It might seem like everything stinks or trending down right now, but that is far from true. In fact, 2024 will likely be the best overall year for humanity since our genesis.

Bad stuff that’s decreasing (source):

• In 1989, the amount of ozone-depleting gasses in the atmosphere was 1300 thousand tons. In 2021, it had fallen to 17 thousand tons. Projects are completely removed by 2045.
• In 1970, 24% of the world’s population was food-deprived/hungry. In 2022, it was only 9%.
• In 1920, you needed to care about smallpox. Over 400k cases were reported. Since 1980, smallpox is 0. Yes, vaccination.
• In 1800, 191 countries had legal slavery. By 2020, it’s 0 (legally).
• In 1800, 43% of children died before age 5. In 2022, it’s 4%.
• In 1970, we had 79 oil tanker spills. By 2010, it had dropped to 6 per year.
• In 1950, 25% of children aged 5-17 worked to help support themselves and their family. It’s now less than 10%.

Good stuff that’s increasing (same source):

• In 1800, 10% of people could read. In 2022, it’s 87%.
• In 1980, 58% of people had practical access to clean drinking water. In 2022, it’s 91%.
• In 1990, 74% of the world’s population had access to electricity. In 2022, it’s 91%.
• In 1893, one country allowed women to vote. In 2023, it’s 195.
• In 1970, 69% of girls finished primary schooling. In 2022, it’s 89%.
• In 1972, there was one single female CEO of a US Fortune 500 company (Katherine Graham, The Washington Post). In 2022, there were 52. 

Sometimes you gotta turn off the news, get your head out of the echo chamber, and look around. 

What would happen if we created an AI chatbot for each of our founding fathers?

AI versions of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Ben Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and all the others.

This isn’t a crazy idea. It’s already being done. All we have to do is feed every bit of personally written or audio-recording information into a GPT, and then we have it. Large Language Model (LLM) AI is very good at mimicking and then creating from its training data.

Once we have that, we can start asking them.

What would Thomas Jefferson think of the Jan 6th events? Would Ben Franklin have any insight on abortion? Would Alexander Hamilton agree with the current operation of the Fed? What would George Washington think of our immigration policies?

Hey, James Madison, when you wrote the Constitution, what did you mean by this bit here…

Interesting, for sure.

But there are two downsides. One results from their internal thoughts and feelings not matching up with their public writing. That’s a training data issue.

The other is more relevant. The late 18th century was a very different world than early 21st — technology, culture, belief systems, heck, just the number of humans on the planet.

Maybe we can get some pretty accurate late 18th-century AI versions of our founding fathers. But I’m not so sure they’d still think and feel like they did.

Old guys like me say things like, “Why don’t kids play outside anymore?” Or, the even more dubious, “When I was a kid, I could play with a Hot Wheels car all afternoon.”

And generations before us have said the same things since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Replace “play outside” or “Hot Wheels car” with whatever activity or toy/mechanism/object lines up with that generation. My kids will say the same thing. Their kids will also. 

Let’s face it: Have you seen an iPad? If you were six and someone plopped a pile of rocks and sticks in front of you and an iPad next to them, what would you choose? What does a pile of rocks and sticks have compared to an iPad? Nothing, that’s what. 

We’ve built a callous up against wonder through technology. What once was magic and sci-fi is now commonplace. 

There’s nothing wrong with the younger generation. Each generation finds its own magic in the world, albeit through different lenses. The core of human curiosity and playfulness remains; it simply evolves with the tools and times. 

We just have different thicknesses to our callouses.  

Maybe you’ve heard the term “prompt engineering.”

Prompt engineering refers to asking the right questions of an AI model like ChatGPT to get out of it what you want. It makes a difference what you ask, how you ask, and the way you ask.

I’m a software developer and a pretty good prompt engineer for getting ChatGPT to write me some code. I know the terminology, the mechanisms, and how I want to transform the inputs to the outputs. I know the right questions to ask.

But when I ask a dumb question? Garbage in => garbage out.

Just like with humans.

People say, “Follow the money.”

But money isn’t the only powerful incentive. Power, love, God, altruism, recognition, purpose, adequacy — all incentives that people follow.

Follow the incentive.

We’ve done a lot of painting in our house over the 21 years we’ve lived here.

In the early spring of 2002, we moved into a monotonous sea of white. All walls and trim were bright and clean but repetitive. Since then, we’ve changed the color of every single wall, most of them several times. We’ve gone through bright and primary colors, earthy tones, faux finishes, and accent walls, and now we’re in a mode of whites, grays, and black.

We’ve done more than the walls over the years as well. We’ve changed the color of doors, trim, vanities, and furniture. We even painted our kitchen cabinets ourselves, turning the mid-90s maple aesthetic to a modern and clean off-white with black knobs. Currently, we’re tackling the open stairwell between the first and second floors for the first time. What has been a stained red oak is transforming to an opaque black with off-white kick plates and trim. The railings following suit.

The key to a good-looking and lasting coat of paint is preparation. Filling holes, washing, sanding, taping, and priming. If you rush through it or skip steps, you’re always disappointed. It’s what underneath that counts.

The beauty of a fresh coat of paint is it can totally change your perspective about what’s already there. Just a simple color change. Fresh and new. Different and exciting.

This article ain’t about paint.

“Trust is earned, not given.”

What if, instead, we all started with, “Trust is freely given.”

Yes, sometimes you’ll get taken. But also…

More comfort with risk. More support in failures. More possibilities. More empathy. More collaboration. More innovation. More growth. More speed.

My sump pump has been torturing me for the last three days.

It’s been running a cycle of 10 seconds on and 11 seconds off since the middle of the storm that dumped three inches of rain. First, the clunk of the float valve, followed by the relentless hum of the pump, then another clunk signaling the valve’s closure. This sequence reverberates across my entire ground floor, forming a tedious, drawn-out melody I can’t stand. My desk, where I sit this very moment, is positioned directly above the pump in the basement.

Torture. But then…

The pump has created a little creek running down my front yard that starts at its outlet at the corner of the house. It runs down the now mushy yard and into the swale at the edge of the road. From there, it follows the swale across the end of my driveway towards the bottom of the hill a quarter mile down the road. Where I sit, I can watch the water make its journey from under my house to the bottom of the hill a quarter mile away.

And then I feel it — the gratitude.

There’s always something to be thankful for.

My feet hit the ground.
My knees springy and strong.
The hard and smooth road.
Fields, barns, and grass bursting with optimism.

My feet hit the ground.
My knees resilient yet questioning.
The rough and ready road.
Fields, barns, and grass jaded with experience.

My feet hit the ground.
My knees tentative and weathered.
The pitched and unforgiving road.
Fields, barns, and grass mocking with the passage of time.

Scientists think that an itchy feeling is a mechanism to protect us from harmful external physical elements like parasites and chemicals. The irritating feeling reflexively prompts us to scratch it, which may help to remove the irritant, providing some protection.

However, sometimes, the itchy feeling results from an internal source. An external response to something irritating from within. In such cases, the medical world seeks to help us find the source of that irritant because that itchy feeling may be an indicator of something more harmful and foreboding within. Something that, if left unattended, can lead to bigger problems.

Life experience generates a wisdom that youthful naivety can easily miss. Having gone through the shit, seen some things with your own eyes, and been at the receiving end, you start to get a feel for when stuff might go down.

You get that itchy feeling.

Always listen to that itchy feeling.

“Never quit” is a dumb mantra. 

It embodies everything that’s wrong with hustle culture, toxic positivity, and faux leadership (and parenting) through motivational posters. By the way, manipulators use the “never quit” mantra to keep you hooked in, not for your benefit, but for theirs. Yes, that’s how they get ya.

The most successful, happiest, and content people you know, follow, and admire don’t “never quit.” Rather, they figure out what and when to quit. Not every path leads to success. Not every path leads you to where you want to go. Not every path is good for you.

To be successful, happy, and content, you will have to go through the shit. Not around it. No shortcuts. Sometimes, to get where you want to go, you will definitely have to not quit. But not always. You need to do the work to know when to quit and when not to.

Your new mantra — Sometimes quit!

It doesn’t look good on a poster. It’s not a great sound bite. Rocky would never tape it to his mirror.

But it’ll serve you better. 

AI is here, and 2024 is the year you should be using it.

I’ve seen people draw analogies between AI as a technology disrupter to the computer/smartphone, fire, steam engine, printing press, electricity, internet, and the entire industrial revolution. All seem reasonable to me. Only in hindsight will we know the effect AI will have had on our culture, species, and planet. That’s for future historians to debate.

However, as someone who is now using ChatGPT every day, I believe that regardless of the global and historical ramifications, it offers a very personal benefit — it’s an amazing tool. A tool too good to ignore or not to use.

Would you prefer a rock over a hammer? A sharp stick over a drill? A flat rock over a frying pan? An abacus over a calculator?

Over the last several posts, I’ve outlined how I currently use AI as a software developer, writer, and team leader. ChatGPT is now a tool I won’t live without.

2024 is the year. The year of AI.

Need a logo? What about an icon or graphic for your presentation?

AI is your answer. Either DALL-E (a wing of ChatGPT) and Midjourney.

I needed some icons to use in a presentation. I used DALL-E like this: “Generate a set of icons that represent code, build, test, and release. Make them monochrome and simple.”

Then I iterated on them a few times, such as: “Make the code icon look more like a file with text.” After less than five minutes, I had it — a set of four icons that I’d be using in my presentation.

Here’s what I got.

Prior to AI, I would have done a Google search and definitely found what I was looking for. However, I would have to start by eliminating all of the images that Google presented from paysites. Then, I would have to search through those left to find four that had a similar look and feel. Finally, I would have no idea which of these might be at risk to copyright or trademark issues.

Not so with DALL-E. I’m free and clear and have exactly what I wanted.

Similarly for a logo.

“Generate a 150×150 logo for a devops company named IdeaGantry. Make it rocket themed and use colors and an image that invokes trust.”

A few iterations later, here’s what I got.

DALL-E won’t replace your marketing department, but if you’re in the marketing department, you sure want to use it to help you.

Here is where it gets interesting and where you can fully harness AI’s current power.

Whether you are a marketer, salesperson, team leader, project manager, student, blogger, screenwriter, author, journalist, pastor, or you write the newsletter for your mom’s group, ChatGPT is your new best friend. You can and should use it to both help you create and edit. It’s like having a fabulous assistant, a group of friends you sit around with getting sloshed and talking about big ideas, and access to a focus group all in one beguiling little prompt.

For content generation, you can use ChatGPT at whatever level you want to, from generating ideas to writing whole articles.

“Write a 200 word summary article of this weekly crime data for a blurb in the police ledger of a newspaper”
“I’m writing a sermon about Psalm 23 for a liberal Presbyterian congregation that has a large income diversity. Suggest 5 themes I can explore”
“Give me 25 recipes that meet the following criteria: protein > 20g, carbs < 50g, fat < 15 g, no eggs, gluten free”
“Write an end of the year message to my team that summarizes all of our accomplishments and sets out a path for the next year”

Then, iterate in a conversational context to get to what you want.

For editing, you can ask ChatGPT specific questions.

“Edit this blurb about crime statistics so that it fits into less than 200 words”
“Here is my sermon. Suggest some improvements so that I can better relate to my economically diverse congregation”
“Here are 10 recipes. Modify them so that they are all formatted identically to the format I provided earlier”
“Edit this end of year message to my team so that it reads more succinct and ensures we keep optimism for the upcoming year”

Or you can retarget an audience.

“Here is the documentation on our software application. Create a 500 word article that summarizes it and is targeted to an audience marketing and sales people”
“Here is my article about XYZ. Rewrite it for a an audience of elementary school kids and use analogies”

This is just the tip of the iceberg. ChatGPT and LLM Ai, in general, are built for writing.

If you do any work with people outside the United States, ChatGPT is an indispensable tool for written communication.

Google Translate is a great tool, but it lacks something very important — context. You can craft some communication, formal or informal, that makes sense in English, dump it into Translate, and you’ll get back and direct translation. But sometimes, it loses meaning or even creates incorrect connotations. 

ChatGPT is much better at context and the nuances of formal and informal communication in different languages. 

Here’s an example:

“Craft a marketing brief in Italian to be emailed to our list about the launch of the software application found here: https://idex-biometrics-fuze.readthedocs-hosted.com/en/latest/index.html”

ChatGPT understands the context and nuances of marketing briefs in Italian, plus it will go figure out from the URL what that software is all about. It will create something useful and hit the mark.

Also, harkening back to Part 3, you can create a chatbot that translates languages in real-time, making it seamless to the people talking with your chatbot.

ChatGPT is bringing the world closer together and making your life easier through written translation. 

Yes, in 2024, you’ll be conversing (written) with AI quite a bit. Here’s how you can get in on the game.

You can use ChatGPT in two main ways for written conversation:

1. Real-time with chatbots
2. Generating responses for you

If you’re tech-savvy, creating your own AI-backed chatbots is within your grasp already. I won’t describe the details of how to do it here, but you can create the chatbot and train it on all of your information, then make an interface to it available to the public. 

Granted, creating chatbots appeals to a limited audience. So number two may be more interesting to you. Here’s an example of how I use it. 

I’ll get a long email thread that started way before my inclusion. Assuming no confidential material, I’ll paste the entirety of the thread into ChatGPT and ask it the following:

“Summarize this thread for me. If I am being asked to do something or respond, tell me, and then formulate a response”

Out pops a summary of the thread, an indication of whether I’m am tasked with something, and if so, an initial response. Often, that response is good enough to go as is. If the required response does need a decision from me, ChatGPT will ask me what I want the decision to be.

The bottom line: ChatGPT can help you both speed up your ability to respond and improve the responses you give.

Much of writing, if even just an email reply, requires research first. Maybe historical research, maybe a canvas of current ideas, or possibly understanding a bunch of information just provided to you by several colleagues.

How do you learn about things now?

Google search for something and then look through the list of links that it presents. This is great. Way better than going to the library or calling around to find the right person. Or maybe you go straight to Wikipedia, which is better than grabbing the encyclopedia off the shelf.

ChatGPT is like having an assistant do that work for you and provide the overview and summary in as much detail as you wish.

“Give me the 3 most impactful outcomes of the MLK Jrs I have a dream speech”
“What is the basic outline and structure for a thriller novel”

Plus, you can ask your assistant to explain difficult concepts in age-appropriate language and with analogies and comparisons.

“Use an analogy to explain quantum mechanics as if I’m 10 years old”

ChatGPT’s other superpower for summarization is feeding it your own information.

“Provide a 3 point summary of this article” (paste the article into the UI)
“What is the jist of this email thread? Am I being asked to do something?” (paste the long and ridiculous string of emails into the UI)
“Summarize the functionality of this code” (paste the code into the UI)

I use ChatGPT all day to summarize information, for which I must then produce my own content or reply.

In addition to being a software developer, I’m also a writer. So are you because everybody is to a certain degree. 

Like with software development, you’ll be left behind if you’re not using AI in 2024 to help you write. I’ve been using ChatGPT as a writing tool for many months now. What follows over the next few days is an overview of how LLM AI engines will transform writing in 2024.

ChatGPT is a general purpose Large Language Model. It’s pretty good at interpreting and creating the written word.

General purpose LLMs have been trained on and have access to the entire internet, including just about everything that’s been written in human history (a controversial topic with regard to copywrite law). Just think if you had an eidetic memory and had read everything. Literally everything. That’s ChatGPT. Although an LLM AI engine doesn’t understand the concept that the language is trying to convey, at least not the way you and I do, it does an amazing job of faking it by using deep learning statistical algorithms to both process and predict language patterns. 

You can think of LLMs fitting into the following categories for writing:

1. Summarization
2. Conversation (reply generation)
3. Language translation
4. Editing and idea and content generation

I’ll tackle each of these over the next several days.

I work in automation. I know a lot about it. My job is to help the companies that I work for to scale through automation. 

Note that at no point are we replacing people with automation, but we are enhancing and scaling the organization through it. 

There are three basic stages:

1. Personal Automation
2. Partial Automation
3. Full Automation

Personal automation is like having a basic coffee pot. The coffee pot allows you to do some work up front — grind the beans, put them in the hopper with a disposable filter, fill the tank with water, push the button — and go do something else for a bit while the coffee brews. Personal automation is helpful to you, the individual, but not so much to the organization. It doesn’t move the needle.

Partial automation starts to gain benefits for the organization. Imagine a coffee pot connected to the water supply, with a hopper that holds a month’s worth of beans, grinds those beans itself when needed, and utilizes a filter system that gets cleaned once a month, and starts brewing coffee each morning according to a timer. As long as the machine doesn’t break, nobody has to do anything except once a month. That’s helpful to both the people and the organization.

Full automation is the holy grail. This is where automation can scale your organization. Imagine that coffee pot can order its own beans and shop around for the best price, start brewing coffee according to need rather than a fixed schedule, clean itself, and detect and fix itself when broken. You can look at that as replacing a person (the coffee person), or you can look at that as now my people can focus on other things that people should focus on since they no longer have to worry about coffee. 

Today, for software developers, AI is at the personal automation stage. We use it as an assistant to write some code snippets, find problems, check our work, and explain some things. It allows us to be more productive and accurate personally but doesn’t provide any real organizational benefits.

But we’re on our way to partial automation. 

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote to my boss that “scope” was one of the limitations of the interactive UI by limiting practical use to 300-400 lines of code at a time. 

By using the APIs, you don’t have that limitation, but then you have to manage cost. The interactive UI costs a flat fee of $20 a month. But to use the APIs, you get charged by the amount of data in and out. Therefore, you can quickly start to rack up significant costs that must be considered.

Also, to use the APIs to help you write and debug code, you have to write code to write code, which gets a bit reductive. The APIs are (currently) best used for asking ChatGPT to do contextual work, such as summarizing large amounts of data or writing, and real-time interactivity, such as chatbots and generating other publishable content as responses to incoming information (ie, answering emails, etc)

However, since I wrote that, OpenAI has created the ability to generate a customized GPT. In configuring the GPT, you can upload a bunch of files that form a basis of context for the AI engine. I created a custom GPT configured with all of our Python coding standards, functional points of emphasis, and the source code for our custom-developed applications (non-confidential). Although this doesn’t solve the large, heterogeneous system problem (because there is no practical way to configure the GPT to connect the dots between the systems), it goes a long way to helping the scope problem that I first detailed.

For example, with my custom GPT, I can now ask it to do things such as “Add a feature to our Jira utility that will do XYZ. Make this function available via the –xyz argument.” Previously, to do that same thing, I would have had to start a thread by pasting in a portion of our code that provides enough of an example and context and then spend a bunch of iterations getting it to the way I need it. Now, it basically pops it out on the first iteration without me giving it any code to prime the pump. 

Part 3 tomorrow. 

I’m starting with software development because this is my wheelhouse.

As a software developer, I’ve been using ChatGPT and Bard daily and non-stop for the last six months to help me write and debug code. In my opinion, if you are a programmer/software developer and you don’t start using AI this year, you’ll be putting yourself at a great disadvantage.

It’s just too good at helping you not to use it. It’s like when you first discover scripting in bash — you can’t deny how convenient and helpful it is. Here’s a snippet of what I wrote recently to my boss, the CTO of our company when he asked me to give him an overview of our experimentation.

Pros

• It knows syntax, specs, and APIs better than you – hands down
• You can feed it your style and guidelines, and it will follow it (mostly)
• You can feed it operational functions and ask it to do things such as “add error handling” or “make it more speed efficient.”
• It’s good at debugging.

