A lot of the best work I've ever done started out as something completely different because I gave myself permission to have space around my time and expectations.

Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely.... Obsessing over the slipperiness of focus, bemoaning the volume of those devil "distractions," and constantly reassessing which shiny new "system" might make your life suddenly seem more sensible - these are all terrifically useful warning flares that you may be suffering from a deeper, more fundamental problem.... Know in your heart that what you're making or doing matters... First, care. Then, as you'll happily and unavoidably discover, all that "focus" business has a peculiar way of taking care of itself.

Everything takes more time than you thought, everything costs more money than you thought, and almost everything turns out not quite as cool as you expected.

By my reckoning, I only need about 200 more takeout coffee cups to complete my bitterly ironic mosaic of Al Gore.

Although your time and attention are finite, the demands on your time and attention are infinite.

It's just that it's mind-boggling to me how many people I encounter every day who are struggling to subsist on a diet of bad advice about fake solutions to nonexistent problems.

If you need to appear on an internet list to know whether you're someone's friend, you may have problems a computer can't solve.