41 | The Year of the "Hell Yeah or No"
"Most of us have lives filled with mediocrity. We said yes to things that we felt half-hearted about." — Derek Sivers
Hello friends,
Happy New Year! 🎉
After the "interesting" and very eventful year that was 2020, like many people around the world (including me), you probably don't know what to expect from 2021. Should you write down your goals and resolutions, even if you don't know when the situation will come back to normal?
I think that you should. In fact, I would say that this year, more than any year, you should go with the "hell yeah or no" mindset.
⌛️ In 2021, let’s stop waiting around.
Now I realize how many times I refused to make a choice in my life. These moments when I instinctively "knew" what I wanted, what I needed, yet my desire to make the "perfect decision" prevented me from making one at all.
How many times do we stay immobile while trying to make a choice? At a crossroad, should we go right or left? What will be the shortest road, the one with the fewer dangers? What if we choose the wrong one and end up losing our time?
“You may have heard this story: Buridan’s donkey is standing halfway between a pile of hay and a bucket of water. It keeps looking left and right, trying to decide between hay and water. Unable to decide, it eventually dies of hunger and thirst.”
— Derek Sivers, Hell Yeah or No
Quite often, refusing to make a decision will make you lose more time than making the “wrong one”. We lose time when we stay sitting on our asses waiting for some "sign" from the Universe that we should go in a direction or the other.
Any decision you make will be right, as long as YOU are the one who makes it.
🌿 Follow your instincts (and don’t be afraid to fail)
We are so afraid to fail, to embarrass ourselves and our family/friends. Although we know in our hearts what we want and what’s good for us, we follow rationality and decide to play it safe.
We don’t feel a “HELL YEAH”, yet we can’t help but say yes to this “safe option”. You know, just in case…
“We’re too busy to react when opportunities come our way. We miss out on the great because we’re busy with the mediocre.” — Derek Sivers, Hell Yeah or No
Follow your instincts and do things the way you see them, today. Don’t wait around for people to give you permission.
Just realize today that:
You’ll never satisfy everyone.
You can’t fail. Even when you choose the “wrong road”, you end up learning valuable lessons and you can improve your decision-making process.
Don’t take advice from other people, they can only see their own experiences and filters. You’re the one living your life. Enjoy going against the current when it’s what your heart tells you. Worst consequence? You will be the one to learn the most.
In 50 years, better laugh at your few (or many if you dare) mistakes than realizing the “I should have…”
❓We all have an internal compass (and it’s okay if it’s not the same as others).
How many of the amazing events of your life were completely unexpected?
You just made one little "hunch" decision: going to a place you hadn't planned and finding a friend (or who knows, the love of your life 😏)?
You made a random choice to do something out of your habits and you landed an amazing opportunity without even being able to explain how?
Now I don't say that we shouldn't think and plan our actions, but we definitely should listen to our intuitions more, our inner compass: let it guide us.
In 2021, let's stop making decisions based on how we think other people will react. The truth is that deep down, we all know (mostly unconsciously) what we want, but we let rationality stop us. We let the "what if" stop us? Let's stop that in 2021.
In 2021, let it be the year of the HELL YEAH OR NO.
If something drives you, and make your inner fire roar, just go for it. Don't do it to please people; do it for YOU.
Quick Note: If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can subscribe right here:
— What I loved this week
Here's what I've been loving this week:
📱 One tool I'm loving: Paper! Well, it’s not exactly an app or a digital tool, nor is it ground-breaking, but these days, I particularly enjoy using paper to reflect on things or to track my habits. I spend so many hours looking dully at a screen for work/learning that taking time to reflect with analogical tools is quite refreshing. The real world is the best app, you should check it out!
📖 Book recommendation: Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday. Just started reading it on January first and I like these bite-sized ideas from the Stoic philosophers we all know of but don’t know about, like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. I could read it in one go, but I definitely enjoy taking it one day at a time.
🗣 Quote of the week: “Most people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a month. We overestimate what we can do in a year, and underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade." — Matthew Kelly.
✏️ Content, books, and videos I learned from this week:
📰 Keep calm and make ugly art | by Austin Kleon
📰 How Notion pulled itself back from the brink of failure | Figma Blog
🐦 Interesting thread by Juvoni Beckford on Twitter
📘 Ikigai | by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles
🎶 born stubborn | by Yoko Kanno
— What I created this week
Here is what I created for you lately.
🙏 Looking back on 2020
At the end of each year, I like to go back in time and review it. Think of what I achieved and what I didn’t get to. Think of what I’m proud of and what I could have done better; all in the hopes of improving myself for the next year. In this post, I do all of that, and I brace myself for a rocking 2021 🎸.
🚀 2021, a year of growth
In 2021, I would like to stop playing around and putting being afraid to try things out. I want to “just build things first, think later”, no matter if it’s not the perfect way to do it or if I don’t have all the answers. I want to figure things out as I go. Although it might sound counter-intuitive, I want to fail and misstep a lot, so that I can learn how to get up and stand on my feet better every time.
See you next week 👋🏾