Over 20+ years of working closely with talented creative pros, here’s a truth that’s become very apparent to me: The thing that gets you noticed and the thing that keeps you in the room are not the same thing.

Talent gets you in the game. Your raw ability, your instincts, the early work that turned heads. That’s the price of admission. But talent doesn’t keep you at the table.

What keeps you at the table, year after year and project after project, are your practices. The small, repeatable things you do consistently that quietly compound into a body of work you’re proud of.

So, talent gets you in the game. Your practices keep you at the table.

The pros who consistently deliver great work with clarity and purpose over a long period have discovered that they need infrastructure to support that ambition. They’ve figured out a few practices that actually move the needle for them, and they honestly couldn’t care less what other people think about it. They don’t engage in these practices because some expert or guru told them to, but because they’ve seen how these practices actually make a substantial difference in their life and work, here and now.

Here are a few things to consider about your practices:

A helpful practice isn’t performative. It’s not something you do to check a box. It’s something you do because it changes the game, changes you, or transforms the way in which you approach your life and work. If a practice isn’t tied to a real outcome, a real output, or a real transformation, it’s just theater.

A helpful practice is reasonable. We’ve all seen the morning routine fantasy. Up at four, cold plunge, ten mile run, journal, meditate, and somehow at your desk firing on all cylinders by seven thirty. That’s not a practice, it’s a highlight reel built to be admired, and it will collapse by Thursday. The practices that sustain are reasonable enough that you’ll actually do them on a bad day.

Helpful practices work together instead of against each other. If two of your practices are pulling toward conflicting goals, you’ll feel the friction every time you sit down, and your motivation will quietly drain away. Practices that reinforce one another build momentum. Practices in tension build resentment.

Let me give you a few that have made a real difference, for me and for the leaders I work with. Some of these I first wrote about years ago in ​The Accidental Creative​, where I made the case that your best work doesn’t come from waiting for inspiration to strike, but from a rhythm of practices you build on purpose.

One is a practice of daily writing. As legendary author and historian David McCullough put it, “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.” Fifteen or twenty minutes a day spent writing about whatever is rattling around in your head will do more to clarify your thinking than almost anything else on your calendar. Choose a topic, pick up a pen or open a blank document, and just empty your head on the page. You’ll be surprised what you think that you had no idea was even on your mind. And, the ways in which this will impact your relationships, your leadership, and your work.

Another is starting the day alone with your thoughts. Before the inbox owns you, take time to understand what you’re actually thinking and gather those thoughts into something you can act on. Sit with a blank piece of paper but don’t just start writing. Instead, pay attention to what crosses your mind. Write it down, then follow your thoughts. So many leaders feel tense, stressed, and stuck because they simply aren’t aware of what’s actually on their mind. So many times, there are patterns and breakthroughs lurking just beneath the surface of our conscious thought, but we’re so busy that we miss them.

A third comes straight out of The Accidental Creative, and it’s one most people skip: Be deliberate about the inspiration you take in. Your ideas are only as good as what you feed your mind, so build a simple study plan and protect a little time each week to seek out stimuli that is challenging, relevant, and a step outside your usual lane. If you want a brilliant idea the moment you need one, you have to start filling the well long before you need a drink. Are you seeking intentional inspiration in your life and work? Do you have time set aside to absorb inspiring ideas and thoughts, and to stretch your thinking?

Talent opens the door, but your practices are what keep you in the room. Choose two or three practices for yourself, make them real, and let them do their quiet work.

It doesn’t happen in a single meeting or a single decision. It happens slowly, in the accumulation of a hundred small moments where the person who cares most about the work learns that there are organizational priorities that are more important.

I’ve been thinking about this a bit as I’ve been preparing several speaking engagements for clients over the past few weeks. (It’s also why I’ve decided to bring back the Herding Tigers podcast. More on that below.)

In a recent email, I wrote about how everyone on your team is optimizing for something, whether stability, autonomy, recognition, craft, or efficiency. The tensions between those drives are one of the most overlooked sources of friction in our organizations.

But there’s one tension in particular that I think leaders consistently mismanage: craft.

You probably have someone on your team who optimizes for craft. They want one more pass at the design, or one more round of feedback on the copy. They push back on timelines not because they’re precious, but because the quality of the work is the thing that makes the work worth doing.

And many (most?) organizations are optimizing for efficiency. You need to ship. You need to move fast. You’re measured on throughput and velocity, not on whether the deck could have been 10% stronger.

So you override them. You say “good enough.” You ship.

Here’s what that efficiency-focused decision just unintentionally communicated: your standards probably don’t belong here.

The first time, they probably just absorb it. The second time, they adjust. By the tenth time, they may have stopped bringing their best judgment to the table entirely.

Why fight for making the work better if the answer is always going to be “we don’t have time for that”?

This is how efficiency culture quietly undermines craft. It’s not with a dramatic moment, but with a slow erosion of the belief that standards matter.

Here’s what we can do:

Name the trade-off explicitly. When you have to prioritize speed over quality, say so out loud and acknowledge the cost. “We’re going to ship this knowing it’s not where we’d ideally want it. I want you to know I see the difference, even if we can’t close the gap this time.” It tells your craft-oriented team members that the standard still exists, even when you can’t meet it.

Create protected space for craft. You don’t have to choose between efficiency and quality across the board. But you do need to be intentional about where quality is non-negotiable. Which projects get the extra pass? Which deadlines are real and which are negotiable? When leaders never answer those questions, efficiency wins by default.

Ask craft-oriented people what they need to feel proud of the work. Not “what do you need to finish,” but “what would it take for you to feel like we did justice to this project?” You won’t always be able to give them what they want, but the act of asking tells them you still value their perspective.

The goal isn’t to let perfect be the enemy of good. Rather, it’s to make sure you haven’t accidentally made “fast” the enemy of “worth doing.”

What signal might you sending your craft-oriented team members, and is it the one you intend?

P.S. If you lead a creative team and you’re not already listening to the Herding Tigers podcast, this week is a great time to start. The new episode is out now wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts (or wherever you get your shows)

This is the invisible source of a tremendous amount of organizational tension. We assume that conflict is about personality clashes or poor communication or misaligned priorities, and sometimes it is. But more often than I think we realize, the friction comes from something deeper: people are playing different games at the same table. They’re each trying to win, but they’re keeping score differently.

Let me explain what I mean.

Think about the people on your team. One of them is optimizing for stability. They want predictability. They want to know what’s expected, deliver on it, and not have the ground shift beneath them every quarter. They’re not resistant to change because they’re lazy. They’re resistant because instability is the thing they’re trying to eliminate from their work life. When you announce a reorg, they don’t hear “exciting new chapter.” They hear threat.

Someone else on your team is optimizing for recognition. They want to be seen. They want their contribution to matter visibly, not just functionally. They’ll volunteer for the high-profile project not because they’re glory hounds but because being known for their work is the currency that makes everything else feel worthwhile. When their effort disappears into the team’s collective output with no acknowledgment, they don’t just feel overlooked. They feel like the deal is broken.

Another person is optimizing for autonomy. They want the freedom to figure things out their own way. Give them a clear target and room to run and they will do remarkable work. But put them in a system of checkpoints and approvals and they start to wither. It’s not defiance. It’s that the way they do their best work requires space, and when you take the space away, you take their best work with it.

Someone else is optimizing for craft. They care about the quality of the work itself, sometimes to a degree that frustrates everyone around them. They’re the ones who want one more pass at the deck, one more round of refinement, because to them the work is the point. Shipping something they consider half-finished feels like a betrayal of what they’re here to do. They’re not being precious. They’re honoring the thing that drew them into creative work in the first place.

And of course, there are people optimizing for efficiency. They want to move fast, eliminate waste, get to outcomes. They are the ones asking “why are we still talking about this?” in the meeting while the person optimizing for craft is asking for one more revision. Neither of them is wrong. They’re just measuring different things.

You could extend this list. Some people are optimizing for income, and there’s nothing wrong with that. They’ve done the math on their life and they need their work to generate a certain return, and decisions that threaten that return feel existential in a way that people optimizing for calling might not understand. Others are optimizing for comfort, which isn’t the same as laziness. It means they’ve found a rhythm that works and they want to protect it. Still others are optimizing for meaning. They need to feel like the work connects to something larger than the quarterly targets, and when that connection breaks, their engagement goes with it.

Here’s why this matters to you as a leader: you are also optimizing for something. And whatever that something is, it shapes the way you lead, the decisions you make, and the things you reward and punish without even realizing it. If you’re optimizing for efficiency, you will unconsciously create an environment that penalizes the person optimizing for craft. If you’re optimizing for recognition, you might inadvertently compete with the people on your team who need to be seen. If you’re optimizing for stability, you might resist the bold move that the person optimizing for meaning is desperate to make.

None of these drives are wrong. That’s the important thing. The tension doesn’t come from anyone being broken. It comes from the fact that these optimization targets are often in direct competition with each other, and almost no one names them out loud.

So what do you do with this?

First, name your own. Get honest about what you are actually optimizing for in this season. Not what you think you should be optimizing for. What you actually are. Your behavior will tell you the truth even if your aspirations won’t.

Second, get curious about what people around you are optimizing for. You don’t have to agree with their priorities. But you do have to understand them if you want to lead them well. The next time someone’s behavior frustrates you, before you label it as a problem, ask yourself: what might they be optimizing for that would make this behavior make perfect sense?

Third, have the conversation with your team. Make the invisible visible. When people can name what they’re each trying to protect or pursue, the disagreements don’t disappear, but they do get a lot less personal. You stop fighting about the decision and start talking about the competing values underneath it. That’s a much more productive conversation.

The goal isn’t to get everyone optimizing for the same thing. That’s neither possible nor desirable. A team full of people who only care about efficiency will produce fast, soulless work. A team full of people who only care about craft will never ship. You need the tension. But you need it to be conscious tension, not the underground kind that slowly corrodes trust and alignment.

So, what are you optimizing for? And do the people around you know?

Not on a foreign nation. Not on a political rival. On emus.

Twenty thousand of them… enormous, six-foot-tall birds… had descended on the wheat fields of Western Australia and were absolutely wrecking the place. Farmers were desperate. So the government did what governments do when faced with a hard problem: sent in the military.

Major G.P.W. Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery showed up with two Lewis guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition. Ten thousand. Against birds. This was, everyone agreed, a problem that could be solved with superior firepower.

Friends, it could not.

The guns jammed. The emus scattered into small, fast-moving groups the moment the shooting started — impossible to target, impossible to pin down. When soldiers chased them, the birds outran them. An ornithologist on the scene observed (and I love that there was an ornithologist on the scene) that the emus had “divided themselves into small groups, each with its own leader.”

The commanding major eventually threw in the towel with this remarkable quote:

“If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world.”

The campaign was abandoned within a month. The emus stayed. The wheat fields stayed destroyed. And Australia had to live with the historical record showing that it had officially lost a war to birds.

This is one of my favorite true stories. And I think about it constantly when I’m talking to creative leaders.

From Emu To… You

Here’s what the Australian military was doing: they saw a big, messy, overwhelming problem and assumed it could be solved with enough concentrated force. One strategy. One command. Overwhelming resources aimed at a single target. It’s a completely logical approach.

It just didn’t work, because the problem wasn’t that kind of problem.

The emus weren’t a target. They were a system. They were distributed, adaptive, capable of reorganizing faster than any centralized strategy could respond. The more force was applied, the more they scattered. The more they scattered, the more useless the force became. You can’t overwhelm a living system into submission. You have to learn to work with how it actually behaves.

And here’s the thing: creative work is often exactly like that.

You cannot force it. You can’t schedule a breakthrough. You cannot mandate originality or put enough pressure on a team to make genuine insight appear. I’ve watched leaders try, and I’ve even tried it myself (guilty!), and what you get is output, not ideas. Activity, not creativity. The appearance of progress without the thing you actually needed.

The harder you push, the more the real work scatters.

The Lesson To Consider

If the Great Emu War teaches creative leaders anything, it’s this:

Your job is to build conditions, not apply force.

The leaders who consistently get great creative work from their teams aren’t the ones who push hardest. They’re the ones who have figured out how to create the environment where creativity can actually happen. Where people feel safe enough to propose the half-formed idea, where there’s enough slack in the system to let something develop, where the question matters as much as the answer.

That’s not soft. That’s not easy. Honestly, building conditions is harder than applying pressure, because pressure at least feels like you’re doing something. Creating the right environment requires patience, trust, and a willingness to look like you’re not “driving” hard enough, even when you know exactly what you’re doing.

Major Meredith had ten thousand rounds of ammunition. What he needed was a completely different theory of the problem.

Meanwhile, a lot of us are walking around with ten thousand rounds.

What would change in your team or organization if you spent less energy pushing for output and more energy building the conditions for real creative work to happen?

Want to join a peer group of creative leaders for discussion each month? Check out Creative Leader Roundtable.

I have friends who continue to scold me for mowing my own lawn. Their argument goes something like “You could hire someone to do that for you. Your time is worth way more than the hundred or so dollars it would cost to pay someone to do it for you. You’re not properly leveraged! Time arbitrage! Argh!” I get it… I do. And, for a lot of people it makes sense.

But my decision to mow my own lawn is not financial. It’s spiritual.

Let me explain: you see, that mowing time is not “dead time.” And it’s not really about mowing at all. It’s about what happens while I’m mowing.

You see, the most valuable activity in my work is not my writing or my advising or my speaking on stages in front of hundreds or thousands of people. Those are the most valuable outputs of my work, but not the most valuable activity.

The most valuable activity is… thinking.

It’s within the space I carve out for thinking that every single valuable output I’ve ever created was formed. Each of my seven books. All of my podcast content. Every speech I’ve given to well over a million people around the world.

If I ever surrender my willingness to do that hard work, I will not only lose the output that feeds my family, but I will lose the very essence of what’s being called out of me. I will forfeit my soul. My voice.

That’s why I say that mowing is a spiritual exercise. Mowing provides me a predictable hour every week where I am (a) required to show up, (b) engaged in a low-thought activity that occupies my executive brain, and (c) allowed the space to be out in nature, walking, and simply alone with my thoughts.

I’m not just mowing, I’m actually doing the work that is core to my calling. And, I am being transformed in the process. It’s not too hyperbolic to say that there have been times when the decision to mow my own lawn has changed my life.

OK, so what does this have to do with anything other than my chores?

Let’s talk about AI.

In your world, you have through work and do work. There are some tasks that you simply need to get through, and utilizing AI to make you more efficient or to help you better organize or accelerate your output is a legitimate productivity lever.

However, there are some tasks that, if you don’t do them, you may still produce the output everyone measures you by, but you will miss out on the transformative experience of having done the work. You will forfeit the voice and soul of your work.

Over time, the net effect of just getting through this important, soul work is that you lose your ability to do it. You have all of the output with none of the transformation. You teleport to the destination, but miss out on the very journey that gives the trip its meaning.

The key for all of us right now is to understand what we actually do when we are working. What is the unique, transformative work that we must do even when tempted to replace it with a machine because it’s not about output it’s about the activity itself and the transformation it yields within us?

I believe that AI is the very first deconstructive technology. Narratives about meaning and purpose are being dismantled right before our eyes. For the first time, we are asking questions like “If a machine can mimic human imagination and intuition, what is a human being even for?”

Humans are – in the words of the Avett Brothers – a “breathing time machine.” It’s not just about getting through the work, it’s about the transformation we experience in the process.

In one of the most poignant scenes, Lincoln is gathered with cabinet members and political allies for a discussion about an upcoming vote on the 14th amendment, which would essentially end slavery in the United States. As the group argues about strategy, with many of them concerned about the political consequences of supporting the amendment and the difficulty of securing the votes necessary to pass it, Lincoln sits quietly at the head of the table turning red in the face. Suddenly, he slams his hand on the table commanding the attention of the entire room, and delivers a masterclass lesson in leadership.

One line in particular has always stuck with me: “See what is before you. See the here and now, that’s the hardest thing, the only thing that counts.”

Even as others continued to argue about the politics and optics and difficulty of accomplishing their goal, Lincoln understood that decades of political debate and bloodshed had led to that very moment. The time was now. The door of opportunity had cracked open for a brief period, but would soon shut.

His response to his team? “I am the President of the United States of America, clothed in immense power. You will procure me these votes.”

All moments are not created equal. Some moments are weightier than others. There are vector-changing opportunities that have the ability to change the entire trajectory of your organization or your own life. The hardest thing to do is to see the here and now. To see what’s in front of you. It’s far easier to follow a medium to long term strategy than it is to recognize the opportunity that’s right in front of you, especially when that opportunity doesn’t match your expectations.

The “safe” thing is to stick to the plan. The brave thing is to contend with reality.

Many people fail to recognize reality because they aren’t looking for it. They wear blinders to prevent them from experiencing the discomfort of disconfirming information. They only seek self-reinforcing data.

Others recognize reality but don’t respond with urgency. Instead, they defer action until a more convenient time. They stay busy following the plan even as the world around them changes. They succeed their way into failure.

