As an adult, I realized it’s all an illusion. We don’t but we’re better at pretending we do. In my twenties, I was a zombie mindlessly following others without stopping to ever question what really mattered to me. I let society trick me into taking the path of least resistance even though I felt empty inside.

I didn’t want to live life like that and I don’t think you want to either.

It starts with a simple pause.

Rather than living by other people’s definitions, you can make your own. People discuss some concepts as if everyone thinks the same way as them but what’s meaningful to you might be mean nothing to me. The last thing I want you to do is to copy me. I want you to understand yourself better so you can resist when life’s flow is dragging you in the wrong direction.

There are three concepts people often use in a way that conflicts with how their inner self sees the world.

Busyness

You have the same 24 hours as everyone else on Earth. We all spend each moment doing something so what exactly do you mean when you say you’re busy?

Busyness has become a plague because many people only use it in the context of work. I’ve lost count of the number of times my friends and I canceled on each other last minute because we were “busy”. I don’t remember any of these nights but I chose to sacrifice quality time with people are care about for them. It doesn’t make any sense.

76% of US workers say work stress has negatively affected their personal relationships.

Today, when I have dinner plans then as far as the rest of the world is concerned, I’m busy. Clients will have to wait. I define busyness as whenever I’m doing something which adds value to my life regardless of whether it makes me money. These boundaries have made a huge difference to my mental health.

At yoga class once, I remember a woman who kept her phone right by the side of her mat. She tapped the screen whenever she got the chance to read the previews of her messages. Halfway through the class, she packed up and walked out. She took a call right outside the door. “Hi, sorry I didn’t reply. Yes, don’t worry, I’ll have your report by tonight.”

My phone was on airplane mode on the other side of the room. I was too busy looking after my mental health to check client emails.

Look at your own life. What do you say you “need” to do when it’s actually a choice? Most of the time, bosses and clients can wait because you’re allowed to have a life. You cannot tell yourself you value something if you don’t think you’re busy while you’re doing it.

Integrity

“I’m going to destroy him. I’m going to make sure he loses his job and no one ever hires him again. How can he do this to me? Everyone knows I have integrity. I have to stand up for my principles.” — Acquaintance circa 2015

Listening to this rant on the phone, I couldn’t help but think the speaker defined integrity in a way I couldn’t understand. This was all a reaction to him thinking a colleague had taken credit for his work despite having no evidence. A day later his boss promoted him because of his colleague’s glowing feedback.

The way I looked at this person changed after this incident. Our definitions of integrity were too divergent for me to want to stay in touch.

Everyone thinks they are principled because everyone makes stories up in their head to justify their actions. How often do you hear someone say they lack integrity? It’s made the word meaningless. Peer pressure relies on distorting people’s sense of integrity to follow the herd even when their internal right-and-wrong alarm bell is ringing.

While I strongly advise you to follow the laws of your country, for non-criminal acts, the lines can be blurry. Whenever you overstep a line, you can just move the line and sleep easy at night if you don’t stop to define them. What does being a good person mean to you? Are you living by these principles or bending them?

Startup founders are classic cases of people who lack self-awareness when it comes to integrity. They’ll preach about the virtues of the environment and mental health whilst polluting and overworking their staff. Don’t allow there to be a disconnect between the person you are, and the person you think you are.

Success

Take a look at Instagram. I bet it won’t be long before you see a post about someone celebrating their engagement with a fat diamond on their finger. People need to spend two months’ salary on this diamond to prove their love for their partner.

The last line isn’t true at all. It was made up by a mining company to sell diamonds.

So much of what we believe about success is distorted by the between 6,000 to 10,000 ads we are exposed to every day. Advertisers want us to value material wealth so they can buy the stuff they think makes them look successful. It’s a vicious cycle and we all play our part in keeping it going.

One of the greatest tragedies of a developed society is the blurring of the meanings of success and wealth.

I choose not to define success as being rich. My fashion style is simple and you won’t see me spending $1000 on a jacket to impress people. If I need to buy someone’s affections then it’s automatically a poor trade in my eyes.

I got an email from a stranger from the other side of the world last week. She told me my articles helped her through a low point during the pandemic when her mind was attacking itself. Even the memory of reading her email gives me goosebumps. Success.

