But if I didn’t have a job at that time, I’d have been in a really difficult position. When 100 percent of your future, 100 percent of your money, 100 percent of your dream is dependent on one thing succeeding, you are strongly tempted to compromise. You are tempted to cut corners. You are tempted to agree to less-than-perfect terms and sign less-than-perfect contracts. The risk of passing up any opportunity is extremely high. But if you have a job—even a less-than-ideal one—you get to say a pretty vital word. No.

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I know it sounds crazy, but people with jobs tend to have more creative freedom than people without.

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I expected to lose weight and feel better physically, but something else happened that caught me off guard. As I dieted, I started to get more done at work. I started to write more on this book. I started to get up earlier and be more deliberate about spending time with my wife and kids. It wasn’t instant. But over a period of weeks the momentum of more healthy eating spread to every part of my life. Why? Because discipline begets discipline. When you step up to a challenge before you, your ramped-up resources rub off on other areas of your life.

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You don’t ask the bottomless, “What do I want to do with my life?” but instead, “What have I done in my life that I loved doing?”

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Sometimes we think we need a massive eureka moment to come to grips with who we want to be and what we want to do. We wait for the lightning strike that will completely redefine our lives and give us clear direction. But the truth is, the greatest impact tends to come from hinge moments. A hinge moment occurs when you are planning to do something standard and normal, something you’ve done many times before, like turn a key in the ignition. And then seemingly out of nowhere, something, a small detail usually, hinges you in a different direction. A chance encounter at the grocery store, a stranger’s random comment, one line in an article you read pushes you to a place you were not expecting to go.

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I look at starting any endeavor kind of like swimming. You can read all the books you want about swimming. You can participate in blogs about swimming and buy magazines and study videos of swimming online for hours and hours. But if you waited until you were perfect at understanding swimming before you started swimming, you might never get in the water. And you’d never learn to be a great swimmer, because you have to get wet a lot first.

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You have the perfect amount of time each day for the things that matter most. The key is spending time on those things.

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I work so that my kids can eat and wear clothes and sleep indoors. Sometimes I forget things like that. In the midst of chasing my dreams, I can get lost in being selfish and self-serving. I act like I’m the captain of my own planet and my actions only impact me. There’s a wild amount of self-confidence needed to successfully chase a dream, and it’s easy for that to mutate into pride and arrogance.

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The second thing you need is practice. You need to try what you’re interested in. You need to dip your foot in the water. You need to visit stores like the one you want to open. You need to read blogs like the one you want to start. You need to explore and test the waters. When asked about the secret of his success, Warren Buffett, the third-richest man on the planet said, “There’s no place where we turned the switch. So much happens by accident. It does show the value of showing up every day.”

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Start small. Start slow. Get better along the way. And enjoy the gift of making many of your early mistakes without a major audience.

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Hustle is not hard. If you write your blog every day, at the end of the year you will have more readers than when you started. If you get up early and work on your dream two hours more than somebody else, your dream will progress faster.

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“Hustle isn’t just doing the things you love all the time. Hustle is doing the things you don’t enjoy sometimes to earn the right to do the things you love.”

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Competition is a great motivator but a horrible measurement.

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Don’t erase all the good work you’ve done in the name of insignificant successes. Don’t become a publishing expert if your dream is to be published. Allow your dream room to evolve but don’t let it lead you away from your core desire. Don’t say yes to the wrong opportunities.