Running Out of Stock In a few hours, I’ll stand behind a table and try to sell Pokémon cards for the first time. Going into the event, one worry that kept coming up was running out of stock. 8,000 attendees are expected. Two full days. Countless opportunities to make deals. Would I stand there empty-handed four hours in? Most of what I’m selling are sealed items. Various collection boxes and such. I’ve already been doing so for a few months online. It’s been surprising how well it has worked, how many items have already left my house. Three days ago, someone messaged me: “Hey, I want to buy all of your sleeved booster cases.” Sleeved boosters are individual booster packs wrapped in a special cardboard protector. They look cool and come in boxes of 24. At first, I was apprehensive: “If I sell all of these, that’s a big dent in my inventory.” But it was a big deal, and I was unsure how well these factory-sealed packages—no fancy exterior box—would sell during the event. Eventually, we agreed, and I shipped nearly eight kilograms of cardboard to Sweden. Yesterday, my buddy and I did early setup at the card show. As it turns out, the space to put up shelves is quite limited. The less stock I have, the better! More importantly, however, he agreed with me in the car: “Whoever buys it, buys it!” He was right, of course. Inventory is meant to be sold! Why would I pass on a deal in hopes of someone else buying the same product? Sure, discounts and prices must be weighed. But when there’s demand for what you sell, why would you not meet it if you can? When a good bakery runs out early, they’re not ashamed. They just close up shop and say, “Sorry, more croissants again tomorrow!” I don’t run a shop. I don’t need to move product to make pay. So if I’m out of cards at 12 PM, I’ll just start circling the event and look for deals on the other side of the fence. Never worry about running out of stock. It’s a good problem to have. https://nik.art/running-out-of-stock/ #stock #sleeved #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Because You Trusted Your Gut In a cruel twist of fate, Silo‘s third season begins just as the first: With a clueless Juliette Nichols trying to find answers—except this time, it’s not because she hasn’t discovered anything yet. It’s because she’s being drugged to forget. Forget that she used to be her silo’s sheriff. Forget all the inconsistencies she uncovered about the cylindrical structure supposedly protecting her and 10,000 other souls from the unsafe, post-apocalyptic world outside. Forget, most importantly, that she was the only person to ever leave her silo, visit another one, and not only live to tell the tale but come back to prevent a fatal rebellion. So, whether she likes it or not, Juliette must start from scratch. Thankfully, some of the people she used to know still remain—and are still willing to help. One of them, Martha Walker, basically adopted Juliette when she was a child. At their first meeting post-memory-loss, Juliette explains she has received a note with an invitation to a secret meeting, and she’s unsure whether to go down the rabbit hole or not. Walker responds with some advice in hopes of bringing back the old Juliette: “You know what was the most irritating thing about you? If there was a problem, a question, a decision to be made and everyone was pointing in one direction, you would decide that the only direction to go in was the opposite.” “Right. Okay. That’s quite irritating.” “No. What was irritating was that 99% of the time you were right. Because you trusted your gut. So my question to you now is, what does your gut say?” It’s hard to trust your gut when the social consensus is a different one. But, for most of us, our gut is well-trained. It knows what we need. We should listen to our instinct first, then add in information. And, most likely, we’d fare better and feel more content if we graduated from overriding it. The exchange in Silo reminds me of a scene in Office Space, where a hypnotized, usually chronically frustrated Peter Gibbons walks into a live-or-die interview with two consultants, smiling. The smile comes from Peter’s letting go of all social pressure in his temporary state of mind. He’s committed to being 100% honest, and due to this honesty, he feels he’s got nothing to lose. Instead of pretending his work is important, he goes on to tell the consultants in minute detail how much time and effort is wasted at his company—and, in the end, gets promoted for it. Of course, life doesn’t always reward you for following your gut. Sometimes, the sore thumb sticking out has the Midas touch, but the tallest blade of grass may just as well be cut down to size. Still, in a world of sameness, standing out is often the first step towards better. But we can’t get past the circles we walk in if no one is willing to step outside of them. As for Juliette, Martha’s verbal poking was the spark she needed. By the end of the episode, we see the hero we’ve grown to admire. Not with her memory intact, but just as curious, determined, and unwilling to be satisfied with anything less than seeing her current path through to the end. In most groups, most people’s guts tell them the same thing. But it takes one person to break the mold, to say the socially awkward, for everyone else to come forward and agree. It’s uncomfortable, risky, and irritating. But it’s also what makes us retell stories about such pioneers much later. Not always because they ended up being right—but because they had the guts to trust their gut. And without guts, no one would ever break out of a silo, be it made of concrete or routine. https://nik.art/because-you-trusted-your-gut/ #juliette #gut #silo #forget #martha #still #peter #walker #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