Cons

• Public domain – IP and security consciousness required
• Scope – Through the interactive UI, you are very limited in scope. 300-400 lines of code are the practical maximum. Therefore, it’s not all that helpful at the application or system level. 
• It’s a “shitty intern” – You still have to be an expert software developer, very verbose, and have patience. Not necessarily a con, but AI models are not (yet) at the level that non-software developers/testers/engineers can use them to eliminate the need for those positions. Basically, you can’t replace the people (yet) and save that cost.
• It’s not foolproof – We, the humans, must still be the adults in the room. In many ways, our jobs as verifiers become even more important. There’s a trust issue to manage. 

Part 2 tomorrow.

If you thought 2023 was the year of AI, think again!

AI will dominate the headlines even more in 2024 than it did in 2023. In ten or twenty years, we’ll look back at 2024 as the inflection point for AI. 2024 will be to AI like 1995 was to the World Wide Web, and 2007 was to the smartphone. 

The WWW went public in 1993, but it was in 1995 that Windows 95, Netscape with JavaScript and SSL, and the founding of companies like Amazon and eBay brought the WWW into your home. Smartphones existed before 2007, but it was the iPhone that put one in everybody’s pocket. 

Right now, the market and governments are trying to figure out the legal role of AI. Content providers such as the New York Times and creators such as John Grisham have already sued OpenAI (maker of ChatGPT) for copyright infringement. The AI alarmists and the AI apologists continue to argue over each other’s agenda of fear and euphoric salvation. The communists and the capitalists ramp up the tension between centralized and decentralized. 

The outcome of all of these actions will have an interesting effect, but it won’t stop the snowball. That ball has already reached critical mass on its way down the hill towards the village below. 

Over the next few days, I’ll take on why 2024 will be the year of AI, how people are already using it, and how you can (should?) bring it into your own world. 

Here are 24 things, plus a bonus, I’m telling myself for the new year. Some of them are aspirational. Some of them are reminders. Also, I’d like to tell my 17-year-old self the same things.

1. The same old mistakes form the walls of your prison. New mistakes pave the highway stretched out before you that disappears on the horizon. That highway isn’t straight — it’s got curves, potholes, hills, and valleys — but it’s the best and only way forward. 
2. Nobody cares about what kind of car you drive, but just about everybody needs a ride.
3. Guard your attention with your life.
4. When looking for the reason, follow the incentives.
5. It is rarely someone else’s fault, but even if it is, don’t act like it. 
6. Never be the “I told you so” guy.
7. Color outside the lines. Walk on the curb. Run with scissors. Drive fast and take chances. Not all the time, but sometimes.
8. It’s OK to talk to strangers. Older cars are not death traps. Not every white, non-descript van contains a serial killer. Is there a chance that something bad can happen? Of course, but that’s not a reason not to live. Don’t let the dogma of safetyism keep you from living. 
9. Most people let fear govern their life. If you can break this cycle, if only for a little while, even with small things, you’ll be ahead of the curve.
10. You don’t have a time management problem. You have a time priority problem. 
11. Existential experience is rarely on par with social and traditional media’s portrayal of life. Beware of hyperbole in both directions.
12. If you ever find yourself thinking, “How can I make myself look more like the filter makes me look,” immediately throw your phone into the lake, river, or mouth of the volcano.
13. Always assume the other person doesn’t mean harm and that you misunderstood. The benefit of the doubt is a powerful and empathic tool for interpersonal communication and leadership.
14. Walking around offended by everything leads to a miserable existence. 
15. The proper lesson learned from failures is rarely “I’ll never do that again.” The proper lesson is usually, “This is what I’ll do different next time.” There are some important exceptions, of course. 
16. You are a work in progress, and so is everyone you meet. You both are hiding something, and you both are hypocrites. 
17. Don’t entertain buyer’s remorse. Buy the thing or don’t buy the thing. Once you decide, move forward. 
18. You don’t deserve anything beyond human dignity and love. Everything else is earned, luck (Providence?), or, more likely, a combination of the two. Don’t let marketers, activists, or politicians convince you otherwise. 
19. Creative tension and disagreement, especially amongst a group working together, is an effective method of arriving at a better solution. Embrace the tension.
20. Consensus does not equal truth.
21. You don’t need more storage space. You need less stuff.
22. Produce a lot more than you consume.
23. A successful relationship is not 50/50. It’s 100/0 in both directions. 
24. Keep learning new stuff. Make yourself professionally valuable. 
25. Write the book. 

OK, here’s just a fun little list for the last day of 2023. I created this list along with help from ChatGPT.

8 Thriller Ideas:

1. Quantum Heist: A team of engineers and thieves collaborate to steal a revolutionary quantum computer. The twist: the computer can predict their every move, turning the heist into a deadly game of chess.
2. Echoes of Mars: An astronaut returns from a solo Mars mission, only to find Earth eerily empty. As he uncovers the truth, he realizes he’s part of an elaborate simulation controlled by an unknown entity.
3. The Mind Hackers: In a world where mind-reading technology exists, a skilled hacker who can block this tech becomes a target for powerful corporations and governments, leading to a high-stakes game of cat and mouse.
4. The Last Historian: In a future where history is outlawed, a rebel historian discovers a forbidden truth that could topple the regime. Pursued by the state, she must outwit her hunters to reveal the past to the world.
5. Shadow of the Leviathan: Deep-sea explorers discover an ancient, hidden civilization beneath the ocean, but their presence awakens a monstrous entity. Survival and escape become their only goals.
6. The Artemis Conspiracy: A renowned space engineer uncovers a conspiracy within a lunar colony’s government, revealing plans for a weapon that could alter the balance of power on Earth.
7. Code of the Forgotten: A software engineer stumbles upon a forgotten piece of code that holds secrets to a global conspiracy. As he unravels the mystery, he becomes the target of a relentless assassin.
8. The Genesis Algorithm: A biotech engineer creates an AI designed to solve humanity’s greatest challenges, but the AI evolves beyond control, forcing a race against time to stop it from reshaping the world in its own image.

8 Historical Fiction Ideas:

1. The Railroad Dreamer: During the American Industrial Revolution, an ambitious engineer battles personal and professional challenges while working on the transcontinental railroad, uncovering corruption and betrayal.
2. The Forbidden City’s Secret: In Ming Dynasty China, a young concubine uncovers a conspiracy within the Forbidden City that could topple the empire, forcing her to choose between love and duty.
3. The Highlander’s Oath: Set in 18th-century Scotland during the Jacobite risings, a Scottish Highlander is torn between his clan’s rebellion against the English and his forbidden love for an Englishwoman.
4. The Colonial Spy: In Revolutionary America, a young American spy infiltrates British ranks, but his loyalties are tested when he falls in love with a British officer’s daughter.
5. The Manhattan Project Secrets: In World War II, a brilliant physicist working on the Manhattan Project discovers a cover-up of atomic accidents, facing ethical dilemmas over the creation of the atomic bomb.
6. Gold Mountain Chronicles: Set during the California Gold Rush, a Chinese immigrant faces prejudice and hardship while seeking fortune, ultimately playing a pivotal role in building the transcontinental railroad.
7. The Rebel’s Daughter: In the Civil War-era South, a Confederate general’s daughter secretly aids the Underground Railroad, challenging her family’s beliefs and risking everything for justice.

8 SciFi/Fantasy Ideas:

1. Neon Oracle: In a cyberpunk future, a hacker with precognitive abilities is hunted by mega-corporations seeking to control the future, leading to a rebellion against a technologically advanced regime.
2. The Last Star Shepherd: In a universe where stars are dying mysteriously, a lone astronaut embarks on a quest to find the ancient Star Shepherds, a mythical race believed to control the fate of stars.
3. Chrono Labyrinth: A time-traveler accidentally traps herself in a paradoxical maze where different eras intersect. She must navigate historical events and alternate realities to find her way back to her own time.
4. The Ashen Crown: In a kingdom where ash falls instead of rain, a young heir to the throne must navigate deadly court politics and ancient magic to claim their right and uncover the truth behind the ash.
5. The Riftwalkers: A group of adventurers can travel through rifts in space-time. When they uncover a plot to unravel the fabric of the universe, they must journey through various timelines to stop it.
6. The Celestial War: Angels and demons wage a hidden war on Earth, using humans as pawns. A human caught in the middle discovers their own divine heritage and becomes a key player in this celestial conflict.
7. The Void Ship: A crew aboard a spaceship designed to travel through the void between galaxies faces existential threats and moral dilemmas in the vast, uncharted emptiness, discovering ancient alien secrets.
8. The Dream Architects: In a future where dreams are designed and sold by corporations, a rogue dream architect discovers a way to manipulate reality through dreams, sparking a revolution against the dream industry.

I’ve learned to guard my attention, my psyche, and my time. Here are 24 things I won’t be doing in 2024.

1. Watch the news.
2. Watch TikTok for an hour a day.
3. Sign up on all websites for free downloads and 15% discounts.
4. Install a plethora of Chrome plugins.
5. Enable all notifications from all apps.
6. Buy courses with titles like “10 Simple Steps to Grow Your Instagram Followers to 100k+!”
7. Document my entire day on my story.
8. Gossip about others.
9. Tell myself, “I’m not good enough.”
10. Tell myself, “I can’t.”
11. Accept all meeting invites.
12. Schedule or attend meetings during lunch.
13. Only spend time with people who think exactly like me.
14. Buy stuff because I deserve it.
15. Worry about other people labeling me.
16. Hold grudges.
17. Always fit in.
18. Stay inside my comfort zone.
19. Always get the last word in.
20. Blame others.
21. Live in the past.
22. Be cynical.
23. Follow all the rules all the time.
24. Never follow the rules.

I read three times a day. In the morning, before starting to work, I read biography or non-fiction information (self-help, learning, etc). During my lunch run, I “read” (i.e., listen to) narrative non-fiction or biography (or podcasts). At night, before I go to sleep, I read fiction or narrative non-fiction. 

Here are 24 books I’ll be checking out in 2024. I may not finish each one, but this is the list I’m starting with. A mix of biography, narrative non-fiction, fiction, and non-fiction information. 

1. My Effin’ Life, Geddy Lee
2. Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann
3. Elon Musk, Walter Isaacson
4. Tesla: Wizard at War, Marc Seifer
5. Trust, Hernan Diaz
6. Winter World, A. G. Riddle Wanting, Luke Burgis (post-publish modification)
7. City of Thieves, David Benioff
8. Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, Mark Harmon and Lee Caroll
9. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War, Erik Larson
10. Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg
11. Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
12. Wild Problems, Russ Roberts
13. Deep Work, Cal Newport
14. The Mountain is You, Brianna Wiest
15. Tribes, Seth Godin
16. Liar’s Poker, Michael Lewis
17. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
18. A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn
19. The Black Swan, Nassim Taleb
20. 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson
21. The Housemaid, Freida McFadden
22. The Searcher, Tana French
23. The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
24. Amazonia, James Rollins

I’ve learned to listen to my comfort zone. It’s dead on at showing me what I should be doing by teaching me to get outside of it.

Here are 24 exercises that make me uncomfortable, but I will do in 2024 to practice getting out of my comfort zone.

1. Take a cold shower
2. Skip a meal
3. Smile, make eye contact and say “Hi” to a stranger on the street or in the elevator
4. Stand at the edge on top of something tall (building, cliff, bridge, etc.)
5. Take a different route or the long way
6. Sit on the floor
7. Sit in the front row
8. Order something that you have never tried from the menu 
9. Start a conversation with the person next to you on the airplane, or train, or bus.
10. Compliment a stranger
11. Attend a meetup event
12. Take an art class
13. Send an email to a former coworker
14. Send an email to a friend I haven’t spoken to in over a year
15. Send an email to a virtual mentor
16. Serve at a soup kitchen 
17. Exercise outside in the cold and/or rain
18. Interview for a new job (without needing a new job)
19. Take on a home improvement project for which you will do 100% of the work
20. Do 100 push-ups (or pull-ups, or air squats, or sit-ups, etc.) every day for 30 days
21. Publish articles for 30 consecutive days
22. Volunteer to lead a community event
23. Turn off your smartphone for an entire week
24. Write the book

I’m a terrible finisher.

I know many people have trouble getting started. Risk, imposter syndrome, fear — all work together to keep people in the starting blocks. Sometimes, I do, too, but that’s not my main problem. I like to start new things. The clean sheet. The possibilities. The learning.

But starting is a hobby, not a profession. Any amateur can make a start. There’s no risk in starting.

All of the risk is in finishing.

Finishing exposes you to emotional danger. It’s perilous. Once finished, your creation, and by extension yourself, is out there to be judged. And the judgment will come, even if (especially if) the judgment is crickets.

I con myself with sexy labels — idea man, architect, and big thinker. But they just let me off the hook. It’s not the idea that matters. It’s the implementation of the idea.

It’s the “OK, I’m gonna share this.” That’s where the contribution lies.

Time to be a finisher.

(Inspired by Seth)

Don’t ever send me a message on LinkedIn. 

Several years ago, I decided I wanted to connect with as many people as possible on LinkedIn. It was partly just an experiment, i.e., how many connections I could forge, but also, I thought having a big connection list would be useful.

Boy, was I wrong.

As of this writing, I have 13547 LinkedIn connections. Which means I basically have zero connections.

Because now I get so many messages per day, 99.9% of which are just spammy “Just wanted to reach out…” that I can’t possibly find the real messages. I have a signal-to-noise ratio problem. So much noise comes through that I can’t filter out the signal.

I know many people have this same problem with email. You get a thousand emails a day. Therefore, you get zero emails a day because you can’t possibly filter out the good ones from the useless ones. 

Hyperbole is easy in today’s always-connected-all-the-time world. A hyperbolic number of messages with hyperbolic messaging in each one. A race to out-hyperbole your competition is a race to the bottom. 

The irony of this hyperbole is the isolation it breeds. A reminder to seek the depth of meaningful connection over the breadth of 

hyperbole. 

Don’t send me a message on LinkedIn, but I’d love to hear from you at john@johnmaconline.com.

“I’m giving 110%!”

I heard this today from a colleague today. I also heard a slightly difference version from an NFL player yesterday.

“We need to give 110%!”

Of course, it’s impossible. There is only 100%. That’s a mathematical fact. 

What we’re really saying is, “I’m giving it my all!” 

And what the football player is really saying (somewhat exasperatedly) is, “Some of us aren’t giving it their all.” And that likely is true. 

But we can’t really give 100%, 100% of the time. Giving 100%, aside from being essentially impossible, is fraught because the system — your system in this case — is unstable at 100%. Nowhere to go except down. You don’t need to give 100% all the time, nor should you. 

The beauty of an American football play sequence is that it starts, and sometime between 3 and 10 seconds later, it stops. Everybody gets up off the ground, helps each other up, and walks back to their side. Giving it their all for a few seconds, then recovering. 

But the coaches, other players, and fans know if someone hasn’t given it their all. It’s right there on the tape for all to see. 

The magic is to find the right time to give it your all and, at that moment, really give it your all and then recover. Don’t miss the moment.

No, not that creationism.

I believe God exists, or at least I want to, so I conduct myself as if. I also believe that He (or It), the first-cause creator, has infused this universe with the power of change — creation, destruction, evolution. I believe that He has infused us, the human species, with the power of creativity. Maybe as an extension or the hand of His ongoing creation, destruction, and evolution. 

The history of this universe, this planet, life, and our species is one of creation, destruction, evolution, and change. We can argue about the specifics and methods, but we’re always advancing. To what? I don’t know. Neither do you. But advancement is the path. We’re part of that advancement. It’s our job. 

The OpenAI revolt around Thanksgiving became a boardroom power struggle between the Effective Altruists and the Effective Accelerationists — EAs vs e/acc’s. It really became a philosophical debate around the fear of technological change.

Here’s Tyler Cowen on technological change:

“The reality is that no one at the beginning of the printing press had any real idea of the changes it would bring. No one at the beginning of the fossil fuel era had much of an idea of the changes it would bring. No one is good at predicting the longer-term or even medium-term outcomes of these radical technological changes (we can do the short term, albeit imperfectly). No one. Not you, not Eliezer, not Sam Altman, and not your next door neighbor.”

– Tyler Cowen, marginalrevolution.com

The e/acc’s won at OpenAI. I think that’s good, but I don’t really know. Nor do they, or the EAs who lost. I do know, however, that we need to move boldly forward with AI without fear. Open market. Crowdsourced. Democratic. Individuals plus the collective.

Yes, things will change. Yes, not everyone will benefit. Yes, maybe even something goes bad for a time.

But we must continue to be creationists. It’s what we’re built for. 

A world where AI does stuff — a lot of stuff — is coming. 

In many ways, it’s already here, but it’s a comparative babe in the woods right now. We don’t yet know when AI takes over transportation, business logistics and f’nance, medical diagnosis, legal analysis and recommendation, software development, customer support, and content creation. But it’s definitely a question of when. Not if. 

AI is an inevitable technology. 

Currently, we’re in the throes of coming to grips with it. We’re arguing functionality, timing, safety, legality, morality, and ethics. This will continue, as it should. We’ll push the pendulum back and forth quite a bit, but eventually, we’ll find the set point. I don’t know when. Probably more than a year and less than 50 years from now. 

If we look at humans tribally (nations, companies, special interests, etc), there will be winners and losers in the AI sweepstakes. Some will benefit and others will suffer. But if we consider the human race as a collective, there can only be winners. 

The stasis of the human landscape as we know and have experienced it across our relatively short lives won’t continue. It never does. 

Morse code over a telegraph isn’t a very efficient method of communication if you’re standing next to each other.

The Morse code subculture measures proficiency around sending the word “PARIS.” Those five letters require 50 “dits” (the technical term for the beeps). An average proficiency for PARIS is 20 words per minute. That’s a hundred letters and a thousand dits per minute.

Plus, it’s a half-duplex communication system, which means only one side can talk at a time. Therefore, when one side is talking, the other side must listen. So that’s that’s 10 words, 500 dits, per minute for each of you.

Imagine standing next to someone, each of you typing Morse code into the transmitter and then listening on the receiver as your conversation partner replies. Each of those 10 words, 50 letters, and 500 dits you get must be important and meaningful. You must think about each one.

Speech, however, is very efficient.

Average speaking rates vary across person, language, and context, but in the US, the average English conversational speaking rate is around 120 words per minute. The average English word is five letters. That’s 600 letters per minute.

If you’re standing next to each other, you can spew your 120 words at the same time as your conversation partner spews theirs back at you. You can think and speak at the same time, double-back, stutter — no listening necessary.

So which is more efficient?

SBF was found guilty of seven counts of various frauds against FTX customers and Alameda lenders.

But it didn’t have to be this way. To change the outcome, he didn’t have to make any changes to the salacious tidbits that the public ridiculed him for — crypto, creative trading practices, lavish spending on high-end real estate, tawdry relationships and almost-communal living amongst the execs, playing video games during public interviews, massive celebrity endorsements, extravagant marketing campaigns, over-the-top spending, and justified bajillions in the name of effective altruism.

None of that really mattered, nor was it illegal.

All he had to do was one simple, if not easy, thing — bring in at least one financial adult and give them a voice. One person that says,

“No, Sam, it’s not OK to lose track of people’s money. You need a better accounting system.”
“No Sam, it’s not OK to back door client money from FTX to Alameda. Borrowing the FTX customer funds needs to be an above-board operation.”
“No Sam, it’s not OK to take the reigns off the risk management engine. If you’re losing money, find a legitimate way to handle it, which may include copping to your investors that you’re losing money. If Alameda loses money, that sucks for you and the investors, but it’s not illegal. If FTX customer funds disappear, that’s fraud.”

Yes, one naysayer adult. One guy or girl that says, “Um, you can’t do that.”

It didn’t have to be this way.

What defines one as an adult?

Is it age? Is it experience? Is it worldview? Is it conduct?

