Burning Issues

As you all will know by now, I live by the quote from Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford that "you can't connect dots going forwards, only backwards".If that's true, then you need to get out of the damn office, off all digital screens and go meet people face-to-face in real life, as you never know where this might lead.

Play As You Go 🐝

So many of us put off enjoying the things we’ve worked hard for. “I’ll treat myself when I retire.” “I’ll wear it for a special occasion.”

But by the time that day comes, the health, the energy or the moment might not be there.

In this Burning Issues, I talk about enjoying life along the way.

Wear the watch, take the trip, celebrate the milestones now, not when you’re pensioned off.

Life is for living. Play as you go.

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I must have said this a million times when people ask me for advice, but you cannot overstate the importance of following your passion and spending most of your life doing something that you love.

In this episode, I share two stories that completely change how you view your own worth:

1. Padel vs. Tennis: Why two sports that take up almost the same physical space are priced so differently.

2. The Subway Violinist: The true story of Joshua Bell—one of the world’s greatest concert violinists who makes thousands per show, but was treated like an average busker when playing in a subway station on his $3.5 million Stradivarius violin. He collected $32.17

The learning?

In your personal and professional relationships, you determine your value by the environment you place yourself in and what you choose to accept. Don't sell concert-hall value in a subway station.

Simply, do what you said you were going to do. No excuses. Personally or professionally, you will see that your stock will rise and people simply won't be able to compete with you. It sounds so simple, but trust me (from experience), most people simply can't do what they said they were going to do.

Since I've been testing this experiment of taking 30 minutes a week with no technology, just sitting with a pen and paper writing down my stream of consciousness, I've seen a massive difference in my overall well-being. Try it yourself and see what happens.

We hear a lot about the importance of saying no and protecting your time, and I'm absolutely an advocate for that.However, there is an alternative view, which is equally as important, and that is The Power of Yes.

By saying yes, you're accepting new opportunities, new chances to make friendships, connections, business relationships, etc.If you watch my podcast, The Burning Desire, you'll know that I always use the Steve Jobs quote that "You can't connect dots going forwards, only backwards." This is absolutely true when you look at how you met people and how certain parts of your life turn out. You can often pinpoint it to a specific moment where you went to a certain coffee store, decided to travel to a certain country, said yes to a certain meeting, reached out to a new contact, etc.

As I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other day, he mentioned something quite profound, which is that to always find an activity that you suck at is humbling. It allows you to develop and grow both personally and in the endeavour, and it's all-round good for the soul.

Having read The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (a book I highly recommend), one of the things that stuck out was when he says:

"If you can find something that, for you, is play and is to others like work, you will always succeed (paraphrasing) because you will put more hours in, more effort in because you want to."

This video is an excerpt from an interview I did with Michel Nydegger of Greubel Forsey (worth finding on YouTube) and I thought it was an important clip that I wanted to pull out and share.

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In this video, I break down how deeply concerning our conscious and subconscious habit of comparing ourselves to others on social media really is. It’s far more harmful than we realise.Years ago, when we stepped into the fantasy world of a James Bond movie, we didn't leave the cinema feeling insecure—thinking we weren't as good-looking as Pierce Brosnan, didn't drive a nice Aston Martin, didn't have as attractive a partner, didn't have as cool a job, or weren't vacationing in exotic destinations.We need to remember that Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms are just modern fantasy worlds, and they should be viewed as such.