James Barry

The Scorpion & The Frog – It’s In Your Nature

by | Sep 8, 2021 | Mindset

You may know the Aesop’s Fable called The Scorpion and The Frog.

If you haven’t, it’s a short read:

A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both drown. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. The frog lets the scorpion climb on its back and begins to swim. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: “I couldn’t help it. It’s in my nature.”

The scorpion knew stinging the frog would cause him to drown, yet that knowledge didn’t stop him from killing them both.

Scorpions can’t control what is in their nature. Even when their life is at stake.

Humans are exactly the same and our history is littered with “intelligent” people making incredibly dumb decisions.

Here are two huge ones:

For both, their choices were made not by them, but by their nature.

You might think they were doomed, but had they simply planned around their basic instincts, they could have avoided becoming examples.

  • Archie Karas could have entrusted a portion of his wealth to a financial advisor, outside his control.
  • Bill Clinton could have had only male interns assigned to him instead of Monica. (Extreme… but effective)

In the moment though, they succumbed to their nature because they didn’t plan ahead.

Bill and Archie had no systems or processes in place to help them when they were most vulnerable. Their choices were made for them, just like the scorpion.

Unlike the scorpion though, we have the ability to plan ahead and we need to use it to our advantage wherever we can.

With the right systems and the right plan, you can stop yourself from making decisions others might view as inevitable.

The better we prepare, the shorter we will fall when we inevitably make mistakes.

As my one of my favorite authors said:

You Fall To The Level of Your Systems.

– James Clear

Better make the level of your systems as high as possible.

3 Ways To Jumpstart Your Creative Process

by | Aug 31, 2021 | Time Allocation

Being creative is difficult.

It’s time consuming and does not happen on a clear schedule, but it can be incredibly rewarding.

I’ve tried to make the creative process more efficient over the past year. Here are the three improvements I wish I had made sooner:

Improvement Number 1: Invest in Note Taking

Trying to be creative and find new ideas without a clear process is inefficient. Stupidly inefficient.

That’s because the brain is literally an idea machine.

🧠 Sleep? Nah, let’s think about things.

🧠 Shower? What about this cool article idea?

🧠 Listening to a podcast while Driving? That topic would make a perfect article!

You could be putting in maximum effort, but if you are only writing down 50% of everything you learn and your new ideas, you’re 50% less productive.

We are all constantly producing seeds of what could be great content. However, if you never plant the seeds (i.e. write them down) they will never grow.

To tackle this problem I invested the two resources I have:

  1. Time
  2. Money

Investing in note-taking and your creative process is easily one of the best places to invest, because the more efficient you are, the more time you will save.

If you think time is your most valuable resource (it is), then put the time in to take proper notes.

Improvement Number 2: Consume the Proper Content.

For the first 10 years of my adultish life (i.e. late teens, early 20s), the content I consumed was either a business or self-help book.

That was a boring time in my reading life.

Today, I either read or listen to a much wider range of books and topics. Fiction, non-fiction, podcasts of all different shapes and sizes, and blogs I had never heard of.

Recently when I’ve been looking for specific takeaways to improve my day-to-day, I’ve listened to Creative Elements. It’s a podcast that only interviews content creators. It goes into minute detail on the creative process and provides a step-by-step guide on how to come up with ideas (which happens to be the area I need the most help currently).

For general learning, I listen to anything and everything. You never know what you’re going to learn from an autobiography, a fiction book, or a random blog. Just search for important takeaways and you will find them.

Improvement Number 3: Reduce Friction

You know what’s difficult? Pausing your life to take down your notes and ideas.

You know what’s easy(ish)? Creating a frictionless process to capture notes and ideas.

Here is how I built mine:

First, pick a note taking app. I use Roam Research and cannot recommend it highly enough.

Second, identify ways to take notes when you previously couldn’t. Here are a few recent improvements I’ve made:

  • Use Airr when listening to podcasts so I can record audio clips that generated ideas.
  • Use Audible‘s clip feature (same as above) to record Audiobook clips.
  • Broke out my 6 year old Kindle to begin highlighting everything I think is important.
  • Push all my notes / highlights into Roam (Where I write all my articles).