The First Time Is the Best and Worst Time It might be hard to believe, but: In 35 years of living, I’ve never been stung by a wasp. That is, until two weeks ago. It was the day after my best man’s wedding. My wife and I decided to explore a nearby town in the area before heading home. We had just parked our car in a small parking lot. It was one of the last few hot days in Germany, so I decided to put on sunblock. I was rubbing some on my face, then slapped my left hand on my neck to spread it out and—zam! OUCH! I spent the next two minutes cursing, fumbling for the water bottle in my backpack to cool down my left middle finger, and needlessly admonishing my wife for “just standing there” instead of “doing something.” As it turns out, a sting from a wasp can really send you into a frenzy—because there really wasn’t much to do. Eventually, I found a band-aid, slapped it on, and we went about our day. The finger swelled a bit and remained like that for two days. It was also a bit itchy. Then, both subsided. They ominously returned a few days later, only to disappear for good a week after the incident. I don’t know in how much detail I’ll remember this incident six years from now, but I do know I will remember it. It was the first time I got stung by a wasp, after all! I also know it was the worst time—because if it ever happens again, I have an idea of what to expect. Even if everything unfolds differently, I won’t go in blind. Last week, I also finally convinced my mom and wife to watch Lord of the Rings. Another first! First time watching it with family. First time watching it in 6K. First time observing their reactions and seeing if they like it. I don’t believe it’ll become their favorite movie for either of them, but they enjoyed it a lot more than they had expected to. Oh, and it was the first time watching it after my sister had played the Shire theme when she entered the church during her wedding—somehow, the TV kept getting blurry every time it played. This was the first and best time. If I ever rewatch the same movie with the same people, it will still be fun, but it won’t have that first-time spark to it. You only get that once. We rarely know what our last times are in life. But we do recognize and remember our firsts. If you frame them right in your mind, they can both amplify the good and mellow the bad. Savor the movie, the new dish, the first time your daughter walks on her own feet. Wave off the bug bite, the pain from twisting your knee, the first time your new boss scolds you for a mistake. They’ll never be as good again. They’ll never be as bad again. The first time is both the best and worst time. https://nik.art/the-first-time-is-the-best-and-worst-time/ #firsttime #worst #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Always Immersed Choosing writing as your vocation almost feels like a cheat code. Today, I woke up before 8 AM, spent most of the next four hours on travel logistics and packing a car, then drove for five hours to get back to my apartment. My mom joined for a short visit, so, after unpacking, we went to get ice cream. I dealt with some Pokémon card dealings, showered, and meditated. Now, it’s 10:30 PM, and, technically, I haven’t written a thing today. Except I’ve probably typed north of 2,000 words already—an accidental side product of going through my day. I typed search queries into Google. I typed domain names into my phone’s browser. I chatted with half a dozen friends, answering various messages and opening new threads with others. During that one hour of catching up on my collectible deals, I talked to another half dozen or so people. I updated product descriptions, re-listed items, and explained products in more detail for those who asked about them. Of course, none of this writing is the kind of writing I aspire to do—but that doesn’t mean it’s writing without any value whatsoever. Even during simple exchanges, I can pay attention to grammar, capitalization, and which words I choose. The right phrase at the right time can make all the difference—for a friend, relative, or stranger mulling over whether to buy a $200 box of shiny cardboard from you. At first, I thought writing was unique in this way. We all do so much of it. But we also all do a lot of other things every day. We see. We listen. We smell. If you’re chosen vehicle of meaning is movies, an ad on a Youtube video or silent news stream playing on the tram can still teach you about lighting, editing, and storyboarding. You can’t sing all day long, but you can listen to people’s voices. You can dissect their accents and intonations, and think about how their voice would sound if it lay one octave higher or lower. The people who want to be are always immersed in the skill they most wish to get better at. To swim like a champion, find a way to stay in the water even when you’re on dry land. https://nik.art/always-immersed/ #alwaysimmersed #even #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

