Question to give yourself some flowers:

When was the last time you allowed yourself to celebrate good enough?

Ambitious people are notoriously hard on themselves: Rather than celebrate the good, they criticize the lack of great.

Be honest: How often have you given yourself some flowers in the last month? How often have you patted yourself on the back for doing your best with what you had on a given day?

My rule of thumb:

• 10% of days, you're going to feel exceptional. You'll feel motivated and energized to crush everything that comes your way.
• 10% of days, you're going to feel awful. You'll feel drained and just want to curl up and hide from whatever is on your plate.
• 80% of days, you're going to feel somewhere in the middle—not great, not bad. You'll feel mostly ready to take on the day.

A beautiful life is built through executing to the best of your ability on those 80% of days. Anyone can crush it on the 10% when they feel great. Few can show up and consistently give the best of what they have on the 80% in the middle.

But when the best you have is a B, you have to celebrate that. You have to give yourself credit for showing up. Because if you criticize yourself for not hitting the A, you'll be less likely to show up the next time you feel the same way.

So the next time you encounter a situation where you want to criticize yourself for the lack of great, ask yourself if you could instead celebrate good enough.

Remember: Anything above 0 compounds!

Quote on earned fortune:

"Luck is not chance, it's toil; fortune's expensive smile is earned." - Emily Dickinson

If you work hard enough and eventually succeed, people will call you lucky.

You'll know the truth: Luck's got nothing to do with it.

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Framework for evaluating your energy:

The Click Test

In What We Owe the Future, author William MacAskill refers to a happiness experiment that a group of psychologists conducted with nearly 10,000 participants.

In the experiment, they would occasionally ask the participants the following question:

"If you could, and it had no negative consequences, would you jump forward in time to the end of what you’re currently doing?"

The results were rather shocking, as people chose to fast forward through ~40% of their waking hours.

I think of this as the Click Test, a reference to the 2006 Adam Sandler film where the protagonist has a magical remote that allows him to control time.

A few questions come to mind:

• How often would you fast forward through your daily experiences?
• What specific experiences would get fast forwarded through most often?

Sometimes, those activities are getting clicked through for good reason—they're draining your energy and not driving you towards your long term mission, values, or goals. In these cases, it makes sense to figure out how to delegate or delete them from your life.

Other times, those activities are getting clicked through for bad reason—they're challenging and painful in the short-term, but enduring them will create much of our long-term, durable satisfaction. In these cases, we need to find a way to mentally pull forward the delayed benefit of these actions to remind ourselves of their importance.

• How can you make the challenging actions more fun?
• How can you embrace the obstacles as the way?
• How can you remind yourself that discipline is the ultimate act of service to your future self?

The Click Test offers an important reminder to be more aware of how you're experiencing your days. Consider it in the weeks ahead and see what you learn.

Mind-blowing tweet on the latest game graphics:

I find the realness to be utterly mind-blowing (and terrifying). If you've ever read/seen Ready Player One, it feels like we are rapidly approaching a world where the lines between real and digital are very blurred.

Amazing video review of Apple's new product:

​The thing no one will say about Apple Vision Pro​

I'm very new to YouTube, but I love Casey's style of natural, raw, authentic content. I was watching a bunch of reviews of the new Apple Vision Pro headset, and this one stood out as being the most engaging and enjoyable.

The product looks magical. I'm not sure how I'll integrate it into my life, but it seems like a fun question to explore.