I got kicked out of college when I was 19. My GPA was 0.33. I was broke and too ashamed to ask for help. It was the end of the year and everyone was packing up for the summer. I was packing up forever.

I gave away most of my stuff. I was too lazy to move. I was almost too lazy to be alive. I sold my laptop to some guy from Craigslist for $500 bucks.

I slept in my car the first two nights. I didn’t want anyone to know how badly I fucked up. I was embarrassed. I was scared that people would think I was a loser.

I pulled my car into the back of a hotel parking lot and slept there. I didn’t know where else to go.

Sleeping in your car is pretty challenging. You don’t actually do much sleeping. I played “Brick Attack” on my flip phone and watched cars drive by to pass the time. I snuck into the hotel and ate breakfast from the buffet. I was sort of staying there.

$10 an hour doesn’t go...

This is part two of my series on Morning Rituals. You can read part one by clicking here.

Every morning that I’m alive, I finish my Morning Success Ritual.

It’s the most valuable thing that I do every single day, day in and day out. Throughout this series of blog posts, I’m going to lead you by example on building your own kickass morning ritual.

I’ve done my morning ritual in one form or another for a couple of years now. It’s constantly evolving— this morning’s ritual isn’t the same one I did a year ago, and next month’s ritual will be different from the one I do today. I’m constantly learning, optimizing, and tweaking the best way for me to start each morning with some oomph.

In the last post, I talked about how I stretch my creativity muscles with the 1/10/1000 exercise. There are some other muscles in your brain that need to get worked out too— just like you don’t only do bicep...

I recently asked a friend—

“What’s the most important thing you do everyday?”

-blank stare-

“I.. I don’t have any idea”

This was POWERFUL , because I know exactly what the most valuable thing that I do every single day is—

It’s my morning ritual, my daily success routine.

WTF is a “Morning Ritual?”

Over the years, I’ve come up with about 10 or 15 things that I do every single day, habits that I’ve noticed multiply my success and creativity.

I first got this idea from Eben Pagan and Hal Elrod’s book, The Miracle Morning.

I used to wake up  and immediately dive into my work. Maybe I’d have breakfast first, but usually not. I’d lay in bed for 30 minutes reading email as soon as my eyes opened and eventually make it to my computer to start hacking away on projects.

I read an article in Fast Company that profiled the “typical day” of a few high-profile business executives. One of the...

Who’s not a sucker for a good paperback? Over the past 5 years I’ve morphed from a self-proclaimed non-reader to an avid doggy-eared paperback collector.

I’ve never been able to adopt the ebook, even though I’m a first adopter for even the most ridiculous things (i.e, Soylent— need I say more?)

I can’t get over the fact that paperbacks just… feel good. They smell nice. They have a sound, a weight, a body. It gets more awkward. I’ve WRITTEN an ebook. And I don’t read ebooks. Yup.

I didn’t have a choice anymore

I’m swapping coasts, moving to San Francisco, and from what I’ve heard I’ll have a tough time fitting a book collection inside of a shoebox in SOMA. Tough break.

But my books.. they’re mine. To look at man’s book collection is to take a peek at his psyche. You see the stories and knowledge that has shaped his mind.

How do you get rid of your most prized possessions?

The...

Life, if well lived, is long enough — Seneca

Fuck motivation. I’ve been staring at a blinking cursor for seven months, trying to write the perfect blog post. 237 mornings, I’ve scribbled “write a blog post” on my thin, yellow legal pad hoping motivation would visit just one more time.

I was scared of writing a shitty post.

So I told myself I was busy. Didn’t have the time. Had a couple of ideas in the air. I’d get to it to it when I was motivated.

We all share a dirty secret.

Anyone who’s ever said they’ve “been too busy” is a liar. They’ve been too scared. Including you. Especially you.

Life is long enough. We say it’s short because we never make the time to live.

Being busy is a pleasant way of saying that.

Motivation is an excuse to do great things without promising to be great in the future.

It’s like, you look at the clock and realize the day is gone. It’s 8PM and sure...

When I was 21, I crashed my hang glider. I was taking hang gliding lessons from an 85-year old German immigrant named Henry, and during a training flight I plummeted out of the sky and crashed in the woods.

After the initial HOLY FUCK I JUST CRASHED AND I’M NOT SURE IF I’M ALIVE shock and the quick pat-down check to make sure my limbs were still on, my face turned rosy red and filled with embarrassment. I didn’t die, but I wished I had. I had just failed in the most spectacular, crash-the-car-going-100mph kind of way in front of my friends, and worse, Henry.

Everyone wanted to know what happened. Was my glider faulty? Sudden change of wind? No, none of those things. It was all my fault. I was going too slow. I stalled. I lost control.

It’s all my fault

Failure feels incredibly wrong. In nature, when you fail— you die. Luckily, we don’t die when we fail at startups, but it still feels...

I’m obsessed with connection. I crave sets of things. Why do we love Apple products? It runs deeper than just the user experience of a single device— it’s the experience of the entire ecosystem. I love things that just.. match. Fit together like puzzle pieces. Like, I have this weird obsession for IKEA. Not because IKEA furniture is the highest quality or the best (it’s not), but because IKEA has mastered the art of the set. Connected. Matching. I obsess over it.

But computers are still figuring it out. Technology and data still seem to have a hard time.. talking— and that’s frustrating to me, because I believe that there is an incredibly futuristic shift that happens at the intersection of the two. We’ve just touched the tip of the connected home, the connected person— Look at Nest, Wattvision, and Lockitron. This is the technology I grew up dreaming about.

The “Nest for XYZ” rush is...

Someone once asked Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. “I write only when inspiration strikes,” he replied. “Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.” - The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

I used to wait for inspiration. But inspiration is always late. Sitting nervously, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. Is it here yet? No, I don’t think so. I’ll just wait a little bit longer.

Inspiration is made up. It’s a self-defeating act of resistance, holding us back from success. From being a creator. Write a blog post without inspiration? Hah. A painting? No, no. Once I’m inspired, I’ll do it right away.

Inspiration is procrastination in a bad disguise. The dream of being great. It’s a taste of success. And it leaves you wanting more. Craving the next short-lived visit. It keeps you believing, riding the procrastination...

Ever burn an entire day knowing exactly what you need to do but just not doing it? Because you can’t seem to get traction- spinning your wheels, searching for focus?

Distraction and Focus are the ying and yang of my life. I don’t mean low-level “my coworker coughs too loud” distraction. Not that. High level, head in the clouds, foggy… just… feel like I’m sleep walking kind of distraction.

And it comes in ebbs and flows. True focus is like a drug- weeks of kicking ass, feeling like I’m on top of the world, really making progress towards what’s most important, followed by withdrawal and what feels like eternity stuck inside of a rut of inaction and paralysis.

What I do when I feel like a loser

Being distracted makes me feel like a loser. Like I’m wasting my life, not creating value.

I whip out a sheet of paper and plan out my day in 30 minute blocks.

Yes this is tedious.
Yes it...