Lost Momentum Halts Dreams

About a year ago, I went through a pretty dark period.

I got stuck.

I needed help but felt too scared to ask. People like me don’t get help, I told myself.

So I didn’t. And I prolonged my suffering.

Then a friend opened up about a struggle. It shocked me.

I wasn’t alone – I just chose to struggle alone. After that, I decided to ask for help and it set me free.

Maybe you’re going through something. Maybe you’re not. But would anyone know if you were?

I don’t presume to know your situation. I’m no guru. But I do know lost momentum halts dreams.

Big struggle, small struggle – asking for help takes courage.

If you’re stuck, you owe it to yourself to do something about it.

Success will demand the best from you. You can’t offer your best when you’re stuck.

If you feel stuck and don’t know what to do about it, reach out to someone. Or shoot me an email. I can’t promise I know how to help. But I’ll offer my best.

Sometimes all it takes is a little nudge.

—

 

*This post originally appeared in my weekly Crash Newsletter earlier today – where I share inspiration, and the week’s best content on careers, personal growth, and how to get ahead. If you’re interest in learning more, sign up here!

Two Minutes of Fury

When he was 16, Sports Illustrated ran a feature on Bryce Harper.

A lot of people remember that issue.

They remember it because Harper made an outrageous claim – He said his goal was to be the greatest baseball player that ever played.

It struck a nerve that some kid had the audacity to make such a bold statement. But as I read on I remember thinking, he very well may do it.

What stood out to me most about that article though was the mindset Bryce approached the game with. He sported the phrase “2 min of fury” underneath the bill of his cap.

2 minutes. The average time of an at bat.

And while he was on that mound – that’s exactly what batters could expect. Fury.

It inspired me. Both as a young dude trying to make his way – and a pitcher. I immediately broke out the sharpie and pulled out my own cap – to sketch a reminder to myself.

I haven’t picked up a baseball in years. But the concept of 2 minutes of fury sticks with me.

The idea of time as finite. The idea of approaching that finite window as a competitor. Unyielding. Relentless.

There’s something about approaching life that way.

Not just as another casual encounter. But as a competitor working with limited time.

What a mindset to approach life with. Just think about it.

By God, when I step on the mound, hell or high-water…if they get on base, they’ll have earned it.

Don’t Hold the Customer Hostage

Two years ago someone stole my identity. It gave me a keen insight into how shitty most corporate customer service is. It’s not about solving problems – it’s about limiting liability.

Identify theft sucks. As a consumer, I mean DEFCON 1 level fucked up.

A Consumer or Suspect?

Suddenly, you are suspect. Everywhere.

Call to report it – you’re a suspect.

Call the account-holding institutions – you’re a suspect.

Call the credit bureau to place a freeze – you’re a suspect.

Just to speak with a human, you have to dance with a robot guard dog for half an hour. And then, after they drill you for proof of identity and your shit matches, they get even more suspicious?

OHO! We caught you! If you didn’t open this account, then how come your information matches, criminal?! Huh?!

The entire mess has way too much friction. If you really wanted to solve customers’ problems – you’d cut to the chase.

Are You Putting Customers in Hostage Situations?

Then I had a particularly gnarly run in that made my jaw drop.

I learned one of the accounts that got opened in my name had never been used. Easy fix, right?

So I called to report it as fraud and asked if they would close the account – no way, buster. They treated me like a criminal.

Dead serious. This was an account with a zero balance. It had never been used. But it had my information tied to it –so they refused to close it without speaking to the police.

This is fucking insane.

In this particular scenario, after investigation they said they determined the account was opened according to their protocol. But here I am – an alleged customer, whose identity they’ve verified – begging them to cancel an account that had never been used.

Still, they refused. I was a customer. But they were holding me hostage.

