@craigpetterson and I are on a roll with this continuing thread of posts. He mentioned something intriguing about advice:

I’ve read a lot of great advice. Some of which I action immediately and try to form the habits. Others, I probably need to reread and try again. There is definitely advice I will ignore forever, no matter how many times I read it.

That really got me thinking: 

What were some advice which I embraced to be true in the past, which I had recently come to learn to ignore? 

Success is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration

You need to work hustle hard—80 to 100 hours per week—to succeed, they say. I was just that kind of annoying, over-achieving workhorse, right up till last year I think. But some things shifted since. Chronic illness, burnout, poor health, changes within my family, made me realise that’s just bullshit. Give your best effort? Yes, for sure. Sacrifice everything else for it? NO. 

And who says you can’t have both success and the ease/flow of getting there? I don’t see why it has to be a dichotomy - either hard work, or no success. That’s probably a convenient narrative that employers would secretly love to use. Working smart, yet ethically, yet being cunning enough to leverage scale and opportunity, doesn’t have to mean long hours and borrowed health. 

Taking inspiration from the Marvel Comics antihero Loki, the trickster god who always manages to get what he needs through cunning smarts, all the while having great fun, an interesting question to ask would be - what would Loki do?

So, next year: more cunning trickstering and devil-may-care play, less like Thor punching through everything like it’s a nail (pun intended, because he uses a hammer lol). 

To be continued tomorrow…