Rootz's Blog

There’s a reason Steve Jobs said, “Think different.” He knew that thinking differently, being different,  not  doing what everyone else is doing, is the key to being successful. . . You want a sure-fire way to succeed? I have good news for you: It’s not that difficult. The trick is to do better than the majority of people around you. Even if just slightly better. If your coworkers show up late for work, show up early. If your friends refuse to take good advice, take good advice. If your classmates don’t study for the test, study. If everyone else is selling, buy. If everyone is buying, sell. This method basically guarantees that you’ll end up on top. You automatically have the upper hand. Because, statistically speaking, most people you know (or will get to know) are average people. To be above average, you have to be at least slightly better than them. Slightly harder-working, slightly more diligent, slightly more self-aware, slightly better at public speaking, etc. ...

We all know them. Those people who are always, always, pulled-together. They're on time, look great, never seem rushed, produce great results. And I'm here to spill their secret. Not because I think I am some role-model or whatever but simply because I obsessively use their secret and I don't want it to be a secret anymore. The secret is what I call buffer time. Buffer time is the accumulation of those little moments that usually go undetected in our daily lives. It’s the time you spend walking from your car into the store. It’s the time you spend in line for your coffee or waiting for a friend to show up. These little moments of seeming emptiness— — seemingly unusable time— — in fact add up to a lot , a lot in terms of the amount of time and in quality of time. The trick is to turn those moments into high-quality moments. Let me give you a couple examples. . . Any time when I am walking from one place to another, like to or  from my car, or anytime I'm in some s...

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who live in what I’ll call “default state” and those who live in “preferred state”. And here’s where I get the tiniest bit geeky and invoke the image of an energy graph for an atom, where the atom can be in one of two states, as shown below. [ image source ] At any given moment, a person can either be in the initial energy state or the lower energy state. He cannot be in both, and he can move from one to the other. But this moving requires two things: energy and time (no quantum tunneling in this analogy). And most of us think we don’t have enough of either. Default state is where most of us exist, as reactants. It’s where we started, probably as soon as we got into high school. It’s where most of the people we know are, and it isn’t so bad, at least not for most of us. The default state is where you stay if you do the bare minimum. You get C's and B's. You do what it takes to keep your job, maybe only just eno...

Here’s a list of the top 10 podcasts that make up a majority of my podcast-listening time, in no particular order. . .  Hello Internet To this show I owe my entire addiction to podcasts. Whether you know CGP Grey and Brady Haran or not (and I can’t tell you what an awful person you are if you don’t) this show is worth listening to, beginning to end. It’s entertaining and funny, and you’re bound to learn new things. My favorite aspect of the show is how, as you listen, you’ll invariably begin to take a side. Are you on the Haran side or the Grey side? More logical or more gut-led? More of a robot or caveman? And the culture around this show is incredible. I don’t think there’s ever been anything like it for any podcast ever. Radiolab 100% of the episodes turn out to be interesting and important. I don’t believe I’ve ever skipped an episode because of the content. This show is a classic. And the editing is amazing, for those of you who are interested in doing your o...

Finding the way through a place is all about continuation, not destination. It's not about knowing where you want to end up but instead knowing how to go from where you are to the next place you need to be in order to, eventually though not inevitably, reach your destination. You're in a strange town in a strange country. You have an address but no maps and no knowledge of the way the town is splayed out over the rough mountainous farmland surrounding you. You'd be able to recognize the place once you got to it by the address tacked to the stuccoed wall but not before. What do you do? Besides ask for help and a map, what could you possibly do? You could drive every street, looking for patterns in the foreign street names. Or you could give up. The point is, without reference points and a common language, without knowing what turn to take next and what landmark to mark next, finding your way through a place isn't so much an act of looking for something as it is an ...

(Quotes throughout are taken from this amazing article by Maria Popova.) “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” I read this and started to think about balance. What’s the right balance between productivity/routine and presence/spontaneity? In defense of routines: “London maintained that every writer needed a technique, experience, and a philosophical position.” Lots of writers had/have routines. They are generally a very obsessive and superstitious bunch. (“I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have  superstition bout examining it too closely.” - Anne Tyler) I’m not necessarily a writer, but I am a college student, and the same things can be said of me as of many writers. The seclusion. The writer’s block. The seeming futility of the work. The routines in my life help me to overlook and overcome the dread of starting another day that is mostly like the last one and mostly filled with things I don’t feel like doing. Getting...

To keep a thorough to-do list, to be totally on top of the expectations placed on you, is to free your mind to reach its full potential. It gives your brain permission to explore, permission to wander when it wishes to, permission to operate at its highest capacity. Emptying your mind into a to-do list is like lubricating the gears on your bicycle. Everything moves faster and smoother. And you can go further. There's a reason a clear mind works better than a full one. Your brain isn't made to multitask. It's meant to specialize. It wants to focus and find a state of flow. It's your impatient, primitive being that wants to be constantly rewarded and distracted. So externalize the demands of life. Externalize the routine tasks, the boring stuff, the important stuff—everything—onto a to-do list, a daily checklist and/or a calendar. It's only after externalizing every worry and reminder that your brain will wake up, come up with ideas and learn to enjoy the moment...