If You Don’t Trust Customers, They Won’t Trust You

Canceling a service should be next to frictionless. But this wasn’t. Their lack of cooperation made me feel suspect of their intentions –

  • Maybe they really don’t give a shit about customer satisfaction.
  • Maybe they hired a bunch of morons who can’t think for themselves.
  • Maybe their protocol is so hierarchical it doesn’t account for this particular situation, so no one knows how to handle it.
  • Maybe reps are incentivized to keep accounts open.
  • Maybe they’re trying to prevent reportable churn so they can keep overstated customer numbers.
  • Maybe they believe by acknowledging my claim and cooperating, they’re opening themselves up to exposure as being complicit in the committed fraud.

Whatever the case, it paints a startling picture of the way some companies view their customers – not as human beings their org is solving problems for, but as inputs.

It’s disgusting. And it serves as a good reminder – the more incumbents act like complete fucks, the more friction they force upon their customers, the more imminent their doom.

If your company behaves this way, I have a message: Go Fuck Yourself.

A better market solution will come to rip market share from your greasy, slimy hands – oh boy will they come.

And I’ll be here applauding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Embrace Yourself

Get this – there is no other schmuck on the face of the planet identical to you.

Profound, right? Across some 7.5 billion people – I am the only me and you are the only you. That’s fucking wild.

Yet, for some reason, we (myself included) make a ton of effort to fit in. To migrate in and out of our ecosystems unseen. To go without disrupting or disturbing.

But why?

Maybe as a species, we’ve found it easier to fit in than to stand out. Perhaps many of us do not possess intimate self-knowledge. Or maybe when we step out we feel ostracized.

There seem to be deep psychological underpinnings of the tribal mindset within us all – where we see ourselves as an individual functioning unit within a larger body.

Perhaps many of us walk around with a proverbial Dr. Jekyll in our pocket – a dark side – the unknown self of our personal Johari window. 

Regardless of why – the more fascinating question is what would we find if we all embraced our purest selves?

An Identity Crisis

I find the idea of ubuntu challenging – that I am who I am because of who we all are – as if the fabric of human identity is a maze with no beginning or end point.

It seems likely and obvious that we should all be somewhat a by-product of the people we surround ourselves with; the environments we inhabit; and the endeavors we pursue.

But what lives underneath all the extremities? What lives a few layers deeper – near our core?

Divorced from our surroundings, what form would we take on? Who would we be absent the influence of other people – or rather, absent the influences of influences that detract from the purest version of ourselves?

Surrounded

If there is merit in the idea our surroundings impact our identities and personalities, then it would follow we should deliberately guard ourselves from unwanted influences.

Yet – in order to grow, we must break down barriers of ignorance. We must effectively expand beyond our current states of understanding.

So perhaps eradicating “unwanted influences” is not the proper aim. Perhaps instead we should seek to avoid inhibiting influences.

Influence Audit

I wonder, what would you find if you audited the influences in your life? Would you discover the people, activities, and environments in your life are desirable or undesirable?

Why?

If desirable, what makes them so? What influence does the agreeableness of another agent have over desirability?

Are you surrounding yourself with people and ideas primarily because they agree with your worldview or because they challenge you?

Do the people in your life push you to become a more pure version of yourself or do they coax you to conform more?

You must set your own standards – but as for me, I choose to surround myself with people who sharpen me, who push me to embrace myself more, who challenge me to enhance my game.

I don’t see comfort as the goal of life. Nor conformity. There’s a reason we’re each unique. Embrace it.

 

 

Anything That’s Peaceful

I think it’s entirely bullshit I should have to interact with anyone against my will.

It takes a conscious effort to limit my exposure to people and institutions that steal my freedom. But it’s worth it to me to avoid people who tax my time, my energy, or my emotional bandwidth. Why? Because being around people impairs my quality of life.

Like Dementors, they suck away the best parts of my capacity to create. So I avoid these kinds of people at all costs.

Similarly, when I have a terrible experience at a business, I either provide feedback or I choose not to patronize it.

Anytime an interaction becomes too costly – when it regresses from the threshold of mutual benefit – I can declare my freedom by exercising a choice to avoid these kinds of transactions.