Those brave leaders who are able to see reality and willing to respond change the world. (And, sometimes, they pay a price for doing so.)

How do you spot reality? Well, it’s not going to announce itself. For those leaders who have honed their intuition, it will often show up in a few more subtle ways:

What “tensions” are you feeling? At times, you may feel pulled in a few different directions with no clear answer. You know that you need to make a decision, but you don’t have a clear sense of the right thing to do. In these moments it’s always helpful to re-root yourself in a higher sense of meaning and purpose for your work. Paths often become clearer when examined from a bigger perspective.

What convictions are weighing upon you? We often know the right path to take even as we willingly walk the other direction. The pings of conscience ring loudly at first, but become less noticeable over time as we ignore them.

What confluent factors are lining up? There are a few moments in life and work where many forces flow into one another and create a perfect opportunity for action. This could be certain people coming into your life or resources becoming available, or even the emergence of a new technology that you are uniquely positioned to take advantage of.

The hardest thing to see is what’s in front of you. What’s here and now. Many people miss their greatest opportunity to contribute today because they are too busy following yesterday’s plans.

Be brave enough to contend with reality and do the work that you are uniquely capable of doing. Rise to your moment.

In this week’s episode of Daily Creative, I dove into a phenomenon I see all too often among talented, ambitious people: the subtle art of building “escape hatches” that keep us from committing fully to our creative goals.

Waiting until the last minute feels like a productivity quirk, but it actually shields us from ever discovering what our best looks like.

When we rush, we retain an out: “Hey, I only had two hours.” The antidote is intentional: break big projects into step goals and time-block your calendar for those tasks. When you measure progress at manageable milestones, you eliminate the drama of all-or-nothing deadlines and give yourself space to uncover your fullest potential.

Where in your work are you leaving things “until there’s pressure,” and what is one step goal you could set this week?

Doing too many things at once can feel like ambition, but often, it’s fear of failing at the one thing that matters most.

Spreading your energy across projects insulates you from risk, but it also robs you of the chance to find out what focused effort could accomplish. The solution? Pick your “big three”—the top priorities where impact would be most significant if you gave your all. Say no to distractions masquerading as opportunities and protect time for the work at your core.

Which three priorities, if tackled, would move everything else forward in your work this quarter?

It’s easy to shift your definition of success after a project is over: “Well, we didn’t do what we planned, but this outcome is good enough.”

Rationalizing results lets you avoid the sting of failure, but it also prevents learning and diminishes honesty in your team or yourself. Define clear metrics for success at the outset, be objective, and establish external accountability—so you know when it’s time to celebrate, or time to course correct.

Before you start your next project, what concrete metric will tell you that you’ve actually succeeded?

Backup plans, “just in case” scenarios, or “waiting for the right time” often look like prudence, but they’re usually fear in disguise.

We talk ourselves into delay by dressing it up as wisdom, but those moments rarely move us forward. Real progress starts with closing these safety exits—committing to your next move and trusting yourself to adapt if the unexpected happens. There’s a difference between being prepared and being perpetually uncommitted.

What’s the escape hatch you keep just in case your current venture doesn’t go perfectly—and what would closing it look like?

True creative confidence doesn’t come from endless backup plans.

It comes from knowing you can “adjust and adapt” as you go, and being willing to risk failure for the sake of real growth. Close an escape hatch—set a milestone, pick your big three, or define a concrete outcome—and see what happens when you give yourself no choice but to move forward and trust your abilities.

What’s one area this week where you can commit fully, allowing yourself neither an excuse nor an easy exit?

Remember, escape hatches might feel like they keep us safe, but more often, they just keep us where we are. This week, close a hatch and lean in. That’s what real leadership looks like.

On this week’s ​episode of Daily Creative​, I shared five questions that I think we all should be asking right now. These questions aren’t just for “leaders” with the job title; they’re for all of us wrestling with creative drift, technological change, and the weird, almost-numb tension in the air.

Here are five ideas from the episode:

1. You can succeed your way into failure. It’s dangerously easy to crush your goals, win awards, and impress everyone while slowly drifting away from what genuinely matters. Many leaders and teams find themselves ticking all the right boxes only to realize they’re solving the wrong problems—or working toward metrics rather than meaning. The challenge is to keep asking: What are you really optimizing for right now? Are you serving your mission, or merely impressing others? The consequences show up quietly: a thriving machine, heading in the wrong direction.

When was the last time you checked if your metrics actually align with your intended purpose?

2. Leadership is an echo chamber unless you intentionally break it. Every level of responsibility creates distance, and unless you make space for honesty, you’ll hear more of what people think you want to hear than what you need to know. Feedback, even when wrong, is valid because it surfaces someone’s perspective—and ignoring it breeds silent compliance, not real alignment. If you punish truth-telling, you’ll lose the feedback you most need. You have to invite—and reward—the mirrors in your life, and ensure others feel safe to disagree.

Who is telling you what you least want to hear, and have you really invited them to do so?

3. The fear of looking foolish kills more ideas than lack of talent ever could. Breakthroughs die quietly—not because the ideas are bad, but because we’re afraid to risk our reputation or invite criticism. The workplace says it wants innovation, but often recoils from what’s truly new. Courage isn’t lack of fear; it’s showing up when your ego’s on the line—and surrounding yourself with trusted people who listen, challenge, and encourage. Before you bring your “wild” idea into the open, find the safe group who can help you test it.

What big, slightly absurd idea have you held back, and who could you share it with this week?

4. If you build around your ego, excellence becomes a convenient disguise. Ego sneaks in behind good intentions, pushing you to defend your comfort and seek applause over real impact. The toughest test for any leader: Would you still pursue this work if no one saw it? If your motivation is external validation, you may have accidentally constructed a system built for your image—not your mission. The best leaders make echoes in others, empowering their team to do great work rather than centering everything on themselves.

If recognition vanished, would you still do what you’re doing now?

5. Stability is a launchpad, not a comfort zone. Your team needs just enough certainty to take smart risks, experiment, and stretch—not settle into routine or wait for protection. There’s a fine line between offering stability and smothering with safety; ‘stability’ means clear boundaries for bold efforts, while ‘safety’ too often means “don’t move.” Great teams are built where challenge and security are balanced—where people are held, but also nudged to venture out.

Are you keeping your team “small” in the name of safety, or giving them the foundation to brave real challenges?

As you reflect this week, let these questions be your buoys—gentle signals when you’re off course, not rigid rules or shame-inducers.

Leadership is less about knowing answers and more about making space for the right questions. To borrow from the poet Kahlil Gibran, “The lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul and then walks grinning in the funeral.”

Meanwhile, a control group of average chickens, who had no choice but to cooperate, produced far more eggs.

When we reward only the loudest or most competitive people, we are likely doing more harm than good. Real performance isn’t about finding superstars, it’s about building super teams.

That’s what this week’s Daily Creative podcast conversation with behavioral scientist Jon Levy and his new book Team Intelligence is all about: how brilliant leaders unlock collective genius instead of chasing individual glory. We dove into how high-performing teams actually work, the surprising role of emotional intelligence, and why being the “glue” might get you further than being the “star.” If you’ve ever wondered why your all-star cast just isn’t clicking, or how to foster trust in a world obsessed with individual achievement, this episode offers a new lens.

Here are five truths we explored, plus a question to challenge your own instincts:

1. Rewarding only the flashiest players breeds competition, not collaboration.

The tale of William Muir’s “super chickens” teaches us that when you pit top performers against each other, you get plenty of fighting but not much productivity. It’s a neat metaphor for what happens in organizations focused on individual achievement: people start jockeying for attention and keeping each other down, rather than contributing to a shared goal. The data doesn’t lie. The teams that actually produce more “eggs” are usually those full of regular folks who learn to cooperate, communicate, and support each other.

Who in your team might be flying under the radar, and how can you create space for their contribution?

2. Leadership shouldn’t be fixed, it should flow.

Jon Levy’s research upends the classic “hero leader” story. True team intelligence emerges when leadership is fluid, shifting to whoever holds the relevant expertise at any given moment. Forget about the myth of leaders who have all the answers; the most effective teams let leadership rotate as needed, based on who’s best-equipped for each challenge, not rank or title. It’s about letting people step up (and back) organically, trusting in the knowledge and strengths around the table.

When was the last time you let someone else direct the conversation or step into leadership, and what happened?

3. Emotional intelligence multiplies team effectiveness far beyond raw talent.

Surprisingly, neither the highest IQ nor the tightest social bonds predict whether a team will thrive. Research shows that emotional intelligence. Understanding when to push or pass, who needs encouragement, and how everyone fits together is the key. Often, teams with more women outperformed simply because women tend to index higher for emotional intelligence, not because of gender itself. The glue here is the ability to be aware, to sense the team’s mood, and act accordingly.

How can you make your team a safer place for ideas, vulnerability, and risk?

4. Incentives matter, but misaligned rewards undermine collaboration.

The way organizations structure rewards can quietly sabotage teamwork. If only the top 10% get bonuses, guess what? You’re incentivizing people to subtly (or not-so-subtly) keep others down. Even in basketball, the most effective coaches aren’t those who churn out higher scorers—they’re the ones who increase passing and selflessness on the court. Extraordinary things happen when you set up rewards that encourage everyone to win together, rather than alone.

Are your incentives aligned with what you actually want?

5. Every team needs ‘glue players’—the invisible force that amplifies everyone’s output.

Perhaps the most overlooked ingredient: the “glue” players. These aren’t your top scorers; they’re the ones with high emotional intelligence, forward-thinking, and self-sacrifice, quietly multiplying the effectiveness of the whole team. Like Shane Battier in the NBA, their presence boosts everyone’s performance, even if their personal stats don’t shine. The lesson? Sometimes, being the person who sets others up for success is the most valuable role of all.

How can you be the glue player this week?

Creativity doesn’t thrive in isolation. It grows in the space between us.

This week, try focusing less on outshining and more on amplifying. Where could you step back, offer a quiet nudge, or help others feel safe sharing a half-formed idea? Your impact might just extend far beyond your own output.

That’s leadership, regardless of your role.

On this week’s episode of ​Daily Creative​, I sat down with Dr. James Hewitt, human performance scientist and author of Regenerative Performance, and Jim Murphy, coach and author of the surprise bestseller Inner Excellence. Together, we explored why relentless optimization leaves us empty, and how the real path to creative excellence starts, paradoxically, by doing less—more thoughtfully. We went deep into topics like rhythm versus balance, the dangers of hyper-optimization, and how psychological renewal and heart training lead to lasting impact, not just fleeting metrics.

1. High performance isn’t built—it’s grown. No matter how much you quantify, hack, or optimize your habits, the deepest forms of excellence are cultivated over time, like a garden, not assembled like a machine. Both James and Jim reminded us that sustainable growth doesn’t result from push-push-pushing harder, but from observing your own unique natural rhythms. When you feel burned out or stuck, it’s rarely a sign to optimize more—it’s a signal to slow down and reconnect with what you love doing.

Where might you need to slow down in order to ultimately go faster?

2. Rhythm beats balance every time. James proposes ditching the myth of perfect balance, and instead embracing “rhythmic alternation”: deliberate cycles of intense effort, followed by intentional recovery. Most of us get stuck in the churn of middle gear—emails, meetings, distractions—without truly focused work or actual rest. The key is to proactively schedule breaks that restore you: think natural light, quick walks, brief chats, a few minutes just staring out the window.

When was the last time you deliberately planned a recovery period as part of your workday?

3. Optimization obsession backfires. The more we chase perfect data, sleep scores, or productivity hacks (hello, orthosomnia), the less life satisfaction we report. Hyper-optimization—trying to improve every metric at once—can leave us more anxious, disconnected, and weary than before. Performance dashboards don’t drive fulfillment; renewal does. So, it’s time to ask whether your next “hack” is moving you closer to the results that actually matter.

What optimization ritual could you actually pause, replace, or drop this week?

4. The greatest competitive edge is training your heart, not just your mind. Jim Murphy spent years in solitude discovering: the real game is about mastering your ego, self-centeredness, and the noisy “monkey mind.” True inner excellence means clarifying your values and training your heart to love what’s most empowering—even when it’s uncomfortable. It’s about becoming interruptible and compassionate, rather than hurried.

How might you reduce the “noise” – cognitive and emotional – you experience each day?

5. Vulnerability and suffering are prerequisites for meaningful creative work. Let’s be honest—being creative requires risk. Vulnerability isn’t optional; it’s the path. Both research and experience show that we reach our potential only by stepping into discomfort, risking failure, and accepting the possibility of rejection. As Jim puts it, the law of growth means clinging to comfort will shrink your life, but giving it up can expand it.

When have you most recently risked looking foolish for the sake of your work, and what did you learn?

It’s easy to fall for the myth that more metrics and optimization will deliver better results. But as James shared, “Performance isn’t about doing more. It’s about learning when to let go.”

And as Jim reminds us, “You can’t be in a hurry and be compassionate.”

On Daily Creative, I sat down with Wharton School economist Judd Kessler to unmask the secret mechanics of luck—and how you can engineer more of it in your creative life. Building from the bizarre genius of Gary Dahl’s Pet Rock phenomenon to the intricate design of modern “hidden markets,” we dove deep into Judd’s new book, Lucky by Design, exploring how opportunity is governed by invisible rules that can be decoded and navigated if you know what to look for. Whether you’re a leader, artist, or innovator, this conversation reveals how prep, perception, and positioning might just turn you into one of those “lucky” people everyone talks about.

Luck favors the well-prepared, not the idle dreamer.

Despite what we love to imagine, luck rarely rewards those sitting on the sidelines. Gary Dahl, often pegged as impossibly lucky for his Pet Rock empire, actually spent years observing consumers, tracking trends, and sharpening his skills—so when the right idea struck, he was ready to seize it with both hands. In any creative career, it’s easy to wait for a “big break,” but it’s the quiet work behind the scenes that attracts opportunity.

When was the last time you honestly prepared for a moment that others chalked up to coincidence?

Hidden markets run on invisible but learnable rules.

Judd Kessler introduced us to the concept of “hidden markets”—systems that allocate opportunities not simply by price, but by rules like speed, lotteries, or reputation. These rules might not be advertised, but they shape who gets tickets to the hot concert, the competitive job, or that coveted client. The truly “lucky” are those who study these systems, figure out how they work, and adjust their strategy to fit.

Which markets in your life seem random, and what unspoken rules might actually be guiding them?

Efficiency, equity, and ease are the currencies of opportunity.

The “three E’s”—efficiency (creating value), equity (being fair and reliable), and ease (removing friction)—are what make you the obvious choice when opportunity knocks. In practice: deliver consistently, treat people like allies not obstacles, and proactively smooth the way for collaboration. It’s not about being a pushover—it’s about being the professional others want to work with time after time.

How could you make yourself the easiest collaborator in your field without sacrificing your standards?

Speed (and the right signal) beats the aura of “untouchability.”

In a world where everyone claims to be the best, a fast, genuine response can set you apart more than a polished halo. As I shared on the podcast, event planners pick the reliable, responsive choice over the high-maintenance diva. These days, speed signals commitment and reduces risk—a crucial factor when trust is on the line.
Are you easy to say “yes” to, or are you unintentionally raising hurdles for your partners and clients?

Technology changes the playing field—but not the need for real, human signals.

As AI makes polished cover letters and speedy responses indistinguishable from automated bots, traditional signals of motivation and fit lose power. The edge now comes from relationships, trusted recommendations, and visible investment in the work itself. That means you’ll need to let your reputation, network, and proven track record do some of the signaling AI can’t fake.

What could you do this week to strengthen your real-world connections, not just your digital presence?

If you take nothing else from this conversation, remember: luck doesn’t strike at random—it knocks on doors that are already open. I’ll leave you with this: “Luck isn’t found, it’s built. It’s engineered through discipline, relationships, and awareness.” So as you move through your week, ask yourself—what am I building that luck could recognize, and am I showing up prepared when it does? The quiet, disciplined preparation you do behind the scenes just might build the luck everyone else will call mysterious.

Keep your eyes open—opportunity loves an attentive audience.

On the latest episode of Daily Creative, I sat down with Pulitzer Prize winner Charles Duhigg, author of Supercommunicators, to dig into both the science—and the practical reality—of why communication so often fails, and what actually creates genuine connection. Together, we unpacked the hidden costs of miscommunication (including a chilling hospital story), the three conversation types we get tangled up in, and game-changing tactics to move from talking at people to understanding and aligning with them. Whether you’re managing teams, trying to understand a stubborn family member, or just trying not to set off another email misunderstanding at work, this conversation offers tools you’re probably not using…but should be.

Here are five truths from the episode that are worth pinning up in your mental workspace:

1. Communication isn’t what you say; it’s what the other person actually hears.
We love to assume that, because something left our keyboard or our mouth, it’s been received as intended. The unfortunate reality? Meaning only happens when what you meant and what they heard overlap. This explains why checklists in medicine or aviation rely on “closed-loop” confirmation—not because people aren’t smart, but because assumptions are silent saboteurs. That one extra sentence, the simple double-check, can avoid a world of pain—not just in hospitals, but in any human interaction.

