Imagine decisions without limits of money, time, or ability. It’s like letting go, like a child’s uninhibited thinking, free from future worries and fear of failure. Do some freestyle thinking, like riding on a bike when you were a kid with nowhere to go other than to feel the wind on your face. This mindset widens your perspective, surprising you as it eliminates doubt, fear, and scarcity. Then, reel it back to today’s realities.

What steps can you take within your constraints to make this vision a reality now?

How do you decide when to stop doing something you love?

Deciding to stop doing something you love is tough. Sometimes, quitting creates space for the unexplored that has been overshadowed by daily busyness. Sometimes, it’s about widening the aperture to let you do other things you love.

It’s a shame watching people follow the script they’ve been told is the blueprint to a happy life and then end up lonely. 

They move to an affordable town without walkability, community, High Street, or gathering areas. The kids grow up and leave. They’ve worked all their life to retire at 60, so they have no close friends. It’s hard to meet people in sleeper commuter suburbs where garage doors spit out and gobble people up in the morning and the evening. There’s no serendipity, so they customize their lives around sports, phones, and Netflix. It’s a single-player mode – and then they get lonely and sad. 

The Pixar Animation Studios campus in Emeryville, CA, was designed to foster serendipity and collaboration among its employees. Like a village with a High Street, the campus’s layout and design reflect a deliberate effort to encourage interaction and creativity among staff members.

Serendipity and unplanned collaborations are based on the idea that creative ideas and innovations often arise from casual and spontaneous interactions.

The Pixar campus included:

• Centralized Common Areas: The campus is designed with central areas where employees naturally meet throughout the day, such as the atrium. This large, open space houses essentials like the cafeteria, meeting rooms, and other amenities, encouraging employees from different departments to interact during routine activities.
• Strategically Placed Facilities: Amenities and facilities like restrooms, mailboxes, and cafes are strategically located to encourage people to walk around the campus and bump into each other, potentially sparking conversations and ideas.
• Open Workspaces: The layout of work areas is designed to be open and conducive to collaboration, making it easy for employees to share ideas and work together.
• Creative and Inspiring Environment: The campus is designed to be visually stimulating and innovative, which is thought to encourage creative thinking and innovation.

Community and friends compound over time. Live in a place where you meet people in the community, with schools, coffee shops, parks, and gathering areas. Learn the art of small talk again, check in with your neighbors, or phone your friends, or you will be on a glide path to Netflix with no chill. 

Good Timber by Douglas Malloch

The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.

* * * * * *

There is an excellent sound bite from Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. His message is that character is built during hard times. We should welcome tough problems at work and work hard and smart to solve them. Anyone who has worked in a venture-backed startup, immigrated to a new country, founded a company, started from scratch, had kids, recovered from an illness, moved to a new city, etc., knows this lesson already.

I think T.S. Eliot understood the sacred places that we visit in our dreams and one day hope to return to.

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.

—T.S. Eliot

It’s easy to know if you have an instant chemical connection with a colleague at work, parent at your kid’s school, or a neighbor who just moved in. The conversation flows, you relax around each other. Humor is key and you’ll find you are looking at life through the same lens and parables. If do you dig a bit deeper you’ll find a shared value system underneath. these are the people you want to work with and spend time with

When you meet someone who is the opposite of this, the worst thing you can do is force the relationship. Whether it’s at work, dating or friendship. Ask yourself whether you could sit together on a 5 hour day flight. If the answer is no then be honest with yourself and let it go.

All great leaders inspire and build a following through storytelling and parables. Politicians, religious leaders, coaches, CEOs. The common thread is the ability to bring their people on the journey. To suspend reality for a second and dare to believe. The same applies to false messiahs, con artists, and magicians. The trick is how to tell the difference.

Coach Prime saying “We ain’t comin no more” and the team finishing his sentence… that hits different.

pic.twitter.com/FneUHZVQ1q

— RK (@RyanKoenigsberg) September 3, 2023

W. H. Auden famously said, “Poetry makes nothing happen.”

When W. H. Auden said, “poetry makes nothing happen,” he suggested that poetry, as an artistic and expressive form, does not have direct power to bring about concrete, practical change in the world. He highlighted that while poetry might not have an immediate or tangible impact on shaping events or solving real-world problems, it still holds value in its ability to evoke emotions, provoke thought, and provide insight into the human experience.

When I first read the line, I imagined a comma after nothing. And that changed the meaning for me. Adding a comma after “nothing” – “poetry makes nothing, happen” could change the interpretation to suggest that poetry creates something meaningful out of nothing. It implies that poetry gives form and meaning to what might seem empty or insignificant.

This interpretation would be different from Auden’s original meaning. Still, I like my version better, which is what Auden intended us to do, which is pause and chew on the importance of nothing and what poetry can do. 

My old-school stovetop espresso maker isn’t just for making coffee; it’s a daily lesson in patience. Tip the pot slowly and taper off at the end to get that perfect pour. If you rush, you’ll end up with spilled coffee on the table and over the sides of your cup.

This morning routine teaches me the value of taking my time, staying in the moment, and being deliberate. Making each pour deliberate helps remind me not to rush through the day or let incoming demands dictate my agenda. I still spill coffee some mornings, but I’m getting better.

Starting your day with purpose can make all the difference. Simple actions like stretching, doing a few yoga poses, practicing deep breathing, watering plants, or walking the dog allow you to begin your day on your terms, setting a positive tone for what lies ahead.

The number of f-bombs dropped in a podcast correlates with how often the presenters or interviewers hang out with kids. More time with kids as part of their lives equals fewer swear words per episode. When you spend time with children, you realize that they watch you, listen to you, and replicate your actions and behavior.

In some cultures, f-bombs are like punctuation. There’s an appropriate time and place to tell someone to go fuck themselves, but in everyday life, a potty mouth is a sign of hubris, bluster, or a limited lexicon.