What Is This?

Hi, I’m John Bates.

I’m a reader and a writer. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to figure out the point of it. How do I make it meaningful?

How do we get out of our own way, out of our head and into the world? How do we pursue an uncommon life? When we want to change things about ourselves, how do we do it? How do we make those changes last? How do we get from having an idea about who we want to be, to becoming that person?

These are the questions I think about. I read in search of answers. My writing is a record of what I find.

If you agree that to stop learning and growing is to stop living, I invite you to join others like you on my newsletter, “The Bates Letter.” It’s one email a week with my latest articles, book recommendations and timeless wisdom from others.

How My Work Will Benefit You

In my writing, I try to answer the question, “How do I live well?”

I want to find great ideas and tie them together in a way that you won’t forget. These are strategies for living an intentional and uncommon life.

My writing focuses on topics like…

• How to pursue the life we want to live, but aren’t

• How to build good habits and make them stick

• How to observe our inner dialogue and not be ruled by it

• How to use our anxiety as a tool  

• How to live intentionally by remembering we will die

• How to choose our environments and be aware of their impact on us

• How to find our Life’s Task and go after it

A Note

I’m guilty and will likely be guilty again of every problem described in these works. E.B. White insisted that the responsibility of the writer is, “to lift people up, not lower them down.”

I write first to myself and don’t have an opinion on what anyone should do. Anything you read here is written to a future version of myself, in an attempt to lift him up.

I’m influenced often and widely. This site is a humble attempt to organize and simplify ideas I’ve learned from those far wiser than myself.

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