Where are you assuming agreement in your daily conversations instead of confirming understanding?

2. There are three types of conversations—and mismatched types guarantee misunderstanding.
Every discussion you enter is actually several conversations layered on top of one another: practical (solving problems); emotional (expressing or processing feelings); and social (negotiating roles or status). If you’re stuck debating next year’s vacation, pause: are you fixing logistics, expressing anxiety, or negotiating family politics? If you talk facts when someone else is swimming in feelings, neither of you is heard. Supercommunicators spot this early, then match (or guide) the conversation type.

Next time there’s tension, can you spot which conversation type you’re having versus the one they’re having?

3. Understanding should precede persuading—or disagreeing.
We often leap into “convince and conquer” mode, but as Charles explained, echoing someone’s stance before you offer your own actually makes them more receptive. It’s not about surrendering your view—it’s about social reciprocity and reducing defensiveness, creating a climate where disagreement doesn’t destroy connection. Whether you’re mediating a workplace disagreement or talking to your opinionated uncle, loop for understanding first and only then pivot to your point of view.

When was the last time you made sure someone felt truly heard before sharing your own opinion?

4. Deep questions unlock deeper relationships.
Superficial questions keep conversations small. But when you ask someone, “What made you decide to do what you do?” (rather than “Where do you work?”), you invite authenticity. The beauty: deep questions aren’t just for therapy sessions; they reveal stories and motivations, and naturally invite mutual sharing. Not everyone will dig deep every time, but just by asking, you set the tone for a more meaningful connection.

What’s one deep question you could ask a colleague or friend this week?

5. Non-linguistic and digital cues require intentional attention.
We pick up on defensive postures, tone shifts, and even emotional content in a text or email, whether consciously or not. But digital spaces are uniquely prone to misfires (sarcasm is practically radioactive in an email), and genuine warmth travels further than we think—just by being a little more explicit and especially polite. Reviewing what you wrote and considering how it will land can save hours of cleanup and rebuild trust along the way.

What’s a small tweak you could make in your next written message to ensure clarity and care?

No matter your role, every breakthrough tends to be on the far side of a better conversation.

As Charles Duhigg reminds us: the goal isn’t to “win”—it’s to build enough understanding that disagreement can feel productive, not personal.

This week, try asking one deep question. And pick up the phone to reconnect with someone on the fringes of your network—you might be one overlooked conversation away from realignment.

In the latest episode of Daily Creative, I sat down with innovation expert Scott Anthony to explore the patterns, perils, and playfulness of navigating epic disruptions—those seismic shifts that upend industries and rewrite the rules of success. Drawing on stories from the past and insights from Scott’s new book, Epic Disruptions, we explored how to develop a sharper lens for distinguishing fleeting fads from genuine, market-shaking transformations and equipping ourselves to ride the next big wave rather than get wiped out by it.

Here are a few principles from our conversation:

1. Disruption rewards those who balance imagination with discipline, not just the first-movers or status-quo keepers.​
Chasing every shiny object or clinging to what’s always worked are equally risky moves in times of rapid change. The sweet spot? Leadership teams who boldly experiment, adapt quickly, and stay disciplined about what actually delivers value. Breakthrough business models rarely look impressive or important at first, but those who blend creative risk with smart process put themselves in position to win as the landscape shifts.
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​Question: Where in your current projects are you too cautious—or too reckless—when you should be running smart experiments?

2. Listening only to your best customers can steer you straight into irrelevance.​
​The Innovator’s Dilemma, as uncovered by Clay Christensen, shows us that great firms often fail not because they’re lazy, but precisely because they are doing everything “right”—serving their most valuable customers. But these customers rarely see the coming shift, and clinging to their feedback can blind you to fringe innovations that will eat your lunch. The rise (and fall) of BlackBerry is a powerful example here.
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​Question: Who are you listening to right now that might actually be encouraging you to preserve what’s about to become obsolete?

3. Disruption always casts a shadow, sometimes leaving chaos before progress arrives.​
Major change doesn’t shower only winners with confetti; there are real losers, messy transitions, and fierce turf wars over what’s safe or fair. In our conversation, we compared the rise of the automobile to today’s AI battles—both created confusion, collateral damage, and the need for new norms before finding their place. Anticipating and actively working through this “disruption shadow” is essential for responsible leadership.
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​Question: What shadow is falling over your team or industry right now, and are you brave enough to wrestle with its uncomfortable realities?

4. The future is at the edges, not in the mainstream—look to outliers and the overlooked.​
Game-changing innovations usually start out serving overlooked or underserved groups—the hearing aid market before transistors went mainstream, or AI being hacked together by everyday users for off-label solutions. The lesson: the “weirdos,” the ignored, the market’s marginalized are often the earliest signals of what’s next. Leaders who proactively listen and learn from the edges gain a preview of tomorrow’s center.
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​Question: Which fringe behaviors, hacks, or communities are you genuinely curious about (but perhaps haven’t engaged with) in your ecosystem?

5. Innovation is always collective, never a solo act, no matter how seductive the lone genius myth may be.​
Every disruptive story has heroes—plural—not just a single visionary. While history books like their protagonists, Scott urges that breakthroughs happen when networks of talent share, tinker, hand off, and build together (often across years or even decades). If you want more innovation within your team, make it less about individual genius and more about fostering the messy collective magic.
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​Question: What’s one habit (personal or organizational) you could tweak to encourage more “productive messing around” and cross-pollination of wild ideas?

No one expects you to decode disruption alone.

As William Gibson reminds us, “The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.”

Spend time this week seeking out those future pockets: play with a new tool, talk to someone younger or farther from the center, and create a little space not just for work, but for collective play. You just might find the next epic disruption before everyone else does.

In the latest episode of Daily Creative, I sat down with Andrew Robertson, chairman of BBDO and author of The Creative Shift, to dig into why companies settle for less creativity than they’re capable of. Andrew, bringing insight from decades at the intersection of creativity and operational excellence, shares how leaders can practically make space for genuine innovation—even inside the most efficient, process-driven organizations.

Here are five key takeaways—each worth chewing on:

1. Rediscover the edges—avoid the creative center.​
When everything around you starts to feel numbingly similar, you’re probably just circling in the center of your domain. True creative energy often happens at the edges, where different fields collide and new perspectives break through the monotony. Read outside your field, chat with someone from a completely different profession, or dip your toe into new domains. It’s these collisions that shake you back to attention and recharge your creative lens.
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​Where are you still playing it safe, and what’s one “edge” you could intentionally explore this week?

2. Attentional minimalism beats digital overload.​
Our brains are burning out on multitasking, constant notifications, and input overload. Attentional minimalism may be your solution—a deliberate reduction of stimulus, through practices like device-free walks, journaling, or input boundaries. The aim is not just less noise, but more capacity to spot the extraordinary amidst the ordinary. The simplest changes (like actually paying attention during a walk) can create the kind of mental whitespace where new ideas land.
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​Where can you deliberately cut back on noise and practice noticing rather than just consuming?

3. Creative energy comes from making, not consuming.​
It’s easy to fall into the trap of endless passive consumption—but progress, motivation, and excitement are born from “productive passion”—making things that matter to you. Teresa Amabile has revealed the value of intrinsic motivation and the power of creative output over input. Every time you choose to make instead of just consume, you feed your own creative fire, turning the routine into something meaningful.
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​What’s one thing you could make this week (and who might it be for?) instead of just another scroll or binge?

4. Operational excellence and creativity aren’t opposites—they’re in tension.​
Andrew acknowledges the dynamic (sometimes uncomfortable) tension between efficiency and creativity. While efficient processes are powerful, they can stifle creative thinking unless leaders make explicit space for it. The magic isn’t in ditching structure, but in operationalizing creativity with the same seriousness as any other business goal—like Delta Airlines did by intentionally pursuing surprising insights about their customer journey.
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​Do you allow genuinely new ideas to surface in your workflow, or does your process just produce more of the same?

5. Great ideas don’t come from certainty—they come from managed risk.​
We all crave certainty, but chasing it leads to average outcomes. Andrew recounts a banker’s wisdom: quantify the downside risk, then ask if you can live with it. If yes, go for the bold idea. If not, adapt until you can. Waiting for guarantees crushes innovation; instead, manage the risk intelligently and stay open to ideas that make you (and others) a little uncomfortable.
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​What’s one idea you’ve been sitting on because you want a guarantee—could you get comfortable with its risks instead?

As Andrew puts it: “The definition of a great insight is something that is blindingly obvious the minute you see it, but nobody had seen it before.” This week, let yourself wander to the edges, prune away the extra noise, and dare to create something without waiting for a permission slip. It’s these little shifts that add up to a week—and a career—where you feel more alive, more focused, and a little less vaguely familiar.

This week on the Daily Creative podcast, I discussed with Chris Ducker what it really means to be a “Long Haul Leader.”

Here are a few key learnings:

1. “Hustle can be a season, but it shouldn’t be a lifestyle.”​
There’s a dangerous myth that relentless hustle is the only route to accomplishment. Periods of intense effort are necessary, but living life in sprint mode is unsustainable. Burnout, lost passion, and diminished creativity follow when adrenaline becomes your default setting. Instead, leaders should embrace the ebb and flow—diving into sprints when needed, but then intentionally recovering, recalibrating, and building habits that allow stamina for the long game.
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​Where are you letting perpetual hustle masquerade as progress, instead of carving out intentional rest?

2. “Burnout is not a badge of honor.”​
Chris’s personal account of pandemic-era burnout dismantles the narrative that being perpetually drained is just “what work feels like.” Napping through daylight, feeling perpetually foggy, and an unshakeable emptiness aren’t signs of commitment—they’re alarm bells. Admitting vulnerability isn’t weakness—it’s wisdom. Leaders owe it to themselves and those they serve to identify early warning signs and take real action, before crisis forces change.
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​When was the last time you honestly assessed your own warning signals—before waiting for a breaking point?

3. “Build your own Life Operating System (Life OS).”​
Operating systems aren’t just for computers. Chris introduces the idea of a personal “Life OS” made up of micro-habits—health routines, real relationships, meaningful learning, and space for hobbies—that build resilience over time. Small shifts in each area compound, sustaining creativity and leadership far beyond quick fixes. The magic lies not in grand life overhauls, but in tiny, consistent moves that keep you working and living at your best.
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​What’s one micro-move you could make this week to strengthen your Life OS?

4. “Know your who, not just your what.”​
Sustainable work isn’t about churning out more output; it’s about knowing who you’re serving. For Chris, focusing on the people he impacts—clients, mentees, and his inner circle—provides meaning and direction that refuels his leadership. Rather than getting lost in endless tasks, leaders benefit from regularly re-centering on the “who”—the actual humans whose lives are changed by their work.
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​Who are the people you’re uniquely positioned to serve, and how are you intentionally investing in them?

5. “Small signals matter more than big crises.”​
Breakdowns—medical scares, emotional collapse—are clarifying, but waiting for a crisis is optional. Todd emphasizes that it’s often the quiet cues—fatigue, disengagement, or subtle discontent—that should prompt us to adjust. Catching these early means the difference between a manageable reset and a forced overhaul. Pay attention to what your body, mind, and work are telling you—don’t wait for everything to fall apart to make a change.
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​What subtle sign have you been ignoring, and what’s one action you could take in response this week?

Take this to heart: “You are not a machine.”

This week, look for ways to intentionally restore rather than just endure, remembering that long-haul leaders aren’t those who burn the brightest for a moment, but those who keep showing up—wise, resilient, and ready to do work that truly matters.

You know the kind I mean—the big splash, the sudden surge of attention, the cultural spotlight shining brightly. They had just experienced a breakthrough that put them on the map, and everyone wanted to be near them.

And yet, as I listened and watched, I couldn’t shake the sense that this success was overwhelming them. Their calendar was packed. Their mind was scattered. Their energy felt frantic, like someone trying to catch water in their hands while more kept pouring in. The attention was exciting, but beneath the surface I could see a lack of practices, rhythms, and grounding that would be necessary to sustain this newfound success.

I’ve seen this pattern before. Someone rides the wave of a cultural moment, gets swept up in the applause, but when the attention fades—as it always does—they don’t have the stability to continue. They were a “moment,” not a mountain.

Later, I met someone else. They weren’t flashy. They weren’t trending on social media or headlining events. In fact, you might not even know their name. But for twenty-five years, they’ve been doing steady, focused, meaningful work. Day after day. Year after year. Their impact isn’t measured in trending hashtags but in the lives they’ve touched, the work they’ve built, and the reputation they’ve cultivated over decades.

This person wasn’t a moment. They were a mountain.

The Allure of the Moment

We live in a culture obsessed with moments. We chase them, celebrate them, and sometimes even worship them. Viral fame, sudden recognition, a big stage, the right mention from the right person—it feels like lightning in a bottle. And for a time, it is.

But the problem with moments is that they are, by definition, temporary. They spike, and then they fade. And if our identity, work, or sense of meaning is tied only to the moment, then when it’s gone, so are we.

Moments aren’t inherently bad. They can be important catalysts. They can launch movements, create opportunities, or shine a light on something valuable. But a moment is not a strategy. A moment cannot sustain a life’s work.

Lessons From the Music Business

When I was a singer-songwriter, I saw this truth play out constantly. Someone would land a big hit—one song that captured the moment, caught the radio wave, and launched them into sudden visibility. For a brief period, it was intoxicating. They were everywhere.

But often, instead of getting back into the writing room, sharpening their skills, and continuing to do the unglamorous work of creating, they tried to coast on that one success. They toured the hit. They lived off the applause. They chased the same formula again and again, rather than deepening their craft. And inevitably, the wind shifted. Their moment faded.

Meanwhile, other artists—sometimes with fewer hits or less mainstream recognition—were quietly building. They kept writing. They kept creating. They played the small clubs. They experimented, explored, and evolved. Over time, they developed not just a catalog but a loyal following. Their careers didn’t burn as brightly in a single instant, but they endured. They became mountains.

This is why I often say: cover bands don’t change the world. A cover band might get a big reaction in the moment. They might even fill a venue for a night. But they’re not building something that lasts. Original voices—those who commit to the ongoing work of creating—are the ones who make a dent in the universe.

The Endurance of the Mountain

Mountains, on the other hand, are not built overnight. They rise slowly, over time, through consistent, unseen forces. A mountain isn’t concerned with attention or applause. Its strength comes from its foundation.

The “mountains” I’ve known—the people whose work endures—are rarely the loudest or flashiest. They are the ones who keep showing up, doing the work, and making progress even when no one is watching. They prioritize rhythms over rush, practices over pressure, depth over display.

And here’s something important: mountains do have moments. A great book release. A breakthrough project. A song that unexpectedly connects. But those moments don’t define them. They’re byproducts, not the foundation. The mountain remains long after the moment has passed.

Their success might not always make headlines, but it compounds over time. They build trust. They create things that last. And while others come and go with the tides of culture, they remain, steady and strong.

How to Become a Mountain

So how do you ensure your life and work are more like a mountain than a fleeting moment?

1. Build practices, not just projects. Projects end. Practices endure. Ask yourself: What daily, weekly, or yearly rhythms anchor my work? What habits strengthen me even when no one sees?
2. Value depth over visibility. The number of people who notice you isn’t as important as the depth of the impact you have. Moments thrive on visibility, but mountains are built on substance.
3. Think in decades, not days. A moment feels urgent. A mountain requires patience. Ask yourself: What will I be proud to have built twenty years from now? Let that vision guide today’s actions.
4. Stay grounded in purpose. If you chase applause, you’ll always be enslaved to it. If you work from purpose, you’ll remain steady regardless of the noise around you.

The Choice Before Us

Every day, we have a choice. We can orient our work around moments—chasing the thrill of attention, grasping for quick wins—or we can build like mountains, steady and unshakable.

The truth is, we all need moments now and then. They energize us, draw new opportunities, and give us confidence. But the real measure of a life well lived is whether those moments rest on the foundation of something deeper, something enduring.

When the spotlight moves on, what will remain of your work? Will it crumble, or will it still stand?

Because in the end, the world doesn’t need more moments.

The world needs more mountains.

In the latest episode of Daily Creative, I interviewed Chris Guillebeau to explore the slippery, often maddening feeling that there’s never enough time for creative work—the “time anxiety” that lives everywhere from our daily to-do lists to our deepest existential worries.

If you’re tired of squeezing more out of less while feeling perpetually behind, below are some key insights to help you re-align with your priorities.

1. More Efficiency Won’t Rescue You from Time Anxiety

Modern life glorifies efficiency—new apps, better systems, and tighter routines. I used to believe that if I just got better at organizing my calendar, the feeling of falling behind would disappear. But it turns out you can optimize yourself into greater stress, churning more and more without ever feeling ahead or accomplished.

Pure efficiency can be a trap that keeps you working on the wrong things, robbing you of energy for what matters most.

What’s one system or habit you rely on that might actually be keeping you stuck in “busy” mode instead of moving you forward?