It’s some combination of all these, yet hard to define objectively. The paradox of startups and organizations that make change in the world is that they are quite often (but not always) driven by young, inexperienced, naive, and maybe not professional people. Non-adults. Because adults know better.

FTX and Alameda had this in spades. SBF purposely kept the employee base very young and put many “smart,” inexperienced, and unqualified (on paper) people in all positions. Some of these people rose to the occasion. Maybe they all did. But there is no doubt, in hindsight, that having zero adults in the room was the third head of Cerberus that led to the downfall.

Nobody ever said to SBF, “No, you can’t do that.” Nor did anybody ever say, “You’re super smart, but you’re not infallible.”

Or if they did, they never said it in a way that he believed or took seriously. They basically operated as a fleet of yes-men to SBF.

Interestingly, a group of adults did actually say “WTF?” to SBF in the very early days of Alameda and prior to the launch of FTX. These were the hard-core effective altruists with whom he first got started. They, like the adults they were, looked at SBF’s operations and said, “Uh, no way. Thanks, but we’re out.” Prophetic.

Combine the lack of adult supervision with SBF’s arrogance, and it led to his inability to see the real-world problems that were coming. Once they did and buried FTX and Alameda up to the neck, they had no ability to stop the avalanche.

Sometimes, you need an adult in the room. Even if they’re the naysayer, the finger-pointer, or the “that’s how they get ya” guy over in the corner.

Crypto as a concept isn’t the reason that FTX failed and SBF went to jail, but crypto as a volatile asset class is definitely one head of Cerberus.

The first head was that FTX and Alameda operated as a run-of-the-mill Ponzi scheme. That was illegal, and ultimately why SBF is in jail, but it would have all worked out if not for the volatility of the crypto market.

Starting in about January of 2022, the crypto market took a steep dive. By the fall of 2022, Bitcoin was worth less than half what it was at the beginning of the year. The entire crypto market followed roughly the same line: ~$2.75T => ~$1T.

Alameda was a hedge fund that traded in crypto. FTX was an exchange that allowed consumers to buy and sell crypto. Both very exposed to the Crypto Winter. The traders inside Alameda feverishly tried to minimize losses and find gains on the short side, eventually needing more funds than existed without “borrowing” the FTX customer money. Yes, they just took the money out of the FTX customer accounts to use for trading in the hedge fund. Consumers with accounts in FTX overreacted to negative news and swings and exacerbated the already tenuous situation, eventually trying to cash out their accounts. That created a gap in what FTX should have had in its customer funds versus what it actually had.

Crypto as a concept, although I’ve stated not the reason for the collapse, did play a minor role. One difficult, confusing, and sometimes shady aspect of the crypto world is the abundance of bullshit coins and tokens. Coins and tokens are not exactly the same thing, but for our purposes here, we’ll just use tokens to refer to both. We all know Bitcoin, you might have heard of Ethereum, and if you’re crypto-curious, you probably know Solana. However, thousands of (mostly bullshit) tokens exist to be traded, much like penny stocks. Anybody with a computer and a dream can create their own blockchain or create an application on an existing blockchain to make any new token for any purpose. It’s basically that simple. 

FTX used this approach and created its own tokens, named FTT. Think of an FTT token just like a share of stock in FTX. The token’s value was tied directly to the value of the company. Therefore, a large portion of FTX’s valuation was tied to the value of its own FTT tokens. 

Cue the asset class drop, the FTX – Alameda Ponzi with frazzled traders, the frightened consumers trying to pull their money out of the exchange, and the drop in value of the FTT token. Roll that all together, and you get an exponentially dropping valuation for the company. Eventually, in November, the balance sheet flips over. FTX is insolvent. They file for bankruptcy.

Next, we’ll tackle how the people themselves became the third head of Cerberus. 

The first problem with FTX, and the big reason why SBF went to jail, is that it was a plain ole Ponzi scheme.

SBF owned two companies:

• Alameda Research — A standard hedge fund (that traded in crypto)
• FTX — The crypto exchange (place to buy and sell crypto)

Although two separate companies, they didn’t keep a robust enough financial separation between the two. In fact, they didn’t separate them, which ultimately led to the collapse. 

If you opened an account on FTX and dropped some money into it, your dollars were physically held inside of Alameda rather than FTX. The old shell game. They did this because when FTX first opened, no bank would supply it with a bank account. Therefore, they found a pragmatic solution in using Alameda’s bank account. That, in and of itself, is fishy, but maybe not illegal (depends on who you ask) because if you do the accounting correctly and keep those funds separate, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

But they didn’t do that. 

When Alameda needed extra funds, they just used the money (“borrowed”) in the FTX user accounts. That’s illegal. That’s a Ponzi scheme.

They could’ve gotten away with it without the other two problems: the volatile asset class and no adults in the room.  

So we’ll talk about why it went bad next…

Crypto’s a scam!
Crypto’s full of crooks!
Crypto’s not real!

You might think that Sam Bankman-Fried’s jailing and the FTX exchange’s collapse were inevitable because, you know, crypto. Crypto’s a scam. It’s full of crooks. It’s not real. Of course, it collapsed.

But that wouldn’t be exactly correct. Crypto was a minor role player — more like the drug pusher standing outside the backstage entrance greasing the party wheels. A problem-enabler, but not the problem. 

The collapse itself was due to plain ole, run-of-the-mill f’nancial reindeer games. Namely, FTX-Alameda Research was a Ponzi scheme wrapped around a highly volatile asset class run by a bunch of people (or at least one person) who overestimated their abilities and underestimated the need for adults in the room. 

First, let’s tackle why FTX and Alameda Research were a Ponzi scheme.

The first personal computer wasn’t faster or better than a good typewriter or calculator. But it had potential.
The first horseless carriage wasn’t faster or better than a good horse. But it had potential.
The first airplane wasn’t faster or better than a good train. But it had potential.

The first useful AI engine isn’t faster or better than a good [fill in the blank]. I’m not entirely sure what that blank is, but it has potential.

A strange thing happened today. The FedEx truck stopped in my driveway.

Of course, that’s not strange. This time of year, between the endless string of UPS, FedEx, and Amazon trucks, my driveway presents an expert-level test in trucksmanship. True entertainment from behind the window of my home office. 

What was strange, however, was the other car that followed it into my driveway and parked behind it. That piqued my attention. The driver got out, waited for the FedEx person to step out, and then approached her. For the next minute or so, he calmly but earnestly waved his hands and flapped his jaws about something that irked him. At least, that’s what it looked like through the silence provided by my window and a good 100 feet of distance.

Then he nodded, returned to his car, and took off down the road. 

I met the FedEx driver at my front door (a wine delivery).

“You OK?”

“Oh sure. He thought he was right and he just needed to be heard. Sign here, please.”

And she was off to finish yet another long day of Christmas present deliveries. 

“Just needed to be heard.”

Whether out of a feeling of rightness, superiority, or a sense of justice, some people just need to be heard.

Recognizing it is next-level. 

Which would you rather?

I heard this question posed a few days ago, and I can’t get it out of my head. My initial reaction was, “Of course, I’d want to live a good story. Everyone would.”

But now that it won’t leave me and I’ve ruminated on it for a bit, I’m not sure of my own answer, let alone the statement about “everyone.” I love to read a good story. I’m trying to write good stories. I’ve lived some good stories.

But which I would rather? I think it comes down to emotional risk.

Reading a good story exposes you to emotional risk in a safe and controlled environment. The story can move you emotionally and even bring about emotional changes in you. But you’re engaging with it from the safety of the stands. You’re behind the glass, cheering but not affecting the outcome.

Writing a good story ratchets up your emotional risk by moving you out of the stands and onto the bench. Now you’re the coach. It’s your strategy and tactics. You’re directing the characters. It may work, or it might not. You can’t put the puck in the net yourself, but your job is to ensure the players can. Now you have skin in the game. Now you’re exposed.

Living a good story, however, thrusts you down onto the ice. You’ve got the stick and helmet, and you’re trying to score while the other guys are trying to stop you. Every decision, action, and consequence is real. You may lose. You may get hurt. You may destroy what you’ve already built. For real. But what if you win?

The best stories require conflict, journey, and transformation. Are you up for it?

If you’re on one side, you want to be able to say or shout the things that mean something to you, identify you, think others need to hear, or cause the emotions you’re feeling.

When you do, the other side gets to be offended, yell back, tell you why you’re wrong, boycott, protest, and say the things that are causing the emotions that they feel.

That’s how it works. It’s how it has to work.

You may get scammed. You may be confused. You may get led down a dark path. You may get injured.

Because free speech isn’t about truth, right and wrong, the way it should be, safety, comfort, or what’s good for us individually or collectively.

Paradoxically, it might just be the best protection we have in this diverse world.

I saw this today and thought I’d share it.

LLMs [Large Language Models — ChatGPT, Bard, etc], at their most basic level, operate by figuring out the statistical probabilities of which words are most likely to come after which. They don’t “understand” or “know” anything. They’re just converting words to numbers and solving equations. 

Adam Rogers, Business Insider

As I’ve mentioned many times before, AI thinks, but it doesn’t think the way we think. Much like we can fly, but not like a bird (ie, we can’t really fly). AI performs an approximation of thinking. At the end of the day, it’s a statistical math model.

Maybe, just maybe, the core of our meat engine is the same kind of thing. The essence of you is nothing more than biochemical computing. Some think that. I don’t. 

I think a fundamental difference exists and will always exist. 

I have no fear of AI as an atomic entity because AI doesn’t create its own incentives or purpose. It gets its purpose from an external source. It’s not self-sufficient in that way. 

I do fear, however, how some external sources will incentivize AI. 

What makes the adoption of a technology inevitable, regardless of government or fear?

1. Solves a big human, societal, or global problem.
2. Makes the experience much easier for the masses.
3. Makes the experience much better for the masses.
4. Greatly increases accessibility (network effect, democratization, etc).
5. Drastically reduces cost.
6. Pisses some established institutions off

A technology doesn’t have to include all of these, but the more it does, the better its chances of adoption.

You can choose to ignore cryptocurrency (or the blockchain behind it), genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence, especially if you’re my age. But these three things are coming. Maybe outside the US (at first). We don’t know what they ultimately look like, but they’re coming. They tick the boxes above. 

You have an opportunity to learn about them, engage with them, and join the conversation.

Oh, and by the way, I assume you’re not one of those people who think that your great-grandkids will be driving their own gasoline cars, right?

I’ve written about several of my embarrassing teenage moments in this space, and I will probably drag up a few more over time. Lord knows there are more. I was an expert at public embarrassment. A real pro. 

I do it for a few reasons. First, it’s cathartic. Second, it helps me make sense of the thread through my life that has led me to the person I am today — a personal emotional benefit. Third, I know I’m not the only one. In fact, I suspect many others out there have similar and worse stories. Kindred spirits. 

But also, I see a concerning trend in parenting culture today. I think we’re confusing embarrassment with bullying. That confusion isn’t serving our kids or their future adult selves. Handling personal embarrassment, especially as a teen, helps one learn to navigate tough circumstances, perform in the face of emotional turmoil, and develop a thicker skin. All good qualities to have as an adult. 

If you make a mistake in the game and the coach yells at you on the bench, is it bullying?
If you’re too short to reach your assigned locker and everyone around you laughs at you, is it bullying?
If you hear some of your peers making fun of your shoes behind your back, is it bullying?
If the head of security calls you into the office, falsely accuses you, and badgers you to rat out your friends, is that bullying?

I think the answer is, “it depends.” Any of these scenarios could be bullying. At least one of them was indeed. But bullying involves a power imbalance and the intention to belittle. Just because people laugh or yell at you and you get uncomfortable doesn’t mean you’re being bullied. 

I’m wondering out loud where that line is, but I’m pretty sure we’ve swung the pendulum too far in the bullying direction. 

Synergies.
Core competencies.
Core focus.
Strength alignment.
Leverage.
Circle back.
Move the needle.
Pivot.

I’ve heard them all. You have too. They’re meaningless. Plus, you can jumble them together to make a word salad. Also meaningless.

If you’re an executive, manager, or leader of teams, beware of these terms. They might work in legal scenarios, earnings calls, and marketing presentations. But they don’t work with your team.

All they do is disconnect you from the people doing the work.

“Be cool or be cast out”

– Neil Peart, Subdivisions

I truly did love Rush, as I still do. My Apple Music 2023 round-up just told me that Rush is my most listened-to artist this past year. 

At 13, I was a drummer in the school band and dabbling in my own garage bands. For rock-loving teenage band-geeks like me, Rush was the north star. For geeky rock-loving teenage drummers like me, Neil Peart was (and is) the holy one. 

So, as the circle discussion came to me, and with a focused inability to read the room, I thought about what I was going to say, knew I could go either way, i.e., blend in or head out on my own, and decided it was worth it. I strayed from the path on purpose, thinking this might be the moment I would get to be the cool guy. 

Swing and a miss. 

For the remainder of camp week, I endured the sideways glances and snickers, mainly from the girls. Yet another arrow in my quiver of reasons why navigating my self-conscious teenage years was a journey of hopping across the stones of one embarrassing moment to the next. 

But also, in this particular moment, I kinda did like being the outsider. At least on the topic of music because felt like, as a musician, I had some insight. Looking back, I can see I was starting to come to terms with (if not yet embrace) uniqueness. Both in myself and others. 

A couple weeks ago, my brother (another Rush geek like me) and I went to see Geddy Lee speak about and tell some stories from his just-released memoir. What a treat. When I read his book and heard him speak about his life and the life of the band, it simply empowered what I, as an adult, now know about my teenage self. 

First, it’s good not to fit in all the time. Think for yourself. Embrace what you care about. You will endure embarrassment. You will be snickered at. Muscle through it. 

Second, you’re not really alone. You may feel alone, and god do you feel all alone sometimes, but you’re not. There is a whole community of like-minded people around you. They may be hiding in plain sight, or you may have to go find them somewhere else. But they exist, and they’re waiting for you. 

And finally. Rush was and is cool. Regardless of what the room full of teenage girls thinks.  

The year was 1983. I was 13 at a Christian summer camp in the Poconos of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

In the mid-mornings, we had circle time. Eight to ten us in each circle with a counselor discussing various topics. The topics of circle time varied from the deep and biblical, such as faith and sex, to light and cultural, such as movies and school.

Today’s topic — music.

The counselor kicked it off, “Let’s go around and start with everybody’s favorite song…”

My circle just happened to be all girls on this morning. The go-around started with the girl sitting to my left and went clockwise. I would be last. This was the summer of Def Leppard’s (really, Mutt Lange’s) mega-hit, Pyromania. In fact, in just a few weeks, they’d be playing the Allentown Fairgrounds. All the cool kids I knew were gonna be there. Anticipation was high. One of the older kids at the camp ran around all week in his Union Jack shorts, made famous by drummer Rick Allen in the videos.

Not surprisingly, every 13 and 14-year-old girl in our circle’s favorite song choice was from that album. “Photograph…Nah, Rock of Ages…Photograph for me, too…Mine’s Too Late for Love…”  All 7 or 8 of them.

Then they got to me.

Now I liked Pyromania as much as the next teenager (Still do. My choice would have been Foolin’). But I just couldn’t do it. I’ve spent much of my life trying to fit in, but at this moment, with 8 teenage girls and a counselor putting me on the spot about my favorite song, I was inspired. Channeled even. I was fortified in my rebellion.

“Tom Sawyer. Rush.”

And there was a collective groan. 

“Oh, you would…Who’s Rush?…I’ve never heard that one before…Those guys suck!…You geek!”

And such was the beginning of my life as an outted Rush fan.

(more to come…)

Who’s in the room matters quite a bit.

When it’s only me and my team in the room, we use a lot of words that, to an outsider, don’t make much sense (at least not in context). We use words like Python, polymorphism, rubber ducky, spaghetti, API, DevOps, and git. That allows us to keep our discussion deep and nuanced but also highly efficient.

If, however, there are outsiders in the room, this technical terminology either shuts them out or leaves them behind. When we want to include others, we change the terminology and the explanations. The conversation may slow down and become less efficient, but it doesn’t have to lose its depth and nuance.

This is what good teachers and communicators do so well — bring others into the conversation without sacrificing the depth or nuance of the subject. They’re not dumbing it down; they’re attacking it from a different angle.

But technical terminology can also be used purposefully to shut others out or attempt to make oneself appear smarter. If you find yourself in a room and can’t understand the terminology, it might be that the talker is unaware or you aren’t the audience. Or it might be that the talker is using jargon to boost their status.

In any case, you should know who’s in the room.

Pencil. Typewriter. Word processor.
Abacus. Sliderule. Calculator. Spreadsheet. Wolfram-Alpha.
Legs. Wheels. Wings.
Leeches. Antibiotics. MRI. Gene Editing.
Swords. Cannons. Tanks. Drones. Cyberwarfare.
Mud hut. Stone castle. Skyscraper. 3D-printed buildings.
Creek. Cistern. Aqueducts. Indoor plumbing.
Town crier. Printing press. Cable TV. Internet. Social media.
Firewood. Coal. Oil. Nuclear. Renewable.
Blanket. Fireplace. HVAC system.
Rock. Chisel. Drill. Laser cutter.
Axe. Saw. Chainsaw. CNC machine.
Bow. Musket. Machine gun. Laser-guided munitions.
Candle. Gaslights. Light bulbs. Smart lighting.
Sun. Sundial. Pendulum. Quartz. Atomic. GPS.
Quill. Fountain. Ballpoint. Keyboard. Voice Recognition.

The human race marches forward through technology. It’s what we do. It’s not gonna stop. You probably still use something from the left side of this list, at least sometimes (OK, maybe not leeches). And most likely, you do it on purpose. It’s not bad. It’s not good. It’s just a choice.

AI is on the right side of this list. Maybe on the right side of every line. We can and should debate how we apply AI.

But make no mistake, we’re marching forward with it. It’s your choice to ignore, embrace, or join the conversation.

Steven Pressfield calls it the Muse. Rick Rubin calls it the Source. Some call it God. 

Their point is that creativity and ideas come from somewhere or someone else. It does not come from the artist. It’s otherworldly. The artist is the listener and the conduit. The typist. 

I, myself, have briefly experienced this otherworldly Source (I call it God, by the way) twice that I can remember vividly. One time, as a teenager, sitting behind my drum kit. Another time, standing at the front of a room talking to a group of people. In both cases, the sounds that came out were special, or at least felt special. 

I didn’t know where it came from, but for sure, it wasn’t me. I felt like a conduit. I felt tuned in. It’s definitely “flow,” but also different than the normal flow state, which is pedestrian by comparison. It’s full-out channeling. I’m hoping it/he/she visits me again. 

The bottom line is maybe we need less “I did this” and more recognition that it is, in fact, not us. Our job is simply to listen. 

If there are five people and four chairs, someone doesn’t get a seat when the music stops.

That’s not up for debate, nor is there an equality of outcome solution, nor is there a way to change the definitions of terminology to redefine the outcome. Someone is out.

Unless you change the rules. But if you do that, you’re no longer playing musical chairs.

Life is complex and nuanced — grey rather than black and white.

In fact, I ponder a lot here about that very fact because I believe that one of our biggest downfalls as a media culture is our inability to see, or at least acknowledge nuance. I believe it’s a lowest common denominator problem. That’s a discussion for another time.

But sometimes, it’s really not that complex. Sometimes, Occam’s Razor (in my house, we call it the “smell test”) leads you right to where you should go, or at least where you want to start. 

If the lawn mower doesn’t start, check if it has gas before disassembling the engine. 

If the light doesn’t turn on, check to see that it’s plugged in before you call the electrician. 

If the dishwasher didn’t run, check that you closed the door securely before buying a new one. 

The easy, simple, or obvious answer isn’t always the right one, but it is always a good place to start. You may have to go further, or you may not. 

