Holding onto hope.

It's easy to lose hope, to look around and see nothing but despair and reasons why you should give up and accept that you are no good. Add to that the cultural narrative like "It's the hope that kills you" or "Hope is

Go or no go?

How will a no-go decision make things better for later? Is it coming from fear or strategy? How will a go decision make things better for later? Is it coming from fear or strategy? We usually delay "go decisions" because they create tension both for ourselves and for

What can go wrong?

This sounds like a negative question. It definitely sounds like a question we are likely to avoid. But if we ask this question much before things actually go wrong, we can plan for them. And make it less likely for them to derail our work. As Seth Godin says, resilience

The urge to tinker.

When you build an elegant strategy, when you have a system that works, don't interrupt it. Don't get tempted by the short term exceptions. They seem harmless but they are not. They mess with the system. Many times, in order to achieve our goals, we need

A skill worth building.

How to complete projects that matter to us: Get It Done: Complete Projects that Matter with Seth Godin Online Class | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.comLearn strategies to effectively tackle, finish, and ship projects that matter to you.LinkedIn Learning

The gift of letting go.

When we let go of things, we allow ourselves to travel lighter. We can let go of wants and desires (for ourselves or for other people), we can let go of stories we are carrying that are not serving us anymore, we can let go of things we really really

Communicate, always.

Just like over-hydration is a rarity, similarly over-communication is rare. Especially when the style of communication is concise and clear. Effective written communication makes it easier for the recipient to read (or skip) and to reply if a reply is needed. It allows us to share the relevant information with

The beauty of elegance.

Elegance is simplicity, efficiency, and effectiveness. It’s not only a solution that gets a result. It’s arguably a better solution—the least complex and clearest way forward. An elegant strategy offers leverage in service of the change we seek. While it might seem effortless in execution, creating the

Proxy rewards.

Proxy rewards are like pain killers. They take away the symptoms but don't do much for the underlying cause. Social media can become a proxy for connection, junk food can become a proxy for nutrition, drinking can become a proxy for fun and so on. The biggest danger

% chaos.

The only way to keep things 100% organized is to not do anything. You don't ruffle any feathers, you don't make any ruckus, no one puts you on the hook for anything. On the other hand, complete chaos doesn't make things better, it mostly

Letting opportunities go.

“Don’t let an opportunity go” might work for those who don’t know how to create the opportunities they seek. A strategic focus requires us to say no to everything that doesn’t align with where we seek to go. And be patient to figure out which path is

Making better excuses.

It doesn't matter how good your excuses are. ~ Seth Godin, Get It Done - Complete Projects that matter Get It Done: Complete Projects that Matter with Seth Godin Online Class | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.comLearn strategies to effectively tackle, finish, and ship projects that matter to you.LinkedIn

Stopping the car.

Driving fast might not be a good strategy if we don't know where we are going. Stopping the car and calibrating the navigation is, of course, better, especially when a map of the terrain is available. But with the work that matters, we rarely have a map. At

The skill of showing up.

Showing up is more than half the work done, maybe even most of the work. That's what most people fail to do. They wait for permission to show up. They listen to the voice inside their head that persuades them to wait, that tells them that later is

3 kinds of tasks.

1. Go or No-Go Decisions: Are we shipping this or not? Can we make a non-emotional decision? If we are shipping it, when do we ship? 2. Shifting work from ambiguous to specific: Now that we have decided that we are going to ship it, what do the specific tasks

The dance of scarcity and abundance.

Abundance and possibility go hand in hand. A universe of possibility is abundant, generative and infinite. To engage with abundance, though, we need to engage with scarcity also. Scarcity creates tension. Human behaviour craves that which is scarce. This dance of scarcity and abundance is what leads to creativity. Scarcity

The trap of recurring decisions.

Recurring decisions don't make up for an elegant strategy. Every decision requires emotional labour and spending it on decisions that do not matter leads to decision fatigue and take us away from the work that matters. If you see yourself asking the same question again and again, maybe

Doing your part.

When we engage with possibility, we can only do our part. We can put ourselves in places where possibility can happen. The other part is not in our hands. The part where we need to trust that the other side will show up. The one thing we can trust is

Intentional relaxation.

Just like work, relaxation does not happen on its own. We have to create the conditions for it to happen. Find things that relax us, keep them handy. Figure out things that stress us, put them out of reach. And as with everything, we get better at it through practice.

System or exception?

Every decision we make is either aligned with the system or is an exception. Yes, we have to make exceptions every now and then, but exceptions in themselves don't make a system. And don't take us too far. We can design a system with intent. Exceptions

Searching for elegance.

The lack of elegance makes working on our goals tedious. We seem to be starting from scratch each time. When we find elegance though, the systems in place work almost effortlessly to take us where we seek to go. It's tempting to solve this by working hard, but

Choose your "people like us".

People like us do things like these. ~ Seth Godin When we choose our people like us, we choose our things like these. The group we identify ourselves as a part of will influence us to do things that the group does. Yes, we can use willpower to do things separate

Strategy, instead of resolutions.

Resolutions are short term and dependent on willpower. Most resolutions don't last a few weeks into the new year. Strategy, instead, is a philosophy of becoming. It invites us to see the systems that we are building or engaging with, games we might play, empathy for the people

Working on the story.

As we are coming close to the end of the year, it provides a good opportunity to write and work on the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Seth's blog below is a great place to start. Find a friend who'd like to do the exercise

Thank you.

Today's my birthday. The last one year of my life has been one of the happiest one so far. In no small part because of you. Thank you.