Latest posts
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The Morning Routine That Survived Everything Else Falling Apart
I have built and abandoned more elaborate morning routines than I can count. The hour-long ones with the cold water and the gratitude pages and the perfectly sequenced stretches. They are wonderful for about eleven days, and then a kid gets sick or a deadline lands or life simply happens, and the whole beautiful structure…
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What Switchbacks Taught Me About Pacing a Hard Year
The first time I hiked a real mountain trail, I tried to go straight up. There was a clear path doing sensible switchbacks across the slope, and I ignored it, because the direct line looked faster and I was impatient. I made it maybe twenty minutes before my legs gave out and I had to…
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How to Give Honest Feedback Without Crushing Someone
Most feedback fails in one of two directions. It is either so softened that the person walks away thinking everything is fine, or so blunt that they spend the next hour defending themselves instead of hearing you. The skill is finding the narrow path between cowardice and cruelty, and it is a skill, which means…
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The Case for Boring, Repeatable Systems
People want the exciting fix. The new tool, the offsite, the reorganization that finally makes everything click. I have watched a lot of teams chase the exciting fix, and I have watched almost all of them end up back where they started, because the problem was never a missing burst of inspiration. The problem was…
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Building a Career That Fits Your Actual Life
For a long time I had the order backward. I built the career first and then tried to wedge a life into whatever gaps were left. It works for a while, especially when you are young and the gaps are big. Then the gaps shrink, the obligations grow, and one day you realize you have…