The market keeps trying to remind investors that average and boring stocks keep going up.

The Dow hovers at all-time highs and it’s nearly outpacing the S&P 500 this year. It looks a couple solid trading session away from beating the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.

The Dow tracks 30 large and uninteresting “blue-chip” names that typically exhibit slower top-line growth than the high-flying technology names in the Nasdaq.

And unlike the S&P 500, it also uses a price-weighting model, which limits how much sway mega-cap stocks hold over the index.

Those characteristics have given the Dow weaker annual returns on average, as well as lower volatility.

This year, though, not only has it kept up with the Nasdaq but it’s done so with far shallower drawdowns.

Tech stocks fell nearly 11% at the end of March, for instance, while the Dow fell a comparatively mellow 6%.

Just as the equal-weight S&P 500 has beat out its market-cap weighted counterpart in 2026, the Dow provides further indication that the bull run has expanded beyond the trillion-dollar behemoths at the top of the market.

The equal-weight index grants the smallest company in the S&P 500 the same influence as Nvidia, yet it’s up about 14% year-to-date, right there with the market-cap weighted index.

The strength of the Dow and equal-weight marks a reversal of the last three years, when a handful of AI giants propelled most of the market’s gains.

This is what investors mean when they talk about a “healthy” bull market.

A broadening rally tends to be sturdier — and so last longer — when it’s supported by everything from banks and healthcare and consumer staples, rather than merely hypescalers.

To be sure, none of this means the AI trade is over.

It just means that the bulls have more to celebrate than a year ago.

This analysis originally appeared in Opening Bell Daily. Subscribe free to get daily market breakdowns in your inbox.

It’s now been over six months since I started a business.

It’s been the best and most enlightening chapter of my professional life so far. One reason I’ve found building my media startup, Opening Bell Daily, so rewarding is because I’m doing all the things I wasn’t able to in my old job at Business Insider.

That’s not to say I think every reporter in a legacy outlet should be involved in sales, marketing, branding, and business development. Most journalists want nothing to do with any of that.

Most actually prefer to be siloed into a specific beat.

I’ve always been interested in learning how to do and be everything — in journalism and beyond — which is why this has worked for me. I’ve relished wearing the many hats of a founder.

Still, in a startup it’s hard to know when you’re making progress.

There’s no existing infrastructure, promotions, or indicators from middle management to tell you how you are doing.

Some weeks I feel like I’ve accrued enough wins to conquer the world. Other times I feel a stupendous sense of doom.

What has reassured me though is the sense that I’m not only taking a risk of my own choosing, but that the risk itself is productive.

It is a risk to start any business, and productivity helps ensure the business doesn’t die.

Because Opening Bell Daily is indeed not dead, the market is signaling that what we are doing is productive and useful. That’s capitalism.

The more I speak with other founders, the more I realize how intertwined the entrepreneurial spirit is with American culture. The latter is built upon the former — so much so that there is almost no reputational hit when your business fails here.

People around the world work their whole lives just to get the opportunity to move to the US and build something.

Among the founders I admire most are those with false starts and ventures that didn’t work. People will always ask about the initial leap of faith, even if the vision falls short later. Whether a new business succeeds is not what inspires others to action. It’s the starting that counts.

On the topic of risk, something that keeps injecting itself into my work as a financial reporter is the rise of betting platforms and prediction markets. Scratching the gambling itch is also very American.

The technology isn’t new, but this form of risk does seem to be an increasingly popular way to spend (and lose) money.

The enthusiasm seen among sports bettors has ballooned across new platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi, which allow members to bet on random, niche events across pop culture and politics.

I saw today that Kalshi has a market you can wager on titled “What will Kamala say in August?” People have bet tens of thousands of dollars for her to utter “coconut,” “unburdened,” and “Venn diagram.”

Gambling is a silly type of risk-taking, but it’s thriving so much that it’s become a regular character in the cast for the financial press. Like starting a business, it offers the promise of exponential returns and unpredictable outcomes.

The difference, however, is that there’s no pride to be found in losing money on a betting platform. It doesn’t make a good story and it doesn’t inspire.

Meanwhile, you can start a business, watch it implode, and still have the respect of others who have attempted the same.

In writing, there is an idea that your first book is only a success if you go on to write another. Anyone can do anything one time, the thinking goes. It’s persistence that offers a more reliable heuristic for success.