It’s Okay To Choose Easy Sometimes, you need it. A quick win. A moment worth celebrating not because of all your effort but because you checked the “Done” box. It’s good to choose hard problems, and in certain situations, even “hard for hard’s sake” can make sense. But the crux of big challenges is rarely their size. It’s not that the mountain is insurmountable—it’s that we must take a few steps every day in order to eventually cross its peak. Once we start, the thinking, work, and emotional labor spool off pretty fluidly. But the thought of having to return to more of it all the next day? That can become a real blocker. So give yourself an out! You’ve already committed to hard. Making sure your kid goes to school with a filled lunchbox. Creating in public daily. Onboarding new people into the system every morning. There’s no shame in taking off some pressure to make sure you can show up again tomorrow. If you’re choosing easy all the time, your problem is not hard enough, unsolvable, or not the right one for you. But if you’re building against the right current, the most important part is to keep paddling. Eating a power bar does not make you weak—it makes you a survivor. https://nik.art/its-okay-to-choose-easy/ #easy #done #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

The Magic of Doing It for Humans I didn’t think I could be even more motivated or inspired to write, but testing this new platform, TK, is really squaring both of them. Granted, it’s new and shiny right now, and some of that sparkle will inevitably fade. It motivates me because the expectation for writing output is low—any note, even a sentence, counts! At the same time, I can put my note in a public journal library and at least a handful of people will see it. Knowing I’m writing for people, at least a little bit, makes it easier to focus. Ironically, pairing these contradicting motivations works well. Okay, I might be cheating a bit here. I mean, this blog has been going for years! The dynamics are slightly different, but the basic setup is the same: low expectations yet still a small audience. But, somehow, having more of that dynamic in a second place still adds motivation! There is one thing that’s unique about TK: I’m exploring a new space with other people. We’re all doing it for ourselves, yet also all together. That, too, creates motivation to show up. The extra inspiration comes from TK’s features and possibilities. There are writing prompts. There’s an AI I can ask for ideas, even one I can tag in mid-sentence. But there are also public libraries. I can read snippets of other people’s writing. Raw thoughts which clash with my own, and then, boom, even more ideas for even more drafts. The latter part is distinct from this daily blog, where I occasionally get comments from readers in my inbox but can’t see their equivalent of a daily note or journal entry. Over the first week of using TK, I’ve been a bit cheeky: I’ve used my additional inspiration and motivation to write about inspiration and motivation. But now, I can use TK to assemble these ideas into a bigger post—and then I can write about that, too. TK feels like I’m building my own jungle gym. I set up a section. I climb around. I sit on top. I see what’s what. Then, I remove some of the pieces and set up the next section. Climb some more, and repeat. Will I build horizontal, vertical, or diagonally? I have no idea. But there’ll surely be new parts tomorrow. TK is the first app where I don’t feel the AI is encroaching on my writing. It’s quiet. It stays in the background. It lets me call the shots—and it doesn’t try to run to the finish line for me. “Look, I’ve generated this whole thing for you!” “No! Bad clanker! That’s not what this is about!” There’s none of that on TK. It’s amazing what happens if someone takes a technology and asks: “How can we use this in a way that’s for humans?” Like, really for humans. Not to replace us. Or indulge us. Or trick us. Not to encourage us to cheat or take shortcuts but to amplify everything we’re already great at. To make our lives better and make us better at the same time. The magic of doing it for humans. The people building TK are working it. Let’s see how big this jungle gym will grow. https://nik.art/the-magic-of-doing-it-for-humans/ #magic #doing #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

You Can Have Infinite Motivation There’s no such thing as not being motivated. You’re always motivated to do something. The question is: what? Motivation is a cocktail of habits, incentives, energy, emotions, and inspiration. We believe motivation is always fleeting, but when we think it to be gone or especially strong, it really just means a new ingredient is now dominating the cocktail, and we haven’t processed the change yet. Meditation, push-ups, sit-ups, writing. I do these every day. You could say I’m never motivated to do them or I’m always motivated to do them. Incentives sometimes drive us towards where we want to go. Often, they don’t. If your fridge is only three meters away, it’s much easier to make a snack than to keep working. Incentives work on us all the time, and it’s very hard to design them in a favorable way. There’s too many of them, and a lot of them we don’t control. If your energy is low, that snack might in fact be a good idea. It’s not that you don’t want to read the contract before it goes to the client. You’re actually low on sugar! That definitely happens. Sometimes, you’re more motivated to sleep than to study because your body is telling you you’re supposed to be resting. Emotions are as tricky and ubiquitous as incentives, except they’re entirely inside us and we understand them