Be boring. It’s the only way to get work done.
The way you get better at your job is to actually practice your craft.
Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit.
Rowan's note
My one rule for the Stream: never miss two in a row.
Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started.
The point isn’t to build a business you can run forever without change, but one that’s flexible enough to adapt.
Resilience means a business can adapt to whatever comes its way.
Rowan's note
Q2 with no launch, and revenue held. This is why.
Protect the asset: you.
Start before you’re ready.
Rowan's note
Should be tattooed on every product roadmap.
A professional shows up every day.
Rowan's note
The entire Stream, justified in five words.
The professional loves it too much to demean it with amateurism.
Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.
Productivity in a deep work sense is a skill, not an innate gift.
Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.
Embrace constraints.
Workaholism is a disease, and it can be as bad for the person who does it as it is for the people around him.
The scary thing about sharing your work is that you have to actually do work to share.
Rowan's note
Best accidental accountability system I've ever used.
Nobody wants to look like they’re workshopping their work in public. That’s exactly what you should be doing.
Amateurs know that trying and failing in public isn’t shameful, it’s how learning happens.
I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection.
Rowan's note
He fails at it almost immediately, which is the most useful part of the chapter.
Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.