2. The Real Problem Is Misalignment, Not Lack of Productivity

The real breakthrough isn’t finding more hours in a day, it’s making sure your hours are spent on what matters. “Time alignment” means regularly checking whether your days reflect your actual values, not just your obligations or expectations. This takes clearer boundaries and tough choices—like saying no to shiny opportunities or “phantom” deadlines that aren’t even your own.

When your schedule mirrors your deepest priorities, accomplishment feels more meaningful and anxiety starts to recede.

If someone looked at your week, would they see your real values reflected in how you spend your time?

3. Time Anxiety Sneaks into Every Corner: Past, Present, & Future

Unlike FOMO, which is about right now, time anxiety haunts our memories of the past, our decisions in the present, and the possibilities for our future. It can show up as regret over missed chances, the endless stress of choosing what’s “next,” or existential discomfort with life’s finality.

The more honest you are about these layers, the more effectively you can change the pattern instead of just reacting to it.

Which part do you wrestle with most: ruminating on the past, stressing over the present, or worrying about the future?

4. Urgency is Not Importance: Beware the False Busyness Trap

We live in a world (and work in industries) where everything is pitched as urgent and immediate. But creative work especially asks us to make space for the important—not just the loudest or most time-sensitive. Most things that truly matter rarely announce themselves as urgent, and no one else will protect your creative time for you.

Building constraints, smaller to-do lists, and moments of pause are subtle ways to start correcting the balance.

What’s one “non-urgent” thing you keep putting off that deserves your best energy this week?

5. Attention, Not Time, Is Your Scarcest Resource

We obsess over time, but what really determines our impact is where we direct our attention. Your best work—creative, meaningful, life-giving—needs focus, not just clock time. Focusing your attention requires tuning into tensions, confronting unresolved stresses, and being honest about when you’re avoiding the hard stuff.

Progress lives in those small, intentional shifts that build momentum over weeks and months.

Where is your attention going by default today—and what small shift would reclaim it for something that truly matters?

Ultimately, the fastest way to unravel time anxiety isn’t to move faster—it’s to get braver about choosing what matters, day by day. This week, try asking Chris’s deceptively simple question at the end of each day: “Did today matter?” If not, don’t guilt yourself—use it as a guide for tomorrow.

When your calendar starts reflecting your values, not just your obligations, those small aligned choices compound into a life and a body of work that you’re proud of. Give yourself permission to slow down and align—a little more, each day—starting now.

In this week’s episode of Daily Creative, I was joined by L. David Marquet, author and former nuclear submarine commander, to dissect the overlooked superpower of “distancing.”

Marquet calls the dynamic of being stuck in your own head the “immersed self”, and it’s one of the reasons that many leaders and creative pros feel trapped in a cycle of boredom and unproductive effort.

Here are a few of my takeaways from our conversation:

1. “Your best work starts when you dare to step away from your own legacy.”

Ever notice how yesterday’s brilliant decisions can box you in today? Marquet recounts working with leaders who struggle to question their own processes simply because they were the architect. The hard truth: our accumulated decisions become blinders. To break the cycle, ask what you’d do if you just started today, or if you were stepping into your own role fresh—no baggage, no ego. This clears the field for real innovation.
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​How might your decisions change if you acted as if today’s status quo wasn’t yours to defend?

2. “Future-you is wiser than now-you—let them make the call.”

The “regret minimization framework” made famous by Jeff Bezos (and echoed by Marquet) is more than clever hindsight; it’s actionable foresight. By imagining yourself decades down the line, you bypass the anxieties and compulsions of the present. Future-you doesn’t sweat the petty stuff—they only care about decisions that truly matter. Try journaling or walking through a tough decision as the 80-year-old version of yourself.
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​If you called your older, wiser self for advice right now, what would they urge you to do next?

3. “Distance isn’t just spatial—it’s psychological, and you can create it anytime.”

Getting stuck in a problem is usually a perspective issue. Marquet shows that asking subordinates to literally sit in his seat—and solve problems from his angle—transformed their responses, not because of added information, but because of changed perspective. You can engineer this shift yourself: move your body, journal as a “third party,” or physically leave your workspace for a new vantage.
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​What current challenge would look entirely different if you could view it from across the room, or even from another continent?

4. “Being immersed is normal; noticing it is the secret.”

We’re wired to view everything from our own point of view, especially under stress or criticism. David points out that public mistakes, unexpected changes, even hallway gossip, can all pull us deeper into a “me-centered” loop—making feedback feel like an existential threat. Recognizing these immersion triggers is the first step to regaining objectivity.
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When was the last time stress made your perspective narrow? How might you have responded if you’d recognized the warning sign?

5. “Creative breakthroughs come after you step back, not after you push harder.”

The difference between reacting and choosing is often a matter of distance. Distancing—by time, perspective, or even pretending to advise a friend—gives you agency over your decisions. Even small shifts, like journaling as your future self or seeking feedback from outside your own head, can reframe your options and help you break out of the urgency trap.
​
​What in your work or life feels too close to be seen clearly, and what’s one way you could pause and zoom out for a better view?

Remember, the moments that define your legacy won’t be delivered to your inbox with a neon highlight—they’ll show up disguised as distractions or easy choices.

As David put it: “Be your future self. Don’t consult your future self.”

This week, choose one tough decision and, just for a moment, act from the perspective of someone smarter and braver—whether it’s future-you or simply someone with nothing to lose. You may be surprised what emerges when you step outside your own story.

“Cover bands don’t change the world.”

It always gets a knowing laugh, sometimes a nod, and occasionally a visible jolt—like I’ve just poked someone squarely in their ambition.

But let’s unpack it.

Cover bands have their place. They entertain. They evoke nostalgia. They help us relive a feeling, a time, or a sound. But no one remembers a cover band as the defining moment of a movement. No one says, “That Journey tribute band changed the trajectory of my life.”

Why? Because they’re reinterpreting, not inventing. They’re echoing something that once broke new ground, not digging fresh soil of their own.

And this is where the line hits home for creatives.

We are surrounded—suffocated, even—by derivative work. Scroll any social feed and you’ll see the same aesthetic, the same tropes, the same recycled bits dressed up as novelty. Everyone’s remixing, but few are creating from scratch. Fewer still are risking enough to be truly original.

Here’s the problem with that: The world doesn’t need more noise. It needs new signal.

Original work—the stuff that feels risky, raw, and even a little “off” at first—is what creates inflection points. It’s what shapes culture, moves people, and yes, changes the world. And yet so many creative professionals—brilliant, capable people—are stuck playing covers. Not because they don’t want to be original, but because they’ve been trained to believe that safe is smart, and familiar is effective.

It’s not.

Originality is the currency of impact. It’s the fingerprint you leave behind. It’s what makes someone stop and say, “Wait… who made this?”

Derivative work might get applause. But original work? That has a shot at starting a revolution.

Why We Drift Toward Safe Work

So why do we default to the cover band mindset?

Because originality costs. It costs attention, time, and energy. More than anything, it costs courage.

Doing something original means stepping outside the lines, outside the algorithm, and outside the comfort zone of what people are “used to.” It means risking misunderstanding, rejection, and failure. And if you’re leading a team—or even just trying to get your work approved—the pull toward the proven can feel irresistible.

But every breakthrough we admire—every band, brand, film, product, or movement that ever shook things up—started with someone saying, “I know this doesn’t look like what’s out there… but I think it matters.”

Those are the people we remember. And those are the voices that shape the future.

Original Doesn’t Mean Perfect. It Means Honest.

Here’s what’s important to understand: being original doesn’t mean being flawless. It means being honest. It means tapping into your unique way of seeing the world and expressing it without apology.

There’s a gritty, unfinished quality to truly creative work. It doesn’t always polish well in the beginning. But over time, that rawness becomes its power. People aren’t changed by what’s perfect. They’re changed by what’s real.

If your work doesn’t cost you something—emotionally, intellectually, or professionally—it’s probably just a cover.

How to Stop Playing Covers and Start Making Change

So what does it mean, practically, to stop playing covers in your work?

• Notice when you’re leaning on mimicry. Are you making something because it’s true to your vision, or because it “worked for someone else”?
• Chase discomfort. If a creative idea feels scary to share, it probably means you’re onto something real. Learn to walk toward that tension, not away from it.
• Define your voice. What do you believe? What do you see? What patterns do you notice that others ignore? Your perspective is your greatest asset—use it.
• Protect time for original thinking. It’s easy to become a content machine, but output isn’t the same as impact. Give yourself time to explore, wander, and experiment.
• Don’t let approval be your compass. Feedback matters, but it can’t drive the car. Great work often gets misunderstood before it gets admired.

Being creative isn’t just a job description—it’s a way of life. And the world doesn’t need more mimicry. It needs you, at full tilt.

I have. And here’s the kicker: they weren’t sabotaged by their weaknesses.
They were sabotaged by their strengths.

​This week on Daily Creative, I spoke with executive coach and author Marty Dubin, whose new book Blindspotting explores how the very qualities that make us successful—decisiveness, confidence, collaboration—can turn toxic when left unchecked. It’s not that we need to abandon what makes us effective. But we do need to ask:

When do my greatest strengths start doing silent damage?

Here are three key things I took away from the conversation:

“Too” is the enemy of growth

Your best traits become blind spots the moment you lean on them too heavily.

Too decisive becomes impulsive.
Too collaborative becomes conflict-avoidant.
Too organized becomes controlling.
These subtle shifts happen gradually and almost invisibly—until you’re suddenly stuck in a pattern that no longer fits your role.

Where might “too” be getting in the way of your growth?

Identity is a stealth saboteur

One of Marty’s most compelling ideas is that leadership blind spots often hide in outdated self-images. You get promoted, your role evolves—but your internal wiring doesn’t. You keep showing up like the brilliant individual contributor when what your team needs is a strategic leader. If your identity doesn’t evolve with your responsibilities, you’ll become the bottleneck you used to hate working for.

Are you still living with a “stealth” sense of self from a long-gone role?

You need someone to tell you before it’s too late

The cost of an unexamined strength is often paid by the people around you.
As leaders, we tend to seek feedback only after something breaks. But by then, the damage is already done. General George Casey once told me, “You need people in your life who will speak truth to you before you realize you need them.” That quote still echoes in my head—and probably will for the rest of my career.

Have you given permission to someone to speak hard truth to you?

Listen to the full conversation with Marty here.

And as you go into your week, I’ll leave you with this challenge:

What strength of yours might be drifting into dangerous territory? And who have you empowered to tell you the truth before you need to hear it?

We were talking about the invention of the Like button—yes, that tiny gesture we now make billions of times a day without thinking—and Martin Reeves, author of Like: The Button That Changed the World, said this:

Think about that. One of the most consequential inventions of the past 20 years wasn’t planned. It wasn’t the product of a grand vision. It was a series of improvisations, nudges, and tinkers that layered into something world-shaping.

As leaders and creative pros, we often feel the pressure to aim straight at greatness—to have a master plan, a bold objective, a bulletproof strategy. But what if that instinct is part of the problem?

Here are three takeaways from this conversation that might help you lead and create better this week:

1. Don’t confuse validation with impact.​

We all want to be seen. But if you’re not careful, the desire to be seen turns into a need to be liked. And that need? It will hijack your best instincts. You’ll stop following your hunches and values and start chasing whatever gives you a shot of approval. As I said in the episode:

You can be liked and effective at the same time, but you can’t chase both.

2. Real breakthroughs sometimes don’t look like breakthroughs.​

The Like button wasn’t a eureka moment—it was a series of small fixes. The same is often true of your best work. Don’t discount what feels messy or insignificant. It might be a stepping stone to something game-changing.

What small hunch have you been ignoring, but should probably pay attention to?

3. The tools we build end up building us.​

When we create systems—whether it’s a product, a process, or a culture—we assume we’re in control. But over time, those systems shape how we think, act, and even what we value. Are the tools around you reinforcing your values… or quietly eroding them?

We make containers, then we have to fill them. Are you filling the right containers with your work or just maintaining old ones?

If you want to do brave, focused, brilliant work, you can’t chase the dopamine hit. Follow your hunches and ask great questions. Tinker.

The greatest breakthroughs often come from walking the path before you know where it’s headed.

“We are not machines.”

It was half-erased—probably someone’s shoulder brushed past it—but I’ve never forgotten those words.

Lately, they’ve been echoing louder.

We live in a world that rewards output, speed, and optimization. That’s especially true if you’re a leader or a creative pro. We grind. We ship. We measure. We strive to be efficient. But we forget: the work we’re doing is human work. It requires imagination, insight, courage—and those things don’t operate on a mechanical schedule.

​In this week’s Daily Creative podcast, I spoke with Bree Groff and Emily Kasriel, two people who are trying to restore a bit of humanity to the workplace. The conversation left me rethinking a few things—and I wanted to share five reflections with you:

1. Most work, most days, should be fun.

That’s not naive—it’s deeply practical.
As Bree put it, “Work is just effort that moves something.” When we strip away the unnecessary layers—back-to-back meetings, performative productivity, bureaucratic theater—we’re left with something simpler and often joyful: people using their skills to create value.

Fun doesn’t mean silly. It means energizing. Purposeful. Connected. And when work is fun, we don’t just feel better—we produce better. If your team hasn’t laughed together in a while, it might be time to ask: what have we lost?

2. We confuse ‘hard work’ with ‘meaningful work’.

A lot of people think my book Die Empty is about gutting it out. Pushing harder. Leaving it all on the field. It’s not.

It’s about not leaving your best work trapped inside because you’re heads-down on the wrong things. It’s about recognizing that doing “a lot” is not the same as doing “what matters.”

Grinding doesn’t guarantee greatness. Sometimes it just means we’re too tired to notice we’re off course.

3. You can’t do your best work on a timer.

Brains don’t think in 30-minute increments. Yet we schedule our days like we’re optimizing a factory line.

Bree introduced the idea of a “Do Nothing Day”—a full day with no meetings, no deliverables, just creative exploration. That might sound radical, but it’s actually ancient wisdom. Some of your best ideas emerge not when you try harder, but when you give your mind space to wander.

Pressure compresses possibilities. Space expands them.

4. Listening is not a soft skill. It’s a radical one.

Emily Kasriel reminded me that most of what we call “listening” is really just waiting for our turn to speak.

True listening—deep listening—is about meeting someone with full presence, no agenda. And when people feel genuinely heard, they bring more of themselves to the work. It builds trust. It disarms tension. It fuels connection.

Want your team to take risks, offer ideas, and own their contribution? Start by actually listening. Not nodding along—listening.

5. The best leaders protect space.

We often think of leadership as protecting outcomes. But great leaders also protect conditions. They defend time for thinking. They make room for humanity. They understand that their people aren’t machines—they’re complex, creative, sometimes messy humans.

And when you create the right environment—one that invites reflection, respects attention, and encourages curiosity—you’ll get better results andbetter humans.

If you’re in a season where work feels dry, reactive, or relentless—this episode is for you.

It’s not about escaping the pressure. It’s about redesigning your approach so that your best, most meaningful work can emerge.

Listen to the episode here →​

One challenge for this week:​

Bring 5% more humanity to your work.

Ask a better question. Block 30 minutes to think. Shut your laptop and take a walk before your next brainstorm. Just one small shift. See what it changes.

Thanks for reading. You’re not a machine. You’re doing human work.

Don’t forget to treat it that way.

In it, I shared why creativity doesn’t just “happen,” but instead results from intentional rhythms and disciplines, especially when life and work are unpredictable. If you don’t manage them, they will manage you.

Here are five key concepts from the talk (and episode):

Focus is your most precious (and finite) resource.

In a world relentlessly vying for your attention—email pings, social media, endless meetings—it’s easy to believe that you’re “multitasking,” when in fact you’re just splintering the energy needed for real breakthroughs. The episode highlights the incredible cost (66+ hours a year!) of checking distractions every few minutes, and how true brilliance only happens in uninterrupted space.

Do you ever have time when you’re off the grid? When no one else has the “override” on your attention? Your inbox represents everyone else’s priority for your life.

When do you give yourself permission to be completely off the grid and let your mind settle?

Brilliance requires community—not isolation.

Creativity often feels like a solo sport, but the best work is generated in circles of trusted, challenging peers. Rather than seeking people who agree with you, find those who nudge you out of your comfort zone and inspire honest feedback.

Form groups of trusted advisers to meet with monthly, or even simple one-on-one “head-to-heads” to share stuck points and fresh sources of inspiration.

Who challenges and inspires you to see things differently in your day-to-day work?

Manage energy as much as your time.

We obsess over our calendars, but overlook the energy needed for emotional labor—the deep work that demands your full attention and heart.

Sometimes, you need to let go of “good” commitments to make space for “great” work to flourish. Look at your routines and obligations, pruning those that steal resources from what matters most, and approach your schedule as an integrated whole—not separate compartments.

Where can you clear space in your life to better nurture your energy for your most important work?

The quality of your input determines the quality of your ideas.

Creativity is “just connecting things,” but you can’t connect dots you don’t have. Be deliberate about adding new stimulus—books, podcasts, experiences—into your routine, and spend time digesting, reflecting, and applying what you learn.

Consider keeping better notes to capture insights as they come and scheduling “stimulus dives” to immerse yourself in new environments or ideas (even if they’re outside your comfort zone).

