Dear Friend, (4 min read)

My friend Parker works at Disney as an Imagineer.

Which means his job—literally—is to dream things up for a living. And one afternoon over coffee in Southern California, he handed me something that changed the way I move through the world.

He didn't call it a rule. I named it after him later.

Parker's Rule.

Here's what he told me.

He was already going to be taking notes by hand. So for one month, he decided to take every single note with his non-dominant hand.

That's it. That's the whole thing.

He didn't add a new habit. He didn't overhaul his routine. He took something he already had to do, modified it 3 to 5%, and ended up somewhere completely new.

I remember sitting across from him thinking: that's so small. That can't actually do anything.

I was wrong.

I went home and tried it.

I started writing with my left hand. Taking notes, signing receipts, journaling. Just small things. And what I didn't expect was that it almost opened up a new world.

You start noticing things you never noticed before. Most notebooks aren't built for left-handed people. Most school desks aren't either. Suddenly you're seeing the world through a lens you didn't have access to before—because you forced yourself into a perspective that wasn't your default.

Then something happened that made it all click.

My last semester of college, I got a wart frozen off my right hand. The doctor looked at me and said, "By the way, it's going to be pretty painful to write for the next two or three weeks."

For most right-handed people? That's a crisis.

For me? I just switched hands.

Something that would have derailed my entire semester was just... not a problem. Because I had spent months intentionally making myself uncomfortable in small ways, I had an option I wouldn't have had otherwise.

That's the whole point.

Here's what Parker's Rule is really about.

It's not about making your life harder. It's not about being weird for the sake of it. It's about giving yourself more options—more creative raw material—so that when life throws something unexpected at you, you're not boxed in.

The more varied experiences you give yourself, the more solutions you have access to when you actually need them.

These varied experiences will also give you more in common with new friends. That’s the real gift of experimenting and trying things from different places and cultures than yours.

This works at every scale.

Small: Don't order the same thing at the coffee shop. Try something new. Worst case, you find out what you don't like—which is useful data. Best case, you find something you love that you never would have discovered otherwise. I've found some of the best food and coffee of my life just by refusing to default to what I already knew.

Medium: Drive a different route to work. Go to a different grocery store. Use your non-dominant hand to brush your teeth.

Large: Do the thing you've never done before. Book the trip. Say yes to the room you don't feel ready for. Rent the cabin.

Actually—that last one. I just did that. Rented a cabin in Colfax, brought a small group of guys together, had a personal chef, worked on my next book. I had never done anything like it before.

I didn't know if it was going to work.

It was awesome. well, it’s in progress. so it’s probably awesome ;)

Here's the thing friend.

You are not running out of experiences. You are running out of willingness to have them.

The world is a menu. And most of us keep ordering the same thing every single time—not because it's the best option, but because it's familiar. Because familiar feels safe.

But safe doesn't make you creative. Safe doesn't make you interesting. Safe doesn't give you options when you need them most.

3 to 5%. That's all it takes to start.

Your Assignment This Week:

One more thing.

The men's weekend March 27-29 is sold out—but I'm running another one April 24-26.

8 guys. Maximum. Intentionally small so we can actually go deep.

Spots are already being claimed. If you want in, reply with the word weekend and I'll add you to the list.

Well, that's all for now.

-Daniel

P.S. Parker works at Disney dreaming things up for a living. I always thought creativity was something you either had or you didn't. Turns out it's something you practice—in the smallest, most ordinary moments of your day. Beep beep.