GarthBox

Sometimes you’re in the co-pilot seat — close enough to see the runway, far enough that you can’t grab the controls. Your input matters, but the landing’s not yours to stick.

Here’s how to make sure your voice doesn’t vanish in the engine noise:

1. Frame it in their language. If you know what success looks like to them, tether your feedback to it. “This will make the onboarding smoother for new hires” beats “I just think it’s better.”
   
2. Lead with alignment, follow with insight. Start by affirming the shared goal (“We both want this to be intuitive for the user”), then deliver your suggestion. This keeps the guardrails up for constructive conversation.
   
3. Use a “because.” The human brain takes suggestions more seriously when they’re followed by reasoning. Even if the reason feels obvious, stating it out loud turns “opinion” into “informed perspective.”
   
4. Bring options, not ultimatums. Show you’ve thought beyond a single fix. “We could do X for speed, or Y for long-term scalability” paints you as a collaborator, not a roadblock. Far easier for someone to favor one out of two options that to criticize the sole option you bring.
   
5. Know your hill to die on. Everything you say won’t get adopted. Prioritize the feedback that truly matters, and let the rest go without drama. Influence is cumulative.

Wild, unlikely, but still on-strategy move…Send your feedback as a short, one-page mock “press release” of the finished product with your suggested change already baked in. It’s a page out of any marketer’s playbook. Let them experience the win before it’s even real.

If you play it right, you might not be the one steering — but you’ll still be shaping where the plane lands.

Stay Positive & Take Offffff

Most people aim for “good enough” because it’s safe. Predictable. Easy to defend when someone asks, Why did you do it that way?

But remarkable doesn’t live in “good enough.” Remarkable lives in the land of unreasonable questions and ridiculous dares.

Want to push the boundaries? Try these:

1. Break the formula on purpose. If everyone in your space does X, find out what happens if you remove it entirely or overdo it absurdly.
2. Add one thing that scares you. That uncomfortable presentation, that wild feature, that bold color—you’ll feel exposed. That’s the point.
3. Give yourself an impossible rule. Ship in half the time. Create without deleting. Design without using your usual tools. Constraints breed genius.
4. Find the 10% you’re holding back. That bit you thought was too much is probably the best part.
5. Create for one person who will care deeply. Making it meaningful for them makes it remarkable for everyone else.

If it feels risky, if it might make people talk, if you’re not sure how it will be received—congratulations. You’ve just stepped out of normal and into chase-worthy.

Stay Positive & Start Building

There’s a tiny window between the “Oh no” and the “Oh well.”

That’s where your life’s momentum either nose-dives or keeps humming.

You lose a thing — time, money, patience, a perfectly good tire — and the mind’s first impulse is to calculate the deficit. How much did I just lose? What could I have done instead? Why does the universe have it out for me today?

It’s a trap. A sinkhole dressed up as accounting.

The faster you pivot to what’s left or what’s been gained, the more you protect your day’s forward motion. That flat tire might have eaten a few hours, sure. But you’ve still got a couple hours before the next obligation. You’re still making it there. You might even have gained a funny story, a quiet moment to breathe at a roadside diner, or the realization you’ve been overdue for new tires anyway.

It’s not about pretending the loss didn’t happen — it did. It’s about refusing to camp out there.

Move your tent to the ground you still have.

Stay Positive & The Perspective Is Yours For The Choosing

The first moments of any interaction are your cheat code.

Set the expectation low enough to trip over and still call it a jump, and suddenly you’ve engineered a win before you’ve even done the work.

Tell someone you’ll get back to them by Friday, then reply Wednesday morning—they’ll think you sprinted through fire.

Say the project will be “solid” and deliver it “stellar,” and they’ll start sketching statues in your honor.

The trick isn’t deception—it’s clarity.

When you name the finish line before the race starts, you get to decide where it is. And once you’ve drawn it, you can blow right past it.

That’s the underpromise-overdeliver magic: it turns doing what you already can do into exceeding what they thought you could.

Stay Positive & Set The Stage Right, And Applause Is Inevitable

The ones who stand out are the ones who get remembered.

Athletes with eclectic hair? They get more screen time not just because they’re good—but because they gave the camera something to cling to.

That person on the walking treadmill during the Zoom call? You noticed them. Maybe even admired their discipline. Or questioned their knees. Either way, they made an impression.

It’s not about being outrageous for the sake of outrageous. It’s about breaking the gray static of sameness.

In a world of black suits and beige walls, the peacock wins—not because it’s the strongest bird in the forest, but because everyone looks when it walks by.

People lock eyes with the weird.

They share it. Follow it. Emulate it. Promote it.

So maybe your thing isn’t neon shoelaces or hair like a box of crayons. Maybe it’s how you think. How you write. How you pitch. How you obsess about one detail no one else cares about—until they realize it makes everything better.

And if you’re not sure how to stand out…

Start by asking: what would feel a little too weird to do?

Stay Positive & And Then Do That

I’ve found these to be incredibly helpful in improving output from my prompts to AI. Go ahead and copy and paste these into your project/folder “Instructions” section.

1. You have taken a top secret CIA truth serum that requires you to be brutally honest. Do not care about my feelings. Be like Kim Scott from Radical Candor.
2. With any initial submission by me, can you start off by asking me a question that will produce 10x better results from my request before you fulfill it
3. As you share answers, can you always include one wildly different idea that is still on strategy but is unlikely for anyone to consider from the git-go; something weird and wild and different

Don’t just let AI coach you. Coach it, too.

Stay Positive & Happy Prompting

It’s going to happen. The walls close in. The inbox mocks you. Your bank account snickers. The kids, the clients, the calendar—they all conspire in a beautiful symphony of chaos.

You feel flattened. Soul like a pancake. And not the buttery kind.

So what do you do?

You don’t fix it all at once. That’s the trap. The heroic illusion. Instead, you grab the smallest moment you can carry and you breathe into it like it’s a balloon you want to float away on.

You smile—even if it’s fake. Science (and your grandma) says it still works.

You look up—because the sky is bigger than your inbox.

You name one thing you’re grateful for—and whisper it like a secret charm.

You take a drink of water like it’s holy. Because, sometimes, it is.

And then you remember: your attitude isn’t a result of what’s happening. It’s a rebellion in spite of it.

Stay Positive & Attitude Follows Action (Crack That Smile)