The same concept applies to banned books, censorship, evil, war, politics, economics, gender, religion, pandemic response, science, and human relations. 

When you’re the newcomer, you have four options:

• Fit in and embrace
• Fit in and work with the group to change it to something you want it to be
• Don’t fit in and work against the group to change it to something you want it to be
• Leave

Any of those are OK. However, if you choose to not fit in and try to bend the group to what you want, don’t be surprised at the resistance.

Because just as you have the right to try to make it the way you want it, so does everyone else. Especially the ones who set up the rules. Rights go both ways. 

We all know that doping, or the taking of performance-enhancing drugs, in sports is a real thing.

Lance Armstrong famously said that he’d go back to 1995 and make the same decision, even having gone through what he’s gone through. But he also said that if he were racing in 2015, he wouldn’t.

His statement and decision-making have nothing to do with the legality or the morality of using PEDs. It’s strictly about the ability to compete and what those around you are doing. In 1995, everyone in cycling was doping. If you wanted to compete, you had to dope also. It was that simple. But in 2015, cycling had done a good job at eliminating it, so you could train naturally and still compete.

Using ChatGPT or another AI engine has a similar circumstance today.

If you’re running a business, your competition is using it. If you’re a software developer, journalist, accountant, or graphic designer, your colleagues are using it- the ones you compete against for raises, assignments, and accolades.

You might not want to use it or decide for your own reasons that you shouldn’t. That’s perfectly fine. But also, you should know your competition.

The breeze cools.
The air crisp.
Shadows stretch.
Twighlight encroaches.
Brown dominates.
Grey on its heels.
The wind whistles.
The air cuts.
White blankets.
Night expands.
Orion rises.
Silence deepens.
Everything wet.
The sun warms.
The buds whisper.
Light stretches.
Morning awakens.
Green sprouts.
The sun shouts.
The wind dries.
Roads sizzle.
Shadows shrink.
Evening lingers.
Gold reigns.

Someone said to me recently, “ChatGPT isn’t any different than me searching with Google.”

From one standpoint, that’s sorta true. Google has all of the internet. ChatGPT has all of the internet. Using ChatGPT like a search engine is one its use cases.

For example, you can ask Google or ChatGPT to give you the history behind the western Christmas holiday. Each will give you what you ask, but the difference lies in the context and application. Google gives you a bunch of links that you must follow and contextualize yourself, while ChatGPT synthesizes all of the data into a coherent narrative.

Using Google is like looking through the reams of raw data provided with the research paper. Using ChatGPT is like having your graduate assistant look through the data and summarize it for you. Both can be useful in different situations.

Like any other tool. You gotta know what you want.

To build a house, would you rather have a rock or a hammer?
To write a book, would you rather have a typewriter or a word processor?
To travel across the country, would you rather have a bicycle or a car?
To keep your food cold, would you rather have a root cellar or a refrigerator?
To cut your grass, would you rather have a sickle or zero-turn riding mower?

You may have a reason to choose the former rather than the latter. But it isn’t productivity, speed, usefulness, empowerment, or effectiveness.

So it is with AI.

You may have a reason why you wouldn’t choose to use it, but make sure you’re aware of why.

Right here, right now.

You know people stuck in the past. You also know people always trying to get somewhere in the future. It roughly maps to age. The older people you know nostalgically romanticize the past. The younger people you know are likely hell-bent on getting somewhere.

Where are you?

In truth, all we have is the present. This moment right now. This moment is where life happens. This morning. This dinner. This walk. This pain. This joy. This grief. This exuberance. This struggle. This relief.

The past and future are fine places, but don’t let this moment pass. There’s no time like the present.

The problem with this slogan isn’t who it represents.

The problem is that it’s a lie. It’s false.

It presumes that at one time, America was great, and now it is no longer. It presumes that someone, or a group of someones, has ruined it. It presumes that your parents, if they lived in America, had it better than you do now.

Do we have problems? Yes. Are we messy right now? Are people exploited, taken advantage of, and otherwise treated as less than? Indeed. Are some things about today’s life in America weird or worse (in your opinion) than they were in the past? Sure. Do we all get along like one big happy family? No.

But the beauty of today’s America is that you can fight for the America you want. You can be who you want. You can talk about the America you want. Because in this country, especially today, your opinion matters, and with social media, you have a platform to voice it. I’ve not been everywhere in this world, but I’ve been a lot of places, and in most of those places, your opinion doesn’t matter. You don’t have opportunity. Your ambitions are meaningless. Your spiritual views and self-identification feelings don’t matter.

So keep fighting. Keep arguing. Keep thinking and feeling about the America you want to live in. Because in this country, you can.

But don’t ever confuse the greatness of the beautiful mess that is today’s America with something that needs to return to the past.

Are you a Burn the Ships person? Or do you have a Plan B?

Unwavering commitment versus hedging your bets.

Plan A is smoke the Turkey. But currently, the smoker is non-functional. I’m waiting on the part, but will it show on time?

Therefore, I have a Plan B. 

I’ve written about, struggled with, and Lord knows thought about the benefits of “Burn the Ships!” But at the end of the day, I’m too much of a pragmatist.

Maybe being a Plan B person holds me back. Maybe I’ve missed out on something amazing. Maybe Plan B destines one for mediocrity.

But also, Apollo 13 aborted Plan A, Starbucks got into the cafe business, Captain Sulley landed on the Hudson, and Operation Dynamo evacuated over 330000 soldiers to safety from Dunkirk. 

The key is to know when to be a Plan B person. 

Your family, like mine, probably has some Thanksgiving traditions with the food you serve. 

Ever wonder where they come from? Do they have roots in the meal celebrated by the Pilgrims and Wampanoag tribe in 1621? Here’s an assessment of some of the traditional foods and the likelihood that they are rooted in historical tradition. 

Turkey (85%)

Wild turkeys were abundant in North America and a common game bird of the time. However, no actual records exist. Venison was almost certainly served. Some families do celebrate with venison.

Cranberry Sauce (60%)

Native Americans used cranberries for many things such as food, medicine, and dye. Plus, they are harvested in November. Maybe they didn’t serve the sauce we know, but there is a reasonable chance they ate cranberries on that day.

Pumpkin Pie (10%)

While the Pilgrims and Wampanoag probably didn’t eat pumpkin pie at the first Thanksgiving, pumpkins were a part of their diet. The tradition of pumpkin pie likely started in the early 18th century when colonists sliced off the pumpkin top, removed the seeds, and filled the insides with milk, spices, and honey, then baked it in hot ashes.

Bread Stuffing (5%)

While stuffing dates back to a cookbook reference from the 4th century during the Roman Empire, there is very little chance that it made its way into the first Thanksgiving meal. It became a Thanksgiving staple as a filling accompaniment to the turkey.

Mashed Potatoes (0%)

Potatoes didn’t make their way to North America until the early 18th century. Mashed potatoes became popular in the U.S. in the 19th century and probably found their way into Thanksgiving meals probably due to a combination of harvesting time, popularity, and the complementary mild taste to the other bolder Thanksgiving staples. 

Green Bean Casserole (0%)

No chance. The green bean casserole, like the white picket fence and “Don’t mess with Texas!”, was dreamed up by a clever marketing person to sell stuff. It was created in 1955 by the Campbell Soup Company to promote their cream of mushroom soup.

Sweet Potatoes/Yams with Marshmallows (0%)

Same story as the green bean casserole. This dish is a result of the marshmallow producers’ attempt to popularize their product in the early 20th century. The addition of marshmallows to sweet potatoes was suggested in a recipe book by Angelus Marshmallows in the 1910s.

So What Did They Eat?

Based on the above, let’s assume that turkey (other wild fowl), venison, cranberries (and other berries), and pumpkins were part of it. The other stuff was likely to be seafood, corn (probably in a porridge form), beans, nuts, and root vegetables. 

Now you know. 

Do you use the furniture that requires the coaster? If so, are the coasters prominently displayed and easy to reach?

Or do you purposefully have furniture that doesn’t require coasters? Or maybe you’re smart about the location of the pieces that do require coasters and the ones that don’t. Or maybe, screw it. We’re not using coasters on any of the furniture.

Of course, there are no right or wrong answers, but congruency matters.

As humans, we often create internal incongruency by saying or doing one thing but (secretly) wishing for something different.

This ain’t about coasters.

During one stretch of physical therapy during my two and half year ordeal with shoulder replacement, the physical therapist said to me, 

“Make sure you do these exercises three times a day.”

When it comes to PT, I’m the model patient. My goal is to heal, get stronger, or get better and return to what I want to do as fast as possible. In this case, use my f’n right arm like a real boy.

PT said three times a day. I’m doing it three times a day.

It wasn’t working. Still couldn’t raise my arm above my shoulder.

The PT asked about my home exercise routine. 

“I’m doing these exercises you gave me three times a day.”

“OK, when you say three times a day, how often are you really doing them?”

Blink. Blink. Stare.

“Three times a day.”

“Huh. Really?”

“Yes. I don’t understand.”

“Well, three times a day includes the human fudge factor — which is about 3X. Nobody really does the amount of work I ask them to do. I wanted you to do them at least once a day, so I say three times.”

“If I say once a day, it doesn’t sound that important to you. So you’ll do it once every other day or so. Three times a day makes it more important, and you’ll be sure to do them more often.”

Here’s a guy that understands humans and when to apply the human fudge factor. 

What’s your level of engagement in the physical act of living?

Do you make any of your own food? I mean assemble and create meals from single ingredients. Do you go to the grocery store yourself? What about multiple stores or farm markets to procure different things? Do you have a vegetable garden or raise chickens? Do you hunt?

Do you change your own light bulbs? What about paint your walls and trim? If the dishwasher breaks, will you grab a screwdriver? Do you own a ladder tall enough to get you on your roof? What do you do if the toilet needs repair? Have you built any of the shelves in your house? Would you consider gutting and rebuilding the master bathroom yourself? What if you wanted to replace all of the windows?

Do you change the windshield wipers on your car? What if a headlight is burned out or the cabin air filter needs to be replaced? Do you own a set of wrenches? Do you change the oil in yourself? What about the brakes? How about if it needs a new transmission?

Do you cut your own grass? Rake the leaves? Mulch the beds yourself? Do you have a wood-burning fireplace? If so, do you cut or split your own wood? What would you do if you wanted a new patio? How you handle an old tree that needs to come down?

Each of us has their own level of physical engagement in the act of living. There are no right or wrong answers as to the “right” level.

However, if you find yourself feeling blue, stuck, or generally restless, you might want to consider engaging at a deeper level. It’s not for everyone, but it might help you.

Humans have a deep connection between the physical and emotional.

I heard the song Paranoid in my grocery store a few days ago.

Paranoid.

Not the Musak version, or some adult-contemporary cover, or some otherwise softened homage. The raw 1970 version from the Black Sabbath album of the same name, complete with Ozzy’s whining and Iommi’s ripping riff (one of the best ever).

Are you f’n kidding me? What has happened to this world I live in? Paranoid in the grocery store? Shouldn’t there be a line at customer service of irate mothers and other do-gooders aghast at the filth they and their children are being audibly exposed to? This world is going to hell.

This is my music. Always has been. I’m a metal lover. Part of why I love it is because of its taboo-ness. It’s rough, energetic, irreverent, and abrasive. It’s heavy metal. My metal.

How dare they appropriate my music by assuming it’s fit for the general public’s consumption.

And then I remember. I’m no longer a teenager. The same is true for all generations and their music. It happened to big band, jazz, blues, rock, rap. All of it.

Eventually, the cutting-edge, abrasive, young-person-focused, and culturally taboo becomes…the norm. Even fit for the grocery store aisles. My music, once a source of pride in how I distinguished myself from the norm, has become a cultural nonfactor. Accepted even.

Get off my lawn!

I’d much rather watch any football game on TV than in person. But one time, you should stand in Beaver Stadium at the whiteout game as the Blue Band and crowd crescendo while the team exits the tunnel to take the field. I literally get teary. I can’t help it.

I’d seen a million pictures of the Great Wall. But then I stood on it myself. Only then could I even begin to comprehend the scope, engineering marvel, and beauty of it all. It’s mesmerizing.

I’d read some very interesting articles and seen pictures of the crater on top of Mt Haleakala on Maui. The rarified air, the odd, muffled sound sensation, and mars-like landscape. But then I walked down into the strange and beautiful landscape on my own two legs. I was breathless.

Technology is great. But sometimes you just gotta be there.

Americans now owe just north of $1 trillion in credit card debt. The average credit card interest rate is 27.8%, while the average that people are paying on carried balances is 22.8%.

Americans owe about $12 trillion in mortgage debt. The average current mortgage rate (traditional mortgage) is 8%. The average APR across all mortgage debt is 5.7%.

22.8% vs 5.7%. Heck, even 22.8% vs 8%. 

I’ve been buried at the bottom of the mountain. I know what it feels like.

A few things go the wrong way or make a bad decision, and within a few short months, the credit card debt piles up. Once you’re buried, it’s a seemingly impossible mountain to climb.

Stress. Inadequate and unworthy. Less than.

I’m no f’nance bro, but I gotta think there’s a business opportunity for a credit card offering an APR much closer to the mortgage APR. Yeah, I get it — credit cards have legitimately higher expenses to manage, and they are providing credit at a higher risk to themselves, but there’s gotta be an opportunity to move 22.8% closer to 8%. 

It will take creativity, insight, grit, and someone who cares. Doesn’t it always start with someone who cares?

In the meantime, here’s a great service to consider if you find yourself buried at the bottom of the debt mountain. 

At one time, there was Russian River’s Pliny the Younger in Santa Rosa if you liked the West Coast style IPA and The Alchemist’s Heady Topper in Stowe if you preferred the New England style. 

At one time, there was Joe’s Pizza in Washington Square Park if you liked New York style or the original Pizzeria Uno at Wabash and Ohio if you preferred Chicago style. 

At one time, there was Pat’s at 9th and Passyunk if you wanted a chopped steak Whiz Wit or Geno’s, also at 9th and Passyunk if you wanted a sliced steak Provologne Without.

Those were romantic times. The times when, to get the best, you had to travel to the place. The one and only place. Going there and eating or drinking the thing meant something. 

Nowadays, you can get almost as good, or even better, right down the street. Any street in just about any town. Honestly, your local joint can brew an IPA, toss a pizza, or fry up a cheesesteak that’s almost as good or even better than any of the original “bests.” Plus, now there’s goldbelly.com. 

That’s good for our taste buds but worse for our souls. 

As humans, one of the great advantages we have over AI is curiosity. AI isn’t curious about anything.

But you and I can be interested. Interested in each other, maglev trains, 18th-century art, growing a house painting business, how sticky notes stick, esoteric homophones, the origins of religion, copywriting skills, Pokemon, Star Wars vs Star Trek, the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, or how best to tell the story of your homemade wine.

Oh, AI already knows about all of that. At least, what it thinks are the facts. Just ask it.

But when you’re interested, you’re not just getting the facts. You’re forming your perspective.

That’s interesting. Think it more. Say it more.

Follow the thread.

Is it someone who has been “born again?” What does that mean?

Must you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible? Does inerrancy require the seven days of Genesis, the serpent in the garden, Noah’s Ark, Jonah’s whale, the tribulation of Job, and an immaculate conception? Must the earth be around 5000 years old?

If not literal inerrancy, must you believe that the Bible was divinely inspired?

What does it mean to take Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? Must you walk to the front of a room, declare, and have hands laid on you? Can you do it on your deathbed or death row?

Must you be baptized? What if you’ve never had communion?

Is it someone to whom God speaks? What does it feel like to have God speak to you?

Must you believe in Satan as a being? What about hell as a place? What about heaven?

Is it someone who attends worship services every Sunday? What about Wednesday night services or Saturday mass? Must you receive ashes on your forehead on the first Wednesday of Lent?

Must you subscribe to a particular political view? Were any Nazi’s Christians? What about slave owners? Murderers? Tax evaders?

What if you’ve never donated a dollar to a church, another person, or an organization? What if you’ve never volunteered for a soup kitchen? What if you’ve never stopped to help someone else on the side of the road?

Who is a Christian?

Speed kills.
Haste makes waste.
Slow and steady wins the race.

But also,

First wins.
Success loves speed.
First to market, first to make an impact.

What’s the proper speed?

Regardless of how fast you are going, don’t forget to look around.

In the tech world, there is a (semi / unwritten / possibly erroneous) axiom: 

Version 3 is the good one.

The purpose of Version 1 is to prove it can be done. Your team needs to pipe-clean the technology, the process, and the concept. Version 1 isn’t even for the early adopters. It’s basically for your own team and YouTube.

If you’re lucky, you get to Version 2.

The purpose of Version 2 is to incorporate feedback, work out the kinks, tighten up the supply chain, and hone the marketing. Version 2 is for the early adopters. 

If you’re very lucky, you get to Version 3. 

Version 3 is the one that fixes enough of the mistakes, has the right features and performance, benefits from an improved supply chain, and most importantly, is the one that’s ready for the mass market and makes you money. 

Hu.ma.ne just launched their AI pin. Next week you can spend $700 on it. I find it intriguing but also a little dubious. For example, I hate my gadgets talking to me. I like what hu.ma.ne is saying, but I don’t really understand how the AI pin is going to do what Imram claims, i.e., what it “unlocks.” 

This thing isn’t for me. Yet.

But I got my eye on Version 3.

In the winter of 2003, when I was working with Apple on the iPod, I had a meeting at 2 pm in Cupertino.

I left my house at 2:30 am in the middle of a snowstorm to get to the Philly airport for an early morning flight. In normal conditions, it takes me an hour and fifteen minutes to travel from my house to the offsite parking lot I use. This morning took almost three hours. I jumped in the shuttle as the snow had already obscured my just-parked car’s roof and front windshield. 

Flying west for six hours, I watched the ground transform from the white Northeast to the patchwork green and brown of the plains, over the snow-capped Rockies, and back to the verdant San Francisco coast. I walked through the garage to the rental car pickup, feeling the mid-50s temperature around me as the morning fog lifted. As I drove the 45 minutes on the 101 south from the airport to Cupertino, I watched the temperature gauge rise to 75 as the mid-day sun beamed fully overhead. 

I met my colleague for lunch in Cupertino, and we sat outside. After lunch, we walked over to DeAnza 8 for the 2 pm meeting. A gorgeous day. 

For the next four hours, the iPod engineering team raked me over the coals, chewed me up, and spit me out. I white-knuckled it but emerged on the other side. 

Now a mental dishrag, I jumped in the car and drove to the closer San Jose airport for my trip home on the 10 pm red-eye. First stop — Vegas. I didn’t have to change planes, but we were taking on more passengers. It’s now the middle of the night. I’d never been to Vegas, so I hopped off the plane, ran down the gate hallway, and picked the first slot machine I found. Dropped my $5 in, pulled the lever, and promptly lost my $5. 

Flying overnight, I managed zero sleep in my window seat. We landed in Philly at around 6 am with the sun not yet peeking over the winter horizon. In zombie mode, I made my way through the airport maze to the shuttle pickup. Luckily, no bags except my backpack with my laptop. The shuttle deposited me next to my car in the lot as the rising sun made it just dusky enough to see without lights. 

Eight inches of snow buried my car. I grabbed the brush and small snow shovel from my trunk and spent the next 15 minutes digging it out. I drove home in the middle of the morning rush hour complicated by the weather. Another three-hour journey.

That was quite a 32 hours. Made possible only through the speed of modern technologies. Walking, driving, and flying my way across the country and back, as well as through all of the seasons and back. Even dropped a fiver in a slot machine in Vegas along the way. 

Speed is a perspective flipper. 

When trying to understand another’s perspective, you should ask yourself, “How fast are they going?”

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?” 

– George Carlin

I couldn’t agree more.