There are entrepreneurs who hold a similar view when it comes to starting businesses. The losses or winnings of a first venture will only define you if you stop there.

Yes, building a startup presents risk. But working for someone else isn’t exactly full-proof. That someone else will give you healthcare and vacation days, but only if you operate on their schedule in exchange.

Oh. They can also fire you — a particularly frequent and prickly occurrence in media.

I like work and always have. In my last job, I’d clock in at 7:30 AM. These days I start even earlier, despite no one telling me to do so. I could start work at noon if I wanted to. I don’t, but I like that it’s an option.

I started writing newsletters six years ago on my own without formal training. That opened the door for me to write them professionally under multiple editors.

Now I’m back to doing them on my own, in part because I felt staying in a big corporation protected my downside more than it maximized my upside. That’s not what I want at 27 years old.

To be clear, early coaching helped me get to today. Business Insider kept me from doing or saying anything too stupid.

It’s amazing how much progress you can make simply by avoiding mistakes. Play with guardrails long enough though and nothing will make you want to seek risk more.

I wonder how much of the sports gambling boom stems from it being illegal for so long until recently.

To recap:

1. Building a business pays even when it fails because it shows yourself and others that you can do hard things.
2. Gambling is a fun way to spend money but an unreliable way to make money.
3. Sign up for Opening Bell Daily if you want the best financial newsletter in your inbox every morning.

I have learned it’s very hard to get opportunities you do not ask for.

I’ve also learned that, in the age of social media, “asking” has evolved. It’s simpler and more serendipitous than ever.

Instead of cold-emailing hiring managers or tapping your boss on the shoulder, you can instead turn to the internet and share the work you’re already doing.

What used to be a private interaction between you and another individual has transformed into an open, unpredictable marketplace where the best ideas are amplified.

Take LinkedIn. It’s not only a place to search for job postings, it’s a tool anyone can use to broadcast expertise.

With roughly one billion users on the platform and only a fraction of them posting content, every time you publish puts you in front of an eager audience.

The same is true of Twitter, Medium, Reddit, and other sites.

I, for one, share ideas from my blog and the finance reporting I do for work. I also write about what it’s like being a journalist and building a personal brand.

Over several years, this has led to countless inbound messages for jobs and contracts. The practice has also put me in touch with interesting, like-minded individuals.

To be sure, the old formula of direct, private outreach still works. But it’s very hard to scale and it requires more targeting and research.

I prefer to simply share what I’m already working on, and let those ideas make contact with the open market.

I also want to acknowledge that sharing work online may not be relevant to every career.

For writers, journalists, marketers, and other creatives, I believe it is paramount.

The secret way to figure out what you’re most proud of

Sharing your work online is a new phenomenon, and I lucked out by starting my career as the trend took hold.

It’s actually how I became a journalist with zero reporting background — I began publishing essays on a blog in 2018, and the right person happened to notice and offer me a job at a newspaper.

Beyond inbound opportunities, I see two concrete benefits to sharing work online:

1. You get more comfortable with who you are
2. You learn how to do work you are proud of, more often

The first point is easier to grasp. I can’t express how nervous I was before hitting “publish” on my first blog post six years ago. That feeling didn’t go away for a long time.

But in opening myself up to the world, I realized no one pays attention anyway, especially when you first start.

Early ideas are rarely excellent, but that works in your favor — rookies get to work in obscurity while they hone their craft.

And even if you do take flak, criticism helps you improve. It thickens your skin and you become more comfortable receiving feedback.

Now, the second point is a new revelation to me.

My friend Evan Frolov creates videos for Morning Brew. He writes, produces, and acts in these videos with the aim of making people laugh (they are indeed hilarious).

To me, that’s as scary as it gets, as far as putting yourself out there.

He told me something this week that crystallized everything: If you’re doing work you’re proud of, you will indeed want to share it.

So yes, sharing work online is nerve-racking. If you overcome that but still hesitate to share what you’re working on, perhaps it’s a signal that you aren’t doing work you are proud of.

Then the question becomes how to do more of the work you’d be proud to share and less of the stuff that doesn’t interest you.

And solving that will bring far more than inbound job offers.

This was originally published on philrosen.blog.

We all want a sense of belonging, but community doesn’t grow on trees.

