Maintaining the Magic
Sunday Reset: #7
👋 Welcome to this week’s Sunday Reset – where I provide you with 1 quote, 1 idea, & 1 article to either end your current week or start your upcoming week with something new.
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This week’s reset:
Idea: Maintaining the magic in your life.
Quote: A different approach.
Article: Define your rich life.
💡 One idea
Maintaining the magic
Packy McCormack wrote a great piece last week about magical technology.
Simply put, when a product is released, the value it provides to the user is such an innovation from its previous generations that it’s nearly magical. However, over time, that magic degrades and the product becomes ordinary.
This is summed up by this graph.
This is undoubtedly true. Packy uses the music industry as an example. The evolution of CDs —> buying songs on iTunes —> unlimited streaming on Spotify is very magical.
Yet, after having Spotify for 6+ years now, the appeal and magic of the product have worn off. It’s no longer special.
This is an idea that can be represented in our own lives.
Think about the last time you bought shoes. You likely loved them at the beginning, avoided puddles so that they wouldn’t get dirty, and designed every outfit around them.
Yet over time, that new shoe magic wears off, you slip into your old routines, the shoes get dirty — you no longer care as much.
In fact, I argue that this can apply to most things in life.
The new house you moved into
Your new job
The new gym class you’ve been going to
Based on this, the greater question is:
How do you maintain the magic to stay driven and motivated on what you’re working on (your job, side hustle, creative pursuit)?
Packy argues that for technology, the magic will always depreciate but I believe that the new-found magic in things in our day-to-day lives can be retained.
How? I argue two things.
Keep it fresh by switching contexts
Seek continuous improvement — optimize the processes you work on as well as your internal system of how your workflows
Get involved in something outside your typical wheelhouse — pursue leading a new/different project than what you’ve worked on in the past
Be relentlessly curious
Always seek for why?
Be the one who is curious and solves the problems no one realizes exist
Take productive breaks away
Burnout is real
Ensure that you’re approaching your work with a refreshed mindset
Key takeaway: Maintaining the magic in what you do is crucial for long-term success.
🚨 One quote
The people who invented the twenty-first century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing, hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently.
The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking.
— Walter Isaacson (author) on Steve Jobs
Key takeaway: What are you doing differently that positively separates your cause from the competition?
🗞 One article
Define your rich life
What is your rich life?
That is what Paul Millerd asks in one of his latest articles by building off of an idea from Ramit Sethi.
My favourite takeaway was this:
I always ask people two questions:
Why do you want to be rich?
What does being rich mean to you?
Most people never spend even ten minutes thinking through what “rich” means to them.
Here’s a hint: It’s different for everyone, and money is just a small part of being rich.
For example, my friends all value different things. Paul loves eating out at Michelin-starred restaurants where a meal might cost $500. Nicole loves traveling. And Nick loves buying clothes.
If you don’t consciously choose what “rich” means, it’s easy to end up mindlessly trying to keep up with your friends.
Learn how to define your rich life, so that you don’t spend your time building someone else’s.
Thanks for reading this week’s issue of my Sunday Reset.
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Hope to see you again soon 😊,