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The House on Paper Street

About a year ago I was sitting at my friend’s house on Paper Street, showing off my Uber-productive morning routine. Boasting about waking up at an ungodly hour to work on myself, maximizing creative output, reading, meditating, whatever. Phony Robbins in full preacher mode.

I am Joe’s lack of self awareness. 

Surprisingly he let me go on for a while, listening with angelic patience. Then one question sent my house of cards crashing:

“Vlad, for all of this productivity, what have you actually created?”

Well, umm, I wrote some brunch reviews on my blog. And, uh, some self indulgent self help posts. I was writing man, lay off. A whole blog post a month!

Damn, I guess I really wasn’t doing that much. Most of my creative energy was going into convincing the world that I had creative energy.

I needed evidence to prove that I wasn’t a fake. Not just to him, but to myself. Now I spend less time being productive, and more time collecting proof that I did something. I think that’s why the podcast was born. I’m tired of being the talker, a life lived overpromising and underdelivering.


Also published on Medium.

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