If you’re a journalist, the core of your work is reporting the news.

If you’re a web designer, the core of your work is creating websites.

If you’re a blogger, the core of your work is writing and publishing posts.

The core of your work is the one thing that isn’t negotiable. No matter what, a journalist must report the news (or be part of the news reporting process); otherwise she’s not a journalist.

The trick is drawing a line between the absolutely indispensable and the really, really important.

For a web designer, good customer service is really, really important. So is branding and making connections and having a good business model. But the part where you actually design websites? That’s absolutely indispensable, and it’s a bad idea to sacrifice it in pursuit of something else.

The Optional Stuff

One of the benefits of finding the indispensable is realizing that everything else – branding, marketing, productivity hacking, a nice office, caffeine, etc. – is optional.

And when you realize everything else is optional (or, at the very least, malleable), you start to see a thousand different ways to do your work. Most of the rules, advice, and conventions that govern the way we work deal with these optional bits. Optional, meaning: feel free to disregard.

Or, to put it another way: you don’t have to do what you do in the way everyone else expects.

A journalist could go on TV, or write for a magazine, or start her own newspaper, or report through daily podcasts, or create something entirely new. And that’s just a choice of medium. She’s also free to make decisions about job contracts and reporting style and interviewees and employer (or not) and so on.

You have similar choices, whether you’re a journalist, a blogger, a banker, a marketer, an artist, etc.

What Makes You Special

The upshot of all this is that the extra stuff is what makes you special and marketable and worth people’s attention. Just reporting the news makes you just another journalist. Finding new, unusual ways of handling the extra bits is what makes you stand out in a world full of people who are capable of fulfilling the same job description.

And by the way, dispensing with the optional entirely (minimalism) is a valid way of handling it, if you so choose.

To sum up:

When you don’t know what to do next, focus on the indispensable, since you’ll need to get good at that part anyway.

If you don’t make conscious decisions about the optional things surrounding your work, other people will make the decisions for you.

You can do things differently if you want (and you probably should) but you’ll need the courage to make it work and prove everyone else wrong.

Sometimes I feel that life would be better in a fantasy world, where great heroes fight dastardly villains, where the days are filled with noble quests and epic battles, where the world needs to be saved and every step is filled with magic and significance.

Let’s be honest. Fighting the armies of darkness sounds a lot more exciting than fighting the armies of procrastination and apathy and existential angst.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. There’s a reason for the popularity of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings and Marvel Comics. There’s something inside us that craves storybook adventure, something that wants more out of life than everyday happenings.

Do you ever feel this way? As if you’re a dragon-slayer in a world where dragons don’t exist?

Making Your Own Adventure

During those times, it helps to remember what Helen Keller said:

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”

I think she was onto something. In the real world, you have to find your own quests to follow, and you don’t get a montage sequence for the boring bits. You have to make your own adventure.

And so you have two non-mutually-exclusive options:

The first option is to learn to break the rules, to be unrealistic and idealistic, to chase grand vistas and big dreams. To constantly put yourself a position to find a life worth experiencing.

The second, and equally important option is to learn to find the great and noble right where you are and inside the things you already do. To do the small things as if they were great things, and in doing so pave the way forward.

The punch line, of course, is that you need to do both.

I’ll end with a confession: I haven’t completely given up on the idea of someday fighting a great battle for the soul and survival of the world – and I probably never will. That hunger for something epic is an important part of who I am and what I do.

But in the meantime, I try to live as though the little things in life are great and noble. It’s a good start.

***

My friend Raam Dev has compiled a free ebook full of little (read: great and noble) ideas to help you make a difference in the world. Check it out here.

Hope you’re having a great week. See you next time.

I catch myself doing this more often than I like.

In general, it’s easier to ask open questions than to give confident answers. There’s no social penalty for appearing open-minded – but if you take a stand and get it wrong (or just different), better watch out.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with wanting input from other people, especially people you respect. And there’s certainly nothing wrong with admitting you don’t have all the facts.

But it’s equally important to recognize the difference between genuinely not knowing the answer and lacking the conviction to accept the answer you already have.

