Note: This is the 5th (and final) email breakdown in the series.
Click here for Email Breakdown #1.
Click here for Email Breakdown #2.
My baseball career lasted all of one day.
At my first ever practice, the coach put me in the outfield. And as you might expect from a team full of 5-year-olds — nothing happened.
Kids at that age aren’t generally known for their ability to wallop baseballs all the way to the fences. …
Note: This is the 4th email breakdown in the series.
Click here for Email Breakdown #1.
5-year-old me would have been a terrible business owner.
Not because I could barely write my name. And not because I was still shitting my pants occasionally. But because I was a perfectionist.
If you took a peek into my kindergarten classroom, you were likely to find me at the teacher’s desk, asking:
“Mrs. Hamilton, did I get a 100?”
Scoring a 100% on an assignment was the gold standard. …
Note: This is the 3rd email breakdown in the series.
When I was a sophomore in college, I gained 37lbs in 3 months.
I know what you’re thinking:
“Jesus, Robert! It’s called ‘The Freshman 15,’ not ‘The Sophomore 37!’ How did you do that!?”
Well… I actually did it on purpose.
You can get the full story here, but the TL;DR is that I had gotten skinny during the summer. …
Note: The first Brain.fm email breakdown was published in Chris Orzechowski’s Email of the Week series. Click here to read it.
Would you rather:
A) Get punched in the face by the strongest person in the world?
B) Get punched in the face by the SECOND strongest person in the world?
The truth is, it doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s gonna hurt.
Black eye. Busted lip. Missing teeth.
That’s how I feel about the second email in the Brain.fm Welcome Sequence.
I don’t mean that it’s going to cause you serious physical injury…
I mean that, while it’s not as…
Having an email list can be intimidating.
You did the hard work of getting people to actually trust you with their email address. But now they’re expecting you to say something.
Not just anything, either. They’re expecting you to say something valuable…
Something entertaining…
Something they haven’t heard before…
Or just something they really need to hear right now.
And to add to that pressure — we’ve all heard about how much people hate getting spam in their inbox…
How junk email is the worst thing since pineapple on pizza…
(Just kidding. I like pineapple on pizza. Come at me.)
…
Over the holidays, I watched a show called Ice Airport Alaska.
I’d imagine you could make an interesting show about any airport…
(I once saw a fight break out between two employees in an airport food court)
But we all know that, just like everything is bigger in Texas, everything is more intense in Alaska. So setting the show there just makes sense.
Here’s the thing, though:
I’d bet good money that the real-life events are not anywhere NEAR as intense as they seem on the show.
But when you add in dramatic music, pull quotes from people about how…
I read more books in 2020 than in any other year of my life…
Which is pretty damn unsurprising, for obvious reasons.
This year, I read 23 books. For some people, that might be chump change. But I’m proud of that number.
More importantly, in 2020 I really began to enjoy reading — to seek it as a pastime, rather than something I “should” be doing.
In this article, I’ll share some tips that have helped me read more, and then I’ll share the 10 books I loved most in 2020.
How To Read More
Reading more is largely just a matter of sitting…
I’ll spare you the cliche intro of “OMG 2020 suuuuucks!!! This year is the WORRRST!”
It does. And it is…
But repeating it over and over is kind of like hanging out with someone who has cancer while you’re wearing a t-shirt that says “You have cancer.”
Technically, it’s true. But it’s not very helpful.
Instead, I’ll take (what I hope is) a more genuine route and tell you that this has been the second hardest year of my life.
(The first hardest year of my life was following the end of a 4.5 year relationship where I was low-key…
Setting goals feels so damn good.
It’s like smoking a cigarette with James Dean on the tailgate of an old Chevy.
It’s like curling up next to a crackling fire and eating warm chocolate chip cookies with your grandma.
It’s like taking LSD and surfing a 40-ft wave strapped to the back of a coked-out dolphin.
I guess what I’m trying to say is:
Setting impressive goals feels almost as good as actually accomplishing those goals. And instead of keeping you accountable…
They actually take away your hunger…
Which is the last thing you want when pursuing a goal.
Those…
I’ll admit it:
I have a pretty un-romantic view of creativity.
I think the people who can get high and write poetry (that actually sounds good) or drop acid and paint a masterpiece are few and far between.
They exist, yes…
But if you don’t naturally consider yourself a hyper-creative person — then getting creative advice from those people might feel like getting advice on how to do a 360 windmill dunk from Lebron James.
Technically, the advice is accurate. But hearing it isn’t going to help you all that much.
Instead, I’m in favor of a “workhorse” approach to…