Third, choose a way to keep track of your ideas (ideally in the same note taking app). I have five buckets in Roam where I create content for my blog and social posts:

  • 💡 Writing Ideas: New ideas go here. I use this as a bucket to write down anything that could ever become an article or post.
  • 📑 Writing Outlines: Next step for any ideas is outlining them.
  • ✍🏼 Writing Drafts: Once a real draft is fleshed out, it sits here for review before being published.
  • 📗 Writing Published: This is where published articles go.
  • 💀 Writing Graveyard: Not all ideas are created equal. Ideas that never made the cut go here. Maybe I’ll revisit them later. Probably not though.

Below is what this actually looks like in Roam.

This process is not perfect.

In fact, I’m always looking to improve it.

But it’s infinitely better than what I did a year ago, which was take NO notes ever.

To make any change, you first need to take a small step forward.

50% Effort

by | Aug 20, 2021 | Time Allocation

There are few things that I put 100% effort into.

That level of effort is scary for two reasons.

First, putting 100% of your effort requires a unique amount of dedication.

It will overshadow everything else in your life.

Second, putting 100% of your effort means that when you fail, it will hurt.

A LOT.

It’s emotionally draining knowing your best was not good enough.

So now we’re stuck at an impasse.

But to achieve great things, you need to give 100% effort.

Life is long though. Splitting your effort across many disciplines informs later choices.

So instead of striving for greatness out the gate.

Strive to do many things as possible.

So when you do finally put in 100% and dedicate your life.

You’ll be ok with it overshadowing everything else.

And you wont fail 🤞🏼.

Why You Should Slowly Add Forcing Functions To Your Life

by | Aug 11, 2021 | Mindset, Time Allocation

When you have your first child, it forces you to become more mature.

You’ve added a net new responsibility to your list. The care and ownership of another human.

To take on that responsibility, you need to make better decisions. Improve how you allocate your time, increase your earning power, say no to more things, etc.

Frankly, adding that responsibility is terrifying. Which is why at 27, I haven’t had a child yet.

It’s an interesting concept to think about though. If having a child could improve your time allocation or increase your earning power, what else force you to make improvements?

Here are a few that come to mind:

  1. Receiving a job promotion.
  2. Adopting a dog. (similar to having a kid, but not really)
  3. Buying a house.
  4. Entering a long-term relationship.
  5. Joining a non-profit
  6. Launching a blog.

A forcing function doesn’t guarantee change though.

Technically, you can have a child and not take on any additional responsibility.

There are plenty of people that do that.

However, if you use forcing functions with good intentions, they can be great tools to change behaviors.

For example, launching this blog has led to three clear improvements in my life:

  1. I spend a significant amount of time each week writing.
  2. Whenever I consume content, I take copious notes (using Roam Research).
  3. I’ve become a lot more intentional about what type of content I consume.

It does not always feel great in the moment to have a force that changes your behavior.

In the long run though, you’ll be glad you made the change though.

So maybe today is the day to go out and do whatever you’ve been putting off.

Get a dog. Launch a blog. Start volunteering.

You won’t regret it.

Sometimes, not getting what you want is exactly what you need.

by | Aug 5, 2021 | Time Allocation

At the start of 2020 I was unemployed.

I had just dissolved the business that I worked on for the past year.

So I started my job hunt and applied to my two “𝘋𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘮 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘦𝘴”.

Here’s how the interview process went:

𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐀: Got to the reference stage. Then they froze hiring.
𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐁: Got to the project stage. My project wasn’t good enough.

I was absolutey crushed.

Recently, I decided to check in on both the companies

𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐀: Everybody who interviewed me has quit / left.
𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐁: Laid off half of their employees.

Now I work at a company I love.

With coworkers I respect.

Sometimes, not getting what you want is exactly what you need.