There are so many things to manage in day. Most commonly, we think of managing your tasks.

However, it’s likely you could also manage your:

1. Energy
2. Mood
3. Health
4. Relationships
5. Environment

Often, when our expectations of tasks being done aren’t complete, it’s either because we are managing one of these other items, or we’ve failed to manage these other items and now they are catching up to us.

Here’s a couple spots where the modern world is failing us in each of these categories:

1. Energy – Not enough exercise. Plan some movement into your day.
2. Mood – staring at a screen and hearing pings on email in an office environment non-stop can put us on edge even without realizing it.
3. It’s easy to not get enough sunlight if your morning commute is going to your desk from your bed, while working from home.
4. In the smartphone world, it’s easy to exchange texts rather than have a real meetup with someone. Perhaps the meetup is necessary.
5. Working from home, it’s more easy for your desk or office space to get mixed up with the messiness of life. Perhaps tidying it up more routinely is better.

Just managing these items even slightly could make a huge change in also being able to deliver on your tasks.

The NFL is a great marketing tool for selling more footballs, helmets, cleats and jerseys. Young kids aspire to that dream of being a professional athlete and older people respect the dedication and effort it took to be there.

If those were robots out there, would artificial intelligence be creating something to aspire to? Likely not.

However, AI may someday write movie scripts, and likely is already writing many different online comments that are shaping discussions. Is that inspiring people to act or behave differently? Perhaps so.

So, if it is possible to be inspired by Aritificial Intelligence, how can we use that? Inspiration is a skill and it takes efforts by great leaders to inspire people in a way that isn’t usually scalable down an organization. Inspiring others is a skill that takes similar dedication to being a great quarterback in an NFL, and finding masses of people that can do so isn’t likely. The question then is if an AI model was created, trained by watching videos, reading transcripts, and pouring over all kinds of books on the subject was to do exactly the same as its human counterpart, would it work the same as the live person?

My guess is no. However, what it could do is help the inspiring person prepare their speeches in less time and make themselves more scalable. This then seems extensible to all kinds of currently non-scalable/less-scalable roles.

The cheapest sandwich is made by taking the cheapest single ingredient you can find, and putting it between two pieces of the cheapest bread you can find.

Of course, many people are interested in a cheap sandwich, but no one is really interested in the cheapest sandwich which is likely two pieces of bread with just shredded iceberg lettuce between them.

Now you can substitute “cheapest” for the following items and decide on a better term to optimize against:

1. meatiest
2. tastiest
3. tangiest

However, even in something as simple as sandwiches, these superlatives don’t really “sell” the sandwich for most people. Here’s some common popular sandwich combos:

1. Club sandwich
2. Chicken Bacon Ranch
3. Meatball

None of those fit directly in the meatiest, tastiest, tangiest as subjective to all audiences. So what is it that makes people choose these combos?

1. Taste matching a broad audience
2. Wide availability creating mass recognition
3. Makeup of all commonly used ingredients contributing to both items #1 and #2

If you want to take a product and make it ubiquitous, you may need to think about those last three items. These goes far beyond sandwiches you can extend it to cars, women’s hair styling tools, and just about anything else. Of course, a challenge is that tastes change, availability will extend as popularity rises and ingredients/components become more common as the products popularity rises. Things may start differently from this, but this is how they end up becoming commonplace.

In a trial recently a judge told the media not to make too much information about the jurors public. The judge said, “Use common sense.”

There is a massive problem here and it pops up nearly every time the phrase “use common sense” pops up from a person who is sick of having to explain or set rules. The problem is, the sense of the situation is different for everyone!

The judge and the court’s sense is that a trial should be fair.

The media’s sense is that covering this trial should make us money.

The jurors sense of the trial is that they are here to judge facts presented and their personal backgrounds and history aren’t that important.

The defendant and his counsel’s sense is that he is innocent or he hopes for some sort of legal acquittal.

The ways in which these different groups apply their “common sense” isn’t common to each other at all. For example, for the media maximizing the money you make for your coverage is common sense. Everyone wants to maximize what they make for their efforts. What happens when juicy details that diminish the courts ability for a fair trial are a bigger money maker? It’s not the media’s job to ensure the fair trial, it’s the courts.

Perhaps all too often we are using “common sense” amongst too many differing parties with varying incentives and expecting everything to play out fine for everyone. Once in a while, you need to take the hard efforts to spell things out.

This applies to teams, organizations, families and any other collection of people you can imagine. “Common sense” has become a catch all term for “read my mind” and we are drastically short on mind readers.

For those of you who are worn down, depressed, fighting the good fight, or just otherwise not feeling their best, I have a message.

You need some little wins.

Over the last year, I had a ton of difficulty in my life. I was having family issues, I stopped writing so much, I quit connecting with people as much, and while there were still some big ups, they weren’t enough. Little wins were missing.

I used to write daily on this blog. Every once in a while I’d get extra hits, a like, a new subscriber, and they were all nice wins when I was in the long slog of finding a big win. The same would happen with posting on LinkedIn.

As I found myself falling out of positive routines, I found myself missing little wins. Without the little wins, motivation was far harder to maintain, and nothing seemed to have momentum in my life.

These little wins don’t have to stop with work. They can be doing something nice for a stranger and getting a thank you. They can be entering a contest and winning a prize. They can be keeping your house clean.

Little wins add up to a positive attitude. Positive attitudes yield big wins.

Find you little wins.

Practice often gets a bad rep. It’s treated as the work that you do when it doesn’t count. However, the actual definition is: To do or perform habitually or customarily; make a habit of.

Habits are how we get good at something. Conversely, and less understood or thought about, is that habits are also how we get bad at things. Take this blog for example, for years I habitually wrote new blogs, new topics and ideas were easy to think of and to come by. It was a ritual and as a result my brain achieved a state where locking onto something throughout my day that made sense to write about would happen. Fast forward to a long period where life is kicking me in the teeth, and I couldn’t write this blog, and all of a sudden it’s very difficult to do that again. It takes significantly more effort, and it’s possible that the writings aren’t up to par.

