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Jul 13Liked by Anant Agrawal

I resonated with a ton in this piece! From the shift you described of extrinsic to intrinsic motivation over time, to setting internally focused goals like continuing to enjoy the process of writing (that’s how I’ve felt about personally writing on Substack, which has made it feel more sustainable).

Also I love the idea of small breaks/big gains and big breaks/huge gains! I definitely think I can learn a lot from your approach of extending the workday and taking big breaks in the middle as I transition into thinking about going back into working after my sabbatical.

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Hi Ray! I'm excited to hear that we are thinking similarly about our approaches to writing and I can't wait to hear more about how you continue to iterate on your approach and what ends up working. I know breaking outside of the 8 hour consecutive grind and saying no to things has definitely been a tough, but rewarding habit to form that I'm also still working on. Thanks for the kind comment!

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Great piece Anant! I've been obsessing over Cal Newport lately and listening to a lot of his podcast episodes. This idea of "administrative overload" is something that really stuck with me as I tend to take on too many things at once instead of doing less at once.

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Glad to hear you resonated with that Brian, when he described that concept, I felt so called out. That used to be exactly how my life panned out. Seems I gotta listen to his podcast too, I actually haven’t checked that out yet.

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May 23Liked by Anant Agrawal

Wow man, read the whole thing. You captured a lot of my thinking as I'm on this sabbatical.

From measured work (I work more now on my sabbatical than off but have more breaks in between; that is absolutely true!), doing less & going deep, to working on mastery.

What a piece my guy; I hope this publication is public because I want to share this with my readers! You really cooked with this one

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Thanks Kiran! Yeah, I feel like I discovered the full picture of what we had seen hints of here and there on our sabbatical journeys. Really glad to hear this piece resonated with you.

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Great job describing the different tempos for approaching creating / making / working. Definitely not one size fits all, and the more I live, the more I see the variance between how projects / skills unfold over different lengths of time. Really nice piece!

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts Andrew! Glad to hear that you’ve had the same experience, there are so many more ways to live and work than I could have imagined before.

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