I won’t pretend to be a martyr. I want enough money to live comfortably and the clarity of mind to care for my mental health. My version of career success is a sustainable long-term positive impact. In life, I want to be the person who makes the good times better for the people I love and the bad times not so bad.

What’s your version of success?

They use it because their parents weren’t rich but they forget about all their employees. Most businesses aren’t built by one visionary without the help of an army of helpers. Few people actually do it all by themselves even if they claim to.

Eric Barone is one of these rare creatures.

Using wages as a part-time theatre usher as funding, he created the massively popular Stardew Valley video game. All by himself. For context, the development of Super Mario Odyessy needed 68 different specialized roles. Eric was the producer, storyteller, developer, audio director, and artist all rolled into one.

It took him over four years but the game was an instant smash hit. Professional game reviewers loved it too; IGN rated it 95/100. It’s sold at least 15 million copies and made at least $34 million for Eric; the revenue is likely to be much higher today as that number comes from 2017.

You might be tempted to follow in his footsteps but when you read on, you’ll see how his obsession almost broke him.

It was just meant to be practice

“I just had my intuition as to what was the next important thing I should work on.” — Eric Barone

Hindsight bias is strong in many entrepreneurs. They’ll preach about how they always had a higher mission when they started their business but it’s easy to say when they’ve already made it.

Eric is more humble. He was a computer science major who no one would hire. He only started working on the game as a way to keep his coding skills sharp so he could impress potential employers. The burning passion to make the game perfect came later on. Maybe if Apple had given him a job, millions of people would never have had the pleasure of playing Stardew Valley.

You don’t need to begin with the end in mind. It’s ok to start something and work out along the way whether or not you’re passionate about it. We’re all muddling our way through life. You can abandon a project if doesn’t light a fire in your belly but you could build something great if it does. You’ll never know unless you try.

Why not me?

The mindset shift from practice to tenacity had one basic pillar.

Whenever he came across a task he didn’t know how to do, he asked himself, “why not me?” If there were other people out there who could do it, why couldn’t he learn how to do it? Pixel art was something he remembers being difficult but he sunk hundreds of hours into getting better. His self-belief meant Stardew Valley was high quality in every measure.

Yet the me-against-the-world mentality also stopped him from ever asking for help. Most of us turn to Google with our problems and we will often find the answer yet sometimes no one has posted about the unique challenge you face. When I worked in tech this is when I would ask a colleague or ask for advice in a forum. I saw no point in re-inventing the wheel as the end product would be the same.

In some ways, Eric succeeded because he took this outlook and in other ways, it was despite it.

The irony

For those of you who have never played Stardew Valley, it’s a refreshingly simple game.

The main character in Stardew Valley quits his job at an inflexible corporation because his grandpa leaves him a plot of land in the middle of nowhere. The character chooses to restart his life out in nature surrounded by beauty. The gameplay is based around farming and interacting with characters who have a human-like depth to them.

This was the complete opposite to Eric’s life. He worked 80 hour weeks and barely left the house. He was his own inflexible boss but there was no plot of land to escape to. His girlfriend remembers what he was like:

“He would be working all day till 11:30 P.M. and I would be like, ‘Hey, you have to get off the computer. You have to do something with me. We have to eat dinner. We have to watch an episode of Star Trek.’ I needed more interaction with him.”

Eric’s obsessive attention to detail made the game as great as it is but the costs to his health and his relationships were great. If I told you that all you needed to do was work 80 hour weeks on top of a part-time job and stay inside all day to make $30 million, would you take it?

He admits “it was definitely a struggle to keep my sanity.”

Burnout strikes

Even after the game was released in 2016, Eric continued being a one-man team for a while. He’d have to be superhuman to provide support to millions of players and eventually all his hard work caught up with him.

In August 2017, he took an overdue break and went on a road trip across America with his girlfriend and housemates. Eric experienced the outside world again with the freedom of one of his virtual characters. They stopped off in California where he allowed himself to relax on the beach like when he was a kid. He later hired someone to help him manage Stardew Valley.

He’s now working on a new project called Haunted Chocolatier by himself again. Yet the unhealthy obsession no longer seems to be there. He’s learned from Stardew Valley and while he wants his new game to be even better, he’s not destroying himself to do it.