Taking this to the logical extreme, talent is more likely practice without complaint, or practice while being totally ignorant of the effort. Someone who likes to run may not realize how sore their legs are. Someone who likes to write may not realize how much mental energy it takes. Someone who likes to read, may not care about all the other life events they are missing out on. They are practicing the thing they love, and ignoring the downsides.

If there is something you want to do or be, start with a practice at routine intervals even if you feel like you don’t have the time. Take a writer for example, if you can’t write for 15 minutes a day, while working/going to school/etc, how would you ever expect to scale that to full-time doing it for 8 hours a day?

Other items might feel like they are in the way, but a practice is likely what is missing.

Focus is massively underrated.

Short-term examples are something like a quarterback making a perfect throw in a chaotic play. Seeing the options available and executing while being surround by distractions and even violence. There is a reason the best make crazy salaries, they have focus. And their ability to focus in that chaos is usually matched by their ability to focus in the longer-term by being the best they can possibly be fitness-wise.

In the long-term, maintaining a focus on items like profitability, increasing margin, increasing sales throughput, quality, or any other item is likely to find you outproducing other companies in that space. However, focus also means ignoring things outside of that focus. Which likely means, you can pick one of these items, but not all of them. You have to pick your viewpoint, and that viewpoint can be your differentiator.

A few examples:

1. Apple – For years they focused on quality at all costs. Is it better? Do it. They weren’t worried about the other items specifically, like margin, profitability, etc. They knew if they focused on quality, they could charge what they needed for a healthy margin, and with a healthy margin they could be profitable.
2. PACCAR – This is a company that produces heavy trucks. In much of their investor information, you’ll find that they have focused heavily on profitability. For 80+ years they’ve managed to pay a quarterly dividend and that keeps their focus on being profitable. At this point, that profitability focus is in their DNA. Would you want to be the first CEO of the company to have an unprofitable quarter in over 80 years? Don’t think so.

The massively missed component of this is that when you have well-defined focus, you can tell people what it is and have them point you towards new supplies, vendors, or processes that can put you even further along that path. Apple suppliers knowing quality matters above all else, can work on putting their best quality options forward, and worrying less about the cost of them, as a result a company like Apple can receive proposals from suppliers that other companies don’t.

Here’s some things to think about:

1. Can you tell someone else what your focus is in a manner that they can assist you.
2. Can you post your focus in a place where others can find it and reach out in pursuit of helping you achieve it?
3. Having heard your focus, can you ask someone else what they would do in pursuit of that?

The real value of focus is being able to communicate it, without focus, it’s impossible to say exactly what you are trying to achieve.

I find that there are often times, where things are not in harmony. Your sanity, health, relationships, hobbies, or work may not all be firing the way you want them to. However, there are always points in time that are key opportunities for finding the balance again. Some examples on different scales of time:

1. A kid on a skateboard grinds down a handrail and things go bad, he’s getting wobbly, and eventually crashes. Right after that crash, he can gather himself get on the board and be totally back in balance. This can happen in seconds.
2. When your day is going wrong, unexpected events happen, and you are flailing. The day eventually ends, and the new one is a good start. This can happen in hours.
3. A salesperson at work focused on a huge deal is neglecting their family and health while trying to sew up all the loose ends. When that deal closes, there is obviously a good time point to regain your family and health habits. This can happen on the scale of weeks and months.
4. When a couple has drowned themselves in debt, and need to work hard to pull themselves, saving and paying debt down. When they get things back to a healthy state, they can find a new balance for themselves. This can take years.

Whoever you are, whatever bad situation you are in, there is balance at the end of your ordeal, however, the key item to all of this is you. Like the skateboarder, the salesperson, or the couple above, when you hit that key point where balance is possible again, you need to reach for it because habits are powerful, and if you don’t seek out your correct balance again, you may fall into a new normal.

We all need the right balance to be successful. If you aren’t there today, you’ll get there, just chart out when you see the opportunity to regain the balance, and create a plan to act on it when it comes.

Professional is a state of commitment rather than skill.

Choosing to be a professional bowler, doesn’t mean you’ll be the greatest, simply that you are committed to making a living at. For those who chose that path, there can still be a long climb to the best in the world, and for those who didn’t it’s not likely that being the best in the world is possible without the commitment.

Every professional should have the following in their chosen profession:

1. A desire to increase their skills
2. A love for what they do, the outcomes it produces, or the people it helps. At least one of those.
3. A network of other professionals to work with, learn from and help each other out
4. A willingness to share their passion with those who aren’t professionals, but interested

If you decide you are a professional at something, commit to it and work on all the above.

It’s possible you’ve gone far too long without asking for help and you don’t even realize it.

Sometimes pushing harder does nothing from where you are.

It’s possible another hand, a bigger piece of equipment, or even a new perspective is required.

Some reasons to reflect on whether you need help:

1. You’ve exhausted all normal avenues of operation

2. You’ve received less in results than you expected

3. You don’t know where to go next without significant brainstorming

4. There is an abnormal amount of stress on you

There are probably many others that could be added. Self-reliance is a powerful thing and is one pillar of success, but everyone needs help from time to time. Remind yourself of that.

Habits are some of the most powerful things in the world.

A streak is a wonderful thing to be on, provided it is something positive like a winning sales streak.

A losing streak is awful.

When you are consistently doing something positive, you should do everything you can to show up with the same habits every day. You don’t want to break the streak.

When you are consistently losing, you need to break your streak somehow with a different set of habits.

Identifying which parts of your life is in a winning streak, and which parts is in a losing streak is a good place to evaluate things. After there, actively manage them.

Our brains are shortcut machines.

I once described a good salesperson I know as “someone who makes zero assumptions.” He would ask questions that we all likely knew the answers to, but that made sense to confirm anyways, and those questions were just checkmarks to make sure nothing would pop up later that we would be caught off guard with.

Let me give an example of a possible assumption you might make. A customer has been purchasing a single product from you for nearly two decades, in that time, they’ve had many different salespeople from your company, and they’ve had personnel changes. Your company also sells many different products and has many different brands. It’s entirely possible when obtaining the account, you think they already know your company, your products, and that you only need to introduce yourself, after all, two decades in business together has to mean something, right?

Except it doesn’t.