What regular habits are you building to ensure you’re constantly putting new, diverse information into your head?

Effectiveness is often inefficient—make time for back-burner creativity.

The push for short-term productivity can crowd out the messy, non-linear play that leads to breakthroughs. Dedicate time to think, dream, and explore ideas that may not have immediate payoffs—whether that’s working on personal creative projects or simply blocking “idea time” on your calendar. Trust that these inefficient practices compound into powerful, long-term impact.

How could you reclaim time (even 30 minutes a week) for open-ended creative exploration?

Every week is a chance to bring a little more intention, courage, and fresh practice to your creative game. As I share in the talk, “Mediocrity doesn’t just happen. It’s chosen—over time.”

Challenge yourself to prune, focus, and connect: that’s how you’ll build a body of work that makes you proud when you look back.

If you’d like ideas like this sent to your inbox each week, subscribe to my newsletter below. 

In this week’s Daily Creative episode, we explore the messy realities and hidden costs of revenge in the workplace—and uncover healthier, more powerful strategies for navigating conflict and difficult people.

While it’s tempting to think that “complicated” only applies to others, the reality is that we’re all complicated people. And frankly, you might be someone else’s complication. With that in mind, here are a few key insights for collaborating more effectively with your peers.

You don’t have to like everyone you work with—what matters is having the courage to work well with almost anyone.

True bravery in the workplace isn’t about being agreeable or avoiding conflict; it’s about facing difficult relationships head-on and owning your role in them. The temptation to avoid or retaliate can be strong, especially with complicated colleagues or managers.

But as Ryan Leak shared, “When we start with that whole idea of being able to say, hey, I’m complicated, you’re complicated, we’re all complicated. I actually think we can work together a whole lot better.”

Leaning into tough conversations with empathy and vulnerability, rather than accusation or avoidance, can transform even strained collaborations.

Who is one “complicated” person you can courageously approach for an honest, growth-driven conversation this week?

The urge for revenge is addictive—but your focus is your real leverage.

Every grievance, every slight, and every unfair moment at work is a potential mental distraction. Neuroscience reveals that revenge isn’t just emotional—our brains actually crave the dopamine rush it brings, leading us into cycles of fixation and rumination.

James Kimmel underscores this with: “Your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs, pretty literally.”

Instead of letting these impulses hijack your attention, you can reclaim your focus by practicing internal forgiveness—not for others, but for yourself. This deliberate refocusing allows you to put your energy where it truly matters: your work and your growth.

Which lingering frustration can you consciously let go of today, so you can refocus on your creative priorities?

The path to better ideas might start with challenging your own assumptions about “difficult” people.

It’s counterintuitive, but the people you find hardest to collaborate with often hold the greatest potential for your learning and innovation.

As Ryan Leak noted, “People can actually pull off a really difficult job with people they enjoy over a dream job with people that they actually have to tolerate.”

By reframing complicated personalities as invitations to stretch your skills and understanding, you open yourself to breakthroughs that wouldn’t emerge in comfort zones. Seek out the perspectives and strengths in others—especially those who challenge you most.

How will you change your approach to working with someone you find difficult, in order to discover an unexpected idea or insight this week?

So, he made one. He wrote a program that solved his problem. And, that was that.

One day he showed the program to his brother John, who was working at Industrial Light & Magic. John immediately saw much greater potential in Thomas’s code, and suggested that maybe they should turn it into something more substantial – a full fledged image editing program.

Through countless iterations and refinements between 1987 and 1990, they developed the little program into a sophisticated image editing tool.

The tool? Photoshop, of course.

What began as a little tool that solved a problem was developed into something much more substantial. A good idea was transformed into a great one.

This story demonstrates how brilliant ideas often evolve through intentional choices and systematic development rather than just spontaneous inspiration. The Knoll brothers didn’t just have a good idea – they made deliberate choices to develop and refine that idea into something revolutionary.

It’s tempting to rely on bursts of inspiration or quick-fix solutions. To believe that brilliant ideas emerge “whole cloth” from the womb. But that’s not how most of the transformative work in the world happens. Rather, it’s chiseled out of marble. Sure, the promise and the vision are there, but most of the value is carved and edited, not dictated.

As Jack London quipped, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

Here are a few questions I encourage you to consider:

Is there an idea you once believed had promise that you’ve abandoned?

Why did you drop the idea? Was it because it got too difficult? Or, was it because you simply got bored with the idea and moved on to something more interesting? Scott Belsky calls this dynamic the “project plateau”, meaning that we initially get very excited about something, but once the enthusiasm wanes we immediately jump to a new, invigorating idea. In doing this, we often abandon a project just when it has the potential to become something great.

How could you re-claim the project and further develop it?

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London

Do you have time set aside for “deep work”?

This is a phrase coined by guest of the show Cal Newport to describe focused, intentional time for doing creative thinking and development. It’s tempting to think that great work will happen in the cracks and crevices of life, but that is rarely the case. If you want to produce brilliant work, you must dedicate the resources necessary for that work to be born.

When will you dedicate a long block of time for doing your most important, creative work?

What new patterns are you beginning to see, but are trying to ignore?

Often, we sense that a valuable idea is forming before the dots have fully connected. However, we ignore it because new ideas mean more work, and the plate is already full! What patterns do you see in your work, in your interactions, in how your customers or clients are responding to the market, or in what seems to be obsessing your thoughts?

What new pattern is forming that you need to pursue?

Your best ideas are more likely to be forged than discovered in a moment of ecstasy. Be diligent in your process, set aside the resources you need to do the work, and commit to ideas even when they get hard. By doing so, you ensure that each idea will reach its full potential.

It can be difficult to maintain optimistic vision in the midst of uncertain times, but the people you lead need clarity from you above all else. They need to know that you see a way through, and they want to understand how they fit into that vision.

So, below is an excerpt from The Brave Habit chapter about cultivating optimistic vision:

The most predictable driver of optimism is productive passion. This is an outcome that you care so deeply about that you are willing to suffer if necessary to achieve it. It is clean fuel.

As Kierkegaard wrote, “Cowardice settles deep in our souls like the idle mists on stagnant waters. From it arise unhealthy vapors and deceiving phantoms. The thing that cowardice fears most is decision; for decision always scatters the mists, at least for a moment. Cowardice thus hides behind the thought it likes best of all: the crutch of time.”

In Die Empty I wrote about what I call the “passion fallacy”. We toss around phrases like “follow your passion” as if it means simply pursuing things that you enjoy. On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with this advice except for the fact that we are fundamentally mis-using the word “passion”. In its root form, the word passion comes from the Latin word passio which means “to endure or suffer”. When we encourage someone to follow their passion, what we’re really saying is “follow your suffering!” (Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, huh?)

This fundamental twist of the common advice about passion is something I can get fully behind, because it’s the foundation of brave action. When you tap deeply into a productive passion, it means that you are willing – if necessary – to suffer if necessary in order to achieve an outcome that matters more to you than your temporary discomfort. It doesn’t mean that you necessarily will suffer, only that you’re willing to do so in order to achieve your vision.

What outcome are you so deeply committed to that you’re willing to walk through discomfort to see it achieved? That is the root of optimism.

If you are pursuing a worthy vision, and you are driven by confident ambition, you will at times experience suffering. Discomfort. Failure, in ways big and small. To continue to cultivate brave action, stay rooted in your productive passion.

Understand the deeper why of your pursuit. What outcome are you so deeply committed to that you’re willing to walk through discomfort to see it achieved? That is the root of optimism.

When you have a clear vision of what matters deeply to you and of the person you want to be, that clarity cuts like a knife between bravery and cowardice. It becomes infectious. Others want to work with you and follow you. They may not always like you, but they will respect you and respond to your clarity.

With clarity of vision, driven by productive passion, in moments of testing your decision to do the right thing, even when it’s uncomfortable, becomes more bearable.

At your testing point, everything you truly believe will be revealed.

Creative paralysis, or “creative block”, is often the result of inattention to a few key areas. There are three that I encounter all the time.

Definition: You Don’t Really Know What You’re Doing

It’s hard to solve a problem you haven’t defined, yet we try to do it all the time. We jump into the work, but don’t make the effort to ensure that we understand the problem we’re really trying to solve.

As a result, we eventually hit a wall when we’ve done all we know to do, but have lost touch with the end goal.

Possible sources:
– Lack of empathy: You don’t understand who you’re really serving and what a potential solution to their problem requires. You need to spend more reflective time considering the people you are trying to serve and what their needs are.
– Lack of focus: You haven’t clearly defined the problem you’re trying to tackle. You’re attempting to solve concepts, not problems. Spend some time getting to the root of what you’re actually trying to do.
– Simple Self-deception: You’ve convinced yourself (or your organization) that a problem exists that really doesn’t. You’re doing a lot of work, but you’re not really making progress because there’s no progress to be made. You need to cut your losses and find a real problem to solve.

Solution: Make certain that you are working on well-defined problems, and re-define those problems as often as necessary to re-ground yourself.

Motivation: You Don’t Really Care, Do You?

Well, maybe you do care, but only because your paycheck (or reputation) is on the line. However, this isn’t always sufficient to keep you bringing your best to the work. You have to establish a  through-line that provides the needed motivation to keep working when things get tough.

Possible sources:
– Misplaced ego: You’ve made the work all about yourself, so when there’s little acclaim on the line you can’t quite gear up for it. What outcome are you working to achieve – one that transcends your own recognition?
– Old problems, new you: You’ve personally moved on from the problems that used to intrigue you, but you’re still plugging away at them. What new, fresh problem would actually excite you?
– Black Box Phenomenon: You’re plugging away at the work, but have absolutely no clue why any of your required tasks are relevant to the larger mission of the organization. You’re all “what” with no “why”, which creates dissonance. Seek an alignment between what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

Solution: You have to be brutally honest with yourself about issues of motivation, and do your best to tie your work back to a deeper through-line that motivates you. Sure, you may not always care about the specific tasks, but how you work says a lot about who you are as a person, which I assume you do care a lot about.

Systems: Old Dog, New Tricks

Finally, your progress may simply be limited by your existing system or workflow. Things like standing meetings and organizational hierarchies tend to stick around for years after they’ve served their original purpose, but so do personal productivity habits. Where are you due for a shake-up of your systems to help you gain a little creative traction?

Possible sources:
– Stale systems OR too much pool-jumping: Are you (a) due for a system refresh or (b) in need of some stability to enable you to focus more effectively? (Systems are just conduits for your work, not the work itself.)
– Wrong mix: Do you need to expand your relational network, or involve new people in the project to help you jump-start your work?
– Bad assumptions: Are you making assumptions that are limiting your scope of exploration? Sometimes systems can limit your vision in an unhealthy way, and questioning your operating assumptions can give you new direction for your energy.

Solution: Do an audit of your systems, and see if you can identify energy drains. Where could you use fresh focus, relationships, or stimuli to help you gain traction? Where have things grown stale?

“Stuckness” is, in many cases, a choice. You may not come up with the optimal solution, but if you stay diligent and commit to progress, you can always re-direct to a better place. However, wallowing in stagnancy is a shortcut to misery and wasted time and energy.

Refuse to be stuck. Do whatever it takes to break through.

We hoard information at an unprecedented rate, saving everything that catches our attention. It’s all part of the creative process, right? Well…

There’s a crucial difference between collecting and curating, one that can mean the difference between drowning in information and transforming it into meaningful insight. This distinction becomes more important as the volume of noise continues to grow exponentially.

As jazz legend Charles Mingus once observed, “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”

The Mingus Principle applies perfectly to how we should handle the constant stream of inspiration we encounter. In a world of infinite noise, the ability to curate effectively has become the essential skill for anyone looking to do meaningful work.

From Info Overload to Insight Gold: A 3-Step Framework

Let’s explore a more intentional approach to handling the information we encounter:

1. Cast a Wide Net

Begin with a broad filter. Allow yourself to capture ideas, insights, and inspiration from diverse sources. This initial phase should be relatively permissive – you never know where your next great breakthrough might come from. Save articles, jot down random thoughts, collect quotes, and gather resources that spark your interest. If it crosses your mind, and seems meaningful, you should capture it. As I wrote in The Accidental Creative, take better notes about anything that sparks your interest.

Unfortunately, this is where many people stop. As a result, they have notebooks filled with random ideas that no longer mean anything, software full of articles that… now why did I save that again?… and scraps of paper or digital notes with random phrases that were going to be the next big thing.

Now, they’re all useless because we didn’t take the time to curate them while they were still fresh.

2. Curate

The magic happens during dedicated curation time. This is when you transform from collector to curator by asking three essential questions of each piece of stimulus that you’ve collected:

• What is this, really? Strip away the surface and identify the core idea or principle. Why did it capture your attention? What is its attractive essence?
• Why does it matter to me? Understand its broader significance and potential impact. Beyond the initial “huh… that’s interesting”, what is the actual, applicable value of this note or spark?
• What can I create with this? Now, envision how this piece fits into your work or thought process. Turn it into something that could fit inside of a project or could become a part of your work. Write down your specific hunch or idea and how it might find its way into your future work.

If you’d like to dive deeper into a system for organizing your stimulus, listen to this episode of the Daily Creative podcast which features my interview with Tiago Forte.

3. Ruthlessly Eliminate

The final step is perhaps the most crucial: eliminate anything that doesn’t serve a clear purpose. If an item doesn’t pass through these filters or feels like it’s adding complexity without value, let it go. This step requires discipline and clarity about your objectives. It also ensures that you don’t lose valuable sparks in a sea of mediocrity.

For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn’t give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have. – Oliver Wendell Holmes

Simplicity on the Other Side of Complexity

The goal isn’t to amass the largest collection of information. Aim to cultivate a carefully considered collection of sparks and ideas that genuinely inspire your work. This curation process helps you move through what Oliver Wendell Holmes called “the simplicity on this side of complexity” to reach “the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”

When you commit to being a curator rather than just a collector, you’ll find that your ideas become clearer, your work more focused, and your creative output more meaningful. The key is to maintain regular curation sessions – perhaps weekly or at least monthly – where you review, process, and either integrate or eliminate the information you’ve gathered.

Remember: The value isn’t in how much you collect, but in how well you curate and what you create from what remains.

It was a bold move. One that was counter to the chaotic marketplace environment.

The gamble paid off: Chronicle’s distinctive aesthetic and commitment to quality helped them not only survive but thrive, expanding from a regional publisher to a globally recognized brand. While everyone else in the industry was retreating, they found their voice.

The ability to stay focused and creative during chaotic times isn’t just a nice-to-have skill. It’s essential for survival and growth.

Here’s how to maintain your creative and leadership edge when everything around you seems to be spinning out of control.

1. Build Your Chaos-Proof Rituals

Maintaining your rituals – your supporting infrastructure –  is essential when the world feels chaotic. By establishing consistent daily practices, you build a reliable foundation that nourishes your creativity and mental clarity. These aren’t mere habits, they’re intentional practices that create space for your best thinking and creative work to emerge.

Dedicate specific hours to deep work when your energy is highest, and protect time for reading and reflection. Close each day with a structured wind-down routine that helps you process your ideas and prepare for tomorrow. These intentional bookends prevent great ideas from getting lost in the chaos.

What are your “chaos-proof” rituals?

2. Ask Questions That Transform Chaos Into Wonder

In times of uncertainty, our instinct is to seek certainty and to search for immediate answers. Instead, develop the skill of asking better questions. What opportunities exist right now that others may not see? What (possibly false) assumptions am I making? What would this look like if it were easy?

The quality of our questions determines the quality of our thinking. Rather than fixating on “Why is this happening to me?” ask “What can I learn from this?” or “How can I use this situation to create something meaningful?”

What question do you know you need to ask, but are avoiding?

In times of chaos, don’t seek certainty. Seek clarity.

3. Zag and Think Counter-Cyclical

During the 2000 dot-com crash, Amazon’s stock had plummeted 90%, and many analysts predicted the company’s demise. Instead of retreating, Jeff Bezos doubled down on innovation and expansion. He maintained rigorous operational focus, while simultaneously launching Amazon Marketplace and developing new categories. This period of extreme uncertainty became the foundation for Amazon’s transformation from an online bookstore into a global technology leader.

When everyone else is panicking, look for opportunities. When the crowd rushes in one direction, consider what they might be missing. This isn’t contrarianism for its own sake, it’s about maintaining independent thought when groupthink is at its strongest.

During market downturns, the best investors often increase their positions. During industry upheaval, the most innovative companies often double down on R&D. Look for the spaces others are leaving vacant and consider how you might fill them.

Where are you tempted to “follow the herd”? How might you intelligently act counter-cyclically?

4. Make Solitude Your Secret Weapon

In chaotic times, the temptation is to stay constantly connected, monitoring every twist and turn. Instead, schedule substantial periods of solitude. This isn’t just about avoiding distractions, it’s about creating the mental space necessary for deep thinking and creative breakthrough.

Make time for long walks without podcasts, drives without radio, or mornings without phones. Let your mind wander and make unexpected connections. Some of the best ideas emerge when we stop actively pursuing them and allow our subconscious mind to take the lead.

