Q&A with author Declan Wilson (Plus Book Giveaway!)
(I’m giving away 5 copies of Declan Wilson’s new book – The Millennial Way. To get get in the drawing, tweet this.)
What I loved most about my short talk with Declan were these two things:
A) You have more time than you think you do
“I think people assume once you have a child, all your free time disappears. But that’s not really true. You have less free time. It’s just more valuable.”
Time is the ultimate excuse. I’ll bet everyone reading this has thought “I don’t have enough time” at least once.
I know I have.
But Declan has a son who just turned one, a wife who just graduated from pharmacy school, a full time job, a blog, and he still managed to put this book together.
Which leads me to the second point:
B) Your ego is less important than your actions
“Writing this book took a long time,” he said. “12 to 14 months. That’s a long time in a world where you get immediate validation from a blog post.”
We live in a world of immediate gratification. There’s a retweet coming in on Twitter, a like from Facebook, a heart from Instagram.
On and on and on it goes.
If you try hard enough, you can spend the whole day checking and responding to notifications. Trust me, I’ve done it before.
That’s a cool trick because it feels like work, but it’s not. It’s not moving you toward any goal. It’s only feeding your ego.
Maybe for you it’s starting a new diet, creating a masterpiece, or finally putting together that book of photos.
Whatever it is, stop looking for short term validation.
Start taking action.