That’s an assumption and can be a bad one. Like I said, on both sides companies aren’t stagnant, and there isn’t really such thing as a “corporation’s memory” it resides in the people, and the people change often. To assume that knowledge is there is a weak foundation.

When engineers are stuck on a problem for production, a system, or something physics related they check their assumptions, it may also be beneficial to extend this to people problems as well.

Sometimes things go right, and your effort and skills had not much to do with it.

Sometimes things go wrong and your effort and skills had not much to do with it.

Success and blame boiled down are stories we tell ourselves to make sense of emotions related to specific events and outcomes. Of course, there are many events and outcomes that do come from things we control, but not every single one is deterministic by our efforts alone.

When possible, it’s good to drop the story, and just ask the following questions:

1. Am I putting in the right efforts and in the correct amounts?
2. Am I getting the desired results I need?
3. Is there anything I can change from from my efforts that will change the results?

Those are much better guides than success and blame stories.

One of the things that I’ve noticed about the world, everything works better when we assume “These are nice people to work with.” This seems specifically true in cross-organizational situations where you collaborate with people that don’t work at your same company.

Too often we get stuck in the trap of:

1. They don’t respond fast enough.
2. They have too many demands.
3. They don’t respect my time.

However, these are stories we are telling ourselves. For each of those items, it is entirely possible they’ve gone above and beyond to make responses as fast as possible for you, demands as minimal as possible, and try to show up to meetings with you as much as possible, however at times our priorities are not always aligned, and it may feel like you are on the backburner.

To keep your stories from wandering too far away at any time, “These are nice people to work with” should be your default thought process about people. I certainly hope people think that about me, and want to give everyone else the same benefit of the doubt.

It’s easy to think your company is silly for all the metrics they track.

“They don’t measure the right thing” is a refrain you may hear often. I’ve even said it myself, but let me offer up an observation, the numbers can keep motivation going.

I’ve been working on this blog for years now. The number of posts I’ve written by year are as follows:

• 2019 – 318 posts
• 2020 – 354 posts
• 2021 – 270 posts
• 2022 – 184 posts
• 2023 – 49 posts

In 2021 and 2022, my posts fell down a bit due to increased responsibilities elsewhere, mostly as a parent, but those levels should have been sustainable. However, in 2023, life had other plans, and things fell apart.

In addition, to the drop in posts, I had a drop in readers, it’s easy to understand why, without much new to read, there wasn’t much point in coming back. Watching the numbers that looked so much worse than last year, when every other year had been an upward trend was a bit of a demotivator, when the years prior, watching things generally trend upwards over the years was inspiring.

In the last few weeks, I’ve started posting again more regularly, a couple new people have found my posts and find them enjoyable and told me so, and now I’m seeing the numbers grow beyond monthly levels that were seen in the past years. It has me motivated again. Not because it ties directly into some money-making metric, but because it is something I can solidly rest on knowing that the value of the work is growing.

The metrics may not always be fair, a good judgement of money-making, or even all that easy to measure at times, but they can be something people can take comfort in.

There is multiple kinds of doing too much.

There is doing too many simple tasks at once. I watched my wife recently cut a banana one slice at a time and place them on graham crackers for my daughter before cutting the next slice, without putting the knife or banana down in between. This was a dangerous and inefficient way to work. Cutting all the banana slices quickly, then placing them each on the appropriate graham cracker would have been faster and safer. Let’s call this type 1 of doing too much.

Then there is the type 2 of doing too much, which is really at the core a lack of focus. Wanting to have 3 businesses that all aren’t profitable is an example of this. Doing too many big items that each distract from the other isn’t a path to freedom.

There is also type 3 of doing too much, which is ignoring your health and exerting yourself beyond your capacities for extended periods of time. This tends to happen to older generations as they age, trying to continue to operate in a manner they knew they were capable of during their prime.

That being said, type I is the most common, nearly by definition, type 2 is the second most common, and type 3 is the most rare, especially at young ages. Most people aren’t over-exerting themselves. Our brains have wiring that make us resist doing so, for our own safety. Nonetheless, in many cases doing a bit more then we are comfortable with is usually a good thing.

A quick run down to escape each type:

1. Type 1 – Pay attention in the moment, and do things sequentially in proper order. Multi-tasking doesn’t truly exist.
2. Type 2 – Forget your ego. Success in a single focus produces ability for more freedom. Seek freedom through a single success at a time.
3. Type 3 – Check in with yourself from time to time. If you can squeeze out another rep at the gym, another mile on the treadmill, another email at the office, it probably won’t kill you, but if you are working 7 days a week already, you may need to re-prioritize and check in they type I and type 2 forms of doing too much you have going on already.

When under a huge amount of stress, it is perhaps best just to close the loop on everything. Don’t plan new things, just complete out all the hanging threads, or at least a good dose of them. Sometimes this involves what appears to be some open days that aren’t as productive, but I find that often times taking this time to do so, you end up creating the opportunities that you felt like were alluding you before.

While it is important to keep the machinery churning, a little expected “maintenance” is always necessary. Don’t avoid it for too long, or you will feel like things are breaking down. And they are.

Closing the loop on a bunch of small things may very well be the very thing you need in order to get your sanity, your groove and your success back.

That’s the formula for lift.

An airplane rises because the shape of the wing along with forward velocity creates a low pressure zone above the wing, and a high pressure below it. When the pressure difference times the wing area exceeds the weight of the plane, you rise up.

What a great analogy for rising higher and performing better. When reflecting on my career so far, the companies and the people, strong job performance has followed this model. Low pressure from the people above you in the form of autonomy, and high pressure from those below you, whether those you manage, your family looking for that bonus to be hit to go on vacation, or to get a promotion so you can get out of that cramped living situation.

When you flip this, high pressure from the top and low pressure from the bottom, you are coming in for a landing. This might metaphorically be tied to retirement for example, your family is set and kids grown, the house is paid off, and the pressure from the top is still there to perform pushing you closer to the ground with out the same lift as before.

In this metaphor, the terms “pressure” surely has a feeling of stress built into it. However, it doesn’t have to be so, we could easily exchange it for “expectations”.