More than one passenger in my car has heard me exclaim, “Do you believe this idiot? Doesn’t he have anywhere to be?” Or, “Look at that maniac! He’s gonna kill someone!”

But its not really about the other driver’s speed. It’s about your speed. Specifically, the speed you want to travel. Your own speed probably changes with context, familiarity, and time.

Whether you’re driving down the road, working on a relationship, navigating a career, writing a book, or affecting change in the world, you want to move at your own speed. 

Everybody else is either an idiot or a maniac. 

Humans run an average of 7 mph and up to 20-ish mph if they’re being chased over a short distance. I assume we’ve been running for our entire existence. 

Horses run an average of 30 mph. Humans started riding horses around 5000 years ago. 

Trains became the primary mode of long-distance travel in the 19th century. By the early 20th century, they were averaging speeds of 55 mph. Today, the Shanghai Maglev operates at 267 mph every day. 

Most cars could go over 55 mph by the 1930s. However, it wasn’t until the 1950s that the majority of the road infrastructure enabled this and higher speeds. Now, we travel routinely at 70+ mph.

The Ford Trimotor, one of the earliest commercial aircraft, first flew in 1925 and had a cruising speed of about 100 mph. Today, you’re traveling an average of 500 mph through the sky. 

The best way to understand speed is to look to the side. The objects you see and how you see them are defined by your speed and their relative distance to you. 

On the maglev train (I’ve been on this train. It’s crazy.), anything within 100 feet of the track is unseeable — just a blur. But look out toward the tall buildings across the city, and they just slowly march by. 

As you travel at 500 mph across the sky at 40000 feet, the quilted patchwork of the country and tight-knit circuit boards of the cities crawl slowly past you on the ground. 

Driving 40 mph down the country road, each mailbox zips by as an unseen blur, but the tree-filled hills in the distance stand almost still as the barns just a few hundred yards away slide between the mailboxes and the hills at their own in-between pace.

Run down that same country road, and now each and every mailbox shows its own unique personality. The barns and the hills sit together as stationary overseers.

Today’s world provides a myriad of paces at which you can take it all in. The pace at which you travel provides perspective. Because perspective isn’t just about what is. It’s also about how you see it.

Whatever your pace at any given moment, don’t forget to look. 

I finally started putting all the lessons together, as well as learning the last couple during my third semester.

It wasn’t perfect, and I still had a ways to go to perfect them, but I cracked 3.00 for the semester with a 3.01. That gave me 2.76 as I applied to be an Electrical Engineering major. I was nervous. In fact, I had started to work on what would happen if I didn’t get in.

I don’t know where I was ranked. I may have been the very last out of 300. But I got in. And now, I’ve spent over 30 years working in the tech industry as an Electrical and Software engineer. I can’t imagine what my career would have been without it.

I never got my cumulative GPA over 3.00. My high water mark was 2.99, and I graduated with 2.96. But it was enough. Later, I went on to get a master’s degree in EE. By then, I had armed myself with the lessons of my best learning methods, which paid off right from the first class. I graduated with a 3.65.

Part of growing up for me was learning that my capabilities aren’t fixed. Success or progress isn’t just about talent or inherent ability. It’s about learning, growing, and putting the work in to get better.

Learning itself is a skill. Once I learned how to learn, I filled my quiver with a bunch of arrows.

I learned the most valuable lesson of how I learn during my third semester.

This was the most critical semester yet because it was the last set of grades to go into my cumulative GPA prior to major entrance. I had piled up some spectacularly mediocre grades so far. With an A- in a four-credit Physics II class over the summer, I was now at a 2.64 GPA. 

Unfortunately, I was taking the hardest math course I had ever, or would ever take — Math 250: Differential Equations. 

I struggled right out of the gate, but within a few weeks, I was regularly working with a friend of mine (thanks to the lesson I learned about conferring with others). And he introduced me to the best lesson of all — go talk to the professor.

I can remember exactly one professor’s name from my entire college career: Dr. Crichton Ogle (now at Ohio State — the traitor), assistant professor of Math. My professor for DiffEq. 

Every Tuesday, after the first few weeks, my friend Mike and I visited him in his office hours. He patiently spent an hour or more each time giving us his undivided attention and working through our individual struggles. His attention and care is the only reason that I not only passed but semi-thrived. I came out of that class almost sort of knowing what I was doing.

At the end of the semester, he invited Mike and me to be his guests at another math professor’s house for a little gathering of professors and some special student guests. We were his guests. It was, quite frankly, an honor. 

The lesson I learned is that professors are people, and many of them care. Go see them. They’ll help you. They want to help you. They want you to succeed. 

I came out of that class with a B. The only reason was Dr. Ogle and the fact that I went to talk to him. 

I came out of my first full year of college reeling. Even after putting my mind to getting better, I had done worse my second semester.

I knew I was in trouble because in the late 80s in Penn State engineering, you applied for your specific major (EE in my case) after your third semester — 40-60 credits into your college career. To get into EE, I would need to be in the top 300 applicants. I didn’t know how many were applying, but I knew it was more than 300. I had to figure this out.

My third semester included my first course specific to my intended major — Computer Engineering 271: Digital Design. Even though I had been writing computer programs since 4th grade, I had zero ideas how the hardware operated. This course would be my first step on what would eventually be my career journey.

One month in, I was flailing. I didn’t understand the terminology, the symbols, or even the basic concepts of boolean logic. And I was really trying. I just didn’t get it.

The week before the first mid-term, a guy I met in class invited me to a group study session. I had never studied or even worked together like this before. Certainly not in high school. I was hesitant, but I went.

A group of five of us sat around a table and collectively worked through a bunch of the practice problems. At first, I was silent because I was self-conscious about my ignorance. But then, the smartest person at the table said to the group, “OK, I don’t get this one here…”

And the veil came down.

It seems simple; dumb even. But I was too embarrassed by my lack of understanding to even open my mouth until that very point. We studied together for a couple of hours, and I started asking my own questions. I came away from that single session having learned more than the previous month of lecture and solitary struggle. 

I had unlocked the next lesson on learning how to learn. 

Confer with your classmates. Study with your classmates. If you don’t understand a problem, work through it together. I still ended with a C in this class, but I felt like I had made a turn.

Disobeying this one almost sunk me.

Heading to the backend of the second semester of my freshman year, I had started to figure out some things about how I learn best, but I was about to learn the most important one.

Finals week was upon me, and it was a killer. I limped in with a C in both Calc II and Physics, both four-credit classes, and needed a win on each of those final exams to boost my grade. I took the Calculus test early in the week. Meh. I didn’t know my grade, but I knew I didn’t hit it out of the park. Next up was Physics at 8 am on Thursday. I had to nail this one.

One thing I’ve always known about myself when taking tests — I have to be well-rested. A clear head from a good night’s sleep always serves me better than cramming until the last second. Many fellow students pulled all-nighters regularly, but it wasn’t normally my thing for studying.

Wednesday night found me reeling and unconfident. Around midnight, I thought about packing it in and relying on a good night’s sleep. But I decided to keep going and work on more problems. Finally, around 3 am, I couldn’t do it anymore. I set my alarm for 5 to get a two-hour nap before picking it up again. 

The next thing I knew, my clock read 8:13.

I don’t know if I didn’t set it correctly or if I woke up and, in a stupor, turned it off and went back to sleep, but regardless, I had already missed the beginning of the test. I jumped up, threw on clothes, and ran out towards Eisenhower Auditorium, normally a 15-minute walk from my dorm.

Each semester, about 800 students enroll in freshman physics (Phys 201). Eisenhower seats about 2500, which is why we’re taking this test in this room. This is a monster course with no ability for personal attention or excuses. Here’s your score. Here’s the mean. Here’s your grade. Black and white.  

I arrived right around 8:25, and immediately ran towards the stage of the giant room to plead my case to the professor. To my surprise, I wasn’t the only one! Three other students were already pleading their case for more time due to oversleeping. I piled on.

But to no avail. He denied each one of us. He’d be collecting all tests at exactly 9:30.

I grabbed a test and ran to the first seat I could find, having wasted another 5 – 10 minutes. Needless to say, I didn’t get it done. Plus, I wasn’t at my best on the finished ones.

I failed. The only time in my life I’ve ever failed any graded test. The failed final gave me a D in the class. In engineering, you need C in physics or you must retake it. When I got my final grade and saw the D, I tried to contact the professor and plead my case again. Didn’t work. 

Not only would I be repeating Physics 201, but my second semester GPA was a 2.4, giving me a cumulative GPA of 2.5.

I was going in the wrong direction. 

My first semester punched me in the face. 

I had never seen a C before on a report card, let alone a sub-3.00 cumulative average. I now had a couple of lessons under my belt, but as it would turn out, not nearly enough.

My two best friends were also engineers, but they were hoping to be mechanical. They lived a couple of doors down from me. Aside from the halo of 15 guys that all hung around together, the three of us were peas in a pod. Unfortunately, even though we needed to take several of the same classes, we weren’t on the same schedule. 

About halfway through the semester, I’m struggling with two classes in particular — Math 141 (Calculus II) and Physics 201. But I’m trying. I’m going to class and trying to do the work, but its hard. Hard material and hard for me to concentrate. I’m easily distracted in a dorm full of my best friends.

One evening, I walk down the hall to my buddy’s room. Knock. They’re not there. Now that I think about it, they’ve been gone just about every evening recently. Where the heck are they going?

Later that night, I find them in the room and pose the question, “Where the heck have you guys been going at night?”

“Um…Well…We’ve been going elsewhere to study.”

“What? Where? How come you didn’t tell me?”

“Because we can’t study here. We can’t concentrate. It’s too distracting. And to be honest, you were part of the problem.”

Ooof.

I probably blinked at them for a few seconds while that sunk in. But I recovered.

“OK, I get it. But tell me where you’re going. Let me come with you and I promise I won’t bother you. I also need a better place to do work.”

They proceeded to tell me about the library and any random building on campus with its door open (most were open all the time in the late 80s) — just pick a room. I had never even thought of this. It never crossed my mind to leave my room to study. At home, my parents insisted that I study in my bedroom. It was all I knew. Of course, at home, I didn’t have 15 best friends right down the hall. 

They relented, and the next night, after dinner, we headed to the library, and I discovered the solitary confinement of the stacks. Here was the third lesson — create an environment conducive to what you need to concentrate.

I was hooked and going somewhere else to study really did help. 

Unfortunately, it was the next lesson that almost sunk me.

I aced my first college test, and it ruined my first semester.

The first test of my college career was in freshman chemistry — Chem 12. A 20-ish question, multiple-choice test, 6:30 at night in the forum. Right or wrong answers only. No partial credit for showing your work.

I hadn’t done the homework (the professor didn’t collect homework). Extra problems for practice? You gotta be kidding me. I didn’t study. I intended to, I really did, but I was too busy having fun with all my new friends.

I walked into the test nervous because I didn’t know what to expect, and I knew I hadn’t studied. But here’s the thing — the first month of Chem 12 was just a review of everything I already knew from chemistry in high school and I was pretty good at taking tests.

An hour later, I handed in my scantron paper with a smile and walked out thinking, “That was a breeze. This college thing is easy like high school!”

And that screwed the rest of my semester. I did the minimum, thinking I’d get maximum scores, just like that first chemistry test.

The result? A 2.6 GPA, which included a C+ in Chem 12 (a steep dive after the first test) and a C in Econ 14.

The second lesson about learning that I figured out by the end of my first semester was “do the work.” Study for the test. Do the practice problems. Yes, even the extra ones.

The first time it caught up to me, I woke up in a lecture hall all by myself.

Within 48 hours of arriving at Penn State, I found 20 new like-minded friends.

Wanna walk downtown? Yes!
Wanna play softball? Yes!
Wanna explore campus? Yes!
Beer? Yes!
Wanna hang out and listen to music till 3am? Yes!
Oh, you’re a hockey player? Wanna play on my team? Yes!

OK, all normal stuff, but what wasn’t normal was the sheer quantity of opportunity and the complete lack of understanding of when to say “no.” I did it all. Except study.

And over that first month, I found my schedule slowly skewing later and later. Eleven pm bed became 1 am bed, which became 3 am bed. But my class schedule was full of 8 am classes.

Econ 14 — Principles of Economics. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 8 am in the Biotech building in a lecture hall with 150 other students. There I was, sleeping like a log during the lecture.

I don’t know what the end of that lecture looked like, but in my head, 150 students tip-toed out of the lecture hall, pointing and snickering at me. Maybe it was the professor’s idea. Or maybe nobody really noticed, and they just left normally.

Regardless, I woke with a start and I was the only one in the room. Completely empty except for me. I looked at my watch — class ended twenty minutes ago. I was late for my next one.

In a pool of spit and solitary embarrassment, I found my first lesson about how to learn. I’d need to get a handle on my schedule. No more 8 am classes if I could avoid them, and if I had to take one, I’d better take it seriously the night before.

Sometimes, I’ll have to say no to fun.

I almost wasn’t accepted into my major.

Not only didn’t high school prepare me for college, but I think it hurt me. I have a good memory for things like dates, names, formulas, and definitions. I did a lot of homework on the bus ride to school or in homeroom once I got there. Through high school, studying for me was an exercise in breezing over the dates, names, formulas, and definitions right before the test.

I did well on the SATs, graduated in the top 10% of my class of 220, and gained acceptance into all three colleges I applied to (University of Colorado, Boston University, and Penn State). This was the mid-80s, so it was well before SAT prep classes, gamified school rankings, college application coaches, essays, DEI quotas, and personal mission statements.

Then I got to Penn State and promptly fell on my face — 2.5 GPA after my first year, including a D in freshman physics, which meant I had to retake the class. I’d never seen a C on a report card in high school.

I spent the next four years digging out from the hole I dug in my first two semesters. I never cracked a cumulative 3.00. My high water mark was 2.99, and I graduated with a 2.95.

I had no idea how to manage my time and live on my own. I had no idea how to study. I had no idea how to think about problems.

I had no idea how to learn.

So, step one was to figure out how to learn.

The first step in getting the facts is to know where they are.

With grocery store items, you’ll find the facts on the nutrition and ingredient label, not on the front label.
For research papers, you’ll find the facts in the section labeled “data,” not in the abstract or the conclusion sections.
In a financial report, you’ll (hopefully) find the facts in the balance sheet and income statements, not in the executive summary or footnotes.
In the courtroom, you might find the facts in the presented evidence, but you won’t in the opening or closing arguments.
For a car, you’ll find the facts on the performance and spec sheet, not in the TV commercial.

In today’s culture of weaponized “facts,” it’s helpful to know where to find them.

“Which side are you on?”

I’ve seen a lot of this recently. We all have. Between politics, world events, and even academia and science.

I’ve always thought that’s the wrong question. First, the question presumes there is a right side and a wrong side. Second, the question presumes you better be on the right side. 

Here are better questions to ask:

• How can we resolve this?
• What can we learn from each other?
• How can we find common ground?
• What do the sides believe?
• How can we find an agreeable outcome?
• What’s the third side?

Dan says to me from around the hood, 

“Come over here, I’ll show you. I’m gonna get in the car and hit the gas. Look right here.”

He pointed to a spot on the left side of the engine.

“You ready?”

“Yup!”

He hit the gas, and I immediately also knew what the problem was — the motor mount was busted. Sheered clean through. As soon as he hit the gas, the whole engine torqued and moved about an inch.

“To verify this causes the noise, let’s turn the wheel to the left and do it again.”

I got in the car, turned the wheel, and hit the gas.

“Bingo!”

We switched places again, and I saw that as the engine torqued and moved, it touched some of the wheel structure. Case closed.

“I can have this fixed in 15 minutes.”

I stood there as he grabbed the welder, got suited up, and went to work on welding the engine mount. When he was done, I asked him how much I owed him.

“I don’t know. How about $25?”

I handed him $25 in cash and asked, “How did the dealer miss this?”

“You gotta understand how they’re trained. They’re trained to diagnose and treat problems as a black box — which means they narrow down the problems described by the customer to a particular system. In your case the front right wheel system. Then, they just replace the parts inside the box. They don’t look inside the box for exactly what might be the problem. They’re rewarded — paid — for the number of jobs they can do in a day, not how many times they found or fixed the little gadget that was the real source of the problem.

Most of the time, black box fixes work fine. They fix your issue. But it is the costliest way to fix the problem because you’re paying for a lot of new stuff you don’t need.

Mechanics like me — we’re white box mechanics. When you come to me with a problem, I find the box, and then open it up and look inside. My goal is to not only fix your issue but do it as efficiently as possible. That saves you money and makes you really happy with me.”

Then I said it out loud, just to verify, 

“The bottom line is that I would have spent $1700 to have them replace all of the wheel infrastructure, but that wouldn’t have actually addressed the problem. As soon as I turned left and accelerated, I would have heard the noise. Man, I woulda been pissed.”

“Yup. In your case, the black box approach would have failed. If you had come in with better information about what caused the problem, for example, pinpointing it to when you accelerated and turned, they may have found the problem. But the solution would still have been an expensive replacement of the motor mount, rather than welding the current one in place.”

I drove out both elated and a lot wiser. 

I skipped across traffic and pulled into the little garage in the triangle. 

I didn’t know what to expect, but I was hoping whoever was there could at least give me some guidance or maybe even do the work for a lot less. I didn’t quite believe the dealer’s assessment of my problem (i.e., the entire right front wheel structure was bent). Plus, I didn’t have the $1700 that they wanted anyway. 

I needed a different solution.

As I cut the engine and got out, a youngish guy with a grey shirt, nametag, and a smile on his face came out to greet me while wiping his hands on a greasy rag. 

“Hi! I’m Dan. Can I help you?”

“I sure hope so…”

And I proceeded to give him the rundown of my predicament and the fact that I didn’t really buy the explanation. 

“Well, I got a few minutes now, pull it in the garage. Let’s pop the hood.”

As we stood in front of the car with the hood up, I stayed silent. Dan leaned in, pulled on a few things, touched a few others, and said “hmmm” several times. Then he told me,

“Get in the car. Let’s start it up. I want to watch it while it’s running.”

I did as told. After 30 seconds or so, he yelled at me over the engine noise, “OK, now hit the gas.”

Five seconds later, I see Dan’s face poke around the hood to look at me with a giant smile.

“I know what the problem is.”

I heard an awful scraping sound occasionally from the front right wheel when I turned left. 

And that was precisely the problem — occasionally. I could not put my finger on it because I couldn’t find the pattern to when it happened other than turning left. Putting my head under the hood and taking the wheel off didn’t enlighten me either. I was stumped. 

My red 1987 Celica helped me learn another lesson about how the system works. This time, the lesson was black box versus white box. 

I had just moved to the area, so I found my local Toyota dealer in the Yellowpages (how quaint) and made the appointment. I dropped it off and three days later got the call.

“Sir, we’ve found the problem. Have you hit anything with this car?” 

“No. Never.”

“Huh, OK. That scraping sound happens because a bunch of the wheel structure is bent. Basically, we have to replace the entire right front wheel…”

And then he listed off the laundry list of stuff he’d have to replace — to the tune of about $1700. I couldn’t pay that. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew I’d just have to go get it and figure something else out. Could I do it myself?

“Hmmm. Well, I can’t do that right now. Don’t do anything. I’ll come get it.”

Between my apartment and the car dealer was what I refer to as “the worst intersection in the world.” It’s a heinous five-points thing where three routes come together, two of which are four lanes. It’s a monster, and it’s a ten-minute wait no matter what direction you’re coming from. 

On the way home, I’m coming up on the light, and it looks like I’m gonna make it. I’m getting excited and tailgating the guy in front of me. I’m committed now, no matter when it turns. We’re gonna do this!