***

Dictionary.com defines an authority as (among other things): “an accepted source of information, advice, etc.”

Authority is a social safety net. It’s okay to be wrong, as long as you can blame it on an authoritative source that is also wrong. It’s not as embarrassing to botch a basic scientific fact, if you can say that you were misled by an incorrect entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Most of the time, when people ask broad questions about difficult issues, they’re not so much looking for answers as for authority, for a safety net to fall back on.

Thus, people who are good at appearing authoritative often have a lot of power and influence. These people are willing to take the risk of having an opinion, and so others flock to them, like pedestrians running for shelter during a downpour.

This power can be abused – see political punditry – or it can be an opportunity. Wherever there’s rampant uncertainty, those who are willing to be certain (at the risk of being wrong) are given the chance to lead. This works in politics, in office politics, and in pretty much every social context.

***

Conviction is the strength to hold onto your personal opinion.

Confidence is the strength to share and defend that opinion in public.

Authority is the power you get as a result.

How can you apply this to what you do?

***

Even if you plan on having an open discussion, it’s usually better to go in armed with a point of view. You can always change it later if there’s a compelling reason. Here’s a good example of that approach in action.

***

George Crane once said, “You can have such an open mind that it is too porous to hold a conviction.”

Where do you draw the line with what you believe? How far are you willing to entertain opposing points of view, and when do you say enough?

Little actions are important and powerful. With enough dollar bill donations, enough volunteered hours, enough popular votes, the world changes. With enough small steps, you can write a book, run a marathon, or make a million dollars.

The problem with little actions is that they’re, well, small. There’s a gap between small actions and big change.

What’s missing is something more powerful than taking an action: setting an example.

I define an example as an action that’s shared with others. An example is an act of one that becomes fuel for many.

An action is giving a dollar to a good cause; setting an example is pointing to that dollar and showing other people how and why they should donate.

Joining a movement is an action; setting an example is sharing the goals of that movement with others so that they can also get involved.

An action is private, small, and limited; an example is communal, powerful, and limitless. But while taking a small action can be a convenient one-time deal (give a buck and you’re done), setting an example takes conscious, dedicated effort for something you believe in. To set an example, you have to not only do your part, but also teach, explain, and defend what you’ve done.

This blog, The Art of Great Things, is my example. I write and share on this site to spread valuable ideas and – most importantly – to inspire people by showing them how they can have a voice and an impact. I believe that today each of us has the opportunity to lead and inspire and change the world; this blog is one way I choose to live that belief.

What will you do?

Around every important cause, quest, or dream, there are three groups of people:

• Outsiders: people who do nothing, whether out of laziness, apathy, or ignorance.
• Contributors: People who do their part, make a contribution, then move on.
• Leaders: People who care enough to stick around, spread the word, and set an example.

There are plenty of people in group 1. There are even plenty of people in group 2 (though we could always use more). But there’s never enough people in group 3.

Note that you don’t have to be “in charge” to be a leader. If you care enough, you can lead from anywhere, with any job description.

A leader is someone who takes actions and turns them into examples, someone who takes small steps and transforms them into a worthy quest, someone who takes a handful of individual contributions and turns them into a movement.

Will you be that kind of leader for something you believe in?

I’d love for you to come along for the ride. You can click here to grab the RSS feed or sign up for free email updates at the top of this page.

Thanks for reading.

***

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been taking a few days to relax: re-reading a few books I like, playing a little chess, and (trying) to avoid spending too much time on internet and email.

From time to time, it’s nice to have nothing to do and nowhere to go. If you’ve been run ragged by work and appointments and obligations, I’d encourage you to schedule a day or two of nothing in the near future. As Leo says, “Smile, breathe, and go slowly.”

But as much as I enjoy the occasional slow, meandering day, I think it’s also good to rock the boat once in a while, to do something different and break yourself out of your nice, familiar routines just for the hell of it.

Why? Because boring sucks – and because you can’t compartmentalize inertia. If you allow yourself to be mindless and mechanical in one part of your life, it’s hard to keep yourself inspired and active in others. If you spend all your energy on following familiar routines, there isn’t much left to keep you from … well … following the same routines.

