A couple weeks ago, I made it to 100 written and published posts in the first 100 straight days of this blog (it’s 120 in 119 now). That was significant for me because one, in the previous 3 and a half years, I had written and published exactly 0.00 things of nothing, and two, for the first time since 2006¹, I love writing again², love spending my days thinking about what to write, and how to write it.

These are the four dudes who’ve motivated me the most, just because of what they do. (Some of what they say’s in their own words. The rest is not, and are things I’ve picked up from their books, blogs or podcast episodes.)

1.

Joshua Spodek’s written 2,598 blog posts without missing a day since January 2011 (2,313 days in a row). This is his blog and this is his book, Leadership. I’m also doing one of his online courses, ‘Fundamentals of Hustling’ through Spodek Academy.

2.

Tim Urban writes Wait But Why. He also did this TED talk, which I show to every group of ESL students I teach (first, I have to teach them what ‘procrastination’ and ‘instant-gratification’ and also ‘Youtube spiral’ mean, but once I do, they know exactly what he’s talking about).

3.

Mark Manson wrote this goddamn excellent book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and this is his blog.

4.

I read a page of Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic first thing every morning, sitting with a coffee in the backyard (and it’s been a part of my morning routine every day since December). He also wrote Ego is the Enemy (among others) and this is his site.

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¹ The last time I clearly remember thinking that, that is. I was editor of my university’s magazine then –earning nothing from it, just like I am now. I ain’t no mathematician or statistician but at least in this case, seems like there’s a correlation between happiness and earnings there.

² Most of the time. Just like anyone who sits down with the goal of writing at least one word at a time, sometimes it does my head in and I fucking hate it.