Over the last several years, I’ve enjoyed my share of running groups, networking events, sports teams, and book clubs.

Each offered something worthwhile, but none provided the specific sense of relatability I was looking for.

I’ve learned that comporting yourself for something you didn’t create will rarely feel perfect, especially compared to building something around your own niche interests.

This holds true for jobs, social circles, teams and projects.

Our social media feeds reflect this best.

The algorithm knows what content makes you linger, share, or skip.

The result is as many different newsfeeds as there are users. Damning levels of daily screen time — 6.5 hours a day per person in 2023, on average — illustrates how addicting it is to have that level of personalization.

Aiming to design our lives with that same degree of specificity and intention can unlock purpose, responsibility, and community.

You are one of one

I’m about to traverse a minefield of clichés, but hear me out: We are all one of ones, who will not and should not fit seamlessly into existing boxes.

And I say that as someone who has participated in over a hundred events and groups, many of which are awesome and I remain a part of.

Sticking only to groups others have created, though, presents a blueprint for future regret. The “finance bro” archetype comes to mind — the endless sea of Ivy Leaguers in Patagonia vests and Lululemon pants with non-negotiable tee times.

That’s just one example. Plenty others exist for various careers and hobbies.

No one, I think, wants to reflect on a life being a copy of a copy of a copy.

Building something unique to you as a one-of-one individual is more energizing. I always liked this quote from Naval:

There are almost 7B people on this planet. Someday, I hope, there will be almost 7B companies.

I’m not suggesting everyone should quit their job to become an entrepreneur (another path rife with stereotypes and memes). But there’s great, unique purpose to be found in working on personal projects or creating things that bring people together.

Change can happen outside a 9-to-5

My friend Jacklyn Dallas, a tech YouTuber, posted about hosting “two-degree dinners” in New York City.

Jacklyn Dallas on Twitter: "Friend and I hosted a two degrees dinner earlier this week - you invite a friend and then they invite a friend (so everyone has someone two degrees apart from them) was such a fun night !! Energizing convo, amazing new people - definitely will host more in 2024! If you're in NYC,... / Twitter"

Friend and I hosted a two degrees dinner earlier this week - you invite a friend and then they invite a friend (so everyone has someone two degrees apart from them) was such a fun night !! Energizing convo, amazing new people - definitely will host more in 2024!

Another friend of mine, Andrew Yeung, who produces social and professional events across the US, tweeted about his group chat with other boot-strapping entrepreneurs.

Andrew Yeung on Twitter: "I run a group chat for bootstrapped entrepreneurs doing $500k-$5M / yr.* We support each other with resources, advice, access* Monthly dinners and video calls* Can't be venture backedDM me if this is you. / Twitter"

I run a group chat for bootstrapped entrepreneurs doing $500k-$5M / yr.* We support each other with resources, advice, access* Monthly dinners and video calls* Can't be venture backedDM me if this is you.

Both posts gained massive traction on X.

In the last few weeks, I’ve seen dozens of others go viral around the topic of small, customized communities or projects. I predict the trend will only ramp up.

On my own blog, meanwhile, I love that I can write what I want to write. Doing so has allowed me to attract a small audience who thinks about the same things.

My ideas aren’t always bulletproof, but I cherish the opportunity to share personal work that could resonate with readers, and the site has been a bright spot for me during times I’ve felt discouraged.

How to customize a life

To clarify, I’m not recommending to quit your job, nor do I believe all professional clichés are bad or true.

But I have learned that I’m happier when I do more things that make me feel like a one-of-one, rather than a facsimile or a face in a crowd. When I show up to my day job — a role I share with many impressive individuals — I’m energized knowing that I run my own website and write books.

Here are three ways to bring more customization into your life that cost nearly nothing:

1. Start a group chat or monthly Zoom meetings with people doing exactly what you’re interested in doing
2. Host small dinners with friends, and ask each person to invite someone they think you’d get along with
3. Start sharing your ideas online in writing, audio, or video

Everybody wants to be somebody, as the saying goes. We can remind ourselves that we are all indeed “somebodies” by leaning into our interests and curating how they come into contact with the world.

With enough iterating, this is how you build a life you love.

This post originally appeared on philrosen.blog.

Last week, I found out I won a Fulbright award.

