Episodios

  • John Wick has a broken heart

    John Wick has a broken heart
    Jul 26 2023
    On the surface, the frenetic John Wick movies follow a man who is impossibly angry. The anger takes top billing, but it is really just a response to being heartbroken.

    What does this have to do with you? Sometimes the people you work with will make confusing decisions, or react in unexpected ways, because of root causes you don’t understand.

    Instead of vilifying and dismissing them, consider engaging with them to explore their motivations.

    What do THEY want to achieve?What pressures are THEY navigating?What are THEY afraid of?

    Their motivations don't excuse their actions – John Wick isn't a "good guy" – but understanding their motivations will give you insight about how to maximize your effectiveness when working with them.
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    8 m
  • This is why so many people get stuck

    This is why so many people get stuck
    Jul 26 2023
    Last year my wife and I took a trip to Bora Bora for our 25th anniversary and one morning we decided to do some stand-up paddle boarding in the lagoon.
    I had never tried it before, but I thought I would be figure it out without much struggle.
    Long story short: it was much more difficult than I expected. 
    I was eventually able to stand and navigate the mild swells of the lagoon, but I was a clumsy mess when I started out.
    I am learning to embrace being a clumsy mess, because the path to growth and mastery begins with incompetence. You cannot grow as a professional without betraying your desire for comfort and competence. 
    Here’s the thing: The act of leveling up will absolutely require you to embrace becoming a beginner today so that you can be a master in the future. Wax on, wax off, and all that.
    How often you are stretching yourself beyond the comfort of the known?
    How often are you developing new connections in your brain by learning to do something you’ve never done before?
    How often are you embracing incompetence as a necessary phase of your personal and professional growth?
    It feels good to be good at things, but if you stop there you will never be any better than you are today.
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    11 m
  • This is how you unstuck anything

    This is how you unstuck anything
    Jul 26 2023
    Procrastination gets the best of everyone from time to time, but here’s a simple way to jump start your progress when you feel stuck.
    Consider the smallest component of the task in front of you and commit to accomplishing that singular element. 
    You don’t have to finish the expense reports, you just have to collect the receipts. You don’t have to organize your office, you just have to clean out your pen cup. You don’t have to write your dissertation, you just have to do a brain dump of things that might need to be included. 
    That’s it. Once you do that simple task, you’re done!
    Except, you will likely find that you’re not done at all. The act of making ANY kind of forward progress will often unlock the ability to make a little more forward progress, and before you know it you’ve accidentally accomplished a great deal more than you thought you would.
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    10 m
  • Adaptation IS the work

    Adaptation IS the work
    Jul 26 2023
    Only a tiny percentage of projects are going to work exactly as you expect.
    Here’s the weird part: most people know this, like in their bones they know it, and yet they are still surprised and frustrated when the unexpected shows up.
    That’s kind of like being flabbergasted that the sun came up AGAIN today or that small children will need to use the bathroom at the most inconvenient times.
    These are immovable truths of the universe.
    I think most professionals would be well-served by taking an improv class because improv teaches you to stop expecting an outcome and to simply adapt to whatever is happening now.
    Adaptation is the name of the game. Adaptation IS the work.
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    10 m
  • Are you licking your stitches?

    Are you licking your stitches?
    Jul 31 2023
    When my dog, Bernie, tangled with a pickup truck in 2020, he found himself in surgery to have one of his legs amputated. In the aftermath of that surgery he had a significant array of stitches lining his hip and was forced to spend many days with a cone around his head to prevent him from licking the stitches. 
    It turns out that dogs don’t have the cognitive abilities to know that licking their stitches can cause problems. They have an impulse and they follow it without being able to measure the consequences, so they end up with a cone to make sure they don’t hurt themselves.
    We have far greater brainpower than our pups, but I think we often find ourselves metaphorically “licking our stitches,” by reacting emotionally, blaming others instead of taking responsibility for our actions, and spending too much of our time on low leverage activities.
    When a dog has an impulse, it just reacts, but YOU have the ability to consider your responses to external stimuli and make reasoned choices about how best to proceed.
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    11 m
  • I want you to make me a promise

    I want you to make me a promise
    Aug 7 2023
    I want to make a deal with you. Right now.
    From now on, come hell or high water, you and I don’t do overwhelm alone.
    I understand there are a thousand reasons why it feels like you can’t ask for help, or why your circumstances are so special that no one else will understand, but none of it is real. It’s a trap.
    From now on I you and will ask for help. We will build trusting, authentic relationships that will be our support system when things get crazy.
    From now on you and I will remind ourselves that everyone thinks their problems are special, but the themes are the same for everyone. I promise you: I work with smart professionals everyday and I get to see that they are all basically wrestling with the same issues.
    When we refuse to do overwhelm alone we diffuse much of its power. We learn that we were never as alone as we believed.
    (If you love this idea, but just don’t know how to start, I’d love to chat with you about how I can help you change the story you believe about the challenges in front of you.)
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    13 m
  • You aren’t in charge of the weather

    You aren’t in charge of the weather
    Aug 14 2023
    If you’ve ever woken up, looked out the window at unappealing weather, and immediately felt like the day was off to a lackluster start, well, congratulations, you are a person.
    Most of us have been there, and yet, it’s worth considering how much power over our outlook and mindset that we give to things we cannot control, like the weather…or the Yankees.
    Listen, I love sunny days as much as the next guy, but I also realize that I can’t conjure a single one on my own.  And because I can’t choose the weather, I have to figure out how to work around it because I have important work to do, just like you.
    In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this message isn’t about the weather. It’s about controlling the things you can control and making peace with the things you can’t. 
    Especially on rainy days…and when the Yankees lose.
    (If you are a control enthusiast who is trying to figure out how to let go of the myriad circumstances outside your control, I’d love to chat with you about how I can help you waste less of your time, energy, and focus on things you cannot change.)
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    13 m
  • The fundamental problem with saying “yes”

    The fundamental problem with saying “yes”
    Aug 21 2023
    Here’s a perspective shift that might melt your brain: When you say “yes” to something, you say “no” to EVERYTHING else. But when you say “no” to something, you’ve only eliminated one possibility.
    (This is, of course, assuming you are bound to the same 24-hour day as the rest of us and have to allocate chunks of time you will never ever get back to specific pursuits. If you have transcended time and space, feel free to disregard.)
    The word “yes” is so often associated with opportunity, and the word “no” with a closed door, and as a result I fear we say “yes” to a great many things that are actually sabotaging our ability to do our most valuable work simply because it can be uncomfortable to say “no.” Have you ever found yourself overwhelmed with projects that aren’t the best use of your time, muttering “why did I say yes to this?!” Yeah, you get it.
    What would be different about your days and weeks if you got really clear about your most valuable work and started saying “no” to the things that didn’t have a strategic impact on your ability to accomplish it?

    (If you are feeling the effects of saying “yes” a few time too many, I’d love to chat with you about how I can help you waste less of your time, energy, and focus on things you shouldn’t be doing.)
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    11 m
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