Same Question, Different Answer

Whatever your goals are – simplifying your possessions, growing your business, writing a novel – every so often it’s helpful to try pursuing them in a different way, just because you can.

A couple of ideas to get you started:

1. Change your schedule.

If you usually work in the mornings, try doing your creative work at night. Do things in a different order, e.g., if you typically check email before you start working, try holding off until afterward. Try working in short bursts – or, if that’s familiar to you, work on maintaining concentration for longer periods of time.

Don’t worry too much about what the experts consider “correct” productivity; the point of this exercise is to be different.

2. Change your environment.

Where you work has a profound impact on how you work. If you’re usually stuck in a home office, pack up and head somewhere else. I tend to alternate between home, Barnes & Noble, and Scooter’s Coffeehouse – but I’ve also tried working outdoors, on the couch, in my car, etc.

Also consider the characteristics of your work environment: if you work in a noisy office, look for somewhere quiet. If you usually work in silence, go to a public place or put on some background music.

3. Reframe your goals.

Teach yourself to write that novel in small chunks, or learn to lose yourself in sweeping inspiration. Combine two of your talents, instead of devoting your life to one thing.

If you dream of someday traveling the world in luxury, consider the possibility of cheap travel-hacking today. Change the ends, and you might get a better grip on the means.

4. Impose constraints – or lift them.

Try living with less than 50 items – or decide against it. Keep yourself focused by only working 4 days every week, or unlock your tireless drive by putting in more overtime than you ever have before. Stay away from Twitter when working – or don’t. Move the boundaries a little bit, just to prime your creative engine.

5. Try the wrong thing.

You know that thing that everyone thought was a bad idea? Try that.

This isn’t a license to go out and do something ridiculous and self-destructive – but it is a challenge to stop knocking things before you try them. Dig up some ideas that you’ve seriously considered (and discarded) in the past, then give them a try. You might be surprised at the result.

6. Use different tools.

As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Rock the boat by picking up some different tools.

If you run in tennis shoes, try switching them out for minimalist footwear, or vice versa. Do your writing online with Google Docs, or disconnect entirely with a distraction-free text editor. Go from Windows to Mac, or Mac to Windows. It’s not always about bigger or better or newer tools; often having different tools is good enough.

If it ain’t broke …

People say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I think: there comes a point where boring is just as bad as broken. What about you?

***

P.S. – Thank you to everyone who responded to my request for interviewees. Unfortunately, disconnecting for half a week has wreaked havoc on my email inbox, so I’m still working on getting back to everyone. Thanks for being patient!

I’m currently taking a few days to relax before jumping into my new “work” day.

Living in the Question

One question I’ve been encountering a lot lately is: “What are you planning to do after quitting your job?”

Feeling obligated to give an answer, I’d reply with something along the lines of: “Well, I’d like to write a bit more, maybe do some freelancing, maybe travel too.” I’d struggle to come up with specifics that I wasn’t sure of myself.

Now I have a better answer. What do I plan to do now that I don’t have a day job? I don’t really know. I don’t have a 10-step plan for success – just a few interesting ideas in the back of my head. I don’t know What I Want To Do For The Rest Of My Life. Not yet, anyway.

And that’s okay.

I’ve been thinking about the paths we take in life. For most of us growing up in a modern country, the first twenty-some years of our lives are more or less planned in advance: twelve years of school, followed by about four years of college, then off either to graduate school or an entry-level position in the workforce. You always know what’s next and what’s expected of you.

For the moment, it feels good to have no set direction at all. To “live in the question,” as Jonathan Fields would say.

Is this for everyone? Perhaps not. For one thing, not everyone has the luxury of dropping out of the workforce (on their own terms) just to see where the wind takes them. I get that. I’ve gotten very lucky – I don’t yet have a family to support or any debt to pay off, and I’ve been able to save up enough money to keep me going for a while.

But in talking to several older co-workers with families and mortgages, I kept hearing the same thing: you ought to explore and experiment when you have the chance, because the window for that closes quickly.

So I’m passing this along to you: if you have the opportunity now, go out and explore. Few people regret not spending more time on conventional paths; many regret spending too much.