This kind of peaceful interactions allows people to self-select a better standard of living. It provides a basis for humans to participate with one another harmoniously.

Just imagine a world governed by a standard of mutual-benefit. Now contrast that to our world.

We live in a dubious time – a time where freedom of association takes a back seat to political agendas.

Under the guise of law enforcement, governmental invasion spans a significant share of our lives. And to what recourse?

Consider the baker – forced to bake a cake for a customer he doesn’t want to serve, else the government condemns his property. Would you want to do work for someone hostile to you?

Or the corner store – forced to accept cash as a form of payment, or face hefty fines from government cronies. Would you want to work the register at night in a seedy part of town?

You cannot breed peace through force. You cannot breed morality through mandate.

You cannot make people better through bureaucracy. And why would you want to?

 

How What We Lack Can Serve Us

I remember the cold winter mornings, my dad driving me in the pitch black to the gym at 5 am.

The sound of Fleetwood Mac blaring on the speaker, and the soft squeaks of my shoes hitting the hardwood floor as I ran.

Something about those mornings stick with me still today.

The solace of an empty gym. The clarity to focus before anyone else is awake. The freedom to experiment new shots, new moves, and new drills by virtue of being alone…

I was never tall. So I committed to becoming the strongest. I wasn’t the fastest. So I committed to working the hardest. I knew it was the price of admission if I was ever to see any playing time.

I never became much on the basketball court – other than maybe setting some records for personal or technical fouls. But the many lessons I learned continue to age with time.

There is something interesting about the human condition that inspires me. Particularly in our tendencies to strive for things we don’t have or that seem impossible.

That innate desire to fulfills the parts we lack seems to be one of the best precursors for conditioning us into who we need to be on our path toward who we’re trying to become.

If I was 6′ 6″ and light on my feet, I may never have developed the discipline to commit fully to a vision for myself. The part of me I felt a need to compensate for may have been just the right recipe to push me to work for it.

In many ways, it’s always what I’ve lacked that has served me most.

The Power of Intentional Choice

The world would have you believe your options are limited by your circumstances.

That’s bullshit.

You have exactly as much power of your life as you’re willing to exact.

You Have Choices

If you want a better job, go get it. There is a formula that works for getting a better job. Run it.

If you want to live in a different city, sell all your shit and move. If you really examine your life, there are fewer excuses holding you back than you let on.

If you want a different car, go buy one. Yes. It may be a dumb financial move. But that doesn’t mean you can’t.

If you’re in a shitty relationship, end it. You don’t have to be in one at all. If it adds meaning to your life, fly solo until you find someone who enhances your life. And don’t settle.

If you’re broke, you can earn and save more money. As fast as you want to and depending on how bad you’re willing to work for it.

Kill Your Excuses

Whatever you want, you have the capacity to go get it. The first and hardest part is to kill your excuses.

How do you do this? Start by examining the assumptions that are holding you back.

Take your job, for example. Maybe you’ve felt it’s time for the next big thing. Why haven’t you done it yet? Is it the steady paycheck? That you don’t know where you’d go next? All your friends work there…?

Define your reasons for inaction and demand the truth from yourself.

The Burden of Proof

Try approaching your goals and ambitions from the opposite direction for once. Instead of getting lost in all the reasons you can’t do something or trying to articulate all the reasons you should, define all the reasons why you shouldn’t.

Why shouldn’t you move to a new city?

Why shouldn’t you go take a new job?

Why shouldn’t you…

Self honesty takes practice. Approaching your life intentionally also takes practice. But you do yourself a disservice if you pretend you don’t have the power to improve your station in life.

The real question is not do you have the power, but are you willing to exercise it?

Clear Your Cache

Ever feel like you have so much going on you lose track what you should be working on?

Happens to me. It can be a damn hard thing to combat.

But there’s a secret solution.

I call it clearing your cache.