I believe he can be proud of is how many people’s lives he has impacted with his game. During the pandemic, the importance of gaming to people’s mental health came into focus. I know many people who used gaming as a way to cope whether it be complex games such as Eric’s Stardew Valley or simple games such as free online solitaire.

It might not have been his intention but there are so many examples of people who say it has made their lives better. Maybe making games despite the money isn’t the best thing for your mental health but playing them could be.

It just happens. That’s life.

This happened to me a few weeks ago with the worst possible timing. Projects I had been excited by all came in at once and my brain seemed to go on strike. You know the scene from Marvel’s Avengers when where the Hulk refuses to come out to play? I felt like Bruce Banner. Out of my depth.

I had to change things up to get back to 100%. Try these techniques for yourself to see if they work for you. You don’t need to commit to doing them forever just until you get your mojo back again.

#1 Do a warm-up

When you’re in a slump, you can spend more time thinking about doing a task than it would take to actually do it. This used to happen with me and writing all the time. I made excuses to spend five more minutes on Instagram which always seemed to turn into an hour.

A simple hack I use to get myself writing is starting by taking online typing tests. The text is meaningless but it gets my fingers flowing. It’s like a game so I never procrastinate on this and this wins half the battle against my inertia.

I found this works for any high-brainpower task. Warm yourself up with something with no real pressure to get your momentum going. If you need to do heavy statistical work, find a random quirky dataset to mess about with. It’s cognitively easier because it doesn’t matter but at least you’re doing the same actions.

#2 Look at the bricks, not the wall

Perhaps counter-intuitively, when my productivity is slumping, I make my to-do list longer. The underlying amount of work doesn’t change but I break each task down into small components. I make sure it won’t take me longer than 20 minutes to cross anything off the list.

I confess part of this is procrastination. Yet, more importantly, it means nothing feels overwhelming. I can cross more items off per day which makes me feel good rather than doing 90% of one big task and my to-do list looking untouched.

If you find yourself feeling like you’ve achieved nothing in a day, why not try breaking down a task. If it’s writing an article, switch from the mindset of it’s not finished to the introduction, and the first three sections are done. It’s a more upbeat way of looking at your day.

#3 Channel your Marie

Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up made a big splash both as a book and on Netflix. Let’s be real, most of us don’t prioritize organization as much in our daily lives as she does.

Yet when I can’t seem to get anything “productive” done, I often end up tidying up my room. It’s cathartic to give order to the objects around me when my mind is so messy. It’s a low brainpower task but a job I need to do. The results are clear and in the end, you feel like you’ve done something good.

You can do the same for digital clutter too. Maybe I’m weird but I can spend hours sorting out files into the right places and feel relaxed. Again it’s a job that needs to be done but doesn’t need much thinking. Perfect for a slump.

#4 Buddy up

I’ve been my own boss for nearly six months now and I’ve noticed a glitch in my matrix. Despite enjoying my creative self-led projects the most, I often prioritized the tasks I had to do for other people first. It was as if I quit my job to be a slave to my clients instead.

I don’t believe enough self-employed people talk about how hard it is to keep up your intrinsic motivation. It’s easier to work towards other people’s deadlines because it feels concrete whereas you can always kick your own ambitions down the road.

Accountability is crucial for me to ensure I work on what deep down I know I want to work on. I’ve started sending 2-minute daily updates to people in my inner circle where I assess the previous day’s productivity and outline my to-do list for the current day. Knowing I’m going to need to explain myself if I keep missing my goals helps to keep my mind on track. You might find it does the same for you too.

I’m launching a YouTube channel soon and I publically announced my intention to post a video a week from January 2022 while on a podcast with Hasan Kubba. If you are reading this in 2022 and my channel hasn’t met this promise, call me out on social media and I promise to retweet.

#5 No sweatpants when working

When I worked in consulting, one of my everyday joys was coming home, taking my suit off, and getting into sweatpants. It signaled the end of work mode and the start of chill mode.

Once I had the freedom to wear what I want, the suit gathered dust in my cupboard. I was sweatpants all day, every day. For a while, this was great like eating candy for breakfast. I was productive and comfortable, why would I ever choose to end this?