And yes, living in the question is a kind of luxury, but I believe it’s not that far out of reach. It starts with creating a little more space in your life, whittling away time wasters and deceptive obligations until you have enough room to add something new. It’s a tricky process, but you can usually find a path if you’re willing to look hard enough.

Getting Involved

Here’s what I do know about my post-job plans.

I want to spend a lot more time getting my hands dirty with different projects and different kinds of work. Writing is and probably always will be a big part of what I do, but I’d like to do more than that. On a broad scale, I’m planning to try a lot different things and see what opportunities reveal themselves.

For example, I’m part of several blogging networks, but I haven’t been as active lately as I’d like. Now that I have the luxury of time, I’ll be spending a good chunk of it giving back to and collaborating with these online communities.

I’d also like to spend some time helping you, friends and readers. If you’re working on something interesting and are in need of some assistance, encouragement, or advice, I’m happy to lend a hand. I’m willing to give most anything a try, so fire away.

Finally, I’d like to start featuring your inspiring stories here on The Art of Great Things in the form of interviews or profiles. If you have an interesting story, business, or philosophy to share and are willing to sit down for a brief audio, video, or written interview, send me an email at jeffrey at artofgreatthings dot com, with the word “Interview” in the subject line. More details to follow next week.

As always, thank you for reading. Let me know how I can help you in return.

***

Some link love for today:

• Chris Guillebeau’s excellent piece on the realities of working from anywhere.
• This post and video about Dan Phillips, who makes affordable homes from repurposed materials.
• MarkMcGuinness on creative vs. reactive work.

If you’re not a mathematician, it’s hard to imagine how a theoretical proof could be elegant.

And if you’re not a martial artist, it’s hard to grasp what’s meant by the “rhythm” of a fighter.

The view from the outside looks nothing like the view from the inside. Someone else’s job looks easy – until you actually try it. And yet we’re quick to judge people or groups or companies by what we can see of them from the outside.

What’s worse, we presume to judge not only people’s actions, but also their intentions. We see our own viewpoints as common sense, so we assume that only an evil, corrupt, or ignorant person could possibly disagree. We demonize people and organizations and political parties, and when we do, it becomes very, very easy to hate them.

“Easy is a word you use to describe someone else’s job.” – Jason Fried

Of course, some people act with less-than-noble intentions. Some people are corrupt, ignorant, or outright malicious. How do you separate genuine mistakes from reckless or corrupt ones?

Most of the time, you don’t – unless you happen to be sitting on a jury and have no choice. Speculating on someone else’s motivations and circumstances and state of mind is usually a wild goose chase. In the short run, it’s satisfying to vent your anger and seek revenge, but in the long run it just distracts you from actually making things better.

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato

What you do instead is make a choice. You choose to believe in people’s good intentions, even if you disagree with their actions. You choose to believe that, at heart, most people want to do the right thing, even if they get lost along the way. You choose to acknowledge that you can’t see the view from inside, and to respect the possibility that they see something you don’t.

And then you stop getting offended over what someone else is or isn’t doing, and get back to your own important work.

Note that this isn’t the same as compromising your beliefs, preaching moral relativism, promoting a lack of personal responsibility, or chasing a utopia of happiness and rainbows.

So long as people have differing opinions, there will be disagreement and conflict. So long as we make mistakes, we ought to take responsibility for them. So long as we haven’t figured out the answers to life, the universe, and everything, there will be a need for people who fight for what they believe in, even if that clashes with what someone else believes.

But. But – we don’t have to hate each other. We don’t have to dehumanize the people on the other side of the aisle. As King Priam says to Achilles in the movie Troy, “Even enemies can show respect.”

I confess – I can be a very vindictive, judgmental person. But I don’t like that about myself, and I’m making a conscious decision to change. I’d like to be a hero, but that doesn’t mean I have to turn everyone else into a villain.

Change without hate and fear. I think it’s possible.

What’s your take?

Working for your own departure is a strange feeling. For someone whose dream has always been to live with a bang, leaving a job with a whisper is a little disconcerting. I have no illusions of grandeur here; it’s not as if the company will fall apart without me. But while part of me owes my co-workers a smooth transition, another part wishes I could leave a bigger hole, just to say I was here.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that our entire office is being remodeled this month. Tearing down walls, creating space – a near-perfect metaphor.

