The death of "hows"

And an epidemic of "whats"

7 questions to find work you love

The first step here is to focus on reflecting on the past, and not try to predict the future. I know personally when I think about choosing what to work on, my brain immediately jumps to imagining what it would be like to do certain work. When we do this,

Why follow your passion is bad advice

How do you know if you’ve chosen the right career path? How do you decide what to pursue, and how do you actually make progress? I’ve spent the past few months researching all of these questions, and today, I share with you what I’ve learned, and what

How to give up on your dreams

Stolen dreams and the assumptions underneath

A goldmine is only as good as your pick

How to get rid of FOMO on business ideas

What good is technology?

Digging below the facade of new tech

The death of stories

Feelings don't care about your facts

Following our intuition

Why we need to own our own path

Does consuming content undermine taking action?

And how video games do it right.

Passion is a fire

Why 'discipline' doesn't work (and how to actually develop it)

The Shadow

You’re at your highest. Feeling the most inspired. In flow. Doing your best work. The Shadow takes a rest. Waiting for the right time to strike. As you’re running through difficulties and leaping over hurdles, the Shadow patiently stalks behind, stealthy enough to not bring any attention to

Stop hiding from your art

Six months ago, I stopped publishing. In September of last year, I started a newsletter on effortless action. I committed to publishing for twelve weeks, with the idea that each Wednesday I’d send an essay where I’d dive into a topic and how it relates to taking action.

Rewards & Expectations

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every week, I share findings from across a range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” Hey friend! I have a little bit of a different newsletter for you this week. Instead of my normal weekly essay, here are

How expectations influence your motivation

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from a wide range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” Last week, I thought I was going to blow up. Not in the physical sense, or eating too much food, but on Twitter.

The do something principle (expanded)

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from a wide range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” Mark Manson’s Do Something Principle  is wonderful. The simplicity of it is great, but as we dive deeper into what actually gets

Fail before you quit

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from a wide range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” Fail before you quit. “What?! I don’t want to fail! Are you crazy?” Maybe, but that’s beside the point. Throughout my

The 2 systems of motivation - Pt.2: Dopamine

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from across a range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” This is the second issue on the 2-part series on the two main systems of motivation in the brain. ( Check out the first

The 2 systems of motivation - Pt.1: Cost-Benefit

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from across a range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” This is the first half of a 2-week issue explaining the 2 main systems of motivation in our brains: cost-benefit analysis, and craving

Getting your brain swole: Building your action-taking muscle

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from across a range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” How can we build our action-taking muscle? Unfortunately (well, probably fortunately) our brain isn’t an actual muscle, but what if we trained

How to make taking action easy

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from across a range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” “What would it look like if this were easy?” If you’ve been in the self-help world for any amount of time, you’

The myth of "unmotivated"

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from across a range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” When you’re unmotivated, what do you usually do? Usually, we procrastinate the things we know we should do. We’ll scroll on

How to finally be self-disciplined

You know that feeling when you know something is going to make your blood just boil, but you indulge in it anyway, getting some sort of sick pleasure out of being upset? Me too. The other day I was recommended a Jocko Willink video about discipline. For me, the word

The missing half of self-development

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from across a range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” Self-help is an $11 billion industry. There are droves of people out there to help you on your journey to become a better

Diagnosing (& treating) procrastination

Welcome back to the Effortless Action Newsletter! Every Wednesday, I share findings from across a range of disciplines to better understand “What gets us to take action?” This week, let’s dive into procrastination. But first, let’s talk a little bit about being a good doctor. What makes a

Welcome to the Effortless Action Newsletter

Welcome to the first-ever edition of the Effortless Action Newsletter! (I guess by the numbering system, it might be the zero-eth though?) My name is Joe, and I’m excited to share my learnings on how we can make taking action more effortless. Inspiration If you do a Google search

What I Learned Making My First $1,000 Freelancing

Unfortunately, making my first $1,000 online wasn’t as glamorous as others may make it seem. And in some aspects, it was a failure. First, let’s look at the story of my skillset and how I started freelancing. Some background If you’re new here, hi! I’m

5 Things Your Laziness Is Trying to Tell You

Newsflash: Just because you’re lazy doesn’t mean you’re worthless. The motivational YouTubers get in your head and tell you that you’re just lazy. You just need to power through it. David Goggins can do it, so why can’t you? If you tie your self-worth to

It's Never Been Easier (or More Difficult) to be an Entrepreneur

We’re in a new age of entrepreneurship, filled with new difficulties. Here’s how to overcome those obstacles. It’s never been easier to be an entrepreneur Welcome to the Information Age, where 4.6 billion people have access to the internet, a place where learning a skill is

My Battle with Perfectionism (and How I'm Overcoming It)

This year, I started to take my personal brand seriously. Everyone on Twitter was doing Ship30for30, but I was not about to drop that kind of money on an accountability group. So I did my own version. I posted 28 blog posts in the month of March, with an accompanying

31(ish) Days of Daily Blogging - What I Learned

How’d it Go? Output Unfortunately, I didn’t publish every day. Out of the 31 days in March, I only published for 28 of them. I missed one weekend, and didn’t post on my birthday (yesterday). That leads to just about a 90% success rate. Hey, I’ll

You Don't Have to Know What to Do With Your Life

On at least a semi-annual basis, I have a crisis of “not knowing what to do with my life.” If you’re in your twenties (or hell even thirties, forties, or beyond), you may even be going through this right now. Luckily, we don’t have to know right now.

I Failed

I could go on about excuses for why I didn’t, but when you pull back the curtains, it comes down to me not making the time for writing. I had a great weekend, did lots of fun things, but failed to make the time for this commitment. It’s