I’m still on a high from reading my acceptance email. If you haven’t heard of this grant, here’s how the State Department describes it:

“Fulbright is the most widely recognized and prestigious international exchange program in the world, supported for more than half a century by the American people through an annual appropriation from the US Congress and by the people of partner nations.”

So in September, I’ll travel to Germany with a handful of other American journalists to meet policymakers and learn about Europe’s media landscape and government.

It’s an honor to represent the US and my profession in this program, and I do not take it lightly.

I’m thrilled to share this news, but I do believe the work I did to get here is something anyone can replicate.

I’ve always believed there was nothing anyone did that I couldn’t do, so long as I was willing to put in the effort. I hold this same faith in everyone.

Now that said, despite my striving, I certainly never made it to the NBA, nor have I made the Einstein-level scientific discoveries I dreamed of as a kid. I’ve learned plenty about the limitations of lofty delusions.

I’ve nonetheless been able to do some things I’m very proud of by telling myself the story that, with enough diligence, grit, and gumption, anything is possible.

This is coming from someone who isn’t particularly gifted. I’m more persistent than talented, I tend to juggle too many projects at once, and my college GPA and SAT scores tell me I’m no outlier intellectually.

Where I have excelled is in effort and enthusiasm. I’m incapable of not trying my best, and that’s taken me far.

The defining characteristic of success

I’ve always loved the idea of high agency.

Loosely, this trait implies that the story other people tell about you is not the story you feel obligated to follow or believe — which in turn suggests you have control over your own destiny.

Since I learned the term a few months ago, I haven’t been able to unsee it. Over a long enough time horizon, it seems high-agency individuals tend to do very well at whatever they invest their energy in.

High-agency people figure out how to make something happen without waiting for perfect circumstances or permission. It’s a handy descriptor for those who take responsibility for their actions and results, without shirking blame.

Investor Paul Graham said he can tell which startups will be successful based on whether founders are “relentlessly resourceful.” You want this type of person on your team. They aren’t good at taking “no” for an answer, and they’re better equipped for adversity than most. They bend reality around themselves, rather than the opposite.

High agency can make up for low talent, whereas high talent can often be useless without high agency, as shown in the chart below adapted from entrepreneur Shreyas Doshi.

You probably have friends who fit into each of the four categories.

To me, the worst color isn’t the yellow square on the left, but the red one on the right.

The book Who Not How by executive coach Dan Sullivan comes to mind. It includes an apt description of hell: “When the person you became meets the person you could have become.”

Hell is the red box.

There’s little more tragic than a generational talent or intellect who never gets close to testing what they’re capable of.

In any case, individuals can move from the green square to blue by working hard and leaning into enthusiasm and initiative. The idea is that it’s possible for anyone to transform themselves into a game-changer, even with minimal talent.

This works — and other people notice — because you can’t fake high agency.

You either take action and shoulder responsibility, or you don’t. The person who blames (lack of) talent or untoward circumstance isn’t going to be anyone’s first pick for their team.

Writer George Mack calls this the most important personality trait you could build, and he popularized the concept with a meme comparing two ways to react while stranded on an island.

All this is not to say I am the perfect example of high agency; I’m not. But I do try to be better every day, and I don’t lack enthusiasm or effort.

I’ve found this a great North Star when facing a decision, obstacle, or opportunity: “What’s the most high-agency way to respond in this scenario?”

I’ve accrued enough anecdotal evidence to know acting on that question in good faith over many years can yield outsized results — like a Fulbright award.

I’ll end with one of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs:

Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

This post originally appeared on philrosen.blog.

A lot of university students pick a major with the aim of landing a good job. Computer science and engineering offer the promise of handsome, steady paychecks. Art history, sociology, and philosophy do not.

Regardless, more than half of college graduates end up working in a field unrelated to their major.

(As a writer who took a science degree, I am part of that statistic.)

I’ve noticed many of the straight-A students I knew haven’t been able to replicate that success outside of school. This makes me think of two things.

First, the obvious: Life takes unpredictable turns, no matter how much you may study, or how good at studying you may be. Sometimes effort is moot.

Second and more importantly, it occurs to me that getting straight A’s demands its pound of flesh. Save for the geniuses, top-scoring students have to live in the library — which means sacrificing personal interests for the near-term goal of a grade.

