Author: Piya Willwerth

Improving On What’s There: This Blog

You know that guy who’s always in his garage, fixing something or other on his car or motorcycle? That’s me, with this blog. I am trying to create a really useful artifact.

June 15, 2021

Everybody Starts Somewhere

I’ll be honest: Some people might make fun of you. It’s not fun, and it’s not great, but if you accept that it will happen, it will probably lessen the sting.

June 1, 2021

4 Areas to Level Up Your Life

When did “leveling up” became part of the self-improvement lexicon? Was it a video game thing? I’m not mad at it — just curious. When people talk about “leveling up” or encourage each other to “level up,” what they really mean is doing the work to make their lives better.

May 25, 2021

I Don’t Know What Career I Want

We tend to have a much better idea of what we don’t want, rather than what we do. This is because we don’t know what’s possible.

May 18, 2021

Happiness is an activity, not a goal

In other words, you need to understand what makes you happy, and work for that — not “happiness” itself. Happiness itself is hazy, undefined.

May 4, 2021

The Power of Writing Down Your Goals

When I first decided that I wanted to be self-employed, I realized that I needed to establish a road map and identify some obstacles that stood in the way.

April 22, 2021

Who Are You in 2021?

We’ve all been so used to sleepwalking through life that getting all of this information and disruption at once will take a not-insignificant amount of time to process. And who knows … maybe this disruption is just where we live now?

April 20, 2021

What is the Attention Economy?

When we were all forced, quite suddenly, to stay at home, we were also forced to reckon with how we spent our time — where we directed our attention.

April 15, 2021

The Freelance Manifesto

This is it. This is the one that made me do it. The thing is, I’ve heard this from other people, too: This book gave a lot of people the courage to try freelancing.

April 13, 2021

Digital Minimalism

I am always a little surprised when I find out that people I talk to don’t know about Digital Minimalism.

April 1, 2021

Eat That Frog!

One of the main issues I have found with many self-help books is that they often promise an “easy” fix. What this book proposes is not, technically, an easy fix, but it is an easy(ish) process.

March 23, 2021

Marketing Yourself: Scheduling Time

Lots of freelancers make the mistake of thinking of themselves as contractors or — gasp! — temporary employees, when really, they’re business owners.

March 18, 2021

Define the Terms Ahead of Time

Avoiding Burned Bridges: Don’t get caught up in scope creep or late payments — figure it out now! And if you were smart about it, you already got half your money up front.

March 18, 2021

Flexibility is Key

If we’ve learned one thing (hopefully more than one thing) in 2020, it’s that having a single source of income is not enough.

March 18, 2021

Mastery

To achieve mastery — to be able to acknowledge yourself as a Master of a skill, a field, or a vocation — you must progress through three stages.

March 18, 2021

Second Careers: Is it too late?

I recently had a conversation with a slightly younger friend of mine, who revealed that they had begun thinking about making plans to have children.

March 18, 2021

Living Your Life vs Enduring it

We’ve got so much to deal with these days. Omnipresent (and omnipotent) social media, a relentless news cycle, financial insecurity, an aggravating government — even before the pandemic, we wanted out.

March 18, 2021