The problem is when I didn’t feel like working then I was already in my chill mode clothes. In my new freedom honeymoon, I could make myself work like this but it became more difficult over time. I began to resent myself for working when I’d rather just lounge around. Why was I spoiling chill mode?

While I haven’t dusted off my suit, I now wear business casual during the day. Studies have shown clothing can give you more confidence and it’s made a difference to me. I get the extra benefit of being able to switch back to sweatpants at the end of the day too.

Even if you aren’t your own boss, whenever you’re doing work from your own home, try to not taint your clothes for chilling by working in them.

#6 Reboot

Machines don’t have feelings but when they are a bit sluggish, the first thing we do is turn them off and give them a rest. We then switch them on again to see if our issue is solved.

If our first instinct with a machine is to switch it off then why do we try to force ourselves to work when our CPU is overloaded? Your productivity might be crashing because you are burnt out and you can try all the hacks in the world but nothing will substitute rest.

When I feel like this, I go to sleep earlier. Anything outstanding on my list can be picked up the following day in 99% of cases.

If it’s too late for this then you might need to take some time off and completely reboot. You might think you can’t do this but you get more done by working closer to 100% when you’re back than plodding along at 40% effectiveness.

It’s simple mathematics.

Give. Yourself. A. Break.

2021 hasn’t been the year we all hoped for but I’m hopeful 2022 will be brighter.

You might have struggled to find the time to keep up to date with the best business books this year so I’ve compiled this list for you. The current times are reflected in what people were reading with several corporate catastrophe books as well as books covering equality and the climate.

Ranking books is always highly subjective and I use a simple formula to order this list. Like movies, the first people to review are super fans or know the author personally. I account for that by giving extra weight to the number of reviews then I normalize the raw figures to give a score out of 100.

This isn’t a list of my favorite books but based on the views of the highly engaged readers of Goodreads.com.

AP: Amardeep Parmar score (books are ranked from lowest to highest score)
GR: Goodreads.com rating and number of ratings
AZ: Amazon.com rating and number of ratings

(Please note that this story contains affiliate links but you can choose to simply google the titles instead should you wish to purchase elsewhere. You can find the 2020 list here.)

#20 Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power by Brooke Baldwin

AP: 72/ GR: 4.2 from 260/ AZ:4.8 from 236

Brooke is a CNN journalist and explores the importance of women supporting each other. Now I’m not a woman but her advice has been well-received by many. It offers practical tips for women to work together to achieve their collective goals within an organization.

#19 Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe

AP: 74/ GR: 4 from 1387/ AZ: 4.4 from 130

If you’re looking for an upbeat book, keep scrolling. Sarah unleashes a strong critique of the way we look at work by exploring how we got to where we are. The central message is stop seeking to love what you do for money because it’s all part of the system. Whether you find that depressing or empowering is down to you!

#18 Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam by Vivek Ramaswamy

AP: 74/ GR: 4.17 from 538/ AZ: 4.8 from 1312

Potentially the most controversial book on this list though it’s not as aggressive as the title might suggest. Vivek argues companies across America are only taking stands on certain topics as a form of marketing rather than believing in what they say. If you think an advert is just to tick a box, you might be right.

#17 A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload by Cal Newport

AP: 75/ GR: 3.95 from 2681/ AZ: 4.4 from 956

I confess I check my emails obsessively even though I know I shouldn’t. Emails were designed to be asynchronous but too many people expect instant replies. Cal offers a guide to change this damaging culture in your work and business.

#16 The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba

AP: 76/ GR: 4.12 from 1016/ AZ:4.4 from 336

This is the only book on this list where I have personally met one of the authors! So much business advice relies on a mantra of hard work and sacrifice but Hasan and Ali reveal unfair advantages is the secret. We all have something we can bring to a business that our competitors can’t. They provide a roadmap for exploiting your unfair advantages.

#15 The Key Man: The True Story of How the Global Elite Was Duped by a Capitalist Fairy Tale by Simon Clark and Will Louch

AP: 76/ GR: 4.23 from 549/ AZ: 4.4 from 243

An insane story. Simon Clark and Will Louch expose Arif Navqi who cheated investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars. Both Obama and Bill Gates were amongst his victims. Compared to other tales of massively fraudulently businessmen, Arif’s is relatively unknown but no less riveting.