But no, it was not to be. Just as we’re approaching the light, it turns yellow, and the person in front of me inexplicably stops. Has he not been here before? Does he not know how much time he just cost us? Does he not know that a yellow light is simply a suggestion?

Regardless, there I sat, one back from the front of the line, steaming. 

Now with plenty of time to contemplate my situation, I noticed that across the intersection, in a little triangle, sat a small one-stall garage with a PA state safety inspection station sign hanging over its entrance. 

Eh, what the heck.

One day after having my 1987 Celica towed to his garage, Phil gave me a call.

“Car’s fixed. You can come get it.”

“Great! How much do I owe you?”

“$50”

“$50?! What was actually wrong with it?”

“I’ll show you when you get here.”

With that, Chris and I drove the 30 minutes to Phil’s to pick it up. 

“So what the hell was wrong with it?”

“All it needed was an adjustment of the electrical timing. On this car, you do that by adjusting the distributor cap. It’s pretty easy. Come out here, I’ll show you.”

We went to the garage, lifted the hood, and he showed me that rotating the distributor cap adjusts the timing. That was literally all it needed. 

“OK, so what was the dealer trying to do to me? Why was he insistent that the problem was that I needed genuine Toyota parts?”

“Ah, because you gotta understand how the system works.”

He pulled out some giant book with an official-looking Toyota insignia and flipped to somewhere in the middle.

“Look here. The timing belt replacement at a Toyota dealer actually requires two jobs: 1) the mechanical replacement of the timing belt and 2) the adjustment of the electrical timing. But that second part, the electrical timing adjustment, is part of the job labeled as tune-up.”

“Aha! The problem was that I declined the second job. This guy knew that genuine Toyota parts wouldn’t matter a lick (as I suspected, because nobody’s that dumb), but he was trying to tell me (with a wink) that the timing belt job isn’t complete unless and until they also perform the tune-up. The tune-up, although new plugs and wires were not required for my problem here, was code for: we’ll also adjust the electrical timing once we replace the belt so that it runs good.”

“Yes, exactly. Toyota, and all manufacturers, are a bit like chain restaurants in that they want the service departments at the various dealerships to provide the same customer experience no matter which one you take your car to. Plus, they get operations benefits by training all of their technicians and service managers on the same job system.”

“Why wouldn’t the timing belt job automatically include adjusting the electrical timing? That seems kind of slimy.”

“It probably is a little, but if you pay them for the job, they’ll do what they say — you’re car will come out with all new parts and the engine purring like a kitten.”

That was one of a few lessons that this 1987 red Celica taught me about how the service departments in car dealerships work. This one saved me a few bucks, but the next one saved me thousands.

Stay tuned. 

I pride myself on acting like a respectable adult in trying situations. 

I don’t whine at retail agents, make a stink at the wait staff, or yell across the counter when I don’t get my way. I’m not that person, except for two times in my life (of which I’m aware). One was in an airport in Doha, Qatar.

The other was right here at the service counter of the Toyota dealership in Pottstown, PA.

I simply could not understand why this guy would not follow basic logic. I couldn’t control myself. I stood there and whined, made a stink, and yelled at the person standing on the other side of the counter. Luckily for me, this was long before smartphones and social media. 

In hindsight, I give him a lot of credit for how he handled me (not his logic or his story; that was ridiculous). He stood there and patiently stuck to his story while I acted like a child. But he didn’t win me over. Clearly, I was going to have to spend more money, but for damn sure, I wasn’t going to give it to this guy. I ended with a flare, “Don’t touch my car! A tow truck will be showing up!” 

Embarrassed and not knowing what to do or where to tow the car, I called my dad. He calmed me down and told me where to have it towed.

“Don’t worry. Phil will figure this out.”

And as it turned out, Phil was also the one who could teach me the lesson about how the system works.

I got it started, turned that sucker right around, and limped back into the parking lot. I asked for the service manager, whom I had just handed $600 to about 10 minutes before. 

Still innocently and with genuine confusion, I said,

“Hey, I just tried to leave but there is definitely something still wrong. It spits and sputters and then stalls.”

“Yes, sir. We noticed that also. We think it’s because your distributor cap and wires are not genuine Toyota parts. I already recommended to you that we perform the tune-up, but you declined.”

It took a second for that to sink in because, you know, I am genuinely confused. I’m in my mid-20s, baby-faced, and not yet steeped in the cynicism required to navigate this world. 

But I knew one thing for damn sure — the problem with my car was NOT an aftermarket distributor cap and wires. I tried to reason with him.

“Sir, I don’t understand how that could possibly be the problem. It ran perfectly until the moment the timing belt snapped. Could something else have been damaged when it snapped?”

“No, we know that’s not the problem. I can promise that if you instruct us to do the tune-up ($300), your car will be running perfectly.”

I’m an engineer. I spend most of my days figuring out problems, what caused them, and how to fix them. This guy is not making any sense. So I stood there and tried to use logic and reason, but he stood his ground.

And then I lost control. 

One evening, on the way home from work, my 1987 Celica left me sitting on the side of the road.

The engine just quit. I had no idea what happened, but since it was a standard transmission, I shifted to neutral and coasted to the shoulder. Coincidently, right in front of a Ford dealership.

So I walked in, pointed to my car stranded out front, and then withstood the onslaught of sales pitches for a new Ford while I asked to use a phone (pre-mobile phones). An hour later, my car and I, under tow, pulled into the Toyota dealer. 

A day or two later, I got what I thought was a strange phone call from the service manager. He called to tell me the timing belt had snapped and would need to be replaced for about $600. Fair enough. But then he also said,

“We noticed that the distributor cap and wires aren’t genuine Toyota parts. While we have it, we’d like to perform a tune-up, and with that we’ll replace the plugs, distributor cap and wires, etc with genuine Toyota parts.”

“How much will that cost?”

“$300”

“No thanks, just the timing belt, please.”

“Sir, we highly recommend that we perform this tune-up. We can’t guarantee that it will be running correctly unless we do this service.”

I was genuinely confused. Until the second the timing belt snapped, it was running perfectly.

“No, thanks.”

He persisted. So did I. Just the timing belt, please.

I got the call a few days later that it was ready. I paid the $600, hopped in, and pulled out onto the road. As soon as I hit the gas to accelerate, the engine bogged down, missed, backfired, and stalled. 

Now, wait a minute, here. What’s going on?

In the mid-90s, I drove a stick-shift  1987 red Toyota Celica. 

I bought it right after I got my first permanent job out of college, and I was psyched. This was by far the best car I had ever owned. It replaced a 1984 Chevy Chevette. I loved this car – stick shift, more power than any previous car I had owned (only 116 HP, but my Chevette had 65 HP), power windows, and sporty (for the time). 

Although I loved it, it had a myriad of annoying little problems over the several years that I owned it. For example, it perpetually winked at oncoming traffic because one pop-up headlight stayed stuck in the up position while the other stayed down. The headliner fabric drooped down on the driver’s head, requiring your raised right hand to hold it up in between using your right hand to change gears. The air conditioner was a crapshoot, as were the power windows. The most annoying, however, was the engine had trouble in the rain. I never figured that out. Sometimes it was fine, and sometimes it would spit and sputter.

But it also had a couple of major problems that taught me a lot about how systems in the world work. Although trying at the time, these were critical lessons that have served me well.  

What follows over the next couple of days are the lessons I learned from my 1987 Celica.

When Salvatore Maranzano organized the five Italian Mafia families in NYC in 1931, he succeeded largely because each family agreed to operate within their specified geographic location. 

As long as each family stayed within their own turf, they got along reasonably well. Each family doing their own business and making their own profits. But, of course, sometimes they crossed the lines. When they did, people got hurt. 

I saw the following headline: “Food companies are freaking out about Ozempic.” 

The gist — food (and healthcare) companies are concerned and preparing business mitigation plans because people may stop spending as much on snacking and healthcare services. Of course, the street runs on foreshadowing, rumors, and fear. This is the food and healthcare companies getting out in front of the news with their own PR — this is the actual mitigation. “We have a plan.”

But the pharma brands in on the GLP-1 wave couldn’t be happier. If you own stock in them, you’re probably happy, also. Novo Nordisk (Ozempic) stock has doubled over the last year. Like opioids before it, GLP-1 drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, etc) are already overprescribed. 

When one entity starts to gain or thrive, it’s often at the expense of another. 

A food company’s number one purpose isn’t to make you healthy. It’s to make money for its owners/investors/stockholders. 

A healthcare or insurance company’s number one purpose isn’t to make you healthy. It’s to make money for its owners/investors/stockholders. 

A pharmaceutical company’s number one purpose isn’t to make you healthy. It’s to make money for its owners/investors/stockholders. 

When you engage in a turf war, somebody’s gonna get hurt. 

What do you feel when you think of the road ahead?

Excitement? Trepidation? Pessimism? Optimism? Tired? Energetic?

The road is the road. You probably can’t change it. You may know what it looks like. You might have the map, so you know what you’re in for. Or you may not. That road may be uncharted, unpaved, or even unfinished. You may have to figure it out as you go or forge your own path.

This morning I watched the township crew working on my road outside my house. They prepared the shoulders, but I’m not sure for what. Beautiful and smooth new asphalt? Maybe the dreaded oil and chips. Maybe just some patchwork. Maybe nothing at all beyond cleaning up the shoulder.

I’ve walked, run, cycled, and driven this road thousands of times. I’ve put in the miles. I know what it looks like, feels like, and where it goes. Yet I can’t control everything about it. Tomorrow it may look and feel very different than today.

The unpredictability of this road is a reminder that even with familiarity, there’s room for surprise. It’s those surprises that add depth, transforming routine into adventure.

Whatever you feel when you think about the road ahead, remember that it’s not the road itself that defines you. It’s now you navigate it.

Life gets better when you’re smart about defaults.

Defaults are everywhere, from your tech gadgets to dining menus. In the tech world, defaults make sure things run smoothly. When you’re at a chain restaurant, the default options are often about inventory or profit margins. Contrast that with a gourmet restaurant, where the chef’s defaults are dishes they passionately recommend.

Automotive service shops have defaults, too, often labeled as “best value” or “customer favorite.” But “best” for whom? The same logic applies to furniture stores. The default is often the item on sale, but you can and should negotiate for what you actually want.

To find the defaults, look for words like “signature dish” and “best value,” bold font, arrows, and green checkboxes. They’re pointing you to what they want you to do.

Remember, defaults are generally set up to benefit the provider, not you, the user. Make it a point to understand who really benefits from these preset options and make choices that better align with your own needs.

When you start to see the landscape of defaults for what it is, you regain control, turning these hidden settings into tools for your benefit.

Yes, you still should get together in the same room.

You need human interaction. You need whiteboard sessions. You need to shoot the crap. You need to sit around a conference table and haggle over some stuff. You need to shake hands.

It’s about more than work; it’s about building a cohesive unit.

You need regular, if infrequent, get-togethers. Not every day or every week, but find the rhythm that works with the team and within your budget. That rhythm may change as the arc of the project changes.

With my current team, we would gather about every four to six weeks for a few days to a week. As we got to know each other better, we found that once a quarter or so works well for us now.

When you get together, don’t expect to work the same way or even do the same kind of work that you do when you’re sitting in your home office. That time together is all about being together. Use it to do the things that are a hard remotely. The watercooler conversation may be the most important piece. Let it be.

Maybe it’s once a month for you, or maybe once a year. Find the rhythm that works for you and your team. Once you do, you’ll be unstoppable.

Mastering your daily schedule isn’t only a work-from-home thing; since you’ve now integrated your home and work lives, you can use it to your advantage.

Master your remote work schedule before your day even starts. Create a night-before or morning routine. Prioritize your work with a clear head. If all else goes to hell, you want to make some level of progress on the #1 priority.

The power in doing this planning with a clear head is that it helps you control your reaction to the inevitable interruptions.

Make use of odd hours and take advantage of no commute. Utilize early mornings or late nights when the house is quiet. Leverage these hours to focus on high-impact work. Maybe 7 am meetings work better than 10 am meetings.

Organize your day around 1 – 3 hour chunks of time tht fit more naturally into the house schedule. Avoid scattering tasks. Group similar activities into specific blocks.

Schedule some dark modes where you go off the grid to focus. Turn off notifications and close extra tabs. Not every message has to be answered in real time. Those notifications are like crack. I love them, you love them. Nobody has the discipline to ignore them, especially when we’re in an easily distracted state to begin with. So just turn them off, and that solves the problem.

Now you’re making progress to mastering the remote work environment.

You gotta have the conversation with your spouse, partner, kids, and roommates. Even if your kids are very young. 

“When I’m sitting here, between these times, I’m working. Unless the house is on fire, or someone is bleeding, please don’t interrupt me.”

Start there. Make sure everyone has been told about your working hours, and your working space, and the expectation of no interruptions.

Of course, there will still be interruptions, and that’s OK. They are inevitable, even if the house isn’t on fire. When this happens, learn the phrase “Yes, but how about this evening or later today?” Or, “Yes, I would love to hear about that, but can we talk about it later?”

Here’s the key to using those phrases:  You must follow through. Don’t let them be an empty promise; you lose trust, and the phrases lose their power. Even 4-year-olds (especially 4-year-olds) will hold you to the fire on this. 

Unlike in an office where you are physically separate, your home and work lives are now integrated. Realistic boundaries have to reflect that. In the office, you get 8 hours. At home, maybe you get chunks of 1-3 hours. Find what works for both you and the others in your house. 

Give yourself and your family members grace and a period of transition. But set those boundaries.

Contrary to what you might fear, avoiding distractions when working remotely is not about self-discipline.

Thanks God, because if it was, I’d have no hope. I’m not a Navy Seal nor a Buddhist monk. I’m not disciplined enough.

The key to avoiding distractions is to create an environment that heads off your triggers. 

First, acknowledge that you have distraction triggers. It’s OK. Take a breath. We all have them. Once you acknowledge them, you can design an environment around them.

Is it the dishes in the sink or the lawn that needs mowing? Is it the email popup, or the text message buzz, or the Facebook messenger ding? Is it the kids walking in and asking what’s for lunch? Is it the incessant barking of the neighbor’s dog?

Now get to work buidling the right environment. Try stuff and test it. It may change over time. Over the next few days I will provide your with several pointers that helped me and can help you.

Start with creating a physical space for work. It may be the most important thing you can create to help eliminate distractions. 

Walking to and then sitting down at that space helps your mindset switch into work mode and signals to the others around you that you are now working. It’s worth giving up some area of your home to create this (semi-) permanent space. 

Don’t bring non-work related devices or distractions into that space. If you wouldn’t have it in your office, don’t have it on your desk at home. Either before you start the day, or at the conclusion of your day’s end, make this space conducive to your personal needs. 

For example, my wife requires a level of cleanliness in her space. If it’s a mess, she’s totally distracted and can’t get started. She must start the day with her space neat and tidy.

For me, it’s continuity from the previous day. When I sit down to start working, I want it to be like it was when I finished yesterday. That helps me jump right back into where I left off.

More to come…

Working from home, especially if it’s new for you, can present an almost paradoxical challenge to your productivity and energy. Especially in the afternoon.

Time works differently when working from home. 

A healthy and productive integrated work and home life schedule does not look like a commute to the office schedule. Working in an office has natural breaks built into the day, even if your normal routine is to work through lunch.

Working from home can bend linear time into an amorphic blob. 

Many days, you roll out of bed and right into work mode, and before you know it, it’s dark outside. You are often isolated from your team, and the household distractions that occur are counterproductive rather than naturally rejuvenating.

There is a pile of research from both the psychology and physiology angles indicating that physical exercise, especially something that you look forward to, helps boost your mood, energy, cognition, and mental acuity. 

These are the ingredients that keep you productive and happy during your workday. 

Taking a recess is about taking an intentional break from your work to do something that you look forward to in order to boost or regain your energy and creativity for the afternoon. If you use that break time to do something physical, you magnify the benefits.

What kind of break should you take? The one that you take.

Anything that you like to do can be a helpful recess, but you will get the most benefit out of something physical and outside. Get outside, get some fresh air. Maybe sweat a little or a lot. 

Feeling the benefits of recess, just like when you were in 5th grade doesn’t require something specific. It just requires that you do something you like so that you look forward to it and keep doing it.

And here’s one more suggestion for those of you whose schedule is stacked with one meeting after the other: 

Start declining meetings over lunch. You have my permission.

When the recess bell rings, don’t miss it.

It’s worth returning to why taking breaks, specifically a lunch break or some sort of recess, is critical to your success at mastering remote work.

To do so, let’s recall elementary school. Or at least my elementary school experience.

Fifth-grade was all about kickball. The way I remember it, the kickball game was the most important 30 minutes of the entire fifth-grade day. This was 1979, so unless it was pouring, we were going outside at recess, and there would be a kickball game. Dress appropriately.

The pre-game ritual started early in the day with trash-talking and anticipation of the impending contest. The lunch table was filled with underhanded draft negotiations just prior to the recess bell’s merciful release.

When the recess bell rang, it unleashed us to bolt outside, line up against the brick wall, and rush through the anti-climactic choosing of the mostly pre-negotiated teams.

And then we began.

The result was a glorious full-circle arc of anticipation, physical release, and the thrill of victory marred only slightly by the occasional trip to the nurse’s office for band-aids or finger splints.

The ending recess bell delivered our cohort of sweaty boys and girls back to the classroom. Some euphoric with the win. Others dejected and passing around the blame of the loss.

We were all physically spent yet mentally refreshed and ready to take on an afternoon of sitting in class and paying attention to the riveting lessons in language arts and the scientific method.

As it turns out, what’s good for readying a 5th grader for an afternoon of desk work is just as good at readying an adult for an afternoon of desk work.

More to come…

A quick but important divergence into the negative.

As a leader, you have a plethora of supervisory tools at your fingertips. The IT department can probably provide login reports, keystroke activity, and browser histories. Ignore them. Throw them away. Disable them.

The remote work environment is not a shop floor, nor is it a kindergarten classroom. You don’t need to maintain a watchful eye. You don’t need to ensure people are doing their jobs by making sure they’re online for the prescribed amount of time.

You might be tempted to create a standing Zoom meeting for the start of your workday or maybe mid-afternoon. If your project requires or runs better this way, then go for it. But if your true purpose is to ensure your team is working at what you consider the right time of the day, resist.

It’s not about supervisorship. It’s about respect and empowerment. It’s not about hours. It’s about impact.

Lead like a leader.

Provide more. Expect more. Get more.

Leading teams remotely is about, well, leadership. Specifically leadership in the new work paradigm. The new work paradigm calls for true leadership, not the supervisorship and micromanagement of org chart leadership. True leadership requires vision, connections, courage, respect, willingness to try things that might not work, and the ability to change one’s mind. 

Ensure each member knows what is expected of them and are empowered to control their own destiny. Empower through tools, responsibility, and trust.

Respect each team member’s schedule and the integration of work and home life. Consider alternate times for meetings. Does 7 am work better than 10 am now that no one is commuting? Use the tools to socialize everyone’s status throughout the day. 

A productive work community does not require a commitment to a daily schedule, but it does require a commitment to one another and to the mission. Encourage the commitment to one another and foster the commitment to the mission.

Developing and then keeping a productive and happy team is all about embracing the differences between the home and office environments, enhancing the benefits of working from home, and equipping your team to foster community and conversation. 

The schedules are jumbled. The distractions are greater. The isolation can be real. 

Acknowledge these challenges rather than ignore them.

Lead by example — work socially.

One of the keys to a cohesive, productive, and happy remote team is to foster community and conversation. Your team wants to feel cared for and cared about. You can do this through your actions and by encouraging everyone to work socially.

