By Colby Kultgen
63 Principles for Life, Do it For The Story, and Elfing
Read online / Read time: 4 minutes
Hello friends!
Here is your weekly dose of 1% Better.
The newsletter where I share my 5 favorite ideas, lessons, and discoveries of the week.
Let's get right into it.
Sometimes I think these “life lesson” lists are fool’s gold.
Shiny and fun to read, but lacking any real substance.
This one is not like that.
I first saw it shared by Tim Ferriss which was already a good sign. Then I opened it and found myself highlighting half the doc.
It didn't feel like recycled advice.
More like someone had compressed a lot of genuinely painful trial and error into compact sentences.
Here's a preview with the first 10:
1) Think about what makes you ‘imbalanced’ as a personality, and do things where this gives you an edge.
2) Once you are ok with people telling you ‘no’, you can ask for whatever you want. Make reality say no to you.
3) Fun is underrated. The best and most creative work comes from a root of joy and excitement. You can feel this in your body.
4) Environment matters a lot. Move to where you flourish maximally. Put yourself in environments where you have to perform to your utmost. If you can get by being average, you probably will. Greek saying: “A captain only shows during a storm.”
5) Later, you’ll be nostalgic for right now.
6) Do things fast. Things don’t actually take much time, as measured by a stopwatch. Resistance and procrastination do. “Slow is fake.” If no urgency exists, impose some.
7) Moving fast forces you to strip things down to the bare bones.
8) Wealth can be created. There is not a fixed amount of it in the world. Somebody doing well doesn’t always come at someone else’s expense.
9) “The world is a museum of passion projects.”
10) Doing as much as you can every day is a form of life extension.
Bonus challenge for you: sit down and write out a few of your own hard-earned life principles.
I've found it to be a surprisingly helpful exercise.
2. A useful reframe for overthinkers
I know, this kind of advice is a wild oversimplification.
"Just do it for fun and you won't be anxious anymore!" 🙃
If only it were that easy.
With that said, I do want to highlight two things here that have actually been really helpful for me:
- Do it for the story. When I think about my favorite stories to tell, they all pretty much stem from me completely bombing at something: a date, an interview, a simple social interaction. So now, when I start to think a moment might go sideways, I remind myself that the worst case is a good story I'll get to tell for years to come.
- Stop taking life so seriously. As a recovering control freak, this has been a powerful mantra for me. Take the serious things seriously, and loosen up about everything else. Sing more, laugh more, play more. Life is so much more enjoyable when you remove the stick from your ass (pardon my language).
Zach Cregger is the writer and director of horror hits Barbarian and Weapons.
And he has one of the best (and most ridiculous) tricks for overcoming perfectionism that I've come across.
He calls it "elfing."
When he’s trying to write a first draft, he pretends he has hired a tiny, stupid elf to write it for him (yes, really).
The elf isn't supposed to be good.
The elf isn't supposed to be clever.
The elf’s job is simply to get something on the page.
Cregger even names the file "Elf Draft" and jokes that he only pays the elf $10, so he gets what he pays for. Once the pressure is gone, the pages pile up fast.
It reminded me of this incredible clip from the Beatles documentary "Get Back."
Paul McCartney sits down with his bass and starts mumbling complete gibberish. None of it is great, but he keeps going anyway. A few minutes later, the gibberish slowly turns into "Get Back," one of the most famous songs the Beatles ever made.
The lesson here is this: Rather than getting stuck at the planning phase of any creative endeavor, give yourself permission to start badly.
Make it exist first. You can make it good later.
4. A course to help you build systems into your life
My friend Ben Meer has a system for basically everything.
Remembering birthdays.
Planning his week.
Saving money.
Staying in touch with friends.
Not forgetting things when he travels.
And while I occasionally make fun of him for this, I've also stolen a surprising number of those systems.
So I was excited to see that he turned them into a course.
It's called Year of Systems.
The idea is simple: install one practical life system each week for a year.
The course will eventually cost $297, but Ben is giving it away free to the first 5,000 people who pre-order his upcoming book, How to Be Good at Life.
Check it out here.
5. Tweet of the week
😂
A few more things I'm into this week:
📖 Book I'm reading (and loving): Ultra-Processed People
🏀 Game I'm addicted to: 82-0.com (build a historic NBA team and try to get an 82-0 record)
🖼️ Website that chooses a Rothko artwork to match your city’s weather: rothko.joonas.wtf
📰 Quote I keep thinking about:
"Worrying is such a terrible use of your imagination."
P.S. If you see this, reply with an emoji. I want to know who actually reads these emails and who just skims.
— Colby
