam, there one would be.

He didn’t have it. But he knew exactly where to find one. The same was true of unusual food items, obscure electronic parts, you name it. Always either free or cheap, usually discarded or belonging to someone happy to have you take it.

The world has lots of neat spare junk that just collects in the corners. If you’re not careful, you become one of those corners, and that isn’t necessarily good. But exploring the nooks and crannies of your environment, taking weird ways home and opening doors as you see them – these are the things that make the world your garage. You can find the spare junk whenever you need it.

If you have a concrete wall, you can’t bend it a little. You can’t move it a smidge. If anything goes through it, it destroys it. Those are the only options; it holds fast, or it gets destroyed completely.

Remember that when you think about bending your boundaries a little.

Answering questions is not only a great way to satisfy another person’s curiosity, it’s also a great way to refine your own thinking. They say you don’t really understand something unless you can explain it to someone else, so answering someone else’s questions about a topic is a great way to practice your own understanding.

Along the way, that understanding is bound to change. Your willingness to ask questions is an indicator of your own intellectual curiosity, but so is your willingness to answer them. And I mean answer actual, asked questions – not just proselytize at strawmen.

The corollary to that is that if someone holds a position that they’re unwilling to be questioned about, chances are high that they’re intellectually unserious about it. They either don’t understand it or don’t really believe it – maybe both. “It’s not my job to educate you” might be true, but it also indicates that you couldn’t if you tried.

So for every position, a good test of your own intellectual commitment is to always be willing to either ask questions about it or answer them. If you’re unwilling to do either, then that’s not an intellectual position – it’s a bias.

There is always some project or another to do. I’m a father and a homeowner, which pretty much means my To-Do list exists until the end of my life.

Every December, that list gets pretty backed up. The holidays demand my attention in other directions and the project list starts to jam. I’ve had unopened boxes and unfinished projects laying around for a while.

And then I was given an unexpected gift of a nice piece of furniture by a friend. It had to go somewhere, which meant something had to move. But in order for that to move, this had to get cleaned. And if I cleaned that, I’m already adjacent to assembling this, and once I assemble this I need somewhere to put it, so I’ll clear off that…

Before I knew it, the domino effect had knocked a half-dozen items off of my major project list. I’d had a positive cascade, each success invigorating me and making the next project both fun and – more importantly – obvious. An easy path emerged and all it took was some music and I ran it.

Sometimes all you need to get started is one thing you can’t ignore or postpone. One positive event can break through the logjam and start all the pieces moving again.