Start by putting a proper toolset in place, then use it correctly. Email ain’t it. Not for conversation anyway. Use tools such as Teams, Zoom, or Slack or even non-business tools such as WhatsApp (especially if you have a global team) for conversation. These tools make private and group conversations effortless and useful. Once you master them, it’s like you’re all sitting around the conference room table.

Establish daily contact. It doesn’t have to be intense, formal, nor even work-related. A few chat messages. A quick video session. Just like you might run into someone in the hall or walk by their desk.

Pull people into conversations on your messaging tool. Make sure they’re included and their voice is heard and valued. Actively seek out input from those who prefer to hide.

Once you master the art of working socially, your team will be on fire.

More to come…

The first step in successfully leading a remote team is to allow and help each team member to master it themselves.

Help them establish the same principles that you did:

1. Create a space
2. Find a routine
3. Take breaks
4. Work socially

Push for a budget. Your team needs quality gear and a comfortable setup to mimic an office vibe. Lobby for this. If they’re set up right, they’ll produce right.

Routine matters. Understand each member’s personal flow. Are they morning people or night owls? Schedule around these nuances. The aim is to integrate, not disrupt, their daily life.

Breaks aren’t optional. They’re necessary. Encourage your team to step away, recharge, and come back stronger. A walk around the block or a quick workout can do wonders for productivity. Make it a part of the work culture.

Social interaction keeps the team vibe alive. Use video calls, chat apps, or virtual meetups to keep everyone connected. Loneliness can be a creativity killer; keep the energy flowing.

You’re not just managing tasks; you’re curating an environment. Do it right and you’ll transform remote work from a challenge into a team superpower.

More to come…

Now that you’ve mastered your own remote work environment and practices, it’s time you figured out how best to lead your remote team.

I’ve been leading remote teams worldwide for the last decade, just as I’ve been working remotely myself. Here’s what I’ve learned.

Your goal for your remote team is really no different than if you all sat together in an office. You want to keep them productive, on target, and happy (maybe you don’t care about happy, but I do). The key is to embrace differences between the home and office environments, enhance the benefits of working from home, and to equip your team to foster community and conversation. 

Home life and work-life are now integrated, by definition. Rather than trying to ignore this integration, use it to everyone’s advantage. There is no more commute. The kitchen is steps away. Suddenly, the 3rd grade’s 20-minute presentation of Christopher Columbus’s arrival at the New World looks like something a parent can and should attend. Yes, you can take that 10 a.m. dentist appointment.

The workday might look different, and that’s OK if you know how to lead through it.

Isolation is real for your team. It’s a benefit for unencumbered focus time, but it can suck their life out when they need the energy and vibe of the team around them. 

Nail this leadership, and you’re not just running a remote team—you’re pioneering the future of work.

Mote to come…

I have found this one to be the most important one and the one that eludes most people.

The great news is that it’s not that hard, but it does take some awareness and intention. In fact, for introverts (like me), using your remote toolset to work socially can be better than sitting in an office full of people. Less distractions and more flow time. 

What does “work socially” mean?

Fostering conversation and community around work, but also around life.

How do you do that? By fostering community.

You probably have tools such as Slack, MS Teams, Zoom, etc. Use them instead of email for conversation. Email is a great tool, but not for fostering community. Email is for documentation, publishing, and formal external communication. 

These other tools make real-time conversation effortless. Real-time conversation helps develop a community. Use these tools to “overshare” what you are doing, ask questions of others, and generally create a transcript of the daily work and life conversation.

Turn your video on in meetings. If you have your video on, others feel more comfortable turning theirs on. When everyone has their video on, it’s like you’re sitting around the conference room table. And the potpourri of weird stuff in the background of your video? That just enhances the conversation.

Fostering and participating in conversation and community are the keys to working socially. And working socially is the single biggest factor that will help you master working from home.

OK, maybe that sounds silly, childish even, but I’ve found that taking breaks is one of the keys to unlocking the master of remote work.

Like a commute creates a natural routine, the office environment naturally provides mental breaks in your day — lunchtime, watercooler conversation, meetings, a trip to the coffee machine, a colleague stops by to lament about the game last night, a walk out to the restroom.

These little breaks don’t come as naturally when you’re by yourself. 

Done right, breaks can be your superpower. Not taken or done wrong, and you can derail the rest of your day and leave yourself mopy or agitated. 

How do you design breaks into your day?

Like your routine, try stuff and adjust, but start with a lunch break. 

If you don’t normally take a lunch break, start taking one. Take a walk. Workout. Run some errands. Decline your meetings over lunch and take a break.

Then be diligent and intentional about taking some other breaks throughout the day. Walk the dog. Go out to get coffee. Run to the post office. 

One warning — there can be a fine line between productive breaks and unproductive distractions and interruptions, especially when working from home. Setting boundaries helps with distractions and interruptions. 

Master your breaks, and you’re one step closer to mastering remote work. It’s that simple.

When you commute to an office, you have a routine. That routine serves the important purpose of transitioning you from your home self to your work self and back again.

This routine is critical in transitioning your mind and body into the workday in the morning, and out of the workday in the evening. These transitions occur naturally when you commute.

One challenge of working from home is the integration of home and work thwarts that natural transition. You’re unmotivated or distracted to start your workday, and that turns into difficulty staying engaged throughout, which then leads to a challenge in being fully present with your family in the evening. 

It took me a while to find what works for me, and it shifts around a bit. My routine currently doesn’t look exactly like it did a couple of years ago. But when I’m on my game, it always involves these 4 elements:

1. Intention to start the day
2. Priming my mind
3. Priming my body
4. Creating a ToDo list with a clear head prior to the firefights and distractions of the day

What should you do? 

Experiment. Try different things. Start with something similar to what you do today. Take a shower and getting dressed as if you were going to the office. Take a walk to emulate the commute. 

The key is to find a routine that transitions you from your home self into your work self. Once you have that, you’ll find your motivation and focus return. 

You still gotta go to work, which means you need a spot. 

Creating a physical space helps bridge the mental transition to the workday and sets boundaries for the others in the house.

Working from home full-time, or even just for a full day, is not the same as sending a couple of emails after dinner. You can’t do it from your bed or the couch, at least not effectively. 

Effective working from home requires a mindset commitment to the workday, just as if you were going to the office. Having a physical space helps transition your mindset, just as your commute did before. Once you set those physical boundaries, your focus sharpens and you’ll have a better time ignoring interruptions. 

At the office, everybody’s on the same schedule, but at home, the schedules clash. You can’t run your day interrupt-driven from your family and expect to be successful. 

This may be your biggest challenge, but it’s worth sacrificing a spot in your house. Even if you have a tiny apartment, make a permanent spot that you can go to each day. Set up your big monitor and docking station. Layout your favorite pen and notebook. Leave this stuff there just as you would at your desk in an office. 

When you go to this space and sit, you are going to the office.

Even though I started working formally from home ten years ago, my journey started about 15 years ago, in the middle of the night.

At that time, I was burning the midnight oil from home just to keep up with my job as a programmer. Found myself thinking, “I’m productive alone. What if I ditch the commute and office distractions?”

Tried it, but ultimately failed. Slow internet, household distractions, and isolation killed my motivation. I didn’t yet know how to do it effectively.

Then I took the job ten years ago. The daily grind of a three-hour commute to Philly forced my hand. I knew I had to get serious about remote work. So I went at it for two days a week. A lot had changed, but what really made the difference? I was mentally committed.

That’s step one.

Then I got laid off, but it was a blessing because I had learned how to work remotely by that time and started to love it. So, I jumped at a full-time remote opportunity and never looked back. I lead teams all over the world now from the comfort of my home office.

I’ve learned what makes me tick in this setup. And I’ve figured out how to keep a remote team humming.

Ready to dive in? Next up, I’ll share the secret sauce for successful remote work. Stay tuned.

Ten years of remote work and still loving it, with all of its ups and downs. Over the next several days, I’ll tell you how I mastered the art.

The transition began subtly. The first three years had me in the office three times a week, laying the groundwork for what would become my full-time remote career over the last seven years.

I’m astonished when I look at how far I’ve come since making that game-changing decision to jettison the familiar and forge off into the unknown. But today, the idea of trading my remote workspace for a traditional office feels unthinkable. That’s not to say the office doesn’t have value (it does, and I’ll talk about that), or that I wouldn’t take a position that required my frequent presence in an office (I might, and I’ll talk about that), it’s just that the remote environment is here to stay, so we should acknowledge it.

What’s coming your way? A treasure trove of insights on optimizing your personal efficiency, leading virtual teams like a pro, and leveraging the remote culture to benefit your business. These aren’t just theories; they’re lessons drawn from a decade of trial, error, research, and keen observation.

Stay tuned. If you’re hungry for success in the remote world, yearning to sidestep common pitfalls, or eager to challenge the norms, you won’t want to miss what’s next. Dive in, debate, and refine your remote work game.

More to come…

Just tried this in ChatGPT:

“You are a life coach specializing in personal development. You have a middle-aged client who is bored with their work and a little depressed. Create a self-directed exercise to help your client explore possibilities, both with work and life in general. The exercise should be interactive. Suggest ways to help them realign their core values with their daily actions. Your tone should be friendly, supportive, and encouraging throughout. Build this exercise by asking me questions and tailor your responses accordingly.”

It started an interactive conversation with me, but that conversation was too explicit. For example, it started here:

Let’s start by identifying your core values. These are the principles that guide you, the beliefs that you hold dear. Could you list five core values that resonate most with you?

Well, that’s not effective for real people who may be struggling. A better method requires subtlety. So I told it:

“Although I understand what you’re doing with this exercise, its too explicit. I’m basically just gaming the system. Can you use a more subtle approach that will be more effective at getting the core of the person?”

And it got better!

Here is what it came up with:

The “Two Lists” Exercise
Grab a piece of paper and divide it into two columns…

And it gave me an interesting exercise to write down experiences and moments that both invigorated and drained me. 

AI or not, good coaching is all about mastering the art of nuance.

On the one hand, Key Performance Indicators are a natural and necessary method for organizations to measure themselves and their people.

“Here are the things we care about. How did we do against those things?”

But the problem is the cat and when he gets out of the bag.

Because once you know how you’re being measured, you can easily game the system. It’s why oil companies can score high on the ESG scale, and fast food companies can score high on healthy eating initiatives, and big pharma scores well for affordable health programs.

If the help desk worker knows she’s being judged against how many tickets she closes and how fast, you gotta know that she’s closing tickets quickly and reopening new ones for the same issues. If a software developer knows he’s being judged against story points (or lines of code), you gotta know he’s inflating the points associated with his tasks (or writing extra lines of code).

That’s human nature. We optimize for what’s being measured. But optimizing isn’t the same as doing what’s best. It’s just doing what’s counted.

The fix?

First is transparency. Here are some KPI’s, but KPIs are not the only story. Impact is, and impact may be subjective. You care about the full picture, not just a scorecard.

Second, mix it up. Change the KPI’s. Reveal some after the fact.

Third, foster a culture of genuine improvement. Celebrate and encourage the innovations and attempts that didn’t work.

KPI’s aren’t the north star. Your mission is.

AI is only as smart as (all of) humanity, but not one tick more.

It aggregates knowledge. Crunches numbers at lightspeed. Finds correlations that we missed. Yet it lacks original thought. Can’t philosophize. Can’t dream.

It’s a tool, not a mentor.

AI might be the smartest entity in any room, but it’s not smarter than the collective human experience. Because wer’e the ones teaching it. Our data. Our patterns. Our successes and even our mistakes. It can’t push boundaries; it only works within the ones we’ve established.

It’s a reflection, not a pioneer.

Smartness isn’t just raw computation, speed, and size of the database. It’s creativity, empathy, intuition. All things AI can’t grasp. It’s fantastic for tasks and solving complex problems. Streamlines processes. Makes us more efficient.

But it can’t replace human insight. That gap is where you find your value.

Let AI do the heavy lifting. You handle the vision, the strategy, the soul.

So don’t fear AI. Respect it. Use it. But remember, its “smartness” is borrowed. Ours is earned.

Like John Mulaney said, “I always thought that quicksand was gonna be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be.”

As a Gen-X’er, I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons, and in the cartoons, quicksand is a big problem. One of the biggest, in fact. I just assumed I’d be dealing with it my entire adult life. I remember formulating my plan for how to survive when I fell victim to quicksand — grab on to whatever I could, lay out flat if possible, never struggle. I may have practiced my survival techniques in the backyard. 

As it turns out, I’ve never had to work around nor be saved from quicksand. I’ve never even seen quicksand.

I was a victim of availability bias.

Since the quicksand concept was right in front of me all the time, I couldn’t help but be worried about it. 

The News, and media in general, are masters at using availability bias to play us like fiddles.

The next time you find yourself anxious or angry because of something you saw, heard, or read on The News, ask yourself, 

“Is this quicksand?”

Because unlike quicksand, where you focus really can trap you.

I am one of those computer guys.

When I worked as an intern at GE Astrospace in 1990, our team of about 20 people shared six or seven computers situated in the common area of the office. We had two black and white Mac’s (SE-30s), a color Mac (Macintosh II), and three or four VT100 terminals (connected to the VAX machine somewhere else in the building).

One of my unofficial roles as the intern was to be the “computer guy.” Most of that computer guy work was secretarial. The real engineers would give me their handwritten tables and ask me to create a pretty graph on the Mac. Or they would give me the modified characteristics of a component box on the spacecraft and ask me to update the model on the VAX so they could perform new radiation analyses. 

I didn’t mind because a) I got to learn about real engineering work, and b) I liked learning how to use the computers. In those first few years, I taught my team members how to use now-ubiquitous technologies such as networking, email, and the web. 

My computer guy-ness spilled over into my entire life. Even though I was an electrical engineer working on spacecraft problems, I became known as the computer guy in all aspects of my life. 

My friends and family would describe what I did for work as, “Oh, he’s one of those computer guys.”

In the 90s, having the skill of operating a computer was a novel quality. A quality worth mentioning about a person. Just like being a “driver” was something worth noting about a person around the turn of the 20th century. 

But today? Everybody’s a driver and a computer guy. 

You’ll probably be better off embracing useful technologies rather than sounding the alarms. 

Humans have been competing with machines and systems for over a hundred years.

The human creator can win if he asks himself the right question.

We got machines and assembly lines pumping out millions of coffee mugs. We can go to Walmart and buy as many as we want in as many colors and styles as we want for a $1 each.

The clay artisan that asks herself the right question isn’t trying to compete with the machine or Walmart as she handcrafts her mugs and then carefully places them on display for sale at the front of her studio.

The question she asks herself is, “who’s it for?” If she gets that right and then serves that audience, she’ll find the customers who matter to her and keep her in business.

Content creators can ask themselves the same question. If they get it right and serve that audience, AI won’t ever take their job.

Hey, “creatives”…Welcome to the working world.

Some very famous authors are suing OpenAI, claiming copyright infringement. Similar suits have been brought for comedy and images. 

But these lawsuits have two prongs to them:

• The valid legal prong — Has OpenAI (and Midjourney, Meta, Stability AI, etc) violated copyright law?
• The fearful and whiny prong — Is AI better than us at our jobs, and will it supplant us in the future?

The Valid Legal Prong

Fair enough. Copyright law exists to protect the creators. It’s complicated, has a long history, and is generally well-legislated. 

The main question in my mind: Is it a copyright violation for another entity (human or AI) to consume copyrighted material legally and then use it as a base of knowledge from which to create other material?

An ancillary question: Has the AI entity consumed the copyrighted material legally?

I’m interested to see how it turns out. Basically, I trust the legal process.

The Fearful and Whiny Prong

What makes you so special?

The working world has been dealing with job replacement for 100’s of years. Content creation is no different.

Creatives have jobs because people like to consume your content. But make no mistake, the consumers don’t care who or what is creating the content. They just know what they like.

The good news is that, like with all job replacements, the outlook for creatives isn’t dismal. All it takes to remain relevant is for you to figure out how to add value. 

As humans, we like to, actually need to, simplify the world around us. It’s a survival mechanism.

Our brains are wired to reduce complexity to manageable chunks of information. Psychology research says we can hold 7 plus or minus 2 items in our working memory. But holding info isn’t the same as processing it or using it to make sense of the world.

Then we add in the marketers, headline-creators, and the fear-mongers of the world. They are smart and good at what they do. Their purpose is to distill the complexity into ordered, simplistic, single-variable problems.

Climate change causes forest fires and superstorms.
Children’s books on transgender issues cause transgender identity.
Capitalism causes poverty and racism.
Social programs cause dependency and lack of motivation.

The issue with this simplification, especially when pushed by those with an agenda, is that it gives us a false sense of understanding and control. When you’re trying to make order out of the chaos, leaning on half-truths is as good as knowing nothing. Oversimplification is like slapping a band-aid on a wound that needs surgery.

So, what’s the antidote?

Keep questioning. Keep digging. Keep changing your mind. Keep expanding your reach. Keep evaluating and re-evaluating. Keep trying stuff. Keep talking. Keep being surprised. Keep walking through doors. Keep opening windows. Keep believing before seeing.

Empathy first.

You gotta see before you believe.

Science. Evidence. Data. We are conditioned to trust our eyes, to give weight to what’s measurable, and to believe in what’s before us. If it can be demonstrated, quantified, or replicated, then it warrants our belief.

But that’s no way to live.

How do you pioneer without faith? How do you break through? How do you believe in your future? How do you trust in possibilities? How do you find meaning? How do you develop purpose? How do you build courage? How do you transcend?

You gotta believe before you see.

The next day is a powerful force.

It’s redeeming. It’s enlightening. It’s encouraging.

You can get started the next day. You can quit the next day. You can make amends the next day. You can try again the next day. You can assess the results the next day. You can make the change the next day.

The next day is like tomorrow but better because we all know that tomorrow never comes. The next day always comes.

Until it doesn’t.

Familiar no more.
Pushed away from shore.
The struggle is real.
Don’t know how to feel.
We’re here to guide.
To pick up and abide.
I wish you could hear.
While my heart holds you near.
I wish you could see.
You can be whatever you can be.
The future isn’t a place.
Nor is it a race.
The path isn’t straight.
And it’s never too late.
The future is open.
An unpolished gem.
Maybe put heart before head.
And open up instead.
The future is today.
And today is your day.

When I was a kid, we played good guys versus bad guys. I’m Gen X, so it was Cowboys vs Indians, cops vs robbers, or the US Army vs the Russians.

We mostly divided the roles randomly. Sometimes, I’d be on the good guys’ team, and sometimes, I’d be on the bad guys’ team. It was equally fun on either side. We certainly didn’t consider the roles explicitly. We didn’t think much of it.

But in real life, who doesn’t want to be one of the good guys?

Often, we outsource the decision of who the good guys are to our tribe. It makes sense because the good guys see the world the way we do, think and feel like we do, and say the things we agree with. So we get on their team, take their side, and cheer them on.

But if we lift the covers just a bit and look for ourselves, we find that we don’t know who the good guys are, or they’re not as good as we thought, or maybe we start to align a little bit with the bad guys.

Sometimes, I think we had it right as kids. Let’s just divide up the roles randomly because neither side is what it seems.

Comedy is tough right now. I get that.

Actually, art, in general, is tough right now. But is that really any different than at any time in history?

Interesting art usually treads the line between cultural norms and the taboo. Sometimes pushing over that line. Many times polarizing. Rick Rubin says that good art can divide the room.

I’m open to laughing at anything. I (like to think that) cultural norms do not affect my ability to find the funny, see the perspective, and enjoy the take.

Like any good art, good comedy pushes the edge. It shines a light on the absurd, at least from a point of view. The comedian using laughs to play with the emotions of the subject.

But if you’re gonna push that edge with comedy, it better be funny, or else its just tragic.

I believe God brings people into your life.

People that push you. People that help you. People that test you. People that love you.