To be clear, there are scenarios in which grades are actually part of a long-term goal, like getting into medical or law school. Grades, too, can be an easy gauge for employers to determine entry-level job candidates, and there’s also a positive status associated with good grades that can influence who you hangout with and date.

Still, I do think grades convince a sizable share of smart, ambitious students to ignore what they are most interested in. That is not a good thing. People try harder and go further when they are working on problems they gravitate to. Curiosity is a far more lasting motivator than some external metric.

Curiosity is what makes work not feel like work. Ideally, education would be optimized for this.

That would mean young adults could spend more time working on what they like, and becoming more skilled at doing what they liked — which ultimately would make them more likely to find success in the job market doing what they liked. It’d be a lot easier to greenlight the platitude “follow your passion” if we knew there’d be ample time and guidance.

Even if all that happened, not everyone can pinpoint what they are interested in. Picking a major with confidence — and attempting to extrapolate it into a multi-decade career — is effectively impossible when you’re 19.

This is also getting harder by the day given that professions are sprouting faster than dandelions. Every few years, new fields arise that we couldn’t even conceive of the prior decade (see: The Rise of AI).

There’s a strong case to be made that those who do best in school are those who know what they are interested in from a young age. Then, when they are presented with the opportunity to specialize in it with a major, it’s a no-brainer.

The work doesn’t feel like work to those students.

It wasn’t clear to me when I was 19, but I learned later that I fell into this extremely lucky cohort — I always loved reading. I read everyday for hours, and that gave me a knack for writing early on. I regularly wrote my friends’ and roommates’ papers. It was both fun and easy for me.

I’ll admit some people paid me. But mostly, I did it for free.

By the time I graduated, I knew I wanted to be a writer because I spent most of my time doing it anyway.

When I started this website after college, I wrote 100 essays before making my first dollar. I gained further evidence I was doing what suited me because earning a steady paycheck didn’t give me any additional motivation.

All this seems to point out how certain intellectual tasks are easy and fun to some people, but can feel like work to others. If there’s something you want to volunteer for that no one else raises their hand to do, it’s probably something you can do well, and for a long time.

Asking students to choose a major — therefore, a career — seems to be the wrong approach. There’s something out of touch about a system that many view as a means (a major) to an end (a job).

This thinking applies well beyond college. Doing what you love might come down to asking the right questions.

While not always practical, this might be a good place to start: What would you do for free?

I write about powerful ideas, recession-proof skills, and building a personal brand in my newsletter every week. Join 1,850 subscribers here.

It’s easy to understand the importance of having a job — salary, livelihood, a position in society.

But side projects are equally as key to personal development and creating your own opportunities.

I launched my website initially as a travel blog in 2018, and it helped me land a full-time job as a writer, which had long been my dream.

Though I would not have secured that job if I hadn’t written dozens of articles first to build up my own skills and portfolio.

The blogging — my side project — led to a dream job. I then took the skills from my job and used them to level-up my side project.

Later, my blog helped me earn a scholarship to a top graduate school for journalism, even though I had no journalism experience.

But the work I had put in for several years writing online helped me make my case that I had the work ethic, initiative, and passion for writing.

Now, I’m about to publish my second book, Life Between Moments: New York Stories, and early drafts of my writing for the book first appeared on my blog. My website has honed my literary skills for four years and now it’s culminating in a fiction book.

(It’s worth nothing that I’ve never made a single dime from my site, but it has directly facilitated countless opportunities).

Outside work is key to professional development

Having a side project separate from your day job makes you stand out from a crowd of applicants, students, or employees.

A side project is entrepreneurial in nature, regardless if you intend it to be, and this hones your confidence and ability to pitch yourself in a creative way.

While a side project could be one approach to making some extra cash, there are more valuable benefits to it.

For starters, it can (and should) stem from something you enjoy, and have a passion for. A blog was the natural step for me as a lover of writing and reading, but you may prefer starting a YouTube channel, or a TikTok or podcast.

Whatever the medium, it can be a fun, challenging way to develop your skills in an area you’re passionate about.

What’s more, side projects help you fill in the gaps that your job does not meet.

That could be learning new skills you don’t have the chance to with a job, or building up a body of work outside of your professional path.

I have a friend who’s a medical student, for example, and he is passionate about learning languages. He recently launched a blog, PolyglotMD, to marry his passion with teaching people how to excel in medical school.