When will you get alone with your thoughts?

5. Follow Your North Star Through Rough Seas

When everything is in flux, your core values become your compass. Values aren’t just nice-sounding principles, they’re decision-making tools that help you navigate complexity. What truly matters to you? What won’t you compromise, regardless of circumstances?

Instead of reacting to every new development, let your values guide your response. This might mean passing on opportunities that don’t align with your principles or taking stands that others don’t understand. Your values, properly understood and consistently applied, will lead to decisions you can be proud of long after the current crisis passes.

What are your core values? Where do you draw your “battle lines”?

Remember that uncertainty, while uncomfortable, is often the fertile ground from which brilliant work springs. Some of the most significant technological breakthroughs and creative works emerged during periods of great upheaval.

Your task isn’t to wait for stability to return, it’s to learn to dance with chaos while maintaining your focus and creative drive.

Don’t just survive uncertain times. Use them as a catalyst. Uphold your values.

Most of all, don’t seek certainty because you won’t find it. Take the time to find clarity, and to lead others with precision, authenticity, and consistency.

Seventy percent!

But this wasn’t just another corporate restructuring – it was a bold demonstration of what I’ve termed “strategic indifference“.

The most controversial aspect of this decision was the elimination of the Newton, Apple’s revolutionary handheld personal digital assistant. The Newton wasn’t failing; it had a dedicated user base and was actually turning a profit. Many leaders would have seen this as an asset to protect.

But Jobs saw something different: a distraction from Apple’s true potential.

Despite protests from both customers and team members, he chose to completely ignore the Newton’s potential, demonstrating a key principle of strategic indifference – the courage to deliberately ignore viable opportunities for the sake of what’s essential to future success.

This laser-focused approach freed up Apple’s best minds and resources to concentrate on what would become the iMac, and later, revolutionary products like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad. The results speak for themselves: Apple transformed from a struggling computer manufacturer into one of the world’s most valuable companies, redefining not just one industry, but several.

For us, this serves as a powerful reminder that sometimes the most strategic decision isn’t about what you choose to do – it’s about what you deliberately choose to ignore.

The Art of Ignoring – When “Not Caring” is Your Superpower

Strategic indifference is not the same as prioritization. We all do that.

It’s about deliberately choosing not to care about certain things – even important things – for a defined period.

When we prioritize, we try to juggle multiple important tasks, giving each its appropriate level of attention, one at a time. Strategic indifference is more extreme: it’s about selecting one or two critical objectives or activities and becoming purposefully indifferent to everything else for a season.

This approach requires both courage and clarity of vision, as it often means saying no to opportunities that may seem promising or even essential in the short term. In fact, it can look irresponsible and neglectful.

But, it’s not. Instead, it’s a recognition that great value is nearly always created by a season of obsessive focus, even at the expense of other “good” things.

Half-Measures, Full Problems – The Trap of Trying to Do It All

Partial engagement is often no different than complete oversight. When we try to maintain a little bit of focus on everything, we dilute our ability to focus deeply on anything.

As Donella Meadows notes in Thinking in Systems (a phenomenal book, by the way), effective systems have inherent self-organizing properties. When we meddle too much – trying to keep a hand in every project or decision – we can actually impair this natural organizational potential. By getting “kind of” involved, we limit the potential for greatness on our team.

Just as creative teams need bounded autonomy to thrive, our strategic initiatives need focused, undistracted attention to succeed.

The temptation to maintain control over everything is overwhelming, but it’s fool’s gold. The irony is that the more “half-measures” you employ, the more mediocre your leadership becomes.

When we try to maintain a little bit of focus on everything, we dilute our ability to focus deeply on anything.

The Paradox of Priorities – Why Important Things Can Wait

Understand that strategic indifference doesn’t mean that the ignored areas are unimportant. In fact, they might be critically important – that’s what makes the choice strategic.

When a marketing team decides to focus exclusively on launching a new product line for a month, they’re not suggesting their existing products are unimportant. Rather, they’re making a strategic choice to temporarily concentrate their resources on this initiative, trusting that the short-term trade-off will yield longer-term benefits for the entire portfolio.

This principle applies equally to business decisions, creative projects, and even personal development initiatives. (Fasting is an example of strategic indifference. You’re forgoing nutrition and personal pleasure for a season in order to achieve the greater result of a metabolic reset.)

Perfect Timing – The When and Where of Strategic Focus

The practice of strategic indifference requires a deep understanding of both timing and context.

In fact, timing is everything. Not every situation calls for this intense, singular concentration. What matters is recognizing those key moments when putting all your energy into one goal can create breakthrough results.

This can mean making tough choices: sometimes stepping away from day-to-day operations, trusting your team to handle tasks you usually oversee, or pressing pause on exciting projects that aren’t essential right now.

Ask yourself:

• What problem, initiative, or idea could generate disproportionate value if given a short period of intense, exclusive focus?
• When is the ideal season to drop my “maintenance” activities to channel my efforts to that initiative?
• How will I deal with the pushback or short-term systems failures that my stepping back might cause? How will I communicate about it, both in advance and while it’s happening?

The Courage to Let Go

Consider where you might need to take your hands “off the wheel” for a season. When you dive deeply into what matters most while strategically ignoring important but not critical things, breakthroughs happen.

The key is choosing these periods of strategic focus wisely. When well-timed, these moments of concentrated effort can transform your entire work life or even your organization. Strategic indifference, when applied thoughtfully, creates far more impact than trying to stay equally engaged across everything.

So, what is your most important value-creating initiative right now, and what will you be “strategically indifferent” toward in order to achieve it?

But typically, our work is presented to us in the form of “projects”. We are tasked with accomplishing some defined objective (like developing a strategy, building a website, or launching a campaign), and the underlying problems we are trying to solve may be obscured by the packaging in which they are presented. We are asked for deliverables instead of solutions.

In these situations, we can easily veer off course. We simply focus on the outcome instead of considering the why behind the deliverables we’re tasked with creating. Or worse, we can actually “succeed our way into failure” by delivering something that checks all the boxes on the project task list but doesn’t actually solve the core problem. It’s frustrating, but it’s avoidable.

The solution? Defining, then continuously re-defining the problem.

Here are three strategies for doing this:

1. Nail Down the Real Problem

Before you dive headfirst into a project, step back and ask: What’s the actual problem I’m trying to solve? Projects are just tools to address problems, so if you’re not crystal clear on the core issue, you’re setting yourself up for pain, wasted effort, and possible re-work. Define the problem with as much clarity as possible. As I wrote in The Accidental Creative, “You must define your work before you can do your work.” When you know the problem, you have a north star to guide everything you do.

“You must define your work before you can do your work.” – The Accidental Creative

2. Get Everyone on the Same Page

When you’re collaborating, alignment is obviously essential. It’s amazing how often teams start working on a project with completely different understandings about what the end goal is. That’s a recipe for frustration and wasted effort. Before you even begin, make sure everyone agrees on the actual problem (or set of problems) you’re solving. Have the conversation, write it down for documentation purposes, and revisit it if needed. Shared clarity creates shared purpose, and that keeps everyone moving in the right direction.

3. Adjust and Adapt

Here’s the thing: as you work, you’re going to learn new things about the problem you’re solving. That’s just part of the process.

New information will surface, and the problem you thought you were solving might evolve. Don’t cling to your initial assumptions. Be open to redefining the problem as you go, and don’t be afraid to pivot if that’s what’s needed to stay on track.

Flexibility isn’t a weakness—it’s a strength. And, clarity is the antidote to anxiety. Revisiting the problem regularly keeps your work on track.

By focusing on the real problems, staying aligned with your team, and being willing to adapt, you’ll avoid the trap of succeeding your way into failure. Creativity isn’t about just getting things done—it’s about solving the right problems in the best way possible.

Keep your eyes on the real goal – the problem you’re actually solving –  and you’ll navigate your way to truly valuable work.

One of the most critical places where the erosion of trust becomes apparent is when team members give an inaccurate assessment of their current capacity because they don’t trust that leadership won’t pile too much work for them to handle.

“I’d love to, but I’m really swamped right now…” while taking long lunches and/or leaving early.

“I’m super busy – I can’t really fit that in…” while spending too much time on a project of little importance.

It’s typically not that there’s an intent to deceive. Often, this behavior is due to a historical lack of respect for the process of creating. When the organization makes too many unrealistic demands over time, it’s natural for team members to overstate their workload so as to avoid the feeling of overwhelm.

Most conversations about organizational trust focus on whether employees trust leadership. But here’s the thing: organizations need to trust their people just as much. This reciprocal relationship creates a balance that, when maintained properly, enables clear communication and smart decision-making about resources and priorities.

But this balance often breaks down in a predictable pattern:

1. The Rhythm Disconnect

Creative work follows natural cycles of intensity and recovery. When leadership fails to recognize these rhythms, team members feel exposed and vulnerable. Their natural response? They start padding their estimates to create a safety buffer against unrealistic expectations.

2. The Trust Erosion

As team members begin overestimating their workload needs, organizations start discounting these estimates. Soon, even legitimate concerns about capacity get met with skepticism. The trust relationship begins to fray at both ends.

3. The Breaking Point

Without correction, this pattern leads to one of three outcomes: systematic breakdown, loss of key talent, or cultural deterioration. Any of these can significantly impact your organization’s creative capacity and long-term health.

Building a Better Way Forward

The key to resolving this trust dynamic lies in fostering genuine dialogue about capacity. Here’s what that requires:

• Process Awareness: Team members need to clearly communicate what’s inside the “black box” of their work. Because the organization doesn’t always know what it takes to deliver on what they’re asking for, it seems like no big deal. However, once team members educate the organization about the actual process, the number of hours (and amount of thought) involved, and realistic timeframes, it relieves a lot of the pressure.
• Clear Capacity Assessment: Develop the ability to accurately gauge and communicate your workload – not just in hours, but in terms of creative energy and mental bandwidth. And, communicate when unexpected capacity exists. “Hey – I have some bandwidth in the next two weeks. Is there anything I can take on?” This builds trust.
• Rhythm Recognition: Implement regular discussions about work patterns, acknowledging the natural ebb and flow of creative work.
• No Fault Honesty: Build an environment where team members can be honest about their capacity without fear of repercussion. Create clear channels for discussing workload concerns before they become critical issues.
• Shared Responsibility: Both leadership and team members must commit to honest dialogue about capacity and capabilities.

When you cultivate an environment of authentic communication and mutual respect, you can break free from the cycle of mistrust. This approach not only protects your team but also ensures your organization can make informed decisions about commitments and resources.

The result? A sustainable creative ecosystem that serves both the team and your objectives.

Because a lot of leaders talk a big game about taking risks and doing bold work, but when the time comes, they are really just playing “innovation theater” (hat tip to Steve Blank for that phrase).

But if you REALLY want your team to do brave work, there are two things they need: Agency, and Optimistic Vision.

And, you have to provide both.

You must speak agency into them, help them understand what they’re capable of, which risks are acceptable, what great work actually looks like.

And, you must paint an optimistic vision of where you’re headed, what it will look like when you get there, and the rewards that await once you arrive.

If you truly want brave work, you must reinforce these two elements. It’s the fertile field within which brave work is likely to occur. (And, it’s the topic of my latest book The Brave Habit.)

If you want brave work, the leader has to go first. Make brave decisions. Speak agency into your team. Paint a brave, optimistic vision.

Lead.

Here are three practical tips for thinking more strategically from the latest Daily Creative episode featuring my conversation with Seth Godin about his latest book This Is Strategy.

Brave: Shun the Nonbelievers! (Sometimes)

Brave leadership doesn’t mean convincing everyone; it means focusing on those who can actually help you move the needle on your objectives. Despite how daunting it may feel, not everyone needs to agree with your vision. However, you need to enlist the right people.

As Seth Godin emphasized in our conversation, “You do not need everyone to agree with you. You simply need at the beginning to find the people who are enrolled in your journey.” Shun the nonbelievers who drain your energy and focus on building momentum with those who see your vision. But, make sure you’re paying attention to those who believe in your cause, but want to help you refine your strategy or vision.

Do you spend the majority of your time and energy soliciting help from those who support your cause, or trying to convince those who will never be with you?

Focused: Simplify The Strategy

Unnecessary complexity is often the enemy of effective strategy. We try to make things more complex than they need to be because we believe the narrative that says “if it’s not complicated, it’s not valuable.” That’s simply untrue.

Instead of adding layers of unnecessary complexity, look for elegant solutions. As Tim Ferriss often asks, “What would this look like if it were easy?” That doesn’t mean the work is easy – just the strategy. Simplify to magnify your impact.

How can you simplify your current strategy to help you better focus on what matters?

Brilliant: Work Within the System

Transformative ideas understand and leverage existing systems. Rather than attempting to overhaul an entire organization, aim to subtly influence and gradually shift dynamics. Seth Godin brilliantly illustrated this by sharing how Michelin tried to change the entire system overnight by launching tires that never go flat and failed, and advises us that instead of naively trying to change the whole system, “Create the conditions for the system to change.”

As a strategic thinker, consider where you are trying to change systems that don’t want to be changed, and thereby wasting your precious time and resources. Instead, think strategically about how you can leverage the system to achieve your desired outcomes.

How can I align my desired outcomes with the existing incentives within the system I operate?

Listen to the conversation:

“A mouse in a mansion does not need to take lessons in humility.”

At first, I chuckled, picturing a tiny intimidated mouse scurrying through grand hallways. But then, as often happens with these nuggets of wisdom, it hit me – there’s something truly profound here about leadership.

Think about it. That little mouse knows exactly what it is and where it stands in the grand scheme of things. It’s not trying to be the mansion owner, nor is it cowering in fear of its surroundings. It’s just… being a mouse.

Here’s the lesson: How often do we struggle with either puffing ourselves up to seem bigger than we are, or shrinking away, afraid to take up space? It’s like we’re constantly toggling between feeling like we own the mansion and feeling like we don’t even deserve to be in it.

But what if we took a cue from the Mouse / Mansion Maxim? What if we embraced an accurate assessment of who we are – our strengths, our weaknesses, our place in the world?

In Die Empty, I wrote about the difference between confidence and ego:

Confidence says “I can get this right”, Ego says “I can do no wrong.”

Confidence says “I’m not explaining it well”, Ego says “You don’t get me.”

Confidence says “I’m valuable”, Ego says “I’m invaluable.”

When we cultivate a kind of confident self-awareness, something powerful happens. We no longer need to fear others or constantly compare ourselves. We can operate from a place of genuine humility – not the fake, self-deprecating kind, but the real deal. The kind that comes from knowing exactly who you are and being okay with it.

True humility actually breeds confidence. Not the brash, look-at-me kind of confidence, but a quiet, unshakeable sureness. You know your worth, you know your limits, and you’re comfortable with both. You can appreciate the grandeur of the mansion without feeling the need to claim it as your own.

True confidence makes trustworthy leaders.

In our creative lives, this balance is crucial. It allows us to take risks without fear of failure crushing us. It helps us collaborate without either dominating or disappearing. It gives us the freedom to create authentically, without constantly looking over our shoulders or ahead at the competition.

So, my challenge to you this week is this: Be the mouse. If you want to be brave, focused, and brilliant, begin with embracing who you are.

You might just find that in accepting your limits, you unlock limitless potential.

I do. And, I see it on the faces of groups I speak to and leaders I work with. We are just… tired.

News and information comes at us faster and in greater quantity than at any point in human history. Algorithms and bots have become very adept at influencing your thinking to match their agenda. And, uncertainty is swirling.

The antidote? For me, it’s getting alone with my thoughts.

I spend time first thing each day doing…. nothing. Not reading, not writing, not doing cold plunges or maximizing my… whatever the gurus say.

Nope… just me alone with my thoughts. And you know what? I discover things that are on my mind that I was too distracted to notice. I get to the heart of why I’m feeling the way I do. I re-root myself in what matters. What REALLY matters.

So, if you find yourself experiencing this existential overwhelm, I encourage you to carve out some space first thing in the morning to get alone with your thoughts.

No devices. No distractions. No purpose or activity other than sitting, letting your mind drift, and collecting the patterns.

The best gift you can give yourself as a leader is the discovery of what’s actually on your mind.

What do they look like? Sound like? How do they walk, talk, dress, act?

If you could only use a few words, how would you describe them?

Many people, when going through this mental exercise, imagine someone confident, in-command, issuing directives in an “I know precisely what I’m doing” way. Sure, they may be humble, but their humility is more of the “I’ll pretend I don’t know the answer so I can involve you, but in truth I know precisely what needs to be done here” kind.

This is the kind of leader we see portrayed in movies, on television, and in culture at large.

And, that completely fictitious “Alpha Leader” contributes to the sense of overwhelm and experience of imposter syndrome that many newly-minted leaders experience when they find themselves in a position of authority. Nothing other than their title has changed since the day before, but they now suddenly find themselves in the decision-making role.

It’s easy to critique decisions when you’re not the one making them. Many organizations are full of pundits, questioning the “coach’s” decision to switch defenses in the fourth quarter. But, when you are suddenly on the hot seat, everything changes.

