Life Lesson

Every decision we make diminishes our willpower or gumption or all around energy.

You wonder why you’re so exhausted at the end of the day?

Decisions.

That said, if you were to double click into it: the decisions that diminish us often (and often the most) are the ones we have to make again and again.

Hitting the snooze button five times diminishes us more than just doing what we set the alarm or notification for.

Deciding to get to the hardest task after this easy one…but then after the next easy one…but then after the next easy one… diminishes us more than if we just did the hardest task first.

The examples are endless, but deciding to list them all out would be yet another example of decision diminishment.

Stay Positive & Decide Once

The math Seth does about the number of copies of a book that a new author may sell could be harrowing.

Could be if we’re not okay with a few.

It could be paralyzing to think about the small impact we can make at work over the next five years. Or the time we have with our kids. Or the likelihood of this blog post breaking through the noise of more than 103,234,342 blog posts getting published today.

Stay Positive & It Could Be…

It’s definitely one of the most important questions to continuously ask on your journey.

Regardless if it slows down the progress; 100% of the time it makes it better.

And better may not be in the work itself but in the impact it has; the connectivity; the network effect.

Ask for input. Share it with others. Connect two people who may be the ones to get it in the end.

This part of the creative process is by far the easiest to skip.

It’s also the most detrimental to.

Stay Positive & It’s About Them, Not You/The Work

It’s easy to assume progress isn’t made because of skill gaps.

It might be the case, definitely, but more times than not… it’s not.

It’s often focus gaps or attention gaps or bandwidth gaps which all sort of says the same thing: where is the time going each day?

I supposed you could say time management is a skill gap. But no one hires for that. There’s no Director of Time Management. (Perhaps there should be?) I’d argue that’s not a leader’s responsibility either – to manage time. Manage expectations and direction and quality of work, sure, but time? Not directly, anyway.

(Could you imagine how emotionally tolling that would be? “I want you to spend 10 minutes on this. No more. I don’t care what the reason.”

Yuck.

That is… unless you’re connecting time to goals and OKRs and what the company needs each person to focus on. It’s talking about time without talking about time.

Rather than skill gaps… find the time gaps and you’ll find the reason you’re not making the progress you want to make.

Stay Positive & Time Is Focus, Focus Is Money/Progress/Success/Impact…

The signal that you care is one of the kindest ones you can express.

Of course, we don’t really think about the act of telling someone we care so they know.

We show. They can see hear. Hear it. Experience it. Feel it.

It’s risky to ask, but next time to do: “can you tell how much I care?”

Risky because of what we may have to do if the answer is no. Risky because we might just be hiding from doing that which would send the signal of care.

Stay Positive & Caring Is Everything

I probably need to go back and edit a number of blog posts on the topics of asking others for help, finding mentors and coaches, and doing the reading before diving in.

AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are here now.

Help is merely a prompt away. A friend is right there to help and there’s no excuse. It can be what you need it to be if you give it the right prompt.

These tools are helping people have better conversations with their significant others, colleagues, and bosses. They are helping them talk to others about pay raises, overcoming addiction, and apologizing.

Need mentoring around writing a novel? Ask it.

Want to understand the basics of Standard Accounting to help you sell software? Interact with ChatGPT or Claude.

People used to get away with not learning something because access was limited (not in the sense of it being available, but in it being easy to find). That’s gone now.

It’s more clear than ever before that if you want to advance in your (insert whatever matters to you here), help is merely a prompt away.

Stay Positive & Leveling Up Is On You

There’s an end before a legacy begins. A fin. Black screen. Done-zo.

How something is sunset counts for almost the entirety of the legacy regardless of the length of existence leading up to it.

There’s a distributor that I’m working with that I’ve heard is dissolving. They aren’t forwarding emails. My contacts are being let go. No communication has gone out. Orders placed are responded with questions of “which account are you?”

We’ve had a 5 year partnership and you can guess the interactions are leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

They could have a legacy worth sharing but I’m less keen on it right now.

The first most important strategic business move you can make is smartly entering a market. The second most important strategic business move is how you exist.

Stay Positive & No One Likes An Irish Goodbye