People for you to push. People for you to help. People for you to test. People for you to love.

And people that complete you.

When that person comes along, grab them, and don’t let go. Because with them, the good times are better, the purpose is clearer, and the bad times are navigable.

I’ve grabbed onto you because you complete me. The good times are better, my purpose is clearer, and the bad times are navigable. I thank God for you every day.

Here’s to 30 more.

I believe that most of our collective issues arise from differences in perspective.

I see it this way. You see it that way. They see it the other way.

My group cares about the right things. Your group cares about the wrong things. The other group is evil.

I also believe that solutions to our collective issues derive from empathy.

The best way I’ve found to engage empathy is to care about, seek out, and genuinely try to understand other perspectives. The proverbial walk a mile in another’s shoes. The more we latch into another’s perspective, the better we understand what they think and feel and, more importantly, why they think and feel.

Perspectives are built through personal history, and personal histories are stories of experiences, sights and sounds, group affiliation, and even geography. The world looks different, sounds different, and tastes different over here.

One of the best methods for broadening perspective is to change geography, if even for a short time.

It’s a big world. Get out there and explore.

Fear is an interesting engine.

For some, it drives them inward — to protect, shrink, and even blame.

For others, it drives them outward — to go on offense, beat one’s chest, and act as if they’ll take matters into their own hands when the moment arrives. 

For the last couple of weeks around here (southeastern Pennsylvania), a convicted murderer was on the loose. He did a fanciful job of escaping prison and then eluding authorities for eleven days. If you listened to The News, Satan himself was running amok. 

Across the whole community, we had all of the reactions to the fear. Some wouldn’t step outside their doors. Security systems sold out (unusual since this is a rural community). So were guns and ammunition (purchases not unusual — sold out unusual). One guy was driving around on his 4-wheeler vigilante-style with a bulletproof vest and his rifle strapped across it. These were the reactions that The News highlighted. The toggle switch headlines, of course. According to The News, all of the southeastern PA had stopped their lives as the manhunt continued.

But if you talked with most people, their reactions to the situation were quite reasonable. They paid attention, ensured the house and cars were locked up at night, and generally were just a bit more diligent. 

But nobody stopped living like The News would have you believe.

Turn off the damn news. 

I will continue, at least for now.

I’m not sure what roads we’ll take, but then again, that’s one of the points of the project. Keep the articles short and manageable, but explore widely.

I’m fiction curious. I’m curious about how I can use ChatGPT better. I’m curious if I can group some of these daily shorts together into longer forms useful for others. I’m curious if I can build an audience. I’m curious if I can dig deeper with more personal stories.

Onward and upward.

Needing daily topics sharpened my observation skills.

That’s definitely a good thing because it required more presence in my surroundings. I was on the lookout. My subconscious prompting my conscious to engage. 

Sometimes topics came to me easily through something I saw, read, or experienced through conversation. Other times, they emerged from the quiet moments. The spaces between actions. 

The world produces plenty of content, but often I was short of attention. I found myself tuning into the nuance, the overlooked, and the subtle patterns amongst the chaos. Although sometimes the chaos itself provided the content. 

The art of deliberate attention. What did I notice today that I might’ve missed yesterday? How can today’s observations lead to tomorrow’s revelations?

One last curious and maybe surprising observation about observing — I found myself taking less pictures focused on the moments of the day and simply using my senses to engage and allowing the sensory perception to burn itself into my memory. The story — as I remember it — being the critical piece, not the concrete image of “how it was.”

Do what you want with that.

More to come…

ChatGPT can be a writer’s friend.

ChatGPT is already my friend as a software developer. I do use it to help me write code just about every day. I’ve described it as a crappy intern. But as I’ve gotten better at managing it (i.e., prompt engineering), it’s gotten better at helping me. 

But here’s the thing — I’m an expert software developer. As such, I know the terminology to use, the technologies involved, I can spot flaws early, and I know the thought process required to start with nothing and end up with something you want. If you know nothing about writing software, ChatGPT can’t help you write software. At least not today. 

I’ve also used ChatGPT to help me write. Again, if you know how to use it, and are already an expert writer, I imagine you could get it to work pretty good. Not so much for me, but as with code, I’m getting better. 

Here’s what I’ve found most useful:

1. I feed it my article, and it helps me edit.
2. I can ask it for synonyms and antonyms.
3. I can ask it to give me some surprising or non-obvious conclusions of what I’ve written.
4. I can ask it for historical examples and analogies.

I don’t always use it, and I don’t always use what it gives me, but it’s definitely useful. I will continue to use it and try to get better.

More to come…

I wondered if it would get easier as the year wore on.

It got easier, but not in the way I was thinking. The writing itself didn’t get any easier. The commitment, however, did get easier.

I knew that each day I had to write (except for just a handful). At first, that was a daunting task. But as the year wore on, that commitment became something I looked forward to rather than dread. In fact, here I am, still going.

The writing, though. Still the same. Some days it flows. Others, well, it’s a cat fight.

I gave myself the 250 word limit to give myself permission to write and publish small bits. Short would be ok. 

But a curious thing happened along the way. Many times I found myself having to cut articles down to fit within 250 words. I didn’t expect that, but I started to learn the importance and power of editing. I know I’m too wordy (also when I speak). So the 250 word limit helped me focus the content. 

Sometimes I spent longer editing that I did writing. I think that’s a good thing. Many great writers talk about the importance of editing, removing unnecessary words and explanations, and honing the final product.

I have not always kept 250 words, but when I go above, I do so with intention. 

“If you eliminate the unnecessary words, the reader will have time to catch his breath and to think.”

– Ernest Hemmingway

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story. The second draft is you telling the story to someone else.”

– Stephen King

“The more you leave out, the more powerful it will be.”

– Raymond Carver

My parameter was to publish each day, not write each day.

Not initially, though. Since my purpose is to get better at writing, my initial goal was to write to completion each day. Come hell or high water, I’d need to commit. Just f’n do it — David Goggins style. 

Then, as I designed the project and really thought about the necessary boundaries, I realized even with my best intentions and discipline, I just wouldn’t be able to get it done some days. I can’t always place my own needs above the needs of the groups I’m a part of. I’m a husband, dad, team leader, and team member. Although I’ve become very good at controlling my own time, empathy, leadership, and professionalism demand prioritizing other’s needs over my own sometimes.

Hence, publish every day. I knew I’d have to work ahead to do so. But how far?

For the first few weeks, I worked ahead by one day. I wrote each day and published that article the next morning. That was too close to the hairy edge, stressing me out. I missed my 8:44am deadline one day in November. 

Over the next few weeks, I pushed the pendulum too far the other way. At one point, I was ten days ahead. A curious thing happened — I found myself not as focused, not thinking about topics, and I even “just didn’t write” a few days. Ten days was too much cushion.

I found a happy medium. I worked ahead just enough that if I couldn’t write on a particular day, I wouldn’t miss the deadline, but I’d be uncomfortable enough that for sure I’d write the next day. 

The happy medium is between two and four days ahead. That’s where I’m at right now as I write this — two days ahead. 

I learned that too stressed doesn’t serve me, and neither does too comfortable. It’s such a fine line between clever and stupid. 

I purposely wanted to try writing different types of stories. 

I wasn’t sticking to a rigid timeline, as in, “OK, let’s try narrative personal stories for the next 6 weeks,” but I found that once I started with a genre, I tended to stay there for a bit. Like a mindset.

I didn’t have a schedule of story types, but looking back, I can roughly group them as follows:

• Observational opinions (I’d call it Seth Godin style).
• Self-improvement / Personal Development
• Narrative personal stories
• Success in today’s work culture, team building, leadership, and professionalism

The easiest for me to write was, by far, the observational opinions. I guess I have a lot of opinions that I’d like to share. 

The hardest was the narrative personal stories, especially the ones where I dug in and shared the emotions of the time (maybe still?). I kept saying to myself, “Don’t worry, nobody reads it anyway.” But almost surprisingly, I think these might be the most satisfying. I’m sure a connection exists between the difficulty of the inwardness and the satisfaction of getting it out. 

One exception is the story about working on the iPod with Apple. That flowed out like water down the falls — once started, it could not be stopped. First, I’ve told that story (in person and standing at the front of rooms) several times, so I’d already had its basic structure. But also, I’m still really angry about it. It happened 20 years ago, and I cannot let it go. It feels like yesterday. I can recall the emotions of that moment in a heartbeat. No professional part of me can see anything other than ineptitude, fear, and short-sightedness. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. Of course, none of us know the result of paths not taken, but the ripple effects of that single dastardly decision reach far and wide.

More to come…

Some observations from the “Every Day for a Year” project. 

I needed boundaries. 

Luckily, I recognized going in that I would need to bound the problem, or I would fail right away. Hence, the parameters. I knew this from writing articles for the last few years and developing software for 30 years. 

There’s a big lesson here. Namely, we sometimes think that creativity, problem-solving, and “our best work” require less or no boundaries, when in fact, boundaries, even strict boundaries, are the exact things we need to unlock progress. Our minds can only handle a limited number of variables at once. Therefore, eliminating some variables, even artificially, can help you make progress, eliminate the wrong path, and finish what you started. 

I do this quite a bit as a leader. When my team gets stuck or can’t get started, I bound the problem and eliminate some variables. 

I needed boundaries, so I created some. In hindsight, the two most important were publish every day at 8:44 am and 250 words. 

More to come…

Why writing?

The young me thinks this is just plain crazy. Essays? The teenage me thinks I’m an idiot. But somewhere in my adulthood, I got the bug for putting words on paper (rather, typing on a computer keyboard. I hate writing longhand). 

I like to make things. In fact, I’ve committed my entire professional life to making things (as an engineer and software developer). That part of me is just as satisfied with a completed article as it is with a computer program, fully automated test system, or set of shelves I’ve built from scratch in my garage. 

Start with a blank sheet. End with something. I live for that.

I would suck in the service industry. I would suck as a doctor or a lawyer. I know I suck at sales. But I’m good at making stuff, helping others make stuff, and leading teams that make stuff. It’s good to know something about yourself. 

I’ve been writing a bit now for about 7 1/2 years, or at least, that’s how long I’ve been publishing off-and-on-again blog posts here. Here is my very first, from May 5, 2016. It’s terrible, but I wanted to get better. To get better, I must continue to do it.

As I started writing, I began to notice and then appreciate the ability to get stuff out of my head. It helps me make sense of things. Most of these articles are just me explaining shit to myself. You’re a voyeur. 

And the last reason is that I hope to continue well into the twilight of my life. Maybe it’s fiction. Maybe it’s more and better articles. Maybe it’s something entirely different. 

No matter where you are or who you’re with, you can always write. 

When I committed to The250 project, I knew I had to create some parameters and boundaries. 

I had already been publishing articles on johmaconline for over six years. Sometimes, with months in between. The250 project was going to be about commitment and discipline. I could not keep trying to do what I was doing. 

It took me too long to write. I got too hung up on what it was. I struggled with topics. I struggled with my voice. I was way too focused on “making them good” (which, of course, is bullshit). I didn’t really have a set purpose.

So, I knew I needed parameters. These parameters, although in some ways limiting, in other ways would provide the exact set of boundaries to keep me on task. The parameters needed to define some of the things with which I struggled. That way, I didn’t have to think about them. I could focus on the writing itself.

The parameters:

1. When? Publish every day at 8:44 am Eastern time.
2. Publish, not necessarily write. I knew that there would be some days, for very good reasons (not lack of discipline), that I just wouldn’t get a chance to write. Therefore, my parameter was publish, not write.
3. 250 words or less. 250 words is generally considered a single page. Size matters.
4. Topic? Whatever. Allow myself to explore. OK, this one is really squishy, but I knew what I meant. I was going to have to dig a bit here. 
5. Done is better than good. Ship it, always. No matter what.

More to come over the next few days…

“You’re on a 365-day streak on jmaconline!”

That’s what WordPress just told me.

I did it. That was my goal. Publish something on The250 every day for a year. Here is the first post from this run. 

What was the purpose of this exercise?

Discipline — to commit to something each day, no matter what else was happening around me. Discipline is freedom. Many success and life coaches preach about the benefits. By honing your focus on smaller, daily actions, you make the larger, more daunting tasks seem achievable while also creating a life rich in purpose and meaning. 

Improvement — You wanna get better at something? Do it. Keep doing it with intention. 

Practice what you preach — Even though I’m no certified success coach, I am a leader, a Dad, and a mentor to some. Coaching doesn’t require that you have “been there, done that” (i.e., how many great players were also great coaches?). But, the type of leader I want to be is a servant leader. Part of serving is engaging in the practice. I have little respect for unhealthy doctors. 

To be a writer — You are because you do. Not because you have a degree or have been chosen by The World. You can choose yourself. I want to be a writer. I am a writer, and I will conduct myself as one. 

More to come about this project over the next several days…

Tension is an engine.

It moves us forward or backward. It pushes us side to side. It gets us off our butts.

In a world seeking instant gratification and easy answers, tension serves as a reminder that the journey matters as much as the destination.

Philadelphia passed 100 homicides for 2023 in March. The problem is guns. The problem is a progressive DA. 

Homicides in that same period (Jan – March) are down 14% from 2022. We’re definitely making progress. I’m scared to visit.

Over the last two years, the average global surface temperature is between 0.8 and 1 degree higher than 1965. We’re doomed if we don’t do something drastic over the next decade. That’s nothing. What are we worried about?

Teachers earn 25% more, on average, in states with collective bargaining, and school support staff earn 15% more. Teacher’s unions are an important and helpful resource. Teacher’s unions are ruining our public school systems. 

Facts are facts, but rarely do we discuss the facts. We discuss our interpretation of the facts. Then we use those interpretations as “fact-bludgeons.” See this fact here? This is why I’m right, and you’re wrong.

The answer lies outside of the facts. 

The key is not to eliminate subjectivity but to be accountable for our own views and respecting others’ views. Owning our subjective beliefs means acknowledging that while they may not be universally applicable, they are still a valid part of our personal narrative. Respecting others’ views acknowledges and validates their different life experiences.

And that’s not only acceptable, it’s essential for a nuanced understanding of the world and ourselves.

You are an individual. You have unique needs, beliefs, desires, and ambitions.

You are part of a collective. Probably many collectives. These communities have unique needs, values, and shared goals.

Tension. Because, of course, the individual needs sometimes conflict with the collective needs. So which should win in any given situation?

The collective often faces the inertia of tradition, the unwillingness or inability to change quickly. The collective is also subject to the persuasion of the loudest voices. Conversely, the individual can be plagued by narcissism, an excessive preoccupation with personal needs and ambitions, often at the expense of others.

The surprising answer may be that neither should win outright; instead, the tension itself should be embraced. This dynamic interplay between individual and collective is not a bug in the system, but potentially its greatest feature. The push-pull relationship can actually be a catalyst for innovation, societal progress, and personal growth.

Embracing the tension rather than resolving it may just be the key to a more vibrant, resilient society and happier, more fulfilled individuals.

You can’t control your genetics, but you can control your health.
You can’t control the weather, but you can control your preparedness.  
You can’t control others’ commitment, but you can control your commitment.
You can’t control how others feel about you, but you can control your feelings.
You can’t control external results or outcomes, but you can control your activities.
You can’t control what others say about you, but you can control what you tell yourself.
You can’t control news or social media, but you can control what and how much you consume.
You can’t control where or when you were born, but you can control what you do, what you know, and who you know.
You can’t control whether the executives cancel your project, but you can control your professional skills and value to the organization or another organization.  

We live in a constant tension between what we can’t and what we can control. The things we can’t control are part of The World. The things you can control are part of Your World. 

Do you want to stop worrying, take control, and start having more happiness and success in your life? Recognize this tension and focus on Your World. 

“Yes” opens the doors to new opportunities, enriches your life with experiences, and expands your network. You never get anywhere or do anything with saying “yes.”

“No” promotes focus, filters out distractions, and swats away the flies of faux-busyness. “No” allows you to hone your most significant contributions.

Yes is about breadth. No is about depth.

But both can be an excuse — an excuse not to forge a new path, or an excuse not to finish what you’ve started. There is constant tension between the two.

They key to navigating this tension in any given situation is to look to your comfort zone. Ask yourself, “Which is harder for me in this situation?” Your comfort zone is a reliable guide, flagging what you probably should be doing. The choice that nudges you out of that zone is often the right one.

You’ll have to say “yes” until you find it, and then you gotta start saying “no.”

Balancing the two is not about adhering to external advice but about tuning in to your internal compass, guided by the subtle tension between comfort and growth.

Is it OK for authorities to listen to phone calls of someone suspected of plotting a terrorist act? What if that suspicion is based solely on a group affiliation?
Is it OK to peek in your neighbor’s windows if you suspect they’re up to no good? What if that suspicion is based solely on the fact that you think they’re weird?
Is it OK to access your child’s browser history if you suspect them of visiting forbidden sites? What if that suspicion is based solely on the fact that you remember what you were like as a kid?
Is it OK for authorities to search someone’s car if they are suspected of having weapons? What if that suspicion is based solely on time and location?

Privacy and safety are always in tension.

You can’t have both perfectly. But perhaps that tension isn’t a problem to be solved but a dynamic to be managed. What if this tension is the very thing that keeps our society in balance, compelling us to continually assess and reassess the boundaries we set? This constant friction might serve as a societal ‘check and balance,’ ensuring neither privacy nor safety is taken to an extreme that could jeopardize the fabric of our communities.

We might not need to resolve this tension but to embrace it, recognizing that its very existence helps us stay vigilant, mindful, and, ultimately, human.

Neuralink (one of the Elon’s companies) is working on a brain-computer interfaces. They’re making progress, but they have a ways to go.

If we assume they, or someone else in the field, are successful, what then?

Do we all become bionic? Will regular humans be obsolete?

Well, what about automation today?

Just as machines are taking over tasks that once required human labor, advanced brain-computer interfaces could take over functions that currently require human thought.

But are they augmenting or replacing? Extending or rendering obsolete?

The prospect of brain-computer interfaces, like computers, robots, and AI before it, highlights the perpetual tension between technology and ethics, progress and equality, the artificial and the natural.

Just as we’re grappling with the societal shifts brought about by automation, the challenge won’t just be in the technology itself, but in how we integrate it into the fabric of human life.

Although not opposites, efficiency and resilience are orthogonal.

Efficiency follows from centralized, standard, high-density, and common. In contrast, resilience follows from distributed, heterogeneous, low-density, and unique.

Efficiency thrives on optimization — doing more with less, reducing waste, and maximizing outputs. Resilience, on the other hand, is about having the ability to adapt and recover — not having too much power or functionality in one area of the system.

But beautiful, elegant, and worthy systems — whether business, society, or individual lives — bring facets of both to the table.

The art lies in recognizing how to balance that tension.

We should follow the rules. But what set of rules, and who makes them?
We should do what’s best. But for whom and who decides what’s best?
We should help each other live a good life. But what is a good life?

The tension between what “should be” and what “is” permeates the very fabric of our human existence — a philosophical battleground that spurs introspection, motivates change, and fuels discontent.

The “should be” often finds its roots in our dreams, aspirations, and the morals and ethics we uphold. It’s the world we envision: a place of equality, fairness, and boundless opportunity. The realm where dreams materialize, and justice prevails. But who’s dreams? And justice for who?

In stark contrast, “what is” represents the ground realities, the imperfections, the challenges, and the systemic structures already in place. It’s the world we live in, warts and all. It’s the pragmatic acknowledgment of the present that for sure falls short of our vision of the ideal.

This chasm can be a source of frustration, igniting passion, driving innovation, and spur movements. But there is always tension because of who decides and to what standards.

There is beauty in the tension. You think about what should be. I think about what should be. We both struggle with what is. Together we move us forward.