Failure Contradiction

Failure is not an option. Failure must be an option.

Everything is riding on this. You must succeed. You can’t fail. Failure is not an option.

If you don’t allow yourself to fail – possibly over and over – you will never grow enough to succeed. Failure must be an option.

Both can be true.

by Colin Brosnan

Contradiction

Do the work. Spend more time with your family. Exercise. Don’t forget to hang out with your friends. Take some time for yourself.

Each contradicts the other. You can’t do it all. But you can do a little of everything. Sometimes that’s not enough and you have to go all in on one thing.

A lot of advice contradicts other advice. Just do what’s right for you at the time. But no excuses.

by Colin Brosnan

You Can’t Just Work

You need to do the work. You need to put in the hours and the time. But not just with the work.

You need to have more in your life. There are more aspects of your life that are important. You need to pay attention to all of them. It can’t just be the work.

You need more in life to survive. You need more in life to keep going.

The work is important, but life is not just about the work.

by Colin Brosnan

Ticking the Box

Keeping the streak going is one thing. But don’t do it just to tick the box. That’s not a reason for anything.

If you’re just ticking the box, stop, step back, and decide if it’s worth doing at all. You have to rediscover why you’re doing it. The excitement you had for the task when you started won’t always be there and you’ll need to put in the time when you won’t want to. But not just to tick the box. There has to be another reason. If not there’s no point.

Tick the box by all means, but for a reason. Not “just”.

by Colin Brosnan

Gear Drop

You can’t keep working at the same pace day in, day out. But you don’t have to stop either. You can just drop a gear.

Maybe you’re feeling unwell. Maybe you’re stuck. Maybe you don’t have the time.

Drop a gear, or two, and you still make progress. You’re pace will drop but you haven’t stopped, you’re still moving forward.

Don’t let the day defeat you. Drop a gear and get over that hill.

by Colin Brosnan

Proportional Time

Our time is important. It’s a scarce resource. One we often spend haphazardly.
Yes, we’re allowed time off. Yes, we’re allowed breaks. I’m not suggesting that every second of our time must be spent on something deemed productive. Too much time in productivity mode and not enough in rest mode will see us run down and unable to continue.
No, I’m talking about something else. Proportional time. The time we spend on a task should be more or less depending on how important it is to us. Or the impact it has on our lives.
If we spend a lot of time on something we are saying it’s important to us. If we don’t spend a lot of time on something we are saying we don’t care about it.
It is easy to get confused and spend the wrong amount of time on something. Sometimes we become trapped spending time on something we don’t care about. More often we spend too little time on the things we say are important to us.
It’s important to take a moment every now and again to realign how we spend our time.
The proportion is important.
by Colin Brosnan

Well of Ideas

Our ideas spring up from the depths of our mind and pool together in a well. We can dip into that well when we need an idea.

Sometimes though we fear the well will dry up so we hoard what we have. We ration it. We save it for another time.

We believe a time will come when we need that idea more. We tell ourselves we’ll use the idea then. We dare not use it before then. That time never comes. Or it did and we didn’t recognise it so caught up are we in saving it for our day of need.

The idea goes unused.

Instead of running dry from overuse the well stagnates from lack of use. The ideas we hoard go stale. Thick weeds grow up around the well, hiding it, making it difficult to get to, impossible to dip into.

Don’t let this happen to you. Keep the well fresh, use it.

by Colin Brosnan