#14 The Conversation: How Seeking and Speaking the Truth about Racism Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations by Robert Livingston

AP: 76/ GR: 4.42 from 206/ AZ: 4.8 from 109

The protests of the last few years have increased the importance of workplace equality and Robert Livingston’s book is a useful aid. He aims to open up conversations rather than shut them down. It’s a thoughtful read which is heartfelt rather than preachy.

#13 Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s Legendary CEO by Satoru Iwata, Hobonichi, Sam Bett

AP: 77/ GR: 4.19 from 1071/ AZ: 4.8 from 1231

A short book with a collection of insights about the revolutionary leader who drove Nintendo between 2002 and 2015. He’s the man who chose to not compete with Sony and Microsoft on hardware and focus on creating games people loved instead. So many joyous moments in living rooms around the world have occurred because of his vision.

#12 An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang

AP: 79/ GR: 4.08 from 2946/ AZ: 4.4 from 701

You have to wonder if Facebook renamed itself to Meta just so history doesn’t immediately associate them to the stings like this. It won’t work. If you want to be up to date on how much the company has abused its power, read this.

#11 Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire by Brad Stone

AP: 80/ GR: 4.15 from 2676/ AZ: 4.5 from 1008

Brad’s earlier book on Amazon, “The Everything Store”, was a huge bestseller in 2013. A lot has happened in the last eight years and that’s the subject of this book. It covers all the major events in detail with an often positive lens but Brad doesn’t avoid the difficult questions.

#10 My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future by Indra Nooyi

AP: 81/ GR: 4.4 from 808/ AZ: 4.7 from 288

As someone of Indian heritage, Indra’s ascent to Pepsi CEO was a landmark for many in my community, especially for women. Her story is far more relatable than many other founders because she doesn’t try to create a sense of aura around herself. It’s a great read for anyone who wants to understand the decision-making process for someone at the top of a huge global company.

#9 Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon by Colin Bryar, Bill Carr

AP: 82/ GR: 4.27 from 2028/ AZ: 4.6 from 1227

What’s great is Colin Bryar and Bill Carr both have over 20 years of Amazon experience. They break down the culture and the principles which have led to the company’s huge success. It’s an overwhelmingly positive book because of the history of the authors but one which has many practical lessons for entrepreneurs.

#8 The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion by Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell

AP: 82/ GR: 4.34 from 1558/ AZ: 4.7 from 434

WeWork tried to be a sexy company but in reality, they were a low-margin office rental company. The hype around them was overblown and the fall was fast. $47 billion in 2019 to under $3 billion in 2021. Who can keep their eyes off a car wreck? It might help you to not fall for a similar delusional founder’s charisma in the future.

#7 The World For Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth’s Resources by Javier Blas, Jack Farchy

AP: 82/ GR: 4.42 from 995/ AZ: 4.7 from 569

Commodities are big business but the average person doesn’t understand how the physical trade works. The people who control the trade of chemicals like cobalt, bauxite, and alumina have far more power than could ever dream of. They can choose to support or topple national governments.

#6 This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth

AP: 85/ GR: 4.38 from 2362/ AZ: 4.6 from 1647

The dark side of the explosion of the importance of technology. Businesses of any scale are going to need to start paying greater attention to security as the wars of the future will be held online. A reminder to anyone in the SaaS world to make sure their code has no loopholes even in MVP.

#5 Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

AP: 86/ GR: 4.36 from 3497/ AZ: 4.6 from 671

Oliver aims this book at people obsessed with productivity. He reminds them the average human only has 4,000 weeks. Do you want to spend it crossing off meaningless tasks from your to-do list? For entrepreneurs, it makes you think about your mission rather than just short-term thinking. I love Oliver’s style which is full of nuance.

#4 Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX by Eric Berger

AP: 89/ GR: 4.52 from 2694/ AZ: 4.8 from 2057

Everybody loves writing about Elon Musk but few had the access Eric did. He is the senior space editor at Ars Technica and reported on SpaceX for over a decade. In Liftoff, he summarises everything including all of his direct interviews with Elon himself. If the innovation behind the space race fascinates you, you’ll love this.

