*Typing*

Those most outspoken about the importance of work/ life balance are preaching atop a fat pile of cash they earned by violating their own gospel.

Unless you’re a tightrope walker, you don’t achieve mastery in your vocation through balance. You achieve mastery by finding something you’re obsessed with and then working like a dog on speed.

For the first decade of your vocation, you want to gain a reputation for being the kind of person that gets things done. You want to be relentless. You want to show up first. You want to leave last. You want to be easy to reach. You want to be quick to respond. You want to be obvious to work with. You want to say “yes” to everything. You want to be indispensable. You want to do really, really good work.

This will cost you a few friendships. You won’t remember everyone’s birthday. This will cost you a few life experiences. You won’t make it to every wedding. This will cost you a few vacations. You won’t have the prettiest Instagram page. This will cost you a few relationships. You won’t be the perfect partner.

It’s called “making sacrifices” because you are quite literally making sacrifices. The only difference between you and the Aztecs is there is less blood.

You can’t have it all and anyone who says otherwise is in denial of the sacrifices they’ve had to make along the way. As you grow older, you will become increasingly more aware of these sacrifices. You will likely have to reckon with them.And so you should place a considerable amount of thought into the sacrifices you make for your vocational. It’s not for everyone.

You will likely be happier finding balance with your work and your life. But, don’t be under the false impression that balance breeds mastery in vocation. It doesnt. Mastery is earned only through obsession, and obsession is paid for in the sacrifices we’re willing to make.

Great ideas are obvious in retrospect.

Expect the unexpected. And whenever possible, be the unexpected.

Jack Dorsey said that.

Before starting Twitter, Jack Dorsey created an open-source dispatch software for ambulances and taxis. It crashed and burned, forcing him to take up contract work as a freelance developer.

Pounding away at the keyboard left his wrists and hands aching so he started getting massages. This led to a fascination with massage therapy. He took a thousand hours of massage therapy, became licensed and was struck with a big idea. Dorsey wanted to give software developers massages while advising and guiding them on their code.

His friends told him it was a dogshit idea. Dorsey listened, started coding again and a year later founded Twitter. From there, things just go weirder. Dorsey was ousted from Twitter twice. He even ran it from a time remotely from Africa.

Sometime in the Twitter saga—and I don’t have an exact timeline here—one of Dorsey’s artist buddies couldn’t sell his art because he was unable to accept credit card. So, he started Square. Today, Square does something in the neighborhood of $500 million per month in transaction volume.

Dorsey is bizarre, wildly curious and—from the outside looking in—prone to making wild detours on a whim.

He has dated super models. He became a Buddhist. He sold his first Tweet for nearly $3 million and donated all the money to Africa. He walked 5 miles to and from work for a time. He enrolled in a few classes at fashion school. He gave up eating on the weekends. The peculiarities go on and on and on.

Dorsey’s path has been so out-of-the-ordinary, it’s difficult to parse fact from fiction. For some, his story is daunting. For others, liberating. Instead of looking for the “right” next step to take, it might be enough to simply take the next step that feels most interesting to you.

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You need great taste to make great things.

Hemingway rewrote the end of ‘A Farewell to Arms’ 47 times. Van Gogh painted ‘Starry Night’ 21 times. Michael Jackson recorded ‘Billie Jean’ 91 times. Take your time. It’s often the extra time taken that makes something extraordinary.