Why Work Is so Much Easier than Love

The Book of Life, from A School of Life begins an essay on work and love this way: 

We’re a culture that’s highly attuned to what’s beautiful and moving about love; we know its high points and celebrate its ecstasies in films and songs. By comparison, work is the dull, tedious bit – the thing we have to do to pay the bills. And yet what’s striking is how often work, despite its lack of glamour, in fact turns out to be the easier, more enjoyable and ultimately more humane part of life.

Know When to Stop Checking Your Phone and Go to Sleep

By now we’ve all heard the importance of getting enough sleep. Yet many of us let our technology sabotage us getting a good night’s rest. Research has found that anxiety, due to fear of missing out, plays a major role in how we (mis)use our devices. A majority of smartphone users feel uncomfortable if they aren’t in direct contact with their phones 24/7/365, even waking up to check their phones at night. To reduce your nighttime anxiety and get the sleep you need, practice not reacting to your phone’s notifications. Simply don’t check your phone every time it beeps. Try to check your phone only every 15 minutes, then every 30 minutes, then every hour. Once you build up your tolerance, try not checking your phone at all at night. Or if you’re still struggling, keep your phone outside your bedroom at night. It’s unlikely you’re missing something that important.

Source: Adapted from “Relax, Turn Off Your Phone, and Go to Sleep,” by Larry Rosen

Alex Blumberg: Your Best Selling Points Are the Mistakes You've Made

Startups often have "creation myths" about their early days. But real life is much messier than that. To prove this, former This American Life producer Alex Blumberg recorded nearly every painstaking moment in creating his new podcasting company, Gimlet Media. With plenty of audio examples, Blumberg highlights the ups and downs of turning your creative art into a business, culminating in a cringe-worthy pitch to a venture capitalist.

"The story that you tell, it's like you're killing it all the time," says Blumberg. "But deep inside every single person who has ever tried to start a business, I'm sure, has had a pitch like that—if not worse."

Learning to Deal With the Impostor Syndrome

Carl Richards in The New York Times: 

Two American psychologists, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes, gave it a name in 1978: the impostor syndrome. They described it as a feeling of “phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.” While these people “are highly motivated to achieve,” they also “live in fear of being ‘found out’ or exposed as frauds.” Sound familiar?

Once we know what to call this fear, the second step that I’ve found really valuable is knowing we’re not alone. Once I learned this thing had a name, I was curious to learn who else suffered from it. One of my favorite discoveries involved the amazing American author and poet Maya Angelou. She shared that, “I have written 11 books, but each time I think, ‘Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”

How Creativity is Helped by Failure

BBC News Magazine Viewpoint:

"Dare to fail" is a powerful slogan. It doesn't mean we should aim at failure - rather it hints at the paradox that creativity is a journey that involves taking wrong turns along the way. Organisations like Google, Apple, Dyson and Pixar have developed cultures that, in their different ways, create the conditions for empowering failure. They have become living ecosystems of the imagination, fired by the courage to test ideas, to see their flaws, and to be triggered into new associations and insights.