The question is, do you want things to go higher or lower, and are you the one dictating the pressures above or below you? Also, how heavy is your “plane” that will dictate the difference in pressure required.

The world is filled with noise, trying to get you to focus on everything else that likely doesn’t matter.

Go to a car lot, tell them you’re interested in a new car, have them show you one, and inevitably, they’ll point out features they want you to focus on, like the seat material, the cupholders, the dash and the electronics, or whatever else makes this vehicle a bit better than your old one. Of course, the features highlighted may not be what matter to you at all, which might be things like price, repair costs, ride comfort and noise, etc., nonetheless they’ll try to move your focus to things the salesperson thinks is important.

Going beyond this, there are many businesses similar to the car dealership in the example above who are trying to get your attention enough to even just get you in. This is also another example of distraction.

Of course, many people go off the deep end here, and lump society into an evil collective. “They just want your money.” Of course, “they want your money”, that’s how the world works, but the people aren’t actively trying to distract you, they are saying, “I provide this service (or product.)” and they are hoping to find the person that responds back “I need that service (or product).”

Is there really a different way for the world to operate than that?

Back to the original topic, focusing on what matters. That’s really up to you. In fact, even your company or shareholders may be requesting you do work that doesn’t matter all that much, especially when things aren’t working well, it’s up to you to decide what is going to get you the results you need, and put your focus in the right spots.

Let me start this by saying, for a beginner, getting better at execution is everything. Until you execute repeatably, consistently, with high quality, you should focus on the quality of execution. However, as you become skilled, you may be looking for better execution to improve your results, and it just isn’t there.

A good analogy for this is bowling. In bowling, there is oil applied to the lane. Every shot moves the oil changing the playing field. That alone is a great analogy for business as every new product, new sales rep in an industry, new marketing tactic, new messaging, new companies, and just about anything else, makes a shift to the environment. Someone who started their sales career in a thriving industry, may find that by the time they’ve built the skills needed to be successful the industry has shifted so much, the money isn’t there. They self-doubt, and wonder why they aren’t making the money the experienced guys did 5-10 years earlier. It’s possible in that time, everything shifted significantly, and those skills now need to be taken elsewhere, or they need to adopt a new approach for similar success.

Going back to bowling, if you throw the same shot exactly every time, within about 7 shots, you’ll no longer throw a strike. This has been proven by robots. The oil moves enough, that it changes the energy and trajectory of your ball, and you are no longer getting the same result for the exact same execution. The idea isn’t to get upset at the unfairness of this, it’s to see the needed adjustments and make them at the right time, not too early in which you’ll give away your current strikes, and not too late when you wait for a disastrous split to happen.

At the top levels of bowling, everyone executes well enough to where that is near indistinguishable. The difference between the hall of famers and everyone else is making the right moves at exactly the right time. What those moves are and when to make them are skills in judgment that need to be honed with experience.

Reflect on this from time to time when things aren’t going well.

In Uno Attack, there is a card called “Discard All”. It lets you discard all of your cards of a particular suit.

Imagine a similar situation in life, where you discarded all of a particular set of an item. You discarded your money, and only had your skills left or vice versa. Or as another example, you discarded your career.

As a company, imagine you discarded everything legacy, your product architecture, your marketing, etc.

In all scenarios, would you be freed? Or would you be trapped?

For everyone, the answer is different, perhaps you should spend a while pondering this for yourself.

The importance of the right feel can’t be overstated.

Today, I was bowling with my wife. As a highly skilled bowler, I told her she was dropping the ball and needed to tighten up her thumb hole with a piece of tape to hold on more naturally.

The first game without the adjustment she bowled 132. After fixing it a couple frames in of game 2 she finished with a 173. After bowling a whole game with proper feel in game 3 she shot 213.

Creating consistency is hard without the right feel. This extends past physical events like bowling. If you’re mechanics are off, perhaps you need to adjust the systems, cadence, and tasks that are in place until it feels right.

Those are three items that going a long way in being able to manage something successful.

Skills are the backbone of being able to deliver something.

To make anything happen, investment is needed. That may be your time, your money, or your attention.

Faith is necessary because with investment we are spending something (time, money, attention) in belief that it will pay off. Without faith, no investment will happen.

All three of these items are in short supply. If you have them, value them.

Fall back on habits.

Habits break the feeling of being stuck.

I’m starting to get back to “health” after 9-12 months of a difficult period.

What helped me, was getting back to the habits that make me healthy, however, I’ve only figured out what those are over my lifetime, and there isn’t a user manual for each person.

However, there are some common things:

1. Physiological habits. Healthy diet. Exercise. Sleep. Etc. Get the right amount at the right frequency of these items.
2. Intellectual Habits: These are the items that vary.

Falling under #2 for me is writing, this blog, LinkedIN posts, answers on various forums. Also falling under this, is reading, and learning something, mostly a new language right now. While it hasn’t been a lifetime habit, I’ve also been talking to my brother more via phone. Strengthening family connections has felt better.

When these items broke down, and these habits fell apart, so did my “health” and my ability to do great work, be a good family man, and even just feel as much happiness as before.

When you’re stuck, habits are key. Also, when stuck, avoid making new, unhealthy habits like drinking, smoking, etc.

Often times, there seemingly is only a few real choices, and even though you have to make a choice with few options available, there can be unintended consequences to each of them.

When applying pressure to make someone work harder, it’s possible that instead you create someone less motivated, who has started questioning their own abilities. Or, you start to create the need for conversations that people need to vent their frustration for their own success at the current point in time. For a CEO of a huge Fortune 500, it surely is hard to make people work harder without unintended consequences.

When there is an expectation of how the mechanics of a process should work, it is easy to become blind to how it actually works. We can build models, spreadsheets, and mathematics to guide us only on things we understand, but unintended consequences lie squarely in the area of the misunderstood.

The more people impacted by your decisions, the more feedback from different perspectives should be sought, or else, you are failing in risk management of unintended consequences.

This leads to a single question, “How many different perspectives did you actually get?”

Most people think asking 100 people would be a lot of perspective. If you asked a single question to 100 CEOs did you get more or less perspective versus someone who asked 10 CEOs, 10 Middle Managers, 20 front-line workers, 20 family members of workers, 20 people with no relation to the issue at all, 10 police and 10 government workers?

