Emotion

The good stuff sticks

May 5, 2026

Learning new things is one of my favourite things on this planet.

Because it’s so important to me, the weight of retention weighs heavily on me. “How on earth can I remember all this, and how can I use it?”

Time Ferriss gave great advice on this, he said “the good sh*t sticks”

We can try different systems of note taking and revisiting, but at the end of the day we cannot remember it all…

…and we shouldn’t really try to.

Just trust that the things that strike a chord, that prove to be useful, that make a change, that shift our world view- these are the things that stick.

It’s the good stuff. And when it makes that kind of impact on us, we don’t have to worry about retention.

Why “Getting It Right” Is Holding Your Class Back

April 22, 2026

You’ve just rehearsed your big presentation in front of your boss.

Hours of prep went into it.

You were nervous but you did your best.

And you know what? You think you did pretty good.

(You even improvised a great little joke.)

Your boss pulls you aside…

…and proceeds to give you pages and pages of specific notes.

Improvements. Words to change. Things to make clearer. When to pause.

You know the notes are there to help you…

but you can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed.

I had this exact experience after a final rehearsal for a theatre show.

We did a full run.

Then our director sat us down.

And we all had detailed notes to take into opening night.

I’m a perfectionist.

I take pride in my work as an actor.

So I scribbled every note down.

Trying to capture each valuable takeaway.

But with each passing bullet point…

I felt less and less able to actually make any of these changes.

By the end, I was holding it together.

Telling myself I’d re-read everything later that night.

Then again in the morning.

All while fighting the panic of trying to integrate this into a performance…

in front of hundreds of people the next night.

Our director ended the session with a smile.

He knew it was a lot.

We all knew it was to make the show better.

Then he said something that completely removed the weight sitting on my chest:
“Look guys, I don’t expect you to get all these right tomorrow night — or ever.
And as you’re performing you’ll notice you’ve missed some bits and nailed others… that’s okay.
All these notes are in service of one thing: finding the life.
All we’re asking is… is it alive?”

Is it alive.

That was it.

The notes and adjustments were only ever there to find the life.

There are hundreds of details and hours of work that go into anything we do.

When I’m in the classroom, this is true.

When I’m acting on stage, this is true.

But it’s all in service of just one thing: life.

We’re just bringing the thing to life.

We want the people we’re working with to feel something.

To connect to it.

That’s it.

I love pouring energy and passion into the details.

But there comes a point where you have to let it go…

and come back to one question:

Is it alive?

Magic and mechanics

April 16, 2026

There’s the magic and then there’s mechanics.

The magic is what we’re always trying to create. The thing that drew us in in the first place.

You want that ‘wow’ moment when the curtain comes up on the show you’re writing.

You want the flow of an electric classroom where students are fizzing and learning is bouncing in all directions.

You want that feeling of presence in the scene where the audience forgets they’re watching two actors.

This is the magic.

Then there’s the mechanics. There’s the hours of drafting, re-drafting and editing the play. There’s learning the editing software. There’s drilling the acting technique. It’s boring. Its laborious. It’s unforgiving.

But it’s necessary. You can’t have one without the other.

The trick, I think, is to keep the magic alive while you’re in the trenches.

Keep the vision alive of the curtain coming up when you’re reworking a scene for the 37th time.

If we can do that, we’ll get through the mechanics and one day (soon) you’ll get to pop the champagne.

Wisdom of magazines

April 6, 2026

Why does reading an article in a magazine feel better?

I think it’s because of finality. A magazine article says “here, someone wrote this, we printed it, stapled it together and now you’re holding it- you should read it”

A magazine is physical artifact that demands to be taken seriously.

I enjoy it more, it feels better and I absorb the ideas more.

Why?

Well I think we can just steal the finality in what we do.

“Here, this is what I made. I put it together like this (not like this) and it should be consumed like this”

The magic moments

April 1, 2026

It’s important to catch them…

The magic moments.

We spend so much time working, aspiring and perspiring toward outcomes. When the awesome moments happen it’s so easy to move on quickly.

I have a dated database in Notion called “Magic Moments”.

When a cool little thing happens, I put it in there- the date is already added.

It’s the best thing in the world to read back over these and be flooded by all the good:

-The stranger who smiled at me on the bus

-The unexpected sunset view from the hotel window

-That apple that was so great and crunchy.

They come and go so quickly you might miss them. Get in the habit of recording them, you won’t regret it.

Stay connected

March 26, 2026

I think the root cause of procrastination is a lack of connection to the end goal of what you’re trying to do.

Say, you just can’t get yourself to sit down and write. That just means you’re disconnected from all the good that comes into your life when you write the book; you’re a published author, people connect to your ideas, you knock something off your bucket list… all those things are true.

But in the moment, you aren’t thinking of these in a visceral way.

So a fun game I’m playing is merely reconnecting vividly to the end goal of any action I’m resistant to beginning.

Give it a go.

Memories

March 5, 2026

Isn’t it amazing that we can revisit, reanimate and re-experience memories whenever we choose?

When was the last time your stomach and face hurt from laughing?

Do you remember feeling so nervous you could hardly move?

When did you feel complete bliss?

All of these memories are there for us. It’s like a dormant library in our brain, waiting for us to stroll in and choose a book.

Its easy to never access these. Or to access just the same handful over and over.

And it’s also easy to simply ask the question:

“Remember when…”

It’s all relative.

March 4, 2026

Your worst day could be someone else’s best day. An ‘average’ win for you now was once life changing.

What was once a dream may well now be your reality.

It’s all relative to our perspective. So with that being the case, we’d do well to pick a perspective that empowers us, right?

Time doesn’t fly when you can’t wait

March 3, 2026

Remember how LONG it took for Christmas to come when you were an excited kid?

Or maybe you remember a time that a month flew by in what seemed like a day.

I love how time stretches and squishes based on our experience, expectations and focus.

Here’s a little trick I’ve been playing with recently to capitalise on this. My goal with this is to make time stretch when I want that and make it zip by when I need it to do that. So here’s the what you do: begin a task that you really care about completing, that will take a few weeks of necessary hours (no short cuts) and that won’t get done if you don’t put in the time.

We’ve just described a task that requires all the time you can get.

So we want to make sure we perceive as much of that time as possible, so we get it done, right?

So the next step is to put something REALLY exciting at the end of the deadline. A treat, an adventure or an experience you cannot WAIT to get to.

Now you’re playing with your time perception: it’ll take forEVER to get to the treat so now you can use all that perceived ‘extra’ time to complete the project.

Weird and magic, aye?

A great idea

February 23, 2026

It seems to me that the way to make ourselves follow through on anything we want to do is to keep it vividly alive in our minds and hearts.

Things are a great idea when they’re a great idea.

They’re less a great idea two hundred and eighty seven days later…

The idea stayed the same but our relationship to it changed.

If we really want to get there, we need to keep it as vivid, as alive, as exciting and captivating as day one.

Thats our only job, really, because when something is that real to us on a daily basis, we will act on it.

JUSTIN ROGERS

Post Category: