5 Thoughts — August 27, 2021

Gratitude is overlooked. Staring at a thing robs it of its essence. Humans create nothing great the first time. Engagement is a prerequisite for attention. Disagreeing with your earlier self is growth.

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5 Daily Thoughts

4 min readAug 28, 2021

I want to become a better writer, but seem to not want to commit to writing. Strange, right? James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says that it’s not about the goal, but about the identify. Don’t try to win a marathon; instead, become a runner. Similarly, instead of writing a book, perhaps I should become a writer?

I’ve written a handful of Medium posts before to some (moderate) success. Nothing to write home about (see what I did there? 😂), but enough to let me know that I have the ability to put pen to paper. But what to write? Well, to solve that, I’m taking a page out of James Altucher’s book (these writing idioms practically write themselves!) of writing 10 ideas daily. Perhaps I’m less ambitious, so I’ll shoot for 5 thoughts daily. So without further ado, here we go.

1. Gratitude is overlooked

Everyone has it better than someone else regardless of what measuring stick we use. The most obvious is wealth, where it’s easy to find a countless plethora of people that have less wealth than you do. Health is another rather obvious metric. No matter how bad a person’s health may be, there is someone that has it worse. The key to this is isn’t to balk at what others don’t have, but rather to be grateful for what you do have.

2. Staring at a thing robs it of its essence

This one is a bit tricky to distill into a tweetable digest. I was walking in a park one day and noticed in my periphery a beautiful collection of colorful flowers. When I turned to look at them, they seemed less bright. The thing that’s out of sight, but perceptible is so much more fascinating than the thing directly in front of you — especially when the thing in front of you was once far away. Goals are sort of like this.

3. Humans create nothing great the first time

Whether it’s a book, a company, a painting, a building design or any other endeavor, we see the finished product and marvel at the brilliance that went into creating it. But more often than not (and possibly always), the product is the result of persistence. Continuing to improve the craft, the design, the whatever, that’s what it takes to create something create. The editing process is more important than the writing process.

4. Engagement is a prerequisite for attention

It is my firm belief that attention is the most valuable (and limited) resource that humans possess. It’s not “time” as many people seem to think. Bill Gates has the same 24 hours in his day as the degenerate that eats fast food 4 times a day, plays video games while eating Cheetos. But Billy boy uses his attention to affect huge change during that time. When vying for other people’s attention, I think engagement is required. We read books that keep us engaged by potentially having us fill in the spaces, or visualize complex scenes. We watch movies that leave us wondering what’s next or feeling something that we haven’t felt in a while. That engagement makes all the difference.

5. Disagreeing with your earlier self is growth

Far too often, we make bad decisions based on things we said or believed at some earlier point in our lives. This is the opposite of growth. When we state a belief (either publicly or to ourselves), it’s not an absolute truth for all time. It’s merely a conclusion based on the latest data and our processing engine. But time changes both of those in unpredictable ways. The facts may remain the same, but our processing engine continues to undergo improvements (if we let it). To that end, I believe that beliefs should be strong, but adherence to them should be flexible.