We only change after breaking

We like to believe change comes from insight. A great idea, a strategic offsite, a moment of clarity. Mostly, it comes from breakdown. James Bond’s trainer says the muscle has to fail before it grows. Push past comfort, and the body rebuilds itself stronger....

A word for that

I grew up hearing more than one language at home and around me. English was mine on paper. But so much of what actually got said, the humor, the frustration, the love, arrived through words borrowed from somewhere else entirely. I didn’t choose most of those...

Stamp collecting

We assume collectors want more. More stamps, more coins, more anything that fills the case. But watch a serious collector work and the opposite is true. They spend a decade chasing one stamp and ignore ten thousand others without a second thought. The discipline...

Depth is the point

The person who has tasted a truly great meal stops ordering randomly from the menu. They already know. This is not indecision. It is the opposite. It is clarity so sharp it looks, from the outside, like limitation. We celebrate range. We reward the generalist, the...

The cost of almost

We live in the almost. Almost done. Almost launched. Almost ready. The accumulation of almost is the quiet tragedy of ambitious people. Neuroscience has a name for what happens when we split our attention across competing priorities. It is called cognitive switching...