If he writes one article per week for one year on this topic, he will have no trouble establishing himself as an authority in this area — even though no one is paying him to write the articles.

Then, by cementing his own expertise through staying consistent with his side project, it can open up professional avenues that would otherwise remain out of reach.

Supercharge personal development

Side projects, importantly, encourage creativity because they allow you to build your own parameters and be your own boss.

No one else is there to manage your time or efforts.

It’s a never-ending cycle of trial-and-error, which means immense room for learning and figuring out new ways to tackle a problem.

For my new book I took skills I learned publishing my first book in 2020, Everywhere But Home, and revamped my approach.

Compared to two years ago, I have a better grasp of the self-publishing and writing process. My time-management is better and my understanding of book marketing is far more developed.

All these skills stem from writing consistently online — keeping the coals hot on my side project.

If I had let my side project wane over time, I wouldn’t have the array of media skills I have now, which means I’d have one less book and likely be in a different job in my career.

Consistency beats a sprint

However, it’s important to note that side projects are easy to let slip.

No one else is there to tell you to work on them, or to remember that they exist.

It’s easy to start something new because of the early excitement and inertia. But maintaining it over time takes intention and diligence.

The people who have side projects that impact their careers and build their skills are those who kept at it, week after week and year after year.

There can be bursts of energy at times, but the main focus should be chipping away at something with regularity.

Consistency will beat the big sprints of effort. Showing up everyday is the most important part of any side project, and that’s also the fastest, most sustainable way to build up a skill set.

Life Between Moments: New York Stories is available on Amazon.

Creativity isn’t something reserved for gifted individuals, and it has little to do with talent.

It is a skill — like shooting a basketball or throwing a dart — and it can be learned by anyone, regardless of inherent ability. It’s wrong to think of it as exclusive to artists and poets.

I’m a business reporter, for example, and I write about economics for a living. It is sometimes formulaic, and usually riddled with data. Not quite a role that fits anyone’s creative stereotype.

Yet my new book, Life Between Moments: New York Stories, just notched a #1 bestseller ranking across multiple categories on Amazon, including Literary Fiction Short Stories.

I shake my head at how flimsy my first attempt at fiction was from a couple years ago. The characters were made of straw and the plot wasn’t believable. I was incapable of penning a description without an adverb.

But diligence goes a long way (you can grab my bestselling book here).

Most people misunderstand creativity as something reserved for a select and talented few, but this couldn’t be further from reality.

I don’t harbor an innate gift for storytelling any more than someone else. But I have always believed in the power of consistent, genuine effort.

I set out with the belief that I could become more creative just by showing up — and my new book leads me to conclude my hypothesis was true.

Sheer volume of practice, to many social scientists (remember the 10,000 hour rule Malcolm Gladwell popularized in Outliers?) is often what determines the difference between good and great.

In my fiction training, on no single day did I make a tremendous output. My progress stemmed instead from my unwillingness to miss a day.

My book now become a success not because of any innate creativity, but my determination to accrue hours practicing my craft.

Intentional action can be powerful, and lead to a steep upward trajectory. When applied to creativity, in particular, the results can be extraordinary because they subvert expectations.

The very best work we produce happens when we contribute something that is new, and that makes an improvement upon something old.

In other words, the most fulfilling stuff we can pursue is creative work.

Creativity is more important than ever.

Almost every professional today is called upon to conjure an original idea on a regular basis.

Creativity happens in spaces as small as a pithy tweet, or as dynamic as a corporate marketing campaign or a mathematical algorithm or line of computer code.

Whatever the medium, practicing creativity is about sharpening your axe and finding your voice.

The aim must be that, when you’re invariably called upon for a creative task, you don’t second-guess yourself or defer to someone you believe is inherently more creative.

I don’t harp on creativity because I’m a writer, but because everyone can radically improve at the work they do when they put effort into improving creativity.

And that means everyone has a chance to become more proud of the work they do — so long as you’re willing to slog through the work it takes to get there.

Don’t wait for permission.

It’s not about relying on artists or designers or musicians to share their creativity with the world, but practicing until you realize you have just as much to contribute.

Life Between Moments: New York Stories is available now on Amazon.

I wrote my new book, Life Between Moments: New York Stories, in eleven months while working a full-time job as a journalist.