One key to effective decision-making is to ensure that you haven’t grown myopic in your situational awareness. You have your own biases and pre-dispositions, often based upon what’s worked well for you in the past. However, replying on your own limited experience is a guaranteed way to (a) alienate the very talented people on your team, and (b) miss something really important.

That’s why I believe the most important question that any leader can ask of those around them is this:

“What’s something obvious that I’m missing?”

It’s almost a certainty that your team members have opinions of your decisions and leadership. However, they are unlikely to share those opinions freely unless given a window of opportunity.

Notice that the question almost implies that there is something you’re missing. You aren’t asking “Is there anything else?”, which is more rhetorical than anything.

You’re essentially saying “I know there’s something here that I’m overlooking. Can you see it?” You’re granting permission to speak up and share the thing that’s been bothering them, but that they are unlikely to mention unless you create space for them to do so.

Great leaders are humble, curious, and obsessed with getting it right (eventually). Model these qualities for your team, and open yourself to the perspective of those around you. By doing so, you greatly amplify your intelligence while simultaneously increasing your chances of getting to the right solution.

Be a curious leader.

This coward is obsessed with self-preservation, self- protection, avoidance of risk, harm to reputation, failure, self- disappointment, and wishful thinking. The coward engages in frequent doubt, blame, regret, self-loathing, and catastrophizing.

But, also inside of you lives the capacity for unspeakable bravery.

Bravery is doing the right thing even in the face of fear, following intuition where it leads, acting where others shrink from opportunity, defending those who cannot defend themselves, boldly speaking your ideas into the world, and sacrificing what’s necessary to bring them into existence.

No one aspires to cowardice, yet many still choose it every day. They fail to speak up because they’re afraid of being wrong. They take the easier, more comfortable path instead of the one that could lead to immense return on their effort. They join the crowd instead of standing firm against the populist tide. They justify their cowardice as prudence.

And that’s the funny thing about cowardice: it often comes disguised as wisdom.

No one chooses to be a coward, or at least they don’t call it that. They argue that they are doing the most practical thing.

“I can’t share my idea in the meeting because it may not be ready for prime time yet, and I don’t want to risk being laughed at. The wisest thing is to just wait.”

“Someone else is probably more equipped than I am to take on that project, so the wisest thing is to just pass.”

“Even though I disagree on principle, if I side with the popular opinion now, I can spend that political capital later to achieve my goals.”

“I shouldn’t have that difficult conversation with Jill because it’s just going to lead to a miserable month at the office. The best thing is to hope the situation resolves itself.”

Each rationale seems wise, but is it? Is it possible that these are simply excuses we make for our own cowardice?

There is nothing wrong with desiring comfort, but rarely is the comfortable path the most gratifying one. As poet Khalil Gibran wrote in The Prophet, “Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.”

If you feed your cowardice, you slowly murder your own soul.

However, you have the choice to be brave. You can train yourself to act instead of deferring, to speak instead of holding your tongue, and to embrace discomfort instead of shunning it. You can develop the habit of bravery. Through everyday practice, you can build a deep reserve of courage ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. You can turn bravery from a difficult decision into an instinct.

“Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.” – Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

When brave decisions are made, two things tend to be present: (a) a vision of a better possible future, and (b) a sense of agency to help bring it about.

When you lack either a clear optimistic vision or a sense of agency, you are more prone toward cowardice. You might want to do the right thing, but unless you have clarity about what right is, you will inevitably gravitate toward either reactivity or comfort. And, without a sense of agency, you may feel that any effort would be futile anyway.

So, as you consider the big decisions you’re facing right now, ask yourself:

• Do I have a clear vision for what a better future would look like in this area?
• Why should I believe that I can help make that future happen?

Remind yourself of who you are, what you value, where you’re going, and how you believe you can get there. By doing so often, you prepare yourself to rise to the moment.

Excerpted from The Brave Habit: A Guide To Courageous Leadership

There is nothing more frustrating to those doing creative work than hearing feedback from a client or manager that is vague, imprecise, and lacking any sense of direction. In order to effectively perform, talented people need clear boundaries within which to operate. That’s the role of the leader – to specifically challenge them within clear guide rails. As I wrote about in Herding Tigers, this is bounded autonomy – freedom within limits.

But giving feedback about creative work can be a tricky task. It’s not just about giving a thumbs up or down, but about providing constructive critique that can help the person grow and improve their work. Here are some tips on how to do it well:

Turn the microscope on yourself first

Before giving any feedback, it’s important to reflect on why they may have missed the mark. Were your expectations clear? It’s easy to say that something isn’t working, but without clear expectations, it’s hard to pinpoint what’s wrong. Take a step back and ask yourself what you were hoping to see from the work.

Were those expectations realistic? If not, you certainly can’t blame someone for not hitting them.

Distinguish between effort feedback and execution feedback

When giving feedback, it’s important to distinguish between effort feedback and execution feedback. Effort feedback is about the idea behind the work. It’s important to know the difference between a bad idea that was well-executed and a good idea that was poorly executed. One requires execution feedback (let me help you get better), while the other requires effort feedback (let’s make sure this never happens again).

The intensity of your feedback should be aligned with whether you’re coaching-up poor execution or correcting inexcusable behavior.

Before giving any feedback, it’s important to reflect on why they may have missed the mark. Were your expectations clear? It’s easy to say that something isn’t working, but without clear expectations, it’s hard to pinpoint what’s wrong.

Be precise

Saying that something “just isn’t working” doesn’t help anyone. You need to be able to articulate the “why” behind the “what” of your feedback. What specifically isn’t working, and why? And, is there a deeper why behind the project that isn’t being met with the work? Talented people need to understand not only what to do, but why it matters.

Always offer feedback within the context of vision

Don’t just point out what’s wrong, but also paint a picture of what’s possible. Ask a lot of questions and let the person arrive at the answer themselves. This way, they’ll be more likely to take ownership of the feedback and make the necessary changes. And, you’re helping them, understand strategy, not just tactics. This means you are equipping them to deliver effective work in the future.

Feedback is an important part of the creative process. By turning the microscope on yourself first, distinguishing between effort and execution feedback, being precise, and offering feedback within the context of vision, you can provide constructive criticism that helps the person grow and improve their work.

Remember, feedback isn’t just about pointing out what’s wrong, but also about painting a picture of what’s possible.

Similarly, in any workplace, there are bound to be occasional conflicts and disagreements between team members. These conflicts can arise from a variety of factors, including personality clashes, differences in work styles, and even simple misunderstandings. While it’s certainly important to address conflicts and work to resolve them in a healthy way, it’s equally important to focus on the overall culture of your team and how it is trending, rather than getting bogged down in the specifics of individual conflicts.

It’s important to “focus on climate, not the weather.”

Weather-type conflicts might include disagreements about the best way to complete a project or differences in opinion about a particular idea or direction. When tensions are high, and people care about the work, it’s likely that there will be some degree of conflict. That’s normal, expected, and healthy.

The climate of your team refers to its overall cultural trend. This includes things like the level of trust between team members, the effectiveness of communication and collaboration, and the overall sense of morale and job satisfaction. When the climate of a workplace is trending in a positive direction, team members are more likely to work together effectively and to feel motivated and engaged in their work. On the other hand, when the climate of a workplace is negative, team members may be less productive and may experience higher levels of stress and dissatisfaction.

So how can we focus on the climate of a workplace, rather than getting bogged down in specific conflicts?

Don’t Become Obsessive About Small Skirmishes Or Conflicts

Because of insecurity, some leaders feel the need to immediately squash any conflict because its seen as a sign of instability or a reflection of their leadership. Instead, work to resolve conflict within a healthy framework (I discuss this in my book Herding Tigers) and according to the agreed-upon values of the team.

Focus on “we” language and paint a vision of a better possible future

How you talk about your team, expectations, and culture sends a major signal to team members about your perception of its current state. Use inclusive language, help others see their part in shaping the future of the team and its work, and focus on where things are trending rather than on present conflicts.

Prune relentlessly

Don’t allow behavior that’s deviant to your team’s cultural expectations to become normalized. If you say that you honor and value someone’s time, and you find that team members are persistently late, you need to weed that behavior out immediately and ruthlessly. If you find that team members are engaging in damaging talk about their peers, you must prune it as soon as you become aware of it. If you don’t prune what you don’t want, it will eventually grow into a major problem that overtakes your cultural climate.

Don’t worry about the weather, focus on the climate. However, consistent weather over a long period of time becomes the climate. So, make certain you are leading your team every day in the direction that you’ve set for them. Earn the right to be followed every single day.

At times it’s tempting to evaluate a decision after the fact and determine whether or not it was good based upon the results. However, this is an ineffective and limiting way to determine whether or not you acted correctly. I call this dynamic Retro-Analysis Paralysis because the fear of achieving another bad result clouds your ability to make a good decision in the present. 

For example, let’s say that you decided to make an investment in an early stage startup. You did the research, saw the opportunity, knew that the leadership was competent and had a track record of growing similar companies in the past, and had the funds to make the investment happen. While losing the money would hurt you, it wouldn’t bury you. However, the potential upside was huge if the company did well. 

Unfortunately, shortly after you made your investment the world was suffered through a global pandemic and the business struggled to survive, eventually folding due to the economic shutdown. Your investment was lost.

Did you make the right decision to invest? By all objective measures, yes. Was the outcome bad? Yes. Both can be true simultaneously. 

You cannot evaluate forward-looking decisions using backward-looking metrics. You must apply the same criteria in retrospect that you use in the moment of uncertainty. Good decisions can lead to bad outcomes, and vice versa. Your job is simply to make as many good decisions as possible, given the data you have on hand.

Regret is often the result of applying new learnings to past situations. As you grow, you become wiser, more experienced, and more mature in your ability to recognize patterns. So, it’s natural to have a twinge of regret when you consider your youthful indiscretions. It’s possible that you will even paint your past decisions with a broad brush as poor and unfortunate. However, I encourage you not to do this. 

You cannot evaluate past decisions based upon present understanding. Yes, your present understanding will help you make better decisions moving forward, but be careful not to allow your perception of past mistakes to cause you to question your present competence. 

Eliminating Retro-Analysis Paralysis

When faced with a moment of uncertainty, consider whether regret and Retro-Analysis Paralysis could be playing into your decision making in the moment. For example, the gambler who – in a moment of stupid risk – decides he needs to make a silly bet in order to compensate for a previous loss. Or, a business leader who due to a series of bad results feels the desperate need to grasp for a home run idea in order to save her career and the organization. Both of these decisions are driven not by an objective analysis of the present uncertainties but by a regret over past results, which may or may not have been due to a bad decision. 

A knee-jerk reaction to undesired past outcomes can prevent you from choosing bravely in the present moment. It robs you of a sense of agency in the present moment because you are still living in the clouded past. 

Are there any regrets that could be clouding your present decision making, or making it difficult for you to act bravely in the face of present uncertainties?

Seems like an obvious question, but I’d bet good money that you’re actually time traveling. You are either partially revisiting something from the past (whether it was ten minutes ago or ten years) or anxiously getting ahead of something that hasn’t even yet occurred. You are a mind divided, and the net result is that you fail to synthesize valuable patterns that are right beneath your nose.

The practice of intuition necessarily requires time and patience. You have to be willing to sit with an idea long enough to turn it over in your mind and to consider its full application. It requires play and cognitive courage. You must do your thinking for yourself.

I was struck this week by a passage in a little book I received as a high schooler attending a leadership camp:

“When it is so easy to get our thinking done for us, the temptation is not to think. We glance at the newspaper headlines and let them form our opinions, and neglect to read the scholarly articles in the monthly magazine that would give us the meat of the subject. We listen to a few minutes of the radio and flatter ourselves that we know all about the Symphony. We read a review of a play and decide that we don’t need to see the play itself. These are the temptations of the average person today.”

William H. Danforth, I Dare You

That passage was written in 1931! Letting others synthesize our thoughts for us is not a new phenomenon, it’s a human condition.

It’s time to reclaim the profundity of the present moment. Each moment has meaning that, if ignored, will be lost forever. Circumstances will never again combine in this unique way to form this moment, right here, right now. There are insights that you can never regain if you let them slip through your fingers. Those who are able willing to do their own thinking and to take disciplined, strategic pauses even in the midst of chaos and uncertainty are much more likely to connect non-intuitive dots and synthesize larger patterns.

Pause for a few minutes each hour. Notice what’s going on around you. Pay attention to what’s actually on your mind. What are you actually thinking right now?

Journal by hand. I know it’s so much more convenient to journal by typing your words, but writing them out slows you down and forces you to spend more time with your thoughts. Allow your mind to work in the background.

Think grey. This is a phrase I first heard from Stephen Sample, the former president of USC. He believed that there is rarely a need to have a strong opinion from the outset. Instead, allow conflicting ideas to marinate in your mind and purposefully sit with them in that tension. You may find a third path you’d not considered.

Practice gratitude for this moment. If you can feel, think, and express, you are still in the game. Be grateful for what is here and now and don’t live in a land of wish and regret.

Do your own thinking. Spend time with the source materials. Don’t allow others (or algorithms) to synthesize your thinking for you. Have your own well-considered opinions and know your reasons. And, keep your antennae up for disconfirming information.

Be present. Think deeply. Don’t time travel.

Reclaim the profundity of the present.

“Oh, nothing much.”

My friend could tell that he wasn’t getting the full truth, so he pressed.

“Well,” the student confessed, “you see, there’s a band I really like, and I thought I was the only one, but I just found out they’re becoming really popular. Now, they’re just ruined for me.”

What the student was conveying is a dynamic that I’ve come to refer to as the “Zeitgeist Blender”. It’s the algorithmic pop culture churn that intevitably takes over and amplifies anything notable. Then, those once notable ideas or art or memes become more notable until they become so familiar that they lose all of their punch. They get blended together into a bland soup of vibe and tone that – over time – causes you to become cynical about what you once loved deeply. Your passion for noteworthy things is channeled into cultural critique.

The official definition of zeitgeist is “the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.” There is a flow to culture, and at any particular point in time if you take a sample you will find certain sentiments, ideas, and trends carrying popular belief along to the point that it’s difficult to tell whether it’s people driving ideas or ideas driving people.

Zeitgeist [ zahyt-gahyst]: the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.

We each must participate in the culture we’re rooted in, but that doesn’t mean that we have to fall prey to the Zeitgeist Blender. Instead, we can maintain a posture of objective distance and honed taste. This not only serves to bolster your sanity as a human being in the world but also helps you maintain a clean and effective creative process. Instead of feeding on the cultural regurgitation of others, you can selectively seek original material that awakens your palette.

How do you do this?

Don’t allow algorithms to drive your inputs

Mindfully scrolling Instagram for inspiration is a recipe for creative burnout and cynicism. You are likely to see what you are predicted to interact with because (gasp!) Instagram has no interest in the quality of your creative work. They are simply trying to make money from you. Which, by the way, is fine. However, their incentives are not aligned with yours. So, rather than jumping into the stream that fuels the Zeitgeist Blender, be intentional about seeking stimulus that truly inspires you. Don’t mindlessly scroll. Instead, be like a crate diver at a record shop, seeking what you don’t even know you’re looking for.

Like what you like, unapologetically

If I shared my Spotify playlists with you, you probably wouldn’t be impressed. Very little of the music I regularly listen to would be considered “cutting edge” or “cool” by many people’s standards. And, that’s fine with me. I like what I like. (I’m listening to Chopin’s nocturnes while writing this. Some early 19th century teen is super disappointed right now that I’m ruining their favorite composer for them…) Don’t feel the need to apologize for your taste. You can navigate toward creativity from anywhere, and much of what’s considered “cool” is only so because some tastemaker declared it or the Zeitgeist Blender is chopping it up for consumption.

Look for the deeper patterns and spend time with the source materials

In my world, a ton of books are written based on books that were just written. What I mean is that people cite ideas that are – maybe – ten years old and founded on other ideas that are – maybe – twenty years old. I like to, instead, seek out the source materials. The works that have stood the test of time because they are deemed worthy of attention by generations. They aren’t just cultural regurgitation, but are instead foundational. Seek deeper patterns. Think deeper thoughts. Find deeply streams to swim in.

If you are feeling uninspired, recognize that it could be due to feeding on the output of the Zeitgeist Blender. Don’t allow cultural sentiment to rob you of the joy of surprise and delight.

Don’t chase cool. Define it.

Without a central driving narrative, it’s easy to become “unmoored” and adrift. I believe this is precisely what’s happened to many professionals over the past few years. With the constant assault on our senses from circumstances, news organizations, social media, advise-givers, and general purpose alarmists, our receptors have become overloaded with stimulus. By the time we process each world-ending event, there is another one to deal with.

I’ve had personal conversations with a number of people recently who convey that they’ve felt largely disconnected from ambition and purpose since the onset of the pandemic. It’s been difficult to engage, whether emotionally or mentally, and the outcomes that once mattered deeply to them just don’t register on their list of priorities any longer. Some might argue that this is a healthy return to more important priorities like family, friendships, and health, but that’s not what they report. Instead, they are struggling with engagement in those areas too. It’s almost like they have been robbed of the greater narrative and can’t find a path forward.

