Everything I Know

by Paul Jarvis

He’s in the creativity and self-discovery business. He’s in the finding-your-voice business. He understands that we want to do great work, that there’s a story struggling to speak through us, not just about who we are, but about who our clients or customers or readers want to be and how we can best help them become that. He doesn’t try to tell it for us. He asks questions and provides advice, tools and insights to unlock our story and let it flow.

Courage doesn’t come from an absence of fear; it comes from being afraid and moving forward anyway.

I loved these books because I got to lead the action and I could always see the consequences of my choices. The plot wasn’t set in stone until I was actually in the story, reading it, deciding. The ending was never certain, but in order to get there, I had to keep making choices.

Two people could read the same book and come away with totally different experiences, adventures and endings. You could also get stuck in plot loops that kept you in an unbreakable cycle until you made a different choice.

I’ve always approached my work as if it were a Choose Your Own Adventure book. And if I look at how I live, the parallels are evident: I choose my own path. I stay true to myself and to my values. I experiment with choices. I might be afraid, but I don’t let fear stop me from trying new things. I can only live a meaningful life if...

We don’t know the consequences of our choices until those consequences become the present or the past.

There’s more than one way to reach your goals, and you probably won’t even know you’re on the right path until you’re looking back at it.

A large part of choosing your path is figuring out which values will determine your worth. Once that’s clear, it’s much easier to decide if the work you’re doing will increase or decrease your feelings of worth.

If a tweet is popular, I turn it into a blog post. If that blog post is popular, I turn it into a book chapter. That's how I write – by testing the value of my ideas before selling them as products. Promotion is no substitute for perfecting your craft. And most people don't get paid for promoting; they get paid for doing actual work.

when industry-specific dialogue takes over, we’re no longer serving our audiences.

For infosec content martketing piece

If we don't let our weirdness rise to the surface, we don’t let our work stand out.

In the beginning, you might fear that you won’t be successful. Once you achieve some success, you might be afraid that you won’t get any more. Once you have a lot of success, you might worry about letting down your now-sizable audience if you change anything or say the wrong thing. At any stage, there are always fears.

Codefte

Choosing a path implies action. A choice is a starting line, so make a decision to begin right there – then make sure you finish, because starting without finishing is the same as not choosing. You need to eventually figure out if what you started and finished actually works by putting it out there.

Failure is a requirement for success, so don’t shy away from it. Instead, embrace failure as a stepping stone to greatness.

If you frame ideas as experiments, you can’t technically fail at anything. You're just going to prove or disprove a theory you've arrived at through experimenting. And if it doesn't work the first time, you can iterate and try something different. It doesn't work until it does.

Saying yes to the wrong things for too long will lead to work that lacks personal meaning.

There aren't really any experts, though, just people further along in their individual journeys.