There are 100 days left in 2022.
What’s one thing you can accomplish between now and the end of the year that will make your year?
Maybe it’s something you’ve wanted to do for a long time, but somehow you never found the time? Or something new that you’re excited to start? Maybe this is the time to do something that will change everything…
You already know the answer. Now’s the time to commit and make it happen.
Quality Questions make it easy to apply the key lessons from the best self improvement books and talks to your life.
100% FREE. No credit card required. Unsubscribe anytime.
What decision have you been putting off for a while?
Maybe you’re on the fence about quitting your job, changing something in your relationship, or embarking on a new adventure.
Can you make that decision today?
As Chris Guillebeau reminds us:
…people will often say “You know, I wish I’d made that change sooner.”
Almost no one ever says “I wish I’d made that change later.”
David Deida wrote, “Every moment of your life is either a test or a celebration.”
Even if you don’t accept that as literally true, it’s still a useful frame.
Ask yourself:
Right now, is this moment in your life a test or a celebration?
If it’s a test, who is testing you? What do you have to do to pass? And how will you celebrate once you’ve passed?
Most of our Quality Questions are adapted from lessons we’ve learned from books, courses, and life experience.
But this week’s question comes straight from James Clear’s popular 3-2-1 newsletter:
“Children are joyful and treat each day as a miracle—in part because they are continually surprised.
Each day, they hear a new word or listen to a new song or learn about a new animal. It’s their first time visiting that restaurant or jumping in that pool or riding that rollercoaster. The world is continually unfolding before them.
How can you introduce more surprise into your life as an adult? How can you renew your sense of childlike wonder?”
The Proust Questionnaire is a series of “confessions” questions, popular among Victorians (including the eponymous French writer, Marcel Proust).
These questions were asked and answered as a social activity, and reflected on in private journals. The questions are still used today for interviews in magazines like, Vanity Fair.
Here’s one for you to answer now:
What do you most value in your friends?
This week’s Quality Question is inspired by Nat Eliason’s recent essay exploring his relationship with writing, work, and money. The punchline?
Be careful what you do to pay the bills. You might just succeed at it.
I’ve tried to seriously pursue writing a few times.
Every time, I’ve given up. Not in an explicit “I SURRENDER” moment of defeat, but through a subtle sliding away.
The kind of sliding where you wake up a year later and wonder “when did I make this decision?” Maybe you’ve experienced that, too. That moment when you realize the current of life carried you somewhere you never fully chose to go.
It took a while for me to realize that all of this other work was originally just to support being able to write. I started making courses to support writing. I started the agency to be able to write. I went into crypto because I was scared of not making enough money writing.
Ask yourself:
What are you doing now just so you can do what you really want to some day? What if you just do the thing you really want to do now?
This week’s Quality Question is inspired by Sara Schonfeld’s tweet:
I had a therapist who once told me, “if you don’t schedule a break, your body will take one for you. And it probably won’t be at a convenient time.”
Ask yourself: When is your next break?
Bonus Question: What activity leaves you feeling the most recharged?
In The Way of the Superior Man, David Deida writes:
Each purpose, each mission, is meant to be fully lived to the point where it becomes empty, boring, and useless. Then it should be discarded. This is a sign of growth, but you may mistake it for a sign of failure.
Ask yourself:
What mission can you graduate from and discard now?
Last week we asked you about the time you failed.
The goal is not to dwell on your mistakes, but reframe them as necessary steps on the path to achieving your goals.
In the process of inventing the lightbulb, Thomas Edison supposedly said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
But not every mistake leads to a revolutionary invention…
I got a car. . . . It was a Lexus hybrid, and the first day I got it, I filled it up with diesel fuel. I destroyed it. It was awful.
That story is from comedian Whitney Cummings in Tim Ferriss’ book, Tools of Titans. She goes on to explain:
I got this great joke out of it, though, a 7-minute bit that probably paid for all the damage. So now, I’m in this place where when something bad happens, I think: “Oh, good, I can use that.”
Fellow comedian Russell Brand has a similar approach:
I’ve learned now that when I’m in a situation where my first impulse is to hide the shame I feel forever, that when rendered as a yarn the scenario will probably be funny, so my second impulse is, “That’s probably material.”
When other people share stories of their mistakes, we laugh, empathize with them, and admire their vulnerability. But our own mistakes are different. Better left unspoken…
What’s a mistake you made that led to a funny story?
Even if you never tell the story in public, you might as well laugh off life’s little mishaps. After all, what’s the alternative?
You failed.
It happens to all of us. Or at least, it should happen.
Failing is an important part of learning and growing. Children fall down over and over again as they learn to walk, but eventually they get the hang of it.
As adults, we’re afraid to fail, especially in a world where it seems like every moment is captured on camera and streamed live on social media.
Our ego kicks in, “What will everyone think? It’s safer not to try…”
There is a difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn’t work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up.
— Jay Samit, Disrupt You!
When was the last time you failed? What did you learn?