even less well. Great! Another stick of dynamite in the mix. On the plus side, emotions are slightly more likely to motivate us to take positive action. Finally, inspiration. Without a baseline of inspiration, all parts of the motivation cocktail will drive you towards the wrong ends. If built up well, however, it can drive all the other ingredients to act further in your favor. I already have a daily writing habit, but right now, TK inspires me to write even more. It creates new incentives, and the additional inspiration turns into strong emotions which, in turn, generate the energy to write at 9 PM after a long workday. It’s not easy to change the mix of the cocktail in real-time. Often, we fail at this task. We don’t understand what’s driving our current motivation, so we think we don’t have any. But we always do. Think of something where motivation feels easy. For me, it’s, surprise, writing. I’m never not motivated to write. Sometimes, I might be tired, stressed, or, rarely, “lazy.” But even when I’d prefer to write a little later, I’m usually still in a state of wanting to write. It’s just that another factor—some emotion, a lack of energy, a twisted incentive—has taken over my motivation mix. As soon as I recognize that’s what’s happening, I can gracefully change course. I can give in to the incentive, process the emotion, or rest on purpose, then get back to writing. I haven’t lost anything. I just needed to follow my motivation instead of trying to squeeze a certain ingredient into the cocktail when it wouldn’t fit onto the timeline. From my point of view, I have infinite motivation. I don’t always know what I’m motivated to do, and I don’t always understand it until the action has already happened—but I’m constantly driven back to the things I care about, and even when I fail to make progress on them, I know I’ll be back soon. I don’t know what your current motivation cocktail tastes like. Maybe it’s buzzing with sparks or flat as a soda without gas. But one thing I’m certain of: You can have infinite motivation. Wherever you are now, I wanted you to know it’s possible to get to that state. https://nik.art/you-can-have-infinite-motivation/ #infinitemotivation #incentives #emotions #sometimes #think #often #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

You Can Have Infinite Inspiration Inspiration is both armor and a sword: In order to want to keep going, we need to feel equipped for offense as well as defense. To have a solid foundation, we start with offense: a handful of long-term aspirations which nurture us at all times. The desire to be a good dad. A dream of becoming a concert violinist. Being the social glue holding a tight group of friends together. Defense is layered on top, and we all have our preferred sources: Movies. Books. Conversations. Working out. Music. Listening to a podcast. Watching our children play. Ideally, our swords are strong, rarely break, and provide enough oomph even when all else fails. If you constantly change your big picture goals, they can’t unfold their full power to push you forward. And, technically, starting a new type of school and making it globally successful should be enough to inspire us for a lifetime. But even though you can fight with just a sword, who wants to go into battle like that? Armor inspiration is weaker and less durable, yet still essential. If you wear too much armor, you can’t move at all. It’s better to work two hours and watch inspiring videos for 15 minutes than vice versa. But the videos add new color to your school dream. The armor makes the sword feel stronger and gives you the confidence to wield it without restraint. My sword is being a writer. Not even a good writer or a successful one, though I sure look at both with hope in my eyes. But a productive writer. A writer who writes every day. If all else fails, I’ll gladly settle for that. My sword has been forged between 2014 and 2017, and ever since then, it’s held pretty steadily. Other dreams come and go. This inspiration stays. My sword is around 10 years old, so by now, there’s always something I can and want to write about. If starting feels hard, it’s usually because I don’t know where to begin wording that particular idea, never for a lack of subjects. My armor, like most people’s, comes from many sources. Two of my favorite vambraces are books and movies. But I also have dozens of existing drafts and infinitely more writing ideas. Those, too, can provide short-term inspiration. Ironically, having a backlog to always fall on makes it easy to not have to use it. Working out your offensive inspiration takes time. I feel I got quite lucky with mine. I had a natural affinity towards it and found the time to flesh it out relatively early in my life. I can’t really speak for someone without a sword, but my gut tells me that without the foundation, the whole thing falls apart. Defensive inspiration, however, is more of an ability than a character exercise. You can learn to draw it from anywhere, and that life skill is incredibly rewarding all on its own. I’ve written about the mugs in my cupboard. I’ve written about that next moment a few seconds away. And I’ve written about what shoes I wore yesterday, the wind blowing away the leaves outside my windos, and what might happen next month. Draw inspiration from reality, your immediate situation, and your surroundings. Draw it from your past and future. From situations, events, upcoming moments, and small observations. I’ve