Choosing which perspectives to not look at determines where the unintended consequences will show up.

When you miss a beat in a song, the best musicians hit the right notes immediately afterwards, they do it so well, you rarely notice the note the missed. However, when you start to miss more than a few notes, it is harder to get back on the beat. All of the discourse you hear with the rest of the music makes it sound more confusing and difficult to match where you are at.

A good way to judge the level of skill you are at is two fold:

1. How many beats in a row did I miss?
2. How long did I have to pause to get back to the music at hand?

I’m not talking about just music here, this analogy extends to everything that you do as a habit or in a rhythm.

If you blog daily, and feel uninspired, tired, sick, etc, how long do you miss before you get back on track?

If you exercise daily, how long in a row due you miss due to extenuating circumstances?

Taking this analogy you can apply it to:

1. Diet
2. Fitness
3. Self-improvement
4. Knowledge Development
5. Skill Development
6. Work habits

Using these two questions, self-assess how good you are at something, or at least the ability to stick to something, and really, that is more than half the battle at being good at something anyway.

After reaching a certain level of skill or ability, it’s possible to find yourself having backslid. Unfortunate circumstance, demanding life events, or long gaps in using the skills you’ve gained can cause stagnation and loss of ability. However, the memory of the ability still remains. That turns to frustration with the current state of things.

It’s best to stop the frustration in its track. The only way out is through. That means doing the actions that get the skills back. It definitely won’t take as long to develop the practice, habits, and skill level as it took you the first time you reached it.

When you are feeling the frustration, realize it is just resistance. Doing the work is the only way back.

Inspiration is all around you.

When you are uninspired, you are simply at a stage of failing to connect the dots. So what can be done?

Taking the “connect the dots” metaphor more literally, if you weren’t in a state of mind for a highly complex game of connect the dots that had over 1000 points to connect, you could start with one that had 20 points to connect. Then once you’ve connect them, perhaps you could add some coloring and some shade. Eventually, you could repeat with a more complex topic.

Eventually, systematically, the inspiration comes back.

Whenever you’ve lost ability, take the basic small steps that built it in the first place, the muscle comes back.

I’ve been struggling. I used to connect the dots between everything, no I feel like I’m flailing.

It’s not an act of not trying, it’s more like an act of not keeping focus. It’s driven by several items:

1. Emotional Turmoil. There are more than a few personal events of significance happening in my life right now.
2. Health and fitness. I’m in the worst shape I’ve ever been in.
3. Lack of short-term success. It’s been a grind lately without much upside to show.
4. Lack of any remaining short-term goals. In most regards, I’m well set, which means that changing anything about my life is a long-term prospect because it requires huge wins.

The only way to get that focus back is by solving the emotional, getting in shape, finding a quick win, and then setting some short-term goals even if they really don’t matter. Doing the will bring back the focus.

There has been a recent video floating around the internet of Chad Smith, of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame, playing drums for different track he has never heard before. You can see it below:

Here are some things you can takeaway from this about Chad’s skills:

1. He can identify musical patterns quickly
2. He can read where the music is going based on what the other instruments and vocals are doing
3. He can match patterns and volume changes based on instincts
4. He can do all of this in incredibly quick fashion while simultaneously doing the actual work.

This is the hallmarks of experience and skill.

Imagine you are a band, and you need new songs to make a new album to pay the bills. You could imagine, depending on the skill of the drummer, it could take months or years for that album, or it could be incredibly quick if you had a drummer as skilled as Chad. Can you imagine a scenario where given new music, a person this skilled needs more than a day to a week to come up with some phenomenal? I can’t.

This is where value is created. Be undeniably good, then find people who can benefit from those skills and serve them. In this case, Chad is part of his own band, but I understand he also sells his services for study work for others.

I define a weapon, not as a tool of violence, but as an economic object whose supply creates more demand.

We are rapidly approaching a “weapons-based” economy, in my opinion.

First, let’s talk about what some people discuss today, a “steady-state economy”. When everyone has a much stuff, entertainment, marketing, as they need, how does anyone have upward mobility?

It’s a good question, but it avoids reality.

If you have two options of who to do business with, at the same price, and same service quality, but one constantly drives out to meet you and takes you out to a nice meal with good conversation, who are you doing business with? Likely the one who is more personal. That relationship and the battle to do more for it, that’s an “arms race”.

With the advent of AI, so many tasks are now possible, and many things that took time to process will start happening much quicker, but that is an “arms race” as well. When generating an ad is near zero cost because AI can do the writing, the graphic design, the demographic research, etc., then you have an arms race to find someway else to appeal to customers.

As we each try to outdo each other, there will lead to higher demand for new things that aren’t so scalable. What that is is uncertain, but I know we’ll find it. One thing that will always stay just as scarce as ever, your time. Choosing where to be generous with it will always be part of the arms race.

At the highest levels an advantage is always needed.

In professional bowling, many pros have charted lanes in centers they’ve bowled at before. What this means is that they understand which lanes hook less, which ones hook more, which ones score lowest and which ones score highest. Using this knowledge, they may only find 1 or 2 frames they strike with the extra knowledge, but that can be enough. The difference between a strike and a split can be 20-30 pins. Find that in a qualifying block, and it is the difference between moving on and missing the cost.

In whatever world you are working in, or trying to break into, it’s likely an advantage is needed. Here’s a trick to make yourself successful, try not to make that belief that the advantage is money. Tons of people want to say, “I don’t have as much money, so I can’t do this like them.”

While finances can be hard, there is always someone who has more money.

Here are some other advantages you can focus on:

1. Your taste
2. Your understanding of a specific audience
3. Your work ethic
4. Your ability to manage
5. Your ability to learn
6. Your ability to make friends
7. Your ability to write
8. Your resourcefulness

How often do you reflect on things? Do you have a quiet space? Do you have the time? Are you able to put the phone away for long enough?

Many would benefit from more space to contemplate life. To reflect on where they are at, and where they want to go. Daydreaming is an act that can increase our happiness, while also giving us ideas of who we want to be.