Work for Remarkable

I think: whatever job you have, whoever you work for, whatever it is that you do, you’re either working to make yourself more valuable or working to make yourself replaceable.

It’s easy to go down the road of replaceability, easy to put in your hours, fit into your assigned role, delegate work haphazardly.

Making yourself valuable, on the other hand, doesn’t happen without intent. You have to think about it constantly. What can I contribute that no one else does? How can I address the problems that everyone else ignores? By the way, this applies to life outside a job as well. A remarkable, interesting life doesn’t happen by accident.

For the past two and a half years, I was fortunate enough to work for a company where it was easy to speak up, do more, and get rewarded for it. I’m grateful; not everyone gets so lucky the first time around. But now that I’ve tasted it, I can’t imagine working in any other kind of environment.

Here’s what I believe: if you have a job where you’re not at all motivated to be exceptional, if you’re doing work you couldn’t care less about, if your boss doesn’t care about inspiring you to be better, it’s time to move on.

Teach for Mastery

You don’t know what you know until you pass it on. As I prepare my former right-hand man to take over my position, I realize just how many important lessons about work, management, people, and leadership I’ve learned in the last few years. They weren’t all positive lessons (I’ve spent a lot of time cleaning up after my own mistakes), but I’m a completely different person today as a result.

Many people shy away from positions of leadership or authority because they believe they don’t know enough to teach. I think it’s only by teaching and sharing that we discover the depth of our own knowledge and ability. Mastery, like everything worth chasing in life, is a journey. You don’t have to become an expert before you can teach; you start teaching and become an expert along the way.

My Inspiration

I’m constantly inspired by people who have the courage to chase their dreams. People like my friend Melissa, who left her job to pursue her amazing work. Congratulations, Melissa – and thanks for leading the way.

Are you chasing something interesting, unconventional, inspiring? I’d love to hear your story.

More and more, I see the truth in that statement. What most of us really want out of life is simply the feeling of being alive, of doing interesting things, even if we use different words to describe it.

Looking for meaning is how we distract ourselves in the downtime between interesting experiences.

I’m not convinced that the abstract search for meaning is worth the time we spend on it. What do we stand to gain? We don’t need the meaning of life in order to savor each day, to change the world, to dream and grow and love. We do those things already.

I think a lot of people shackle themselves to meaning, as if life were a timed exam with a letter grade at the end of it. They’re always asking:“What does this mean? What’s the right answer?”

Forget the answer. Life isn’t a test. It’s a blank page waiting to be filled with the story of whatever makes us come alive. For me at least, there’s a tremendous freedom in replacing the search for meaning with a quest for interesting.

***

Sometimes I do ask myself: where does legacy fit into all this? Can I live for the experience and for legacy at the same time?

I say yes. One of the perks of living in such an interconnected world is the ability to take intensely personal goals and turn them into something more, something shared and remembered and passed along. Writing, teaching, sharing, and connecting make things permanent, which is legacy in my book.

And if, at the end of it all, my legacy is that I lived a life full of interesting things and that I showed other people how to do the same, I’m happy with that.

What about you?

Stuck happens because you have some sort of mental roadblock sitting in your path, a roadblock you either are unwilling to remove or don’t even know is there. That roadblock dams up all your focus, motivation, and creativity – until you find a way to get rid of it.

Roadblock: The Dreaded Task

The hardest part about leaving my job was having to tell my bosses and co-workers that I was moving on. I dreaded those conversations. I was willing to deal with the financial challenges of quitting; it was the social challenges that I didn’t want to face.

But until I forced myself to get those awkward conversations out of the way (during which, by the way, everyone was incredibly supportive), I couldn’t really concentrate on anything else, including my writing.

Often, stuck happens when you have an unpleasant task hanging over your head. This task may not be the most important task on your list; it may not be the most urgent or difficult  - but, for whatever reason, it’s a task with a lot of emotional and psychological impact, and it eats away at you until you deal with it.