I did this by keeping a consistent schedule with my fiction writing at nights and on weekends, while making sure not to burn myself out from writing.

During the day, I write about markets and economics as a reporter. The daily reps of quick-hit news stories has helped me improve as a writer and built my stamina and speed.

The metabolism of a markets desk for reporters is extremely high — some days I write as many as six stories a day, with each one ranging from 200 to 400 words. But the sparse quality of business news taught me to trim down my prose and be more specific in my language.

Usually I finish work around 3:45 p.m. ET, leaving me ample time afterwards for relaxing, exercising, and more writing in the evenings.

I usually go workout immediately after work, then have a meal, then sit down to write for about 30 minutes before hanging out with friends or going out.

That’s it.

Thirty minutes, five days a week.

The main lesson here is not that you need outrageous bursts of writing, but rather consistent, small bites.

Even on days I was tired or busier than usual, I would sit and write for 15 minutes. That kept me constantly chipping away at my writings, and allowed me to always have the project front of mind.

And, after almost a year of following that schedule, I had a complete book, ready to publish after dedicating very small moments of my day for a year.

Naturally, I had many weekends of all-day writing sessions, but I know that if I had aimed for those, rather than the small bursts in the evenings, it would not have been a sustainable output.

Scheduling smaller sessions is far more effective than longer ones, because there’s less mental friction to tackling them in the same way it is easier to convince yourself to run two miles than ten.

As I’ve written about before, consistency is the key to any goal. Consistency can make up for lapses of effort or a lack of talent. I do not consider myself particularly talented but I have learned not to miss any days of writing.

Action begets action. The more you do, the more you will have done and the more you will have to show for it.

That sentiment couldn’t be more true when it comes to writing a book.

Now, a year after beginning my job as a markets and economics reporter, I have a book that I worked on entirely outside of working hours.

Life Between Moments: New York Stories is available on Amazon and will be my second book in two years (you can add it to your Goodreads profile too).

If you take one thing away from here let it be this: Set a schedule, and don’t negotiate with yourself. Respect the schedule you set, and it will take care of you.

The things you can accomplish when you do not miss days are limitless.

Why ‘Life Between Moments: New York Stories’ won’t be my last book.

My debut fiction work, Life Between Moments: New York Stories, will not be my last book.

It published this week and has topped bestseller charts on Amazon. Positive reviews have been trickling in.

And while I found writing the book very meaningful, the feeling afterwards isn’t as rewarding as you might think.

I disagree that you have to somehow “discover” the meaning of life. To me, it’s something that requires work. It needs to be built, a day at a time.

Yes, I am proud that I completed the book. But the most fulfilling times in this journey were those that gave me the greatest challenge.

When I couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel but sat down to write anyway.

When the words failed to fall out of my pen in any coherence.

The meaning of life is something you have to hack away at, day after tiresome day, even when hope dwindles like a slow-dripping tap.

Life Between Moments, therefore, gives me less fulfillment now that the writing is done. To sustain the sense of meaning in my life, I cannot just sit and watch people read my book, because it was the work itself — rather than the final product — that made me feel most alive.

My definition is certainly different from the image of a wandering and wise hermit in search of meaning via abstinence from worldly delights.

While that trope can play a role still, nourishing meaning, to me, must be an active endeavor.

It takes diligence and intention, rather than happenstance. The notion that enlightenment happens to you is misleading.

I found the meaning in my life soon after I began writing everyday and realized I’d feel empty on the days I missed. Putting in a consistent, challenging effort in work I love is the most engaging thing I can imagine.

And to riff on a second cliché: The man who enjoys walking will go further than the man who loves the destination.

The meaning of life is rooted in the act of the walk, rather than the arrival. The work it takes to get somewhere — the responsibility you must adopt to achieve something — is where deeper fulfillment lies.

To be sure, an award or a milestone is encouraging, but that sentiment is as fleeting as a wave on the ocean. The celebration can’t sustain a sense of fulfillment because it is external — and ultimately easier than the work it took to get there.

I am so proud of completing my new book and watching it top the charts on Amazon. I’m doing my best to enjoy the moment.

But ultimately, I know I’ll have to put this book in the rearview mirror sooner rather than later if I’m to continue building the sense of meaning in my own life.

Life Between Moments will not be my last book.

“Life Between Moments: New York Stories” is available now on Amazon.