When everything feels simultaneously urgent and random anyway, what’s the point?

Without a central driving narrative, it’s easy to become “unmoored” and adrift. I believe this is precisely what’s happened to many professionals over the past few years.

Research has shown that the pandemic has had a significant impact on people’s emotional well-being. A study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research found that during the pandemic, the average person routinely experienced increased anxiety, depression, and stress. Another study, published in The Lancet, found that people who had recovered from COVID-19 reported a range of ongoing symptoms, including fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and emotional disturbances. These emotional challenges can lead to disengagement from previously meaningful activities and a general sense of feeling unmoored, as individuals struggle to navigate the uncertainty and social/political/economic upheaval.

How do we re-tether? By re-discovering productive passion.

I wrote about productive passion in my book Die Empty. We must re-claim a focus on outcomes instead of focusing on activities. We must center in on what is worth sacrificing for instead of focusing solely on what we might enjoy doing, which is how many people think of “passion”.

The key to disrupting the pattern of distraction and anxiety is to deeply connect to a small set of outcomes that you chooseto allow to drive your decisions. Then, make small progress toward each outcome every day. As Teresa Amabile revealed in her research, small amounts of progress toward goals result in large motivational boosts.

Here’s a simple way to get started:

1. Choose 2-3 qualitative or quantitative outcomes that you’d like to pursue over the next month. These should be outcomes that (a) are within your sphere of influence, (b) matter deeply to you, but that you currently feel somewhat helpless to influence, and (c) you are willing to suffer a bit if necessary to see achieved. (”Suffering” the meaning of “passion” in its root form.)
2. Decide on 2-3 behaviors or activities that are likely to move you toward those outcomes.
3. Track your progress on each of those behaviors or activities every single day. This is important, because it will improve consistency and begin to create a self-fueling well of motivation to continue to pursue the outcomes.

Whether your chosen outcomes are personal or professional, commit to engaging in those behaviors and activities every day until you see results. Or, adapt them as needed. The key is consistency and progress each day.

When we lose the larger narrative, the key is to re-claim the smaller ones. When the grand story is chaotic, purpose is uncovered in the details.

Re-tether yourself to important outcomes, cultivate your productive passion, and re-discover the narrative of your life and work.

The speaker lineup was off the charts

Fellow speakers included film icon James Cameron, Danielle Feinberg from PIXAR, engineer and astronaut Kat Echazarreta, Jordan Peterson, author Dorie Clark, researcher Rahaf Harfoush, and many others. I had the opportunity to attend many of the other talks and I took pages of notes. (I’m going to share some ideas in another post.)

The informal conversations were just as (or more) valuable

The event organizers also did a fantastic job of creating an atmosphere that encouraged networking and collaboration. There were plenty of opportunities to meet and chat with other speakers and attendees, whether it was over a cup of coffee or at one of the many social events. I found these informal conversations to be just as valuable as the formal talks, as they allowed me to learn about different perspectives and to build relationships with other passionate people.

The location was stimulating in and of itself

The festival’s location in Puebla, Mexico was also a highlight. Puebla is a beautiful city with a rich history and culture, from the stunning architecture of the city’s historic center to the local cuisine. It was also fascinating to learn more about the challenges and opportunities facing Mexico, and to hear from local experts about how they are working to build a better future.

The attendees brought the energy

But ultimately, what made the Festival de las Ideas 2023 such a memorable experience for me was the enthusiasm and curiosity of the attendees. It was clear that those who attended were genuinely interested in learning and growing, and that made for an inspiring atmosphere. Whether I was speaking on stage or chatting with someone during a break, I always felt that I was among people who shared my passion for ideas and action.

Speaking at Festival de las Ideas 2023 in Puebla, Mexico was one of those “pinch me because I can’t believe I get to do this” moments. I left feeling inspired, energized, and grateful for the opportunity to be a part of something so unique. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this event and for the community of thinkers and innovators that it has brought together.

The key lesson I’m taking from the event is this: it’s critical to put yourself in environments where you are challenged, stimulated, and dared to dream about what’s possible. And ideally, to do so in the company of other dreamers.

Have you ever walked into a company’s headquarters and passed an enormous marble wall engraved with the company’s values? There it is, in all its permanence and glory, greeting employees each day and reminding them: “THIS IS WHO WE ARE!”

Except, it’s not always. It’s who they were, once. Most people walk right past that wall without even paying it a moment of notice. They’re numb to it, and it doesn’t really hold any sway over their everyday behavior. Your culture isn’t defined by a set of tenets or a plaque on the wall. It’s defined by what you do.

If you say that you value boldness but always make the most comfortable decision, then people will cease to be bold.

If you say that you value customer service, but you are always snickering and telling stories about how annoying your customers are, then you will train your culture to devalue its customers.

If you say that you value truth telling, but you get defensive every time someone attempts to offer a piece of constructive feedback, you will cultivate a reactive, closed-minded culture.

This kind of hypocrisy is demoralizing. However, with clear ground rules and a stable culture around your team, people know they have the support they need to take risks. Your team’s experience of you is its experience of the company. Period. Full stop. When cultural expectations aren’t well defined, people tend to be very conservative out of a fear of getting it wrong.

Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of Visa, once said, “Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.” However, you cannot impose a culture on a team. Great cultures are grown from the ground up. A culture mandated from on high will fit like a suit that’s three sizes too large, never quite cut to size.

Because cultures are grown, you must treat yours like a garden. Just like a good gardener, you aggressively fertilize the aspects of your team’s culture that you want in abundance and diligently prune the things you want to get rid of. This requires constant attention on your part, because if you allow a few errant behaviors to slide, you will eventually find your entire garden choked with weeds.

Prune the “Ghost Rules”

Ella was a successful manager at a very large company. I was challenging her to think in a new way about a tricky problem she was attempting to solve, but when I offered my thought, she quickly responded, “Nope—that won’t work here.”

I paused, a little stunned at her abruptness, and asked, “Why not?”

She looked at me as if collecting her thoughts, and after a few moments she replied, “Hmm. Good question.” After further dissection, we realized that Ella’s response had been hardwired into her by a previous manager, who often had strong, fear-based opinions about new ideas. “That won’t work here” was a common reaction to many of Ella’s fresh thoughts, and over time she began to adopt these opinions as hard fact.

“Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.” – Dee Hock

What Ella had come up against are what I call ghost rules, or invisible limitations that people or teams place upon themselves for no good reason. Sometimes these rules become baked-in organizational assumptions about what is and isn’t possible, and the net result is that the team artificially limits the places it looks for ideas or value.

In order for your team to feel freedom to do its best work, regularly prune ghost rules from your life and your team’s culture. Following are a few examples of ghost rules I frequently see.

What Will and Won’t Work?
A manager from a large company once told me that he was instructed not to pursue a particular idea because “someone tried that back in the 1980s, and it didn’t work.” Apart from the laws of physics, a lot of things have changed in the past thirty years. It’s probably wise to revisit some of these baked-in organizational assumptions from time to time, just like Ella did, and ensure that you’re not missing potentially valuable insights.

Is your team paralyzed because of assumptions or narratives about what will and won’t work? Challenge any declarative statement by asking “Why?” If you do not receive an answer, then it’s possible that the team is operating by assumption, not fact.

Who Can and Can’t Introduce an Idea?
Some teams have invisible rules about who is allowed to contribute ideas to a project or who is allowed to offer thoughts or criticism about a decision. Although you do need to have a protocol for sharing ideas and offering critique, narrowing your scope of vision to just a handful of people can be extremely limiting. Ensure that everyone on the team understands clearly what’s expected of them and the actual process for sharing feedback or ideas, not the perceived one.

Are team members limiting their feedback or shrinking back from offering insights because they feel it’s not their place to do so? Identify and eliminate these ghost rules from your culture by replacing them—in the moment you catch them—with the principles that you want reinforce. In meetings, call on people who never share and ask them to offer their opinions. Invite new people to meetings who are always on the outside. Shake up the assumptions with actions that are rooted instead in your core principles.

What Is and Isn’t Acceptable Behavior?
Expectation escalation can quickly take over a team’s culture and turn it into a pressure cooker. When a team member decides to come in at 7 a.m. one morning, another makes it 6:45 a.m. the following morning. Then 6:30 a.m. Pretty soon, the cultural thermostat is set, and the assumed behavior is “we are a culture that expects people to arrive to work before the sun rises.” No one ever stated it explicitly, but all new hires observed the behavior and they assume “this must be the way it is around here.”

Are there behaviors on your team that are assumed to be expectations but are in fact simply a result of expectation escalation? Identify and squelch them.

The worst part about ghost rules is that some leaders actually use them to manipulate the team into achieving the results they want, regardless of the negative consequences. They might allow team members to believe certain things to be true—working weekends is expected, e-mail responses within minutes are required, challenging certain people’s ideas is off limits—in order to make their own life easier. Although people might comply with the ghost rules in order to keep their jobs, these leaders will not maintain the trust and respect of their team for long.

You want your team operating by simple, clear principles so that it can be messy and risky with the work it does. If people are wasting their mental energy just trying to comply with invisible barriers that no one has really set for them, they will feel disempowered and unable to bring their full heart and soul to the work.

Exercise: Identify any ghost rules that your team is following. These could be residual rules from a previous leader or organizational rules that you need to prune. Replace them with a counterprinciple.

Having worked with and interviewed hundreds of professionals, I’ve come to believe that each person also has a “sweet spot”. It’s comprised of the situations and activities where they are maximally effective, and where they create the most unique value for their effort. It’s not necessarily a specific job or task, but rather a mode they go into that separates them from the pack. It’s a unique kind of value that they become known for, and that others seek out.

However, in the flurry of busyness, many people never stop to consider the patterns present in those moments when they have delivered extraordinary results. They may be great students of the marketplace or their customers, but they have failed to be great students of themselves.

In Louder Than Words, I shared the stories of several people who had navigated to a place of effectiveness over the course of their career, and some of the lessons they’d learned along the way. Here are a few of the key insights I gained about finding your sweet spot:

To find your sweet spot, you must act first and sort later.

Your sweet spot is discovered through active contemplation, not passive reflection. The broader your base of experience, the more patterns you will be able to discern. Some people think that their sweet spot should be obvious, and as a result they waste a lot of time trying to “find their passion” or figure out their optimal career path before diving in. Instead, great contributors begin by adding value wherever they can, then spend time sorting the results later.

One practice that I prescribe in Louder Than Words is what I call “The Notables”. It’s designed to help you identify the times in your work when you truly shine, or when you have a unique response to something in your environment that could point to an opportunity to set yourself apart. For example, you can ask yourself:

– What problems seem to obsess me more than others, and why?
– What fills me with anger and compels me to act?
– What do others seem to come to me for instead of going to someone else?

Your sweet spot is not always something you enjoy.

Many people think that once they discern their sweet spot, work will be perpetual bliss. Not so. Often, the place where you are most effective requires doing something that you don’t find personally thrilling, but that allows you to have massive impact. I know many prolific writers who – gasp! – don’t enjoy the process of writing, and many great entrepreneurs who find building a team a bit of a grind. However, they also recognize that they are uniquely capable of adding value through these activities, and they are more in love with the results than they are with their temporary comfort.

The word “passion” is often tossed around casually as something necessary for great work. What’s ignored is that the root word of passion means “to suffer.” When you are passionate about something, it means that you are willing – if necessary – to suffer a bit on behalf of it, because you care so deeply. Great contributors have discovered a productive passion, or an outcome that they are so committed to that it fuels and animates their best work. Here are a few questions to ask as a starting point:

– What outcome am I truly committed to that transcends my desire for comfort?
– What have I been avoiding because I dislike it, but I know is a place where I’m really effective?
– What outcome am I committed to, and how can I structure more of my activity around it?

Finding your sweet spot is not necessary, which is why many people never do it.

Here’s the truth: you can be very productive for your entire career and never identify your sweet spot. You might even become celebrated for your work. However, the most gratified and ultimately successful people I know are those who have a strong sense of self, and have engaged in at least some attempt over time to shape their work so that it reflects their unique abilities. Others cannot do this for you. However, this also involves taking strategic risks and making bold decisions with your work. I encourage you to consider:

– Am I playing it safe and just drifting from opportunity to opportunity?
– What are the potential traps in my career path that could lead to years of misalignment?

Your unique contribution is needed by your organization and by the marketplace. Take the time to consider your unique productive passion, skills, and experiences, and leverage them to navigate to your sweet spot.

Oh, they would never admit to that. Instead, they would say “I’m not trying control them. I’m just trying to help them do things the way that I would do them.”

Yes, it’s the same thing. 

If you want your team to produce its best work, and you want to retain the talented people you’ve hired, you need to learn to release your control.  You must let your team members do what they do best. How do you do that, when you have deadlines looming and you’re worried that the team’s work won’t be up to par? 

Know Your Temptations

It’s important that you understand the times and situations where you’re most likely to jump in and try to control the team’s work. Are there specific situations in which you tend to grab the wheel and take full control of the work? Are there predictable times when your team just knows that they’re going to have to surrender everything to your wishes, even though they’d prefer a different direction?

Take some time to consider if there are patterns of control in your leadership. Then, spend just a little more time considering what the root of that need to control truly is. Is it a concern about your personal reputation? A fear that your team isn’t capable? A need to show your value to everyone around you? What is at the root of the control issue? 

Embrace The Stakes

Next, know what’s truly at stake with the project. Some leaders are tempted to control the work too early and too often because they’ve artificially escalated the stakes of a particular project, or they’ve mis-judged how important the early stages of the work are to the finished project. Yes, understand what’s truly at stake if you get the work wrong, but also be realistic about what it will take to get it to the right place. A project that’s 90% as good, but fully conceived and executed by your team, might prove far more valuable in the long-run because you’re teaching your team how to solve problems, not just telling them what to do. 

Set Your Limits and Checkpoints In Advance

There comes a time in the life of any project when you have to step in and make it what it needs to be. You can’t submit sub-par work to a client and say “yeah, but I really didn’t control this one!” You absolutely need to have a clear understanding of when to step in and take the wheel, and you must establish checkpoints along the way to help you determine whether the project is still on the rails, or needs your helpful correction.

Ask yourself the following:

1. How often do I need to check in on the team’s work on this project? 
2. What are the signs that my urgent action is needed to get the project back on the rails?
3. At what point in the project will I know it’s time to step in and take control, to ensure we have time to deliver a quality product to our stakeholders?

Again, there are times when you simply must step in to make things happen, but it can’t be everywhere and always. Let your team do what you’ve hired them to do.

Controlling your team reduces its effectiveness to the limit of your own personal reach. Don’t allow that to happen. Instead, teach your team not just what to do, but how to do it and why it works. They will reward you with the best work of their lives. 

I was recently reading Titan, the biography of John D. Rockefeller, and came across this quote from the iconic oil man:

“It is remarkable how much we all could do if we avoid hustling, and go along at an even pace and keep from attempting too much.”

Now, to be clear, Rockefeller certainly did not heed his own advice early in his career. That said, there is much truth in what he said. When you are in a state of perpetual hustle you may find yourself growing increasingly efficient at doing decreasingly effective things. You think you’re making progress, but in reality you’re simply running in place.

Hustle drives you, but rhythm sustains you

You are not a machine. If you don’t care for your mind and your body, sooner or later, something is going to give. You have to build infrastructure into your life to support your ambition, which means taking time to think, cultivating relationships that help you see the world in new ways, and managing your energy so that you are able to perform at critical moments throughout your day. However, when you are in a state of perpetual hustle you may miss opportunities to shine because you are simply stretched too thin. (I offered more thoughts about building rhythm in The Accidental Creative.)

Hustle yields incremental results, rhythm facilitates intuitive leaps

Think about what it’s like to run really fast on a strange and imperfect surface. You are constantly watching a few feet in front of you to ensure that you don’t trip up and hurt yourself. When you’re moving at breakneck speed, you rarely have the opportunity to look up and consider where you’re going.

On the other hand, if your pace is punctuated by rhythmic breaks you are able to consider the bigger picture and make intuitive connections that you might otherwise miss. Simply taking a bit of time each day to meditate, block out distractions and consider big problems you’re trying to solve, or feed your mind with inspiring stimuli can help you make more progress in less time than if you were in a full-out productivity sprint.

Hustle wears you down, rhythm builds muscles and capacity

If you’ve ever been involved in strength training, you know that it’s important to take a rest day between each day of exercise. This is because your muscles need time to recover from the wear and tear you’ve done to them. Without that rest day, you won’t see results from your exercise, which means that you’ll spend a lot more effort for much less gain.

Similarly, punctuating your “hustle time” with breaks allows you to recover from the work and also to reflect on what did and didn’t go well. When you pause to consider what is giving you the most “bang for your buck”, you can adapt your approach and yield greater results.

Yes, work hard. Of course you need to put your full effort into whatever you’re doing at any given time. However, be careful not to fall into the hustle trap. You might find you’re only sprinting on a treadmill rather than making true progress.