Being creative generates a lot of energy – more than it consumes, if you’re working on something you enjoy. The problem is what to do with the excess! If you keep your creations to yourself, you often find that energy burning you out or frustrating you. But if you share with others, the energy is infectious. It creates a beautiful feedback loop of inspiration and collaboration; others become inspired to create as well, and share that energy back with you. No matter how small or “silly” what you’re working on might seem, someone out there will love it and you’ll encourage one another. Go live out loud!

When I think about the people who I consider to be very smart, the people with the most deep expertise aren’t who I’m thinking of. When I think about people who are smart, I think about people who are thoughtful.

Deep expertise on a topic is impressive, don’t get me wrong. But you can get there by being focused, determined – and of perfectly average intelligence. It’s a matter of time and effort. On the other hand, when I think about people who carefully consider things, change their opinions or views in the face of new information, and hold their decisions when they don’t know enough – these are the people I think of as geniuses.

The funny upshot is that the smartest people I know are also the ones who say “I don’t know” the most! It’s a very smart thing to say. Most of the time, you don’t know. But only smart people can see it, and only thoughtful people are comfortable admitting it.

Choice is a funny thing. If you ask the average person to pick between two drinks at a restaurant, they probably can do it quickly. Make the choice three drinks, and they’re happier, because it’s more likely that they’ll find a drink closer to their ideal. You’d think that would scale, but it doesn’t. Give them a choice between twenty drinks, and it might take them half an hour or more to decide.

Give them a list of one million drinks, and the choice becomes impossible.

Think about the replicators on Star Trek. If you’re unfamiliar, replicators are a magic box that can create literally any food or drink. Yet every time we a character ordering from them, you know what they get? Their “signature item.” Each character has a thing they like that they almost never deviate from. You can order literally any drink in the universe, and you get hot tea, every time!

But that makes total sense to me. If I had a box that could give me any of 10 different drinks, I’d probably rotate through most of them pretty regularly. But infinite choice paralyzes us with infinite chances to get it wrong. If there are one million choices, after all, then there are 999,999 choices that aren’t the best choice. And if you’re the kind of person who agonizes over whether or not there could have been a different choice that made you slightly happier, those odds will stop you in your tracks.

The only way to effectively make a choice in that scenario is to essentially forgo it entirely. You can say “surprise me” to the replicator, or you can just order the same staple every time. You can also try to restrict your own choice in some arbitrary way, like saying “I’m only going to even look at the first 20 items on the menu,” because actually evaluating one million different options is impossible.

(Of course, self-restriction in that way opens up lots of possibilities for abuse of the choice architecture. If you don’t believe me, think about the last time you went to Page 2 of a Google search, and then think about why companies will pay so much money to be on Page 1.)

I say all this to highlight a problem. Our modern society has become one of infinite choice. Search engines, job boards, dating apps – all of these things give us millions of options, and give everyone else millions of options too, to the point where nobody can simply coordinate any more. You can’t buy a lamp without being offered a choice of a million lamps. You have a choice of a million jobs to apply to, all of which have a choice of a million candidates to interview. There are a million singles in your area, and you’re one of a million singles in theirs.

No wonder everyone feels stressed and powerless.

My advice is this: Restrict yourself to the real. Buy a lamp from among the lamp stores within walking or driving distance from your house, and only if you physically go there. Make all your choices in person. Reject the artificial inflation of your choices. There might only be one lamp store in your town, and it might only sell four different lamps. But trust me, you’ll be happier.

I won an award at work this week, and it cracks me up:

The contents of the award are nice, and I’m proud of them. Apparently they reflect numerous pieces of feedback I’ve gotten from clients and coworkers, and the sentiment they express is something I definitely work hard to cultivate. I’m happy to get this award!

But it cracks me up because the title of the award category is “Unstoppable.” Ha! I work in training & development. I don’t know what’s “unstoppable” about either my work or the way I perform it, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ll just continue doing what I’m doing.

After all, you can’t stop me!

When my children were younger, I read to them every night.

It’s not that I’ve stopped. It’s just that on more and more of those nights lately, they’re reading to me instead.

What sublime satisfaction! To hear the voices of my children lift the words from the page while I close my eyes and smile. To hear the sounds of my investments in them echoing back to me.

I’ve never been big on letting others do for me. But when what they’re doing is gently taking the very reigns you’ve held for them for so long, there’s a poetry in it that calms the storm of the soul.

I hang on every word.

There are few things in life more joyous than when a child asks you to play and you are able to say yes. To engineer your life in such a way is a noble goal and a grand accomplishment.

If you punish someone for talking to you, they’ll do it less. “Punish” can mean a lot of things, but just remember – speaking to you is a choice, always.

People are generally quite prone to hyperbole and hysteria. You’re no exception, and neither is your brain; your memory, especially. If one bad thing happens to or near you, your brain will elaborate on it until it become an epidemic. Even if you only hear about a bad thing, your memory will make it worse, and more frequent, and more the cause of actual malice.

This is just a statistical bias in that direction, and it’s damned near universal. The good news? Statistically speaking, almost every bad thing you can think of isn’t actually as bad as you think.

Think about something you view as “bad” in the world. Take a moment to imagine (or pretend you’re “remembering”) the details, as many as you can. Then, take ten minutes and go do some actual research. You’ll find that almost universally, it’s not so bad.

The actual thing itself might be bad, of course – I’m not saying “kidnapping” isn’t as bad as you think. I’m saying it’s not as frequent as you think. If you say something like, “Kidnapping is rampant! It happens all the time, and people usually get away with it, and nobody cares,” then you’re just wrong. Kidnapping is bad, but it happens less frequently than you thought, people who do it get caught, and as for nobody caring? Well, if they didn’t hear about a kidnapping case today, then their brain didn’t do what yours did, which is blow it up into a whole thing without you even realizing. That’s why it seems like “nobody cares.”

Look, there’s bad stuff in the world. And you can (and should!) make an impact where you can. But if your own life is getting worse because of how bad you perceive the world to be, have hope. Both the world and your specific life are not so bad, after all.

No matter how tired you are, you get that boost of energy when the finish line is in sight. Somehow, you find the strength to run, a burst of speed beyond what you would have sworn your reserves possessed.

Bring the finish line closer, and get those boosts more often. Set milestones more frequently, and find the strength.

I think most people – myself included! – squander their good luck. As a result, we think we’re far less lucky than we are.

Imagine that you’re doing moderately well (and I hope you are). Your bills are paid, your health is fine, there’s nothing particularly pressing on your horizon. Suddenly, you get a small but unexpected windfall; maybe you win a raffle, or a gifted lottery ticket hits for a small amount, etc. You get something like a thousand bucks.

What do most people do with it? Probably something like whatever your first thought was: a nice dinner for your family, a small vacation for yourself, maybe a shiny new toy you’d like. After all, this is “free money,” so why not let yourself have a little fun with it? Assuming your savings rates and bills and such are already where they need to be, what harm does it do?

Well… no harm, really. But definitely a missed opportunity. Ask yourself a different question: What keeps you from investing a thousand dollars into the stock market right now? The answer is probably along the lines of “I don’t have a spare thousand bucks to fritter away learning how to invest without losing my shirt.” The upside of investing is, of course, enormous. Especially in comparison to the upside of a nice dinner or new toy. But when we suddenly do have that luck, we don’t come back to questions like this.

All I’m saying is: You should have fun. But “fun” should be a part of your plan to begin with! It should be budgeted and accounted for. A sudden windfall, of any kind, should perhaps instead be used to multiply itself. Reinvest your luck!