Overcome:

Tasks that eat at you are huge mental roadblocks. When you feel stuck, try reprioritizing your to-do list in order of emotional or psychological impact:

• Which tasks worry you the most?
• Which tasks bother you whenever you put them off?
• Which tasks would you most like to get off your plate?

Tackle those tasks first. Then, once your head is clear, it’s that much easier to work on your other responsibilities.

Remember, dreaded tasks are rarely as bad as we imagine them to be. Either way, things work out better when you’re actually doing something instead of wondering what if.

Roadblock: The Tough Decision

Oddly enough, the decision to leave my job wasn’t that difficult. I realized a while back that my long-term goals lay in a different direction. It was more a question of when and how I would make the transition:

When would be the right time to leave? If I quit now, will I be leaving my co-workers in the lurch? If I put off my personal projects for another three months, will I regret it later on?

And even trickier: how do I go about preparing for departure? I don’t want to check out mentally before I do so physically – that’s not fair to the company – but does that mean I’ll be starting projects I won’t finish?

Tough decisions are the cousins to dreaded tasks. You agonize, you vacillate, you weigh evidence over and over, you look for advice when you really need affirmation. Meanwhile, the prospect of having to make a choice weighs on your mind, distracting you from your work.

Overcome:

Decisions are rarely as permanent as we make them out to be. It’s better to make a choice – any choice – than to sit around agonizing over the decision. When I’m faced with tough decisions, I try to focus on doing, instead of speculating and planning (though clearly I don’t always succeed).

It’s also easier to take a stand on hard decisions if you translate them into actions. Think about what you will do, instead of what you should decide.

Roadblock: The Gurus in Your Head

As much as I write about breaking rules, being independent, and making up your own mind, I have to admit that I still have gurus inside my head, repeating their 7 rules for writing a Good Blog Post.

Sometimes these gurus are helpful; sometimes they’re not. On several occasions I’ve spent hours writing and rewriting a post, only to realize I’d been hung up on following a piece of advice I’d read somewhere instead of saying what I needed to say.

Everyone has their own gurus inside their heads; everyone gets hung up on different pieces of advice. Advice-based roadblocks are tricky, because they’re well meaning, and thus difficult to dismiss.

Overcome:

Chris Guillebeau gave a speech at TEDxCMU about fear and permission. In it, he talks about how many people sit around waiting for a permission slip to do something different with their lives – like kids waiting for a permission slip to get out of class.

How do you get rid of the gurus inside your head? Write your own permission slip. Give yourself permission to be wrong. Give yourself permission to try something just because it might work. Give yourself permission to accept the consequences, either good or bad.

And when you find yourself stuck, always ask yourself: are there options I’m not considering? Even crazy ones that my parents / my teacher / that expert warned me about? Am I sure that they wouldn’t work for me?

A word about fear

Most mental roadblocks come down to fear. Fear of having that conversation. Fear of taking that leap. Fear of doing something unusual or unconventional without an authority figure to back you up.

Fear is sneaky. It looks different to everyone. Things that scare me probably don’t scare you, and vice versa.

And there are different kinds of fear. For example, the kind of fear that stifles your dreams isn’t really the same kind of fear you get from walking down a dark street at night – at least, it’s not for me.

To me roadblock fear usually masquerades as apathy, laziness, procrastination, or rationalization. You don’t jump out of your skin at the thought of publishing a risky blog post; you find excuses to delay and edit and polish. You don’t scream at the thought of leaving a job that’s not right for you; you just start listing all the reasons you can’t go now.

But it’s all fear. And that’s important, because once you know what it is, once you can call it by name, you can fight it. You can say, “I know what you’re trying to do, fear, and it won’t work.”

One more thing about fear – it can be your friend, if you train it well. Some people have asked me, “Why are you so calm about not having a paycheck? Aren’t you a little scared?” I am scared – but not about the paychecks. I’m afraid of waking up one day, 20 years from now, and realizing that I’ve put my dreams on indefinite layaway.

Go break some barriers today.

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If you’re interested in working for yourself or creating side income, you might want to check out Everett Bogue’s excellent guide to Minimalist Business.