For people with office jobs, it always seems like you should be answering another email, entering more data, or tidying something up. However, when I think about it, just a bit of time in each day to daydream might even be useful to your job. Where else are you going to find the inspiration for a more efficient way of working. Where else are you going think about how to better decorate your office to make you happier while at work, leading to less burnout.

Space to contemplate things is important and a serious part of mental health.

Below is a clip of an MLB pitcher throwing a fastball. Every throw he grunts, however, he is also exerting himself to the maximum extent. The amount of people who could reach throws of this velocity is tiny in the scope of the human population. That level of exertion probably leads to the grunt.

Of course, there are other things people can exert themselves in besides the physical. They can exert creativity, empathy, logic, systems creation, analysis, connection, recollection, and there are probably others. It’s highly likely that while these don’t lead to a physical “grunt”, they probably have their own equivalents to the explosive pitches.

Perhaps, one way to be fair in judging our own efforts, is to ask ourselves based on the energy put in, is there some unexpected byproduct? If so, we likely shouldn’t be pushing any harder. If not, perhaps we should dial it up a bit until there is some, then dial it back slightly to find our correct equilibrium in ensuring we are trying, but not killing ourselves in the things that we have to do day in and day out.

Here’s the clip:

There is a “real” you to your mom.

There is a “real” you to your spouse.

There is a “real” you to your brother.

There is a “real” you to your friends.

There is a “real” you to your coworkers.

There is a “real” you to you.

Of course, what is “real” is a perception from everyone else. If at work you always have everything together, and are punctual and well-mannered. That is the “real” you, at least at work, if that is what your coworkers perceive you to be.

If when it comes to family, you are always late to events, scatter-brained, and a bit grumpy, that is also the “real” you, even if it is a byproduct of how you behave at work, giving your job your energy first, and your family second.

Sometimes, to avoid the “real” version of ourselves that we want to avoid being, we have to choose where the bad version of ourselves is going to lie, and make sure that the good version exists in the audience of those we care about it doing so the most.

We all pick our audiences, in business and in life. Choose the “real” you that you want for each audience in your life. Fair warning, tradeoffs will be required.

I’m good at this is a signal that is sent by doing well at something.

Wearing a school logo on your shirt is a signal that says, “I am proud or connected to this.”

Living in the cheapest house in a nice neighborhood, says I care about the community I live in.

Living in the most expensive house in a neighborhood, says I care about status.

We are busy sending signals all day long. Not everyone is an antenna attuned to picking these signals up. However, if you do manage to receive them, something that should certainly cross your mind is, “What do I do with this information?”

I’ve noticed something, when I feel great my life is basically waking up, going to the gym, showering, making a healthy breakfast, working the day, making dinner, going for a walk, putting my daughter to bed, writing a blog, then perhaps reading or watching TV for 30 minutes and going to bed.

When I feel lousy, my life is endless scrolling, trying to find endless satisfying movies and TV shows, and searching for all sorts of things and feeling like there is so much “more” I’m missing out on.

My friend Sam knew life was simple. Do something that doesn’t destroy your soul, help others, get some exercise, enjoy nice days, and be good to your family.

Life is simple. If it feels hard, remember you are making it that way. I don’t think most squirrels are busy having existential crises. Just because you have the capacity for those, doesn’t mean you should.

Enjoy your life, but know there isn’t that much to be done.

I used to go to lunch with my friend Sam. When we went out, we’d go for Indian food, or sometimes something like Lebanese. Rarely, did we go for the ordinary hamburgers, burritos, salads, sandwiches. Once you’ve had these less common cuisines, and understood how good they are, you will rarely judge another new type of cuisine before trying it.

I had some coworkers who were mortified at the thought of Indian food. They were also the same people that judged everything before experiencing it. There is nothing about Indian food, that they couldn’t enjoy, it was just beyond the bounds of their world. Living that way limits opportunities, which could extend to jobs, friendships, community engagement, experiences, travel, and other items far beyond food.

Try something out of the ordinary, it’s a habit. It can grow, and so can you as a person.

P.S. My friend Sam recently passed away. I’m trying to document all of the things to take away from him as a person over a set of blog posts. Sam had the most touching ceremony with so many people coming to celebrate his life and share beautiful words. If someone had to pick a role model that was an ordinary person (i.e. not a business tycoon, famous person, politician, etc.) Sam would be high on the list, so learning from him and reflecting on how to live is beneficial to anyone.

Racing is an anxiety-inducing thrill ride.

My friend Sam, who recently passed away, was a big racing fan. He was in racing clubs, followed the sport and liked fast cars. Sam was also the most laid back guy you’d ever meet. Racing was that out of the normal thing that makes us feel like life is meaningful.

Not everyone is looking to induce anxiety in themselves, but everyone is looking to induce SOMETHING.

Here are some things people may want to induce:

1. Anxiety
2. Safety
3. Danger
4. Calm
5. Thoughts for the present
6. Planning for the future
7. Creativity
8. Rhythm
9. Outgoingness
10. Selfishness
11. Routine
12. Spontaneity
13. Empathy
14. Drama

If you know what your audience is seeking to induce, you can figure out what to serve them.

For some people, their closest friends are obvious, for others, not so much.

My friend Sam passed away recently. We worked together for nearly 10 years and shared an office for a lot of that. We had conversations on philosophy, politics, shared food, experiences, and support on events in our life.

Because we were coworkers, it didn’t dawn on me that we shared so much that we knew far more about each other than most other friends of ours do.

For those 10 years I worked with Sam, he was one of my best friends. Due to his unexpected passing, it’s so obvious. Life has a way of eventually showing us the truth.

Don’t be like me. If you are close to someone, make sure they know it. Make sure they know the bounds. You make think some things can go understood unspoken, but the words are always nice.

It’s been a hard year on me.

Both my parents were diagnosed with cancer in the last twelve months.

I have some other family issues going on.

And last month, a close friend of mine, a man I shared an office with for years, passed away to a brief struggle with cancer. I never connected with him after he shared his struggle. After my parents going through successful treatments I had a bias in my thinking that he would come out the other side.

It didn’t happen.