If you’re into self-helpy bullshit, you’ll find tons of people suggest making to-do lists the night before, about planning their week on Sundays, about avoiding email in the morning, or having their daily calendar emailed to them first thing…

I tried most of these. Some help. Others don’t. But none of them work as well for me as clearing my cache.

What’s a cache?

A browser cache is basically a stored version of a website on your drive so you can access it faster.

In sorts, a cache is a lot like the cognitive load you carry around.

The more shit you have to do, the more things you have to remember. That’s more things you have to forget. Or, the more tasks you have rattling around inside your head to distract you from actually getting anything done at all.

So, what’s it mean to clear your cache?

Clearing your cache is about reducing your cognitive load. It’s about deliberately removing many things from the top of your mind so you can focus on one thing.

I like to start small. What’s one thing I could cross off my list quickly? Do it immediately.

What’s another small thing? Cross that off, too.

But the real power of cache-clearing comes in the form of routine. 

I don’t mean the kind of routined, predictable, set-your-clock-to-it behavior. What I mean by routine, is intentionally structuring your day around the things you know you must complete. Define the amount of time you have to do those things. Then devote only that amount of time to them.

This kind of behavior allows me to forget things until it’s time to do them. It reduces my cognitive load and frees me up to focus on the task at hand.

But it’s not easy. It takes practice.

Start with today.

 

 

 

What UPS & FedEx Can Teach Us About Evaluating Opportunities

Shipping stores live and die by three questions.

How big?

How fast?

How far?

These three questions judge every package through the door. The answers determine the degree of difficulty of a package’s destiny and assign a cost accordingly.

I think these questions provide an equally interesting litmus test for us.

What if we put each opportunity we encounter through the same scrutiny?

How big?

How fast?

How far?

How big is this particular opportunity? What’s the absolute maximum expected upside? What’s the worst downside?

How fast can I achieve return from this opportunity? How long will it take to make this reality?

How far must I go to unlock this opportunity? To what lengths will this opportunity take me? How far away from being ready for it am I, today?

An Agile Model

I love the simplicity of this mental model. It’s not some robust, lengthy analysis. It’s a quick easy gut-check.

For huge opportunities, do more due diligence if necessary. Small opportunities shouldn’t require much more than this. This model provides a quick, yet sturdy enough checklist to get to “No” more efficiently.

Medium-Sized Opportunities

Maybe the most valuable application of this regards the middle-of-the-road-size opportunities.

Medium-sized opportunities can be costly, but not exactly for obvious reasons. For me, the cost usually comes in the form of wasted resources evaluating what to do.

Medium-sized opportunities eat away precious time and mental energy. I say avoid them at all costs.

As Derek Sivers once said, “If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no”.

Give it a shot this week.

How big?

How fast?

How far?

Endure the Opposite

In one of my favorite poems, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran describes the relationship between sorry and joy as proportionate.

He eloquently writes that as our ability to fathom joy expands, our comprehension of joy increases in step.

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

I think the concept Gibran describes also applies to a great many other diametric opposites.

Take patience as another example. My dad always jokes, “I prayed for patience, so God gave me twins.” Maybe patience came at the cost of endurance over time. Ironically, patience took time.

Henry David Thoreau provides another example: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” In other words, the more a man becomes content without, the more abundantly wealthy he becomes – if even only in spirit.

Perhaps fear and courage are no strangers to this same phenomenon.

Think about the way people learn to express courage. It starts small. Incremental gains lead to larger challenges. For instance, a kid first scared to ride without training wheels soon becomes a kid getting back up after falling off his bike.

The more you fear something, the more you bring it to life. The larger it looms over your head, the more courage facing this fear requires. Yet, the larger fears you approach head on, the more courage you earn – establishing a new “courage baseline.”

These relationships provide an interesting thought experiment about how we should approach our actual desires.

What I’m trying to get at is that maybe striving for more of something, like happiness or wealth, is futile.

Maybe a better approach is to strive for the opposite. And only by knowing the opposite condition can we become more intimately prepared for our actual goal.