#3 How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates

AP: 91/ GR: 4.18 from 26881/ AZ: 4.5 from 7714

If you’re surprised by a book about climate being so high up then you haven’t been paying attention. Rather than just telling everyone to consume less, he accepts the developing world needs the energy to lift people out of poverty. He wants the businesses of the world to focus on clean energy instead.

#2 Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam M. Grant

AP: 94/ GR: 4.25 from 33231/ AZ: 4.6 from 6991

Adam Grant appears to have the Midas touch with yet another bestseller. His core argument here is you should always challenge why you think the way you do. He uses famous examples from history to illustrate how people didn’t have the right answer the first time around but adapted to achieve success.

#1 Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

AP: 100/ GR: 4.59 from 18563/ AZ: 4.7 from 3089

It seems this year, people love reading about companies behaving badly! Few companies in recent memory have created more tragedy than Purdue Pharma. They intentionally triggered an opioid epidemic to increase their profits. The story is riveting and it’s a handbook of what you shouldn’t do in your own business.

Nike has created a billion-dollar empire out of “Just do it.” Yet we all know it’s not so simple.

Nothing is more annoying when you’re dealing with difficult emotions about a decision than someone uttering their slogan. It can feel like your emotions are being invalidated. Maybe you’re being irrational but it’s a normal human thing to do so you shouldn’t be ashamed.

Brazilian author and podcaster, Tiago Henriques, says it’s his biggest pet peeve. He believes we should be more compassionate to people who are frozen by fear. His suggestion is to make use of what he calls the “Minimum Viable Fear”. You break down the fear and find the smallest thing you can which you can overcome and then repeat. Eventually, you take on the big fear without the dramatic showdown.

Rather than jumping off a tall building, find the staircase and take it one step at a time. It’s manageable and means your alarm bells have less reason to ring. There are several steps you can take to get through whatever is troubling you.

This article is based on the Mindful & Driven episode with Tiago. You can listen here or find the YouTube video at the bottom of this article.

Squeeze the cloud into buckets

We evolved to have fear to help us survive in the jungle. To make us freeze when we see danger so we do not draw attention to ourselves. According to Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, we react in a similar way to opening emails as we would to finding a lion in the wild.

Fear can be overwhelming and all-consuming. Like me, you’ve probably had a sinking feeling in your stomach even though your mind cannot articulate exactly what is terrifying you. When you need to make a major decision, there can be so many factors to consider that you become a zombie instead.

The first thing you can do is get it all down on paper. Release it from your brain all at once so it can get out of panic mode. It could be financial, practical, and emotional buckets for example. What you may find is dealing with the non-emotional side eases your overall stress and makes the emotional side easier to deal with.

Just do it small

You can’t make lists forever so at some point you will need to act. All you need to do is worry about the first tiny step though. Just do it but just do it small. Make it feel as safe as you need it to feel.

It’s a good idea to experiment at the beginning. If you consider your new venture as trying something out, it doesn’t bring the same pressure as committing to a long-term plan. It’s okay to start something then abandon it if it’s not right for you.

Tiago did this in his creative career. His first-ever Instagram page was under a pseudonym and grew to 50k followers without anyone knowing it was him. He still had self-imposed anxiety but he didn’t have the worry of people judging him if it failed. You could do the same thing with anonymous content to build the confidence to create a business with your face on the show later on.

A struggle he has been dealing with recently is making the shift from Portuguese content to English. He has great English and if you listen to the podcast, I’m sure you’ll agree with me. Yet there’s a mental block where he doesn’t think he’s good enough. So he took an interview with me to test it out. It’s less risky as it’s not directly on his page alongside all his other content so if people don’t like it, he simply won’t show them.

There are so many ways you could apply this to your own life. If you want to start a new career, why not dabble on it on the side for a while? If you want to start a new hobby, why not try it at home with YouTube videos first? In an ideal world we wouldn’t have fear but in the real world, finding the minimum viable fear can help us conquer it.

I hope you found these tips useful and can see ways you can apply them to your own life. If you’d like to hear Tiago talk about it with me in more detail, check out our conversation in the video below.