Today, I attended his “Celebration of Life”. It was perhaps the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed. I knew Sam was kind, genuine, optimistic, and all sorts of positive, however, the expansiveness of how many people he helped and the depth of caring people had for him was enormous. The stories shared were deeply moving.

Sam wasn’t “The Head Honcho”.

Sam wasn’t the richest guy on the block.

However, from what I can tell, he had more people with genuine care and affection for him than just about anyone out there and that is something that was earned over decades.

It’s easy to measure jobs, homes, retirement accounts. However, it’s much harder to measure love and impact.

I’ll miss my friend Sam. But he had as touching a send off as anyone can ever hope for. It will forever be with me as a reminder of what is important in life.

To just about anyone with a pulse, self-improvement makes sense. If you improve yourself, then everything around you gets better. However, most people actually shrug off simple, easy improvements and chalk it up to, “It’s not big enough to make a difference.” Below, I’ll outline an example, so that hopefully, you’ll learn to recognize it yourself and stop yourself, so that you can grow without limits.

All over the internet you’ll see posts like if you are 1% better everyday for a year you’ll be (1.01)^365 = 37.78 times better in a year.

I’ve read stories about a number of sports teams who took an approach of writing every single thing they could possibly brainstorm as an improvement down, then ordered the list based on what everyone thought would be biggest impact to smallest, then implemented. I’m not sure that is the 1% everyday specifically, but both are the same in spirit.

Let me give you a sport I know really well, bowling.

Here are a list of improvements someone can make to get better at the sport:

1. Make sure you are properly hydrated
2. Check your slide sole is fresh and clean
3. Clean your bowling balls after every session to make sure they start fresh the next time
4. Make sure you wipe your ball after every shot
5. Ensure your surfaces start at the same grit every time
6. Use tape in your thumbhole to make sure the fit is properly snug
7. Change the tape pieces that touch your hand every night so they have the same level of friction
8. When you don’t strike, write down which direction the ball missed and see if you find a pattern
9. Keep a journal detailing pairs, and what happened as the lane broke down
10. Change your grips after every 20 games
11. Make sure you start with your foot on the same board every time
12. Make sure you are the exact same position forward or backward every time
13. Don’t go to the bathroom if you are striking
14. Eat with your non-bowling hand
15. Eat the same thing while you bowl all the time
16. Drink the same thing while you bowl all the time
17. Once a week in your practice session take a different ball and try at different surface grits (500,1000,2000,4000)
18. Drill up one ball multiple different ways and see how it react in comparison
19. Use a dedicated spare ball
20. Put tape on your shoes with writing that reminds you of key points in your game

I can keep going if I think for longer, however, as you read through here are a few thoughts that might have crossed your mind:

1. “That won’t make a difference”
2. “That seems expensive”
3. “That’s a lot of work/effort”

And you’re right. However, that is exactly why the world isn’t filled with nearly as many people achieving huge results a year later by practicing all these small improvements.

If you hear yourself mentioning any of these excuses, stop yourself, and ask, “Do I want the results, or not?”

In the last 11 months, I’ve had a ton of shifting routines. It’s been stressful. I felt like I was mentally coming apart at times. You don’t realize how much you rely on habits, especially when new things are introduced to your life slowly. However, when you have a series of abrupt changes, it feels like the difficulty has gone up. And it likely has. You can coast with less energy with good habits. You don’t have to think about what to do, just do them.

Whenever you are struggling to diagnose what is go wrong in your life, look at what you have a cadences for. There are a few tricky aspects here:

1. You have to HONESTLY self-reflect on each day
2. You have to recognize habits and routines even if you didn’t mentally feel like you decided on them
3. You have to be willing to struggle with trade-offs

For #1, weight loss is a good example. If you are counting calories, you have to be honest and accurate in measuring calories. If you lie to yourself and believe that a 400 calorie cookie was only 200 and have one daily, you won’t lose the weight you should.

For #2, an example would be starting a new job, then get home at a specific time, and plopping down on the couch for hours in front of the TV. You just started doing it, but didn’t really ask yourself, “What habit should I do after work?” Then decide on becoming a couch potato. It just happened.

For #3, taking that couch potato example further, it may be very restorative mentally to take that break and watch TV, but if it doesn’t give you time to stay in good health, that can deteriorate too. Balancing what the right amount of TV to watch for relaxation vs. having a balanced and healthy life is important.

Once you look at yourself clearly, and have identified the cadences, you can then start to analyze if you are spending your time correctly to do the things, be the person, and achieve the goals you set for yourself.

There is two ways to deal with the situation:

1. Say “No more.” I literally can handle no more than this.
2. Work on your process and innovate the way you work.

I recently have been hitting the overwhelmed stage, and I told myself I have to find more efficiency in my process, spend less time figuring out what the next most important thing is and lower my mental overhead.

I had the following:

1. A system for managing customer interests in our products
2. A task list broken down for each customer I serve as well as our general company tasks
3. OneNote used for taking notes in company meetings and documenting action items
4. A highlight/lowlights sheet for the week that needs to be filled out as the week goes on capturing important information
5. A long-term document for items I couldn’t handle in the short term that would just be cluttering up my day-to-day list
6. A quarterly business review document that outlines initiatives status of where things are in accounts, and plans for the future

That’s a lot of focii, not to mention the typical flood coming in via email, and actual customer meetings 8-10 per week. I figured I was spending a significant amount of mental overhead constantly shuffling information between them. So I did the following:

1. I integrated everything in #2 into #3. Using tags in OneNote, allows me to generate lists pulled in all sorts of ways. Based on the company, based on the week it was generated, based on whether it is a meeting to be scheduled, with a few button clicks I can re-arrange the task list as desired.
2. My highlights/lowlights I integrated into OneNote as well. While it didn’t reduce any workload, it did keep me from switching screens as often.
3. I combined items #5 and #6 together. Since anything in the long-term should be considered “strategic planning” it should be in the quarterly business review presentation. No need to have another place for it. Anything that doesn’t fit in that document should either be dropped or reconsider if it is a priority at all.

This all doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but it minimizes constant window switching, and more than that, it allows much more flexible re-arranging.

The final and most important piece, is I added a physical journal for document my top 15 priorities for the week, and then breaking them down 5/day (that gives a little wiggle room if some days all 5 aren’t achieved). This takes the mental overhead off of what to work on next during a hectic chopped up day. At the end of the week I review, and along with my newly organized lists, I update.

Systems are important, and I doubt this is the final form mine will take. While I don’t feel it’s made me a crazy amount more productive, it has made my brain feel far less scrambled and my day more enjoyable.

Society seems to have specialized so much everyone wants to delegate responsibility.

Delegating financials to banks and brokers.

Delegating your survival to the company.

Delegating your entertainment to Netflix.

A more personal revelation is the movie theater. I took my daughter to see the Super Mario Bros. movie. The ticket purchase was automated. There were no attendants in the theaters. There was one guy working the concessions stand. He was more than a bit scattered from dealing with any and all problems. When a problem arose, it seemed like there should be someone else on hand to ask, but there wasn’t and one man can only do so much. If the movie didn’t start playing, but there was a long line at the concessions stand for a different movie starting in 20 minutes, do you stand in line and wait your turn? Or raise it as an emergency and jump the line? The lack of someone else responsible, like a projectionist, makes the customer uncomfortable in the situation regarding the etiquette.

This is the unforeseen side of automation. While the clear side being is what is on someone’s spreadsheet, dollars and cents being saved, the downside is customer experience and no resiliency. When the lone worker is stressed, the interactions with them aren’t as pleasant. When an automated system breaks down, and there is no slack, the entire system starts to come apart.

We are facing a dilemma as a society, ever increasing abilities to automate tasks we wouldn’t have thought possible 10 years ago, but also is full automation a worthwhile goal.

Inevitably a number of people will over automate and lose out.

The true thing that needs to be thought about is this, if automation can lower your base cost dramatically, it won’t be long until the prices you charge become a commodity since others will find the same opportunities to operate equally efficiently. On the other hand, differentiating is always an option. Being personal, creative, unique, and optimized in a way entirely other than cost is an option.

Delegating responsibility means delegating the value of what you do. It’s a race to the bottom.

It is easy to lose focus. All that has to happen is have too many things to track enter the frame. After all, busyness can sneak up on us.

At work, it’s easy to have our task list grow until managing it efficiently is no longer possible. The important tasks getting buried in with the drudgery. Of course, it is possible to climb out, but at times it doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes without realizing it we are grasping on to things we don’t need to be. In writing, I’ve even written about Holding onto too many drafts.

The deeper I get in to my career, and my life, the more I realize focus is incredibly important. When I was young, I would lament not being able to get something going that I was interested in. The reality was I had too many interests. Now that I’m older, with a family, and a daughter with her own growing interests that I want to be a part of, I have to make decisions.

I’ve spent the last two months mostly not writing on this blog after 4 years of mostly not missing writing. The reason for that was because my career, and my family life were both struggling. I could not continue doing this and pull myself out of that. However, focus can be looked at a lot of different ways. Provided that something does leave so far out of your view that it never comes back, you can always bring it back in to focus.

That’s what I’ve done with this blog. It’s something that I will continue to do in all aspects of my life.

When you’re overwhelmed, be deliberate in what you dump from your focus, but try to remember the ones that truly are important and you need to come back to.

For many people, they don’t realize all the assumptions they inherently make all around them.

When you put your money in a bank, you are actually making an investment in that bank. They take your money, hold onto 10% of it as their required reserve and then invest 90% of it in the form of mortgages, bond purchases, stock purchases, etc. The interest you are paid on your money represents a fraction of the profit they made from those investments.

There are many different alternative investments you could make:

1. You could buy equipment to start setting up for a future business
2. You could buy a house
3. You could invest in stocks directly yourself
4. You could invest in educating yourself
5. You could buy items that you can sell when you need your cash bank

There are more items that could go on that list but you get the point. Some people forget, the best marketing you don’t even think of as marketing. “Put your money in the bank” is traditional wisdom, but that tradition was created through marketing before your were ever born.

We are about to go through a turbulent financial period. Educate yourself on how finance works because if you don’t do it, you’ll find out there are many assumptions, and more importantly risks, that you weren’t even aware existed.

P.S. Here are some things you should try to understand:

1. What does a bank do with your deposit?
2. What is the national debt?
3. What is a bond?
4. What is a mortgage-backed security?
5. What is an asset
6. What is a liability
7. What are the factors that affect interest rates?
8. How do interest influence bond prices?
9. What is margin in the stock market?
10. What is leverage?
11. How much leverage is available on different asset classes?
12. How does leverage change risk?

When I say the word, “gambler” it probably conjures up an image of a casino, a roulette table, a blackjack table, a poker shark, a horse track bettor, or some other common imagery.

It likely doesn’t conjure up a golfer, a bowler, etc.

No doubt, these are two distinct groups. One is seen as relying on chance, the other more on skill. However, those in the first group often believe they are working on skill as well.

In daily life, we are all gambling as well.

We gamble on:

1. The job we take
2. The spouse we choose
3. The town we choose to live in
4. The car we buy

All of these things may not work out the way we expect.

In some regards, everyone is a gambler, most just don’t see it. A few others do, but say they will only take gambles with the odds in their favor, others don’t even calculate the odds, they just love the thrill.

If you want to sell something to someone, they are taking a bit of a gamble the first time they work with you. The key here is to know which kind of gamble your audience is keen on taking, and frame your offer correctly so they identify it as being their type of gamble.

I watched a Hot Ones episode with Bryan Cranston recently. Two bits of wisdom in acting caught my attention:

• Audiences will cry if a character doesn’t cry easily
• Audiences won’t laugh if a character laughs easy

The interesting thing about this is that he mentions sketch comedy and stage shows where people are in the room with you work differently. We’re engaged with them. On Saturday Night Live when an actor giggles the audience giggles.

There is a life lesson here, when you are pitching something, selling something and you are in the same room, the audience is on your side much more than a recorded webinar or video. They are along for the journey and you have their permission. They want you to succeed in whatever you are trying to sell.

On the other side of this, if you are afraid to be on the journey and live with someone, you better have prepared and create the right tension because you need more to pull people to the state you are looking to put them into.