also written about the countless movies and TV shows I watch, the fantasies I play out in my head as I walk along the street, and entirely made up scenarios. Draw inspiration from other people’s imagination. Use your own and draw it from there. You can add fact to fiction, fiction to fact, and even fiction to fiction. That alone is a well that’ll never run out as long as you go and fetch water. I don’t know about the state of your sword. I don’t know about the state of your armor. But one thing I’m certain of: You can have infinite inspiration. Wherever you are now, I wanted you to know it’s possible to get to that state. https://nik.art/you-can-have-infinite-inspiration/ #inspiration #armor #movies #defense #working #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Inspiration vs. Motivation Both are foggy concepts. Definitions vary for each of them, and there’s no hard line between them. Where does one end and the other begin? Who’s to say? Still, everyone has their own ideas. These are mine. Inspiration makes you want to start. Motivation actually makes you start. Inspiration is ideas. Motivation is momentum. Inspiration is easy. You can pull it from anywhere. Motivation is harder. It works best when it’s intrinsic, but sometimes, you need to prop it up with external means. When inspiration is scattered, it still works. You can have five different ideas in the same day and still feel fired up. When motivation is scattered, it flounders. If you’re ready to keep working on five different projects, you’ll get stuck in a prioritization loop, fail to choose, and whatever you could have achieved in the next two hours likely dissipates into thin air. Both inspiration and motivation work best when they come with focus. A strong urge to write a book about Pokémon card collecting is more likely to become a lasting vision when I nourish it for a few hours. The same is true for actually writing that book: If I can motivate myself to work solely on that project for four hours, I’ll make more progress than if I spend one hour on four different book projects each. Inspiration can be converted into motivation, but the window is brief and starts closing as soon as the sparks fly in your brain. Motivation can’t be converted into inspiration, but it sets you up for a new burst of it in the evening or on the next day. Pride after a long day of work creates space for earned relaxation, and into that relaxation bubble new ideas from your subconscious. Inspiration can be long or fleeting. Motivation is always fleeting. A single inspiration can provide nourishment for decades. Motivation must be sourced anew every day. Inspiration is irrational. The more you imagine, the better it works. Motivation is realism. You accept the limits of time, space, your body, and reality, and decide to do the best with what you have. Inspiration is feeling you have enough creative firepower to continue an adventure or go on a new one. Motivation is deciding to use that firepower even though it’ll likely only take you half as far as you hope to travel today. Both inspiration and motivation are wells. Ideally, they never run dry. Still, if your bucket scrapes on rocks, you can reset them. As to what each of them means to you, draw your own lines. Whatever adds to your working definitions will set you up for another round in the infinite game of life. https://nik.art/inspiration-vs-motivation/ #motivation #inspiration #still #both #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Honest AI We need more of it. Not, “Yes, most certainly!” and then confidently spitting out a half-baked result. I recently started testing Medium’s new social writing app, TK. I uploaded some 130 existing drafts into the system. I asked: “What’s the most important draft in my library which I can finish in the next 15 minutes?” On the first try, it suggested two pieces. One had extensive notes but was definitely not “90% there,” as the app suggested. The other was indeed “actually already finished”—it just happened to be an anniversary note I wrote for my wife, and that’s definitely not going public. But when I explained and asked again, I received a surprising yet welcome response: “I don’t see an obvious 15-minute-finish candidate in your library drafts.” Wow! How refreshing! Instead of the usual nothing-is-impossible attitude, I got an honest grounding: “Look, what you’re asking for is not feasible with the given parameters.” Then, TK gave me two more, second-best options. Instinctively, I knew it was right. But it was nice to get confirmation from a tool which can actually scan my entire draft repository. It made the permission to fire up a new tab and start from scratch feel more official, and that was nice. One stamping press makes the door of a car, another the hood, and yet another the fender. If we used one press to make all three parts, none of them would come out right. There’s nothing wrong with a tool that can’t do every job—and any tool which claims to be able to should make you suspicious. When we know our limits, we can have a sincere conversation about what it’ll take to get where we want to go. This is a hard task as it is. The last thing we need is tools which confuse us further. If they can proactively inform us about at least their limits, however, maybe even help us discover some of our own, all the better. More honest AI, please. https://nik.art/honest-ai/ #honest #yes #ai #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit