Most people dream of more money, but money itself isn’t a great dream, at least not beyond most people’s ordinary earning capacities in a country like the USA.

In fact, prior to adulthood, most people never even thought about money. Instead, there was childhood aspirations. Places to go, things to do, achievements not yet completed.

However, money has a way of changing that as an adult because money is our entire system. It’s our food, our shelter, our transportation, our warmth. It’s the medium of exchange for all of that. In a more philosophical manner, it’s our security. When all of that is on the line for your family, it always seems like more is better.

Somehow, money makes it seem like purchasing our dreams is possible. A big house. A nice car. However, money doesn’t really purchase anything significant at all. As you age and experience more of the world, you recognize how few truly amazing things are out there. Most things become humdrum if you experience enough of them, so being original is an opportunity. That originality only comes from people with dreams. The chef creating entirely new ideas of food, or playful and imaginative desserts, doesn’t need all that much money to get started. Yet, if that same person already had a $200,000 or $300,000 yearly salary, they would likely find it hard to go out and pursue their dreams because of what they would lose if it didn’t work out. Part of the salary is the price they are paying not to in fact.

There is much to be said however about living your dream first, then finding ways to monetize that. One example of that:

• Brad and Kyle – These guys are professional bowlers. When they first went out on the professional tour, they weren’t making much money, but they were vlogging about it. Now they can sell t-shirts, online memberships and more that help fund their professional bowling lifestyle. While they are getting more seasoned and improving in the sport, it almost doesn’t matter because their viewership and fans are growing. In the future, if they wanted it they could have pro shops, coaching clinics, bowling alleys and more, which would provide far more income than professional bowling ever will. All built off their dream that they shared with others.

Often times, we think of money first, then dreams later. There are dreams that require a certain threshold of money to start, and perhaps that is okay to wait on, but we all need plans on when we have enough to pursue our dreams after that, we can figure most things out from there.

Meet enough successful professionals and many will tell you, “School is a waste.”

What they really mean, is that the pacing, the classrooms and the teachers matter to the learning experience, though they don’t communicate it that way. Where this comes from is that the traditional schooling didn’t resonate with their desired methods of learning. Traditional schools have a set curriculum, set pace, and teacher’s who all generally have same background, university degrees in education.

We are seeing far more choice of this than ever before:

1. YouTube Channels
2. Khan Academy
3. Podcasts
4. Mastermind and Executive Groups
5. Universities
6. Community Colleges
7. Online Courses

These all have different presentation types. They have different production qualities. They have different pacing. They come from those who have different work experiences.

As a result, the ability to learn and grow as a person is nearly unlimited, at least in relation to previous times in society. If you haven’t thought about what you need or would like to learn, how you want to learn it, and who should be doing it along side you, it’s time to do so.

How is this possible if the average sample should produce average work?

Sample bias.

People who aren’t good at something don’t generally willingly engage in it. Or said alternatively, people who actively engage in topics or activities without being required to do so are the most likely to be highly skilled in those areas.

Taking that fact into consideration and that the internet is what fed ChatGPT it’s training data, it becomes clear that ChatGPT is likely to be better than a person chosen at random in a particular topic, however, at the moment it has several drawbacks:

1. Limited to mostly generalized topics.

2. Doesn’t know much about specific companies, people, etc.

3. Isn’t going to know much about topics that are highly technical niches mostly involving academic publications.

4. Not up-to-date. Data is from 2021 or earlier.

All that being said, ChatGPT can still be a useful ally.

When you are crafting a presentation involving many different people, a good question is who is the narrator? Who is the main character? What is the theme?

When the presentation is something more like a business presentation, these ideas that seem like they are out of a movie script are still applicable. Storytelling is storytelling nonetheless. Without a through line, themes, characters, and a guide to the story, it’s likely it won’t be super successful. Someone needs to take responsibility to tell the story, everyone else is just reacting to the plot.

and many of those people are unaware of what others find most interesting about them, or what their own skills are really worth, or even what big things they are capable of.

The world also incentivizes and rewards people who show others what they are capable of and provides opportunities.

I’m at an event that is showcasing many different wins for a company in 2022. Dollar amounts that would make your headspin. Yet, many of the people that have won this business come from humble backgrounds.

Alternatively, last night I had a great conversation with two gentlemen, and they don’t do their work for the money alone. They have interests and passions that they pursue, much of which is enabled by the everyday jobs they have. You never know who you are talking to, but if you find the right topic, they will profess their life to you. Don’t be scared to ask.

The food at a conference cannot change how good the content is. Good food, and bad presentations, is just a company dinner. However, good presentations with mediocre food at a conference misses the point.

We communicate things in a number of different ways. Some are communicated in words. Others are communicated by body language. Some are implied by society. Last but not least is the much is communicated by our actions.

The food at a conference, and the experience itself is an opportunity to say this is how we do things in this group of people. Here are items that can be communicated with no words:

1. Punctuality.
2. Quality standards
3. Power and Hierarchy
4. Transparency
5. Planning and communicating the plan
6. Coordination

I’m sure there are more that you can add to the list.

The important takeaway is that while a conference is about the ideas being presented, it is also about so much more. After all, how often do all these people get together, and how many opportunities do you have to convey items such as those above on such a large scale?

Make the opportunity count.

You may feel like you’re a beginner at most things, the reality is you are likely intermediate.

If you shoot 120 a game, you are far short of pros bowling 250 a game. However, a beginner is the 5 year old who bowls a 22 with bumpers up.

If you are bad at crafting a story in your native language, you may never be a novelist, but you’re still a far cry from someone who doesn’t even know how to write.

Today was my first day in Monaco. I don’t speak French. I don’t know the customs. I didn’t know they drive on the right side of the road, I thought like most European countries they would drive on the left side.

Here is a list of some other things I’m clueless about in Monaco:

1. How much do phone calls and data cost?
2. How do I get up the hills here?
3. What is the tip culture?
4. Where can I get bottled water?
5. Which side of a hallway should I walk along?

For a lot of communication and culture here, I’m a beginner again. Seeking a skill or experience where you are truly are a beginner is a great exercise from time to time, it keeps you humble, it grows your empathy, and it helps you grow in ways you would never expect.

The PBA (Professional Bowlers Association) has a problem. Bowlers today make smaller payouts than the same tournaments 20-30 years ago. One result of this is only a handful of people make better money then run of the mill professional jobs (sales, engineers, etc.). As a direct consequence, many talented people don’t try to be professional bowlers.

I’ve pondered, “What could I do to start a competing tour to compete with the PBA?” One idea I had, run events where only 1st place pays. Concentrate all the money at the top. For example, the upcoming 2023 USBC Masters has a prize fund raising of $420,000. 1st place pays $100,000. The winner of this event every year becomes one of the top earners of the year. What if it all went to 1st place? Most bowlers have never earned $420,000 in a year. This would make it possible to have one good event and do so, but it would also remove the “grinders”, those who hang in there with smaller earnings until their skills develop and they scoop up big wins.

Is this a better way to function with all the money at the top? I’m not sure. It started out as a thought about marketing in a sport I love, but ended up as a philosophical social commentary. Think about it.

It’s likely that you are valuing the tasks on your plate incorrectly. In fact, even more likely you’re not even valuing something at all that is high value.

A good example is sales prospecting emails. Most get zero responses. However, it requires sales prospects to make sales. While the expected value of each individual email is zero, the average average email value is your yearly sales/emails sent out. I’d guess for most sales people that value is around $500-$1000 dollars. If you were paid that average value every time you sent one of those emails, it would be your whole day, but because you aren’t and you have to wait for one of them to turn into something, it’s easy to do less than you should.

If we all crossed this expected value to average value chasm in the right manner and to the best of our abilities while low value tasks get automated, we’d see a rising standard of living,

That’s one potential “Battle of Wills”.

In the sport of bowling, in competitive matches between highly skilled competitors, it often comes down to who can stay the most relaxed. That’s because when your muscles tense up, it is harder to be repetitive in your skill.

When thinking of competition, most people think of feelings like anxiety, pushing hard, and digging deep. The war analogies often pile up. However, not every competition calls for that.

Many competitions require deep thought, thinking ahead, and staying relaxed. However, it’s not often you hear a calls to stay more relaxed than the opponent, and on the rare chance you do, it’s usually in a tense, harsh tone, “C’mon guys! Relax!”.

Learning how to keep your cool when your nerves are filled with anxiety and fear, when your senses are loaded with stimulation, and when you have something on the line is a skill worth learning.

Waves are cyclical, however, different waves have different amplitudes and different frequencies.

How waves combine is typically what we call “rhythm”.

Rhythm is what determines how long a particular accomplishment takes.

One example is in sales careers, there are multiple waves. Annual quotas, quarterly targets, monthly initiatives, weekly team meetings and daily conversations with customers. For most companies, for this particular career, you’ll find this rhythm. This is what produces certain accomplishment, or at least is perceived to be the right rhythm.

Everyone needs to find their own “waves” that lead them to the right pace in their life. Some different examples might be:

1. An author – Spends 2 years writing a book, then a while touring around promoting it.
2. A crab fisherman, out at sea during the season, then back home for a while.

The list could be endless, but I won’t go further.

Most times when people are looking for work, they are seeking jobs that match their skills, but another consideration is a job that matches your rhythm. After all, it’s likely that a job that doesn’t match your rhythm can break you faster than a job that doesn’t match your skills. Skills adapt better, rhythm is more ingrained.

As the costs of individual tasks is pushed ever lower through technology and automation, one of the only things left to do is pick and audience and an offering and find combinations of tasks to be done that create value for the audience.

This seems easy, but the difficulty lies in its pure triviality. “What do I want to do?” is one of the toughest questions for just about anyone to answer for a reason.

While some think, “I’ll just do something, then I’ll figure out who will pay for it.” That mostly fails because when it comes time to figure out where you will place marketing ads, how to resonate with those people looking for what you offer, and the value they will receive from what you do, it all comes up as unanswerable.

Determining the audience and the offering is where fortunes (monetary and otherwise) are made. It’s not that doing this leads inevitably to success, but that the lack of this approach almost always leads to inevitable failure.

The world is filled with many little 1 way decisions. “What should I eat for dinner?” is a good example. However, decisions that are 1 way are simple to answer, and as such, they aren’t valued highly.

More highly valued are decisions where multiple parties are involved and each may react in a way that changes subsequent decisions down the line. If a trucking company decides to invest in lithium ion battery vehicle development, another company may decide to do so as well, then there is competition, and it’s possible that the other party entering the space changes the economics of it, possibly better, or possibly for worse.

These complex, multi-way, interparty interactions that are difficult to answer, and can never truly be “optimized” like many 1 way decisions can are where the value in the world lies.

Getting good at dealing with ambiguity, shifting environments, understanding direct and indirect assumptions and making important decisions is where leaders are made.

If you take time to craft a new style of desk that completely fits your digital stuff, your writing stuff, your notes and keeps you organized, that is an example of using creativity to make yourself organized.

If you take the time to line up your tools, your paintbrushes, your varnishes and other finishes in a woodshop, and get some new materials in, the only thing left is to think about what you want to do, with the awareness of where everything is at in order to produce the piece in your imagination, the only thing left to do is put in the creative efforts.

Creativity and organization are inextricably linked.

If you don’t think so, find a healthy person you know, one that is low on creativity, and you’ll find they are probably organized. One such person in my life that comes to mind hand recipe cards nicely written and alphabetically ordered by main dish. They would also copy a number of side dish recipes that go along with it and put it in there for multiple options. They were then sealed in pouches to prevent them from fading or getting beat up and to keep all of that particular meals variations together. While there was a lot of organization, there was a hint of creativity in there to produce such a system. I certainly wouldn’t have duplicated side recipes and put them with each main dish.

One way to go about achieving one or the other is to look at what you’re struggling with: organization or creativity, then take the one you aren’t struggling with and take it to the extreme, in the course of doing so, the other will likely activate.

I haven’t been in a good headspace as far as writing this blog goes. I just completed the longest gap I’ve ever had without putting up a new blog.

It was 11 days.

It felt like it was an eternity.

During that time period, I went through feeling bad about not putting up new blogs, to acceptance that I can’t do everything all the time and even wondered, “Am I done with the blog as the 4th year of writing it is coming to an end?”

Today, I didn’t expect to write something here at all, but after a single relaxing weekend without much going on, I reached the evening and there was nothing else happening, and I thought to myself, “I should write something.”

So here I am.

This story dovetails with another in my family. My parent’s current story.

They sold their business and retired in May. They were thinking about their next steps, then my mom was shortly after diagnosed with cancer, received treatment and went into remission, only for my father to get cancer and have surgery to remove a tumor.

One thing they noted, “We’re not sure how we ever had the time to work.” Since, they’ve been non-stop handling issues since retiring. They certainly are in a gap before starting their enjoyment as they work back to health.

My burnout was a combination of things crashing all around me, and writing feeling like it was the least important aspect of my life and getting dropped. However, that doesn’t mean it is unimportant to me, as at the first sign of relief, my mind decided, “It’s time to write.”

It seems to me in the world we live in, we have so much going on, that important things get crowded out. What matters is the duration that goes on for.

I missed 11 days of writing. In the grand scheme, that’s like a bad case of the flu knocking me out for a couple weeks so bad I can’t do anything.e

If I missed 11 years, that’s an entirely different problem.

Life is full of gaps and delays, but getting comfortable with that, and back to the work when possible is a skill to be learned. Finding happiness and your way back to things that comfort you is a necessity for surviving in turbulent times.

We beat ourselves up constantly, even if not realizing it.

If a professional bowler is starting to have inconsistent nights, it’s possible they think their skills are getting dull. Their physical abilities are diminishing and they are no longer at the skill level they need to be. It’s easy to think that more practice and effort is needed?

What happens if after increasing the practice and effort, the results are getting more inconsistent and worse? Do we lose all faith in ourselves?

That’s what is the most common?

What if the root of the cause was actually a worn out piece of grip tape? Causing an ever so slightly, early and inconsistent release of the ball? The increase practice wore the tape down even more exacerbating the problem.

What was the end result?

Personal blame. Self-doubt. Increased effort with decreased results.

Many times, it’s good to self-reflect on all the variables possible and where they can be changed, rather than take everything as a personal failure. If you don’t you may double, triple or quadruple your efforts without better results. If increased efforts don’t realize increased results, look at the your “tape”.

thanks to technology, should we do less effort to product the same result?

Or should we do the same effort to produce more results?

This is the $100 Trillion Dollar sociological question of the coming century.

Here are some questions to start to frame it in your mind:

1. Look at short from content on youtube that is essentially ads. Is 1,000 of those ads done by 1-2 people better than 1 commercial created with 1000X the production effort?
2. As it is easier than ever to find people you need to connect with is more time spent connecting better or should that time be better spent building a relationship?
3. What is happiness most tightly correlated with? Production? Relationships? Leisure? Health?
4. If every system is automated, does that mean that accountability is harder to come across when something doesn’t work as intended? Doing more tasks with automated assistance lowers the accountability for each task a person has.
5. How big of an undertaking should one person be able to orchestrate vs a government or societal decision. The billionaire space race seems like the sorts of things society should collectively decide on through government. Pioneers were valuable, but historically, you could be relatively poor and still be a pioneer. Space pioneers will have a limited pool due to the resources required

A salesperson is accountable for his quota. While this means he needs to put in a certain amount of efforts in the right place, at times success and failure may be out of control.

An engineer is responsible for delivering something that works. While he needs to stay up on new technologies and troubleshoot issues, at times success and failure may be out of control.

Both are accountable for different parts of a project. Both have items that can slip out of control. Both should seek to minimize that part which is out of their control.

That’s a scarce resource.

People who want to work, serve, and be responsible for a result or cause.

Accountability doesn’t always mean money, but usually money means accountability.

That aside, being accountable for a result is a good place to be.

This post is going to use anecdotes from sales training, but I’m not talking just about sales success. I’m talking more generally about success in any field. Success is derived by finding who you are and leaning into it deeply.

I was in a sales training recently, and I’ve been a number of them in the past as well, and while some have a few nuggets, in general, they seem to be self-perpetuating. Each training tries to shoehorn people into a mold. Then they try to get salespeople who don’t fit that particular training’s mold to use their methodology, and often it makes many people in the class seem like far worse salespeople than they actually are. This is because success comes by finding who you are.

Sticking to the sales analogy before I change to a more broad perspective, different sales reps may have different styles:

1. Someone may be conversational and good at asking questions and finding issues that a customer has.
2. Another salesperson maybe good at finding an industry-wide problem and preparing a pitch for it.
3. Another could be good at making friends in target accounts, building relationships and getting people comfortable with calling them when they need something.
4. Another could be amazing at crafting deals financially that makes sense for everyone.
5. Another could be highly technical in their knowledge of the product and wins by being a trusted advisor.
6. Another could be good at crafting solutions that cross boundaries and use multiple tools which are often less competitive

A salesperson could be combination of those types.

However, each one of those on its own can be effective. While training someone to add more depth to their toolset never hurts, each person knowing which category they fall into and how to bring them together is an important step to success.

When it comes to more general success in life, the idea is the same. You need to know your style of working, and things that interest you as well as your skills to pick the work that makes sense, that you can be successful at. If you’re not a good communicator, you may need work that can be delivered alone. If you are a great manager, you need to find a way to get leadership positions.

The struggle is that sometimes we are skilled in things we don’t value. You may be a good manager, but don’t like having power over people. This is why self-discovery is so important.

A great writer is likely better at 50 than at 25. The opposite is likely true for a professional athlete.

The brain, if properly taken care of and exercised can exceed the longevity of the body.

This is true for a couple reasons:

1. The body is subject to mechanical wear. Pushing it hard, damages it.
2. The brain forms new connections and changes in response to its usage. This is called neuroplasticity. The body isn’t as adaptable.

If you’re worried you missed your shot when you were young, that was just the opportunities represented by your body (athlete, dancer, etc), there are still plenty of opportunities presented by your brain left waiting to be explored.

I recently saw a video clip of someone trying to kick a soccer ball through a hole slightly bigger than the ball. It had dozens of kicks assembled together. all missing the mark by just a tiny amount.

It seemed obvious that the video would end with excitement of finally making it through the goal and solidifying the athletes kick accuracy.

However, the obvious doesn’t always happen.

As I watched the video, and then sat there realizing it was a clip of all misses, the human bias, or at least the healthy human bias, towards optimism seemed apparent. The athlete was optimistic he would reach a skill level to achieve this. I was optimistic I would see him do so in the clips.

Two things are clear takeaways:

1. If you are doing the work and getting close, but missing just slightly everyone will believe your success is just around the corner.]
2. Even repeated failure can capture someone’s attention. Even possibly in a positive manner.

For item #2 above, it didn’t seem to me that his constant misses signified poor skill. The goal was ambitious in being only a fraction bigger than the soccer ball itself. Getting so consistently close still made him seem skilled.

We don’t always have to succeed to show our skill, but we always have to make attempts to show it.

When you are seeking to serve an audience, you are either splitting an existing one, or aggregating a new one.

This is in time with the political election that just happened. If two political candidates go after the same target audience, they split that audience, and make it easier for someone else to step and win by serving a different audience. This is the equivalent of starting a business in an existing market, you are seeking to split the market and gain a share for yourself.

In an alternative, you can aggregate a new market. If you came up with a new invention that served mining companies, manufacturing companies and chemical companies, you can aggregate those markets into a new one for your audience.

Each methodology takes a different approach and reaches a different amount of people.

As time goes by, if you pay attention carefully, you can see the cycles of this aggregating and splitting of markets happening time and time again.

That is the age we are living in.

With the ability to capture an experience, photograph, video, sound recording, on-demand, the only things that stand out any more are the highly improbably.

On YouTube, you can see examples of this:

1. Trick pool shots that likely required 100s of takes.
2. Videos of animals in the wild doing extraordinary things and timed just perfectly.
3. Unusual defects of items.

It’s likely that if you are looking for interesting, something that is highly improbable, but succeeds is a good place to start.

If you are in a room, and they are speaking a foreign language you haven’t studied, it’s much harder for you to distinguish key takeaways than someone who knows the language that you didn’t understand.

This extends far beyond literal languages. In almost every major business conversation, there is a pseudo-language. Acronyms, abbreviations, terminology and concepts that define specific industries are common. If you don’t understand the language of the room, it will be hard to have the right takeaways.

It’s likely that you will always be missing some part of the language, after all, even in your native tongue, it’s likely you’ll hear a new word from time to time. The trick is you need to have enough common ground with those you are talking to in order to be productive.

What happens when you don’t know the language, how should you proceed?

1. Make it clear what you don’t understand, and don’t pretend you do have the knowledge that you don’t. Someone in a foreign country may still order breakfast if the restaurant understands their struggle and helps them, but it does no good to pretend to know the language and instead spit out gibberish.
2. Study as much as you can. Learn some common lingo and pickup the more specific stuff along the way.
3. Meet with people who speak the language often. You only learn it by speaking it more often.

Those 3 points can get you where you want to go.

Those two components are the basics of a story.

Background sets the tone, rules, environment, age, etc.

Conflict shows the forces at play and the means they use to play out.

Conflict without background = suspense

Background without conflict = exposition/introduction

Sometimes you want to tell the full story, other times you want to create suspense or introduce people to something that they can use for their own personal battles. Use appropriately.

It used to seem that nothing was on TV. That the regularly schedule programming SUCKED. When streaming services for shows and movies came along, it seemed like freedom. How wonderful to find something new and amazing and put it on at your schedule!

Now, I have no TV and only streaming services and moving into a busier stage of life with more work and family responsibility, I yearn for the regularly scheduled programming!

There are a few reasons for this phenomenon:

1. When streaming was new, the list was full of good stuff I hadn’t seen, now, not so much, especially as new streaming services arrive looking for exclusive licensing for popular titles.
2. I’m now making more decisions in my life than ever before. Decision-making fatigue is real. I would enjoy being surprised with something randomly good coming on, or even just something familiar that I didn’t have to actively search my mind for.
3. The excitement of waiting for another episode has been lost. Anticipation isn’t a thing anymore. It’s short-lived when a new series drops, followed by a quick burst of watching, then disappointment that new episodes are 12 months away.

Thinking on this, there is more room for any marketer out there to understand that this phenomenon goes beyond movies. Selections in every category have risen dramatically. Curating, and creating regularly scheduled programming that someone can tune into, or that feels familiar is a way to win the attention of others out there.

or romance and boredom…

or rich and poor…

or fun and seriousness…

or creative and dull…

or success and failure…

are all things people use to make themselves feel something. Not all people swing through all of these, nor does everyone seek to swing back-and-forth in the same amplitudes, but rarely do you find someone who seeks stability in all these items. Instead we have romantics, gamblers, thrill seekers, artists, and achievement seekers.

You can understand someone better by the things they hold constant and the things the states they fluctuate between.

I just heard a new record was broken.

The record was “Most consecutive weeks charting” for a song.

91 weeks was the timeframe. The past record was 90 weeks. That’s 21 months.

Think about all of the songs out there. None of them have ever maintained mass popularity for even two years, still some were mass successes.

What are some reasons for this:

1. Musical artists make many songs, they move on from marketing the same song over and over again in order to create the next hit
2. Tastes change and people grow bored
3. Music can have a mood that may be dependent on the time of year, or even location

Your success might be fleeting. There is always the next thing you can do. Everything needs someone to get attention to it, even if it is only for 91 weeks, or likely much less.

If you were into gaming in the early ’90s, you may know the names in the title. They are characters in the game Mortal Kombat. With a dozen or more versions of Mortal Kombat made over the last 30 years, they are now unique characters, but in the very first version, they were nearly identical with just a color swap and a differentiated move set. This made producing the game cheaper since it didn’t require an entirely new character to be made.

Today, these two characters are the most popular in Mortal Kombat history. Something that started as an idea to lower costs developed into the most popular characters in the game. Less can be more.

Hide something in the house.

Hide something in the park.

Hide something somewhere on the globe.

How big of a game of search are you willing to play?

Do you want to do the hiding, or the searching?

Does the desired object in question have to be tangible? Or can it be something like a goal.

We are all searching for things, and during that search, we may also create something of value that can be sold, traded, or used in our search for what we really seek.

How big of a game of search is your life?

Amaury Guichon is a chocolate artisan, but he makes different things. While his entire audience may all be interested in his chocolate craft, his creations may stir interest from others based on their other interests including:

• Robots
• People about to propose
• Wildlife enthusiasts
• Race car types
• Sculptors
• Game enthusiasts
• Fun(guys) – Fungus
• Music
• Campers

When seeking out an audience for your work, you don’t always have to go about it so straight-forward. A company that makes camping gear, could make products for (or just market to) people who love music. A jam company could make jam for married couples. A weight-loss company could target people who work on Wall Street.

You don’t have to see your audience as a monolith, there can be sub-audiences. Figuring out how your business can serve them in their alternate interests can make your connection with them even stronger.

One purpose most religions seem to serve is how to have faith. Most assume that means belief in the religion being followed, but I actually mean “faith that everything will be fine, especially during turbulent times in life.”

Having faith means knowing you’ll get through any trial in life fine and that you don’t need to feel beat down, distraught, fearful or any other negative feel because you will make it.

Knowing the people in my life I lived beside, worked with, and engaged with in daily life, for some, this concept of faith is ingrained. It doesn’t need to be stoked by an outside force, it just is something inside of them. Inherent to their personality. For others, they need stories, inspirations, sermons, movies, to continue to ignite the idea that everything will be fine.

Here’s a few ideas to build your faith:

1. Ask something uncomfortable, but reasonable from a stranger and see how they respond. Can you give me a ride back to my house? To a complete stranger would be a good example. Do they blow up at you? Ask for more information? Politely decline? Is that reaction less severe than you expect? You’ve built some faith in people.
2. Call someone directly about a job. See a job posting? Call and ask about it before even putting a resume together. Talk about what you can do? Did it go better than expected? Or even better, did it go bad, but you still survived. You’ve built faith in yourself.
3. Try raising money for a worthy cause in your community. Is there someone you know who is is sick or needs assistance? Is there something that can be done to improve your community? Are you able to raise awareness and see what others are willing to contribute? Congratulations, you’ve built faith in your community.

Faith is important because it’s what is needed to do any project with unknowns. It’s needed for a successful career. It’s needed for a successful marriage. It’s needed to be a parent. There is no aspect of life that isn’t made better by always having the feeling that everything will work out for you. While there is plenty of things in life that seek to batter it, there are far more ways to build it than the three items I listed above. Exercise it just as you do your muscles.

Beginner – I have no idea what I’m aiming at, how to improve my consistency, or the key points to my success.

Intermediate – I know how to hit a target and judge my success by it. I understands a few key points of my success though may incorrectly attribute many of them to the wrong cause.

Expert – I have a feel for what I need to do. While targets exist, I’m less stringent in my attempts to hit them directly seeing them only as a means to an end of a result.

This boils down to: First we understand the “rules”, then we break them.

That’s the process of skill development in a nutshell.

If you want to write a book, you may agonize that you have an overabundance of topics which you could write a book about. It’s possible you can do some analysis and whittle it down, and make sure it is going to be profitable. If that’s your goal, it’s worthwhile to do that. Even with profitability in mind, you can come to more options than you can possibly create, in the end, the decision is big, influencing everything about the work you are hoping to create, but also trivial in a way. Talk about a problem in duality.

In various aspects of life, with the things I’ve desired to do, but left undone, it’s due to this phenomenon. There is no singular factor to decide on, no problem to be optimized, nowhere to go, but to pick at random and do some work.

Great artists thrive by getting through this. They struggle with it, but then seek to tell a story about it, but despite their best marketing efforts, those allegories usually come after the fact, and you won’t convince me otherwise.

There is a huge opportunity here because once you recognize that often trivial decisions are necessary, you can do the work. When you do the work you can get feedback. When you get feedback you can make a less trivial decision about what work to do next, and that ratchet can continue allowing you to do bigger, better and more important work as time goes on.

Do not sit idle in triviality unless trivial is what you want life to be.

P.S. This could be taken as a “work to death” post. It’s not. Building relationships takes work. Helping others can be seen as a form of exerting yourself. All of that is valuable in the world and definitely not trivial.

Gravity is an invisible force. If you take a picture laying down, it will look slightly different than if you stood against the wall. Gravity isn’t acting on your face at all.

If you somehow took the picture while hanging upside down with your hair firmly held in place by a strong gel or similar hair product, you would again look different than standing up. Without certain clues, like your hair hanging down, the person looking at each of these three pictures may notice something different about them, but are unable to see that in each picture the direction of gravity has changed. Gravity is the invisible force.

This doesn’t stop with gravity. Most people in your life won’t see your ambition, your drive, your intuitiveness, your resourcefulness, and any other positive aspect of your personality.

Most people also won’t see the bad role models, unfortunate circumstances, bad luck, or other obstacles you had to overcome in your life.

Invisible forces are all around us, acting in different directions. The only chance you have is to strengthen the positive ones, weaken the negative ones and orient yourself in the direction that makes it easiest to move forward.

I was at an engineering conference and a panelist talking about control theory used the term “control theorist”.

I had never heard that term before, usually hearing “Control Systems Engineer” but my mind started spinning immediately. What a great thing to be.

A “Control Systems Engineer” or now as I’ll refer to them, a “Control Theorist”, takes signals from sensors and equipment and attempts to keep it functioning correctly and productive especially in the case of feedback loops or random, unexpected signals or events.

Extending this beyond engineering to the entire depth of the world, the analogy only gets better. We can choose to filter out all of the horrible, inaudible, inconceivable amounts of chaos and noise all around us and control it in a way that produces a positive result.

The opposite of a “control theorist” is a “conspiracy theorist” in which the goal is to take seemingly simple functions of a system or society and promote all sorts of chaotic, unordered noise and feedback around it that it is hard to filter and make sense of.

Happiness is much easier to come by as a control theorist. Find other control theorists and join them.

Social media advice says , “You want much higher followers than people you follow.”

Think about the opposite, what if you had no followers and followed a million people? What would that mean?

It would mean you would never come to understand the thoughts or works of any particular person you follow because with that many people being followed seeing more than a couple of posts from the same person is unlikely.

People follow you on social media because the work you do is interesting. They want to see a pattern, be inspired, learn something, or work together with you. The reason the follow to follower ratio naturally skews towards more followers than people being followed is because there aren’t an overabundance of people putting in effort AND documenting it in the world for others to see and learn from.

Everyone has aspirational identities that they would like to build on, following others doing the work you aspire to is the first step. Doing so allows you to see the patterns in the work, to understand where you would like to head. Most stop at this step, however, the goal is to get to where you have people who follow you, and to do that you have to eventually get to doing your own work. The more you do, the more your ratio starts to shift as you become one of the “few” worth following.

You may not be a bowler, but if you stick with my analogy here, it’s possible you’ll learn something about synthesizing your own reality into existence.

Once upon a time, bowling balls were made out of pure urethane. They skidded a little bit on the lane oil and then rolled slow and hooked smooth on the driest 1/3 of the lane in the backend. Then, an innovation happened…reactive urethane.

Reactive urethane is the marketing, but at it’s core it was urethane that had additives that made the urethane cure differently and giving it different structure. Reactive urethane was porous, it skidded on the oil more and then picked up more on the dry. The end result was bowling balls that changed direction much quicker and generally created more pin action, ultimately resulting in more strikes!

That’s not where the story ends however. Reactive bowling balls took over because in addition to the increased power, they also picked oil up off the lane due to porosity. This meant that as bowling went on, scores typically went up as more friction and more hook would lead to more strikes. Prior to this, the non-porous urethane balls would carry oil down, and the reverse was true. It would become harder and harder to strike most of the time.

Today, the original urethane type balls have a made a comeback for a certain reason…the invention of the bowling shammy!

The shammies remove all the oil from urethane balls by wiping them in between shots. Towels have been a thing for decades in bowling, but they didn’t remove all the oil. The modern shammies do. As a result, the original urethanes + shammies, now produce the same effect as reactive bowling balls, lanes get easier as bowling goes on.

When one avenue isn’t open to you, there are alternatives. The invention of the shammy allowed another way to produce the effect on the lane reactive urethane had using the original urethane, you can find a similar effect in technology, real estate, jobs, family and more. Synthesize your own reality by finding the right components that produce the same desired effect.

Math and science are important because they teach people how to think about a problem and expose it’s variables. The formulas themselves may not always be clear, or possibly too complex for total understanding, but identifying contributing factors is beneficial.

Often times, when stuck on a problem, pondering the variables involved is enough to get you unstuck.

When you are unable to see the variables, or the “levers” that move or define a problem, then you are lacking knowledge or insight and likely need to do research on the state of the problem, most times it is already there, if not, congratulations, it’s you’re turn to pioneer something.

The world is full of variables, the ones you see define the work you do and who you are.

Whenever you look at averages, there must be something in the collection of items being averaged that is above the average and also something that is below the average. That comes simply from definition.

Take an ice cream sundae, something in that has to be the worst component for you health-wise. Sugar…cream…vanilla…cocoa powder…condensed milk…cocoa butter…heavy cream…nuts…cherry. One of those is the least healthy item, so the sundae itself is better than eating an equivalent pile of pure sugar perhaps.

In that same vein, the stock market is made of companies who have an average return amongst them, some better and some worse than average, and those companies are made up of people who produce for those companies. Some produce more and some produce less. For those seeking freedom, your goal should be to get in that high producing section.

When your skills are capable of taking your existing money and returning more than 9.8% a year on it, you are on your way to riches, even if it doesn’t seem like it, or you haven’t yet had the opportunity to take advantage. It also means you can take bigger risks and have confidence.

Focus on developing valuable skills.

The stories, without the pictures, for a comic book could be cranked out much quicker than all the nicely drawn scenes. However, comic fans wait for the stories in comics to develop over years of weekly or monthly releases. The story of One Piece has been happening since 1997 and the main character Luffy still hasn’t reached his dream of becoming the King of the Pirates yet! One Piece has sold over 100 million volumes despite (or because of the) long attention to all the details of the story that have stretched it on for 25 years.

When you are rushing something because you think it should be done faster. When you are skimping on a detail because you think it will take too much time. Whether it’s a job, a project, or your life, the fine details are so worth it, they’re worth waiting for.

You may have the strength for a task, the ability to perform it. However, you can be out of energy for the task.

An interesting thought is that the world may continue to build our stamina naturally in the areas we already bring energy. If you bring a load of physical energy, it’s likely you’ll find more tasks and activities that require physical energy. The more those physical exertions are put on you, the more stamina you build and in a cycle you find even more stamina as the activities become the norm for you.

Alternatively, if you bring an abundance of empathetic energy, you may find yourself playing counselor often. The more your do that, the stronger your empathy and energy to handle situations requiring empathy becomes.

This can be true for energy for all sorts of tasks:

1. Mathematics
2. Science
3. Writing
4. Marketing
5. Sales

If you bring energy for something, the world will often find a way to allow you to do more of it. Doing more of it, will grow your energy for it.

That’s a reference to New York pizza. It’s a slice that sold at a place that cranks out pizza all day. It’s not the greatest pizza anywhere, but it’s readily available and cheap.

This contrasts with more gourmet style of pizza that may have special care taken in the dough recipe, ingredient sourcing, or method of cooking. You may also have to wait for it to be prepared.

Both of these are methods of working:

1. The dollar slice. This is low margin, high speed, crank out the product kind of work. You don’t have to put too much thought into the work because it’s the same thing all the time. You make more money by being faster.
2. This is high margin, thoughtful work. Faster doesn’t necessarily make your more money because people are paying a premium for your care. If that drops, then the premium is no longer worth it.

In my experience, different kinds of people like working in each of these categories. If you are upset with the type of work you do, think about which category your work falls into, and ask yourself if you might like the methodology of the other category instead.

I write with my left hand, but I bowl with my right hand. That’s because throwing a 16lb down a 60 foot lane at 18+ mph takes power. That power isn’t in my left hand as much.

Switch to billiards, I’m back to left-handed because finesse is required.

From the definition of finesse itself: Refinement and delicacy of performance, execution, or artisanship.

“Delicacy of performance” means that it is light and soft, which is interesting because in order to have enough finesse, you have to have a significant amount of strength beyond the minimum required for the task. I can’t throw a bowling ball with finesse to hit the target I’m looking at if I can barely lift the ball.

Finesse requires strength in the right proportion. Similarly, if you have overly strong finger muscles, you may not be able to do delicate or intricate artistry like calligraphy, jewelry making, etc, but you may do good with placing a heavy countertop in just the right position.

To have finesse, you must have the right amount of power, which leads to two cases:

1. If you have too much power for the work you do, you may need to choose a different scale of the work that fits your strength.
2. If you don’t have enough power, choose a smaller scale of work, or get stronger.

It’s possible you thought you were at one place on a spectrum (patient vs urgent, thoughtful vs shallow, shy vs outgoing), and in reality, you were in a totally different spot on the spectrum.

Take patience, perhaps you always saw yourself as the most patient person around. Then one day, you are struggling to teach someone something and another person around you teaches people who take twice as long to learn sd your students. All of a sudden, your patience seems average.

What does that mental shift do?

It may change your identity. Most of us define ourselves by the areas that we think we are on the far sides of different spectrums on.

If you are highly athletic, average at math, average at science, never read literature. Your identity is most likely athlete.

If you read more literature than anyone, average at math, average at science, never play sports. You might identify as a literary scholar.

As everything moved online and people put their entire selves online (and even fake curations of themselves), many people found themselves in far different parts of the spectrum as their world opened up to everyone instead of a tiny subset they were previously surrounded with. In some cases, identities were even changed based on false, curated personalities that never existed in the first place.

There are two ways this happens:

1. Your identity shifts, and you seek out a new identity to understand your new spot in the world along various spectra.
2. Your identity holds and you find yourself becoming even more patient (or any other trait that lies on a spectrum) as you realize you can be even more of that trait once you’ve seen someone else be.

At times, you may take path 1, and others path 2. If you understand this, try to use it to better yourself. A new identity can be a great thing if it isn’t a form of hiding, but at the same time improving our strengths is also a great thing.

and make measurable what isn’t measurable.

That’s what MBA’s do. From there, costs and profits can be derived and optimized mathematically.

This doesn’t make an interesting business or service alone.

Tell a story where there is a story, and make a story where there is none. The Graduate Hotel, a successful and unique brand of hotels, creates an imaginary person with a back story for each of their hotels built. They then design and build a hotel that fits that story. The stories make sense in the context of the town currently being built in. There isn’t a way to account for this kind of effort on a spreadsheet that an MBA makes until after the work is done and the results start rolling in. That’s why it isn’t common.

The common is common because it is measurable and has a positive return-on-investment as a result it makes sense for everyone to do it, so everyone does.

The uncommon is uncommon because it is unquantifiable, and feels like a gamble.

The obvious takeaway is the everyone is looking for uncommon amounts of success by doing the common work. That doesn’t happen often, which means, pre-dominantly the unquantifiable work is where the amazing success happens. It is risky, but so is drowning in a sea of commons.

P.S. There is plenty of room in the world for MBA’s to apply their knowledge, but if they want to have uncommon success, sprinkling in as much creativity and story as possible is where the magic takes hold.

I learned about Yin and Yang when I was in school. Basically stated as “Without the dark, there cannot be light.” Vice versa was often stated as well.

Today, I’ve discovered a more nuanced approach, Yin and Yang as an alternative to hypocrisy. This can be seen in politics today. Each side showing how the other is hypocritical in someway. Yet, without diving into specifics that make this post actually political, Yin and Yang basically say without that small bit of hypocrisy, beliefs wouldn’t exist at all. You can’t be kind to everyone if no one is ever stingy.

If you start to understand this, you can move beyond who is a hypocrite and who isn’t and start to discuss, “Obviously there is going to be a tiny amount of abuse/misunderstanding/opposition of whatever system or belief is being shared, but what is the bigger spirit of this that can be seen through that?”

Once you move away from who is a hypocrite, which is everyone at some point, you can have an actual conversation about what is best.

I’m not a Mr. Beast fan, but the guy gets an amazing amount of views on YouTube.

One thing he did was make a brand of chocolate bars in the fashion on Willy Wonka. He then built a Willy Wonka-style warehouse and crafted fun and games to sell his bars. That took a tremendous amount of effort and money to pull off.

Most people will look at the latter of “effort and money” and say “See that’s why I can’t do it, I have no money.” In reality, all money buys is effort and previous effort by others. So it’s all effort, all the way down.

That project that you think isn’t going to work, definitely has a shot. What you are actually concerned about whether you will get burned out from your efforts before success happens. Of course, there are many factors and pivots can be required at times, but those too are efforts.

I went out and bought a baking soda rocket to experiment with for my daughter. It was cheap, and when she saw it, she was excited.

I was excited because I saw possibilities far beyond the box.

If you aren’t familiar, a baking soda rocket has a cavity that you fill up with vinegar and a base that you place baking soda in. When the pressure builds up enough, the rocket pops off and travel some height before coming back down.

The box itself bills it as an experiment to test different amounts and ratios of baking soda and vinegar to get maximum height, but I knew of so many more variables.

Here’s some variables I saw right off that bat:

1. Friction at the interface of the base and the rocket
2. Packing shape of the propellant (Baking soda in this case)
3. Tightness of the seal at the interface
4. Temperature of the vinegar

I could probably list more.

When we started, the rocket was lackluster. Even its normal connections leaked and so much pressure was lost. It popped off about 5 to 6 feet. My daughter and the neighborhood kids who had never seen much before were excited, but I knew more was possible.

I went to get some pipe thread tape. I taped the base to seal better and where the fins screwed on to ensure there was nothing that could leak in that direction either. Once pressure was staying in the body, the results were 5-10X larger! Flying above the tall trees in the backyard!

All of those other items then became experiments to toy around with and create even more excitement.

For even something so basic, there were ways to get dramatic results differences. If you wanted to go even deeper than what we did and start building your own baking soda rockets you could also work on shape, weight, designing extra stages of propulsion and more. The options are limitless.

This extends far beyond a baking soda rocket to nearly any aspect of life. There are more options than you can dream of if you pick what you want to look at, and continue to improve upon it.