You know, if you shine a laser pointer at a sponge, it stops. It won’t go through and shine out the other side.

But if you hold the sponge under a small stream of water, the water gets through.

There are a million paths that lead through the sponge. Just none of them are perfectly straight. So if you can only move in straight lines, it doesn’t matter if you’re fast and bright. You must be persistent and clever, instead.

Water is persistent and clever. Be like water.

I’m going to share a secret with you. A formula. A pretty tried-and-true way to stick out in someone’s memory.

“Once upon a time things were normal. And then they became bad, and here’s why! Then I did some cool things that only I could do. Then things were normal again, or even slightly better, because of what I did.”

That is every story ever. That’s the system. Replace the vague language with specific detail, but do not change the essential formula. That story will stick out in someone’s mind for a long time. Way longer than unconnected, irrelevant details.

Interviews. Dates. Sales calls. Family reunions.

You have cool stories in your past. You just might not know how to tell them. The above is how – use your details, truthful ones, things that really happened. But when you’re trying to figure out what order they go in, how to line them up – that’s how.

Anyone who you interact with in some way replaces you.

If you go to a restaurant, the chef there replaces you, if only for an evening, as the person who cooks your meals. By default, you do everything for yourself – all other interactions are acquired.

If you work for someone else, you’re replacing yourself with them as your boss. If you hire a nanny or use a daycare, you’re replacing yourself (at least some of the time) with them as the caregiver of your children.

It’s not a bad thing. But it’s a good reminder – always replace up. Always use someone better. Don’t replace just to replace. If you have to replace yourself, do it with someone you admire.

The best thing isn’t always good. But it’s still the best thing, and that means it’ should be your choice – the thing you act upon.

The best choice may simply be the best choice of available options. A think a truly powerful person is someone who can realize that even a bad option is the best one, and take it. If your leg is caught in a bear trap and the only way to make it back to civilization is to cut it off – well, not everyone can do that. But the ones who can’t don’t survive.

So let’s say you’re presented with an option – a course of action, a path. You don’t want to do it. Then you need to answer one question:

“If not, then what?”

If you don’t have a better idea, then then even an idea you hate may be the best idea. Of course, “nothing” is one of the choices – sometimes. Imagine you’re employed, but looking for something better. A job offer comes your way, but you don’t like it. “If not, then what?” Then you stay in your current job. Your current job may be better than the offered one. Okay.

But let’s say you’re not employed at all – you have no income, bills are piling up, etc. You get that same job offer. You still don’t like it, but: “If not, then what?” Then you starve – so take the job you don’t like, and then look for a better one.

I have a rule with my kids that makes me both more and less strict than a lot of typical parents. When I’m preparing dinner, I’ll get my kids’ input. I’ll say something like “I’m thinking about chicken and broccoli for dinner. What do you think?” If they say yes, great. If they say no – “If not, then what?” They have to make a suggestion. They can’t just say “no” and expect me to rattle off fifteen options until they pick one (parenting tip: they’ll never pick one). So I make my suggestion, and if they actually have a reasonable counter-offer, I’ll make it. If they say “how about ravioli instead,” then I’ll reward them for making a decision and make ravioli. But if they say “umm, I don’t know,” then they get my original offer.

That’s good training for anyone. “No” might be a complete sentence, but it’s not a complete plan for yourself. A long line of negatives and refusals won’t get you where you want to go. Your goal is movement. If you don’t like a particular direction, no problem – but if not, then what?

Ideas don’t have to be good.

I was in a brainstorming session with some coworkers today, and one of them shared a thought that she described as “quarter-baked.” As in, not even half-baked. I loved the term, but even more I loved the fact that she shared the idea anyway. It bounced off someone else, gathered momentum, ricocheted off someone else, and by the end of the meeting we had a process in place for a new initiative that would save us a ton of time and effort.

People are far too afraid to share their quarter-baked ideas.

Even in designated “brainstorming” spaces, too many people are afraid to “think out loud.” They want their ideas to be perfect (or at least complete) before they share them. Don’t do it. Don’t hoard your thoughts, especially when creativity is the watchword.

If you have to put a disclaimer on your vocalized thoughts in order to feel confident enough to share them, do so. Nothing wrong with it. Just say, “this is just a quarter-baked idea, but…”

It’ll never bake the rest of the way unless you put it in the oven.

I just saw an absolutely fascinating question posed on Twitter. The question is: “Assume you’re having difficulties finding a serious romantic partner. You meet someone who’s all the things you want, except you’re not attracted to them. There’s 0 spark. Would you take a drug (dosed weekly) that induces attraction to this person so you could be with them?”

I just have so many thoughts about this question and its implications that I felt I had to use space here to think them out loud.

First, my answer is an enthusiastic “yes.” Let me begin by actually drawing on an exercise I often use with my clients when doing career exploration. I tell my clients to draw a circle and divide it into some number of sections – somewhere between 4 and 8, doesn’t really matter. Then I tell them to fill in the slices with things they think make a “great job.” Common choices are: Satisfying Work, Great Boss, Good Wage/Salary, Location, Good Company Culture/Reputation, etc. We explore how each of those things matters, but there will always be trade-offs and you need to be prepared to examine those trade-offs in order to find a career you really love.

Now, some simple math here: if you have two people and they draw identical charts, but then one of them wakes up and decides that “Location” doesn’t really matter to them at all and they’re removing it from consideration, then that person has more options. It’s as simple as that. There’s absolutely a meta-trade-off between how many trade-offs you’ll accept and how many options you’ll have.

Now, the same thing can apply to romantic partners. Your “circle” could includes slices such as: Shared Values, Personal Ambition, Intelligence, Charm, Appearance, Social Status, Wealth, or any number of things. But if two people draw the same circle and then one of them gets to just remove ANY of the slices, that person will have more options overall. Simple math, no judgement attached.

Now, think of it another way – for better or ill, many people consider “wealth/income” (or at least wealth/income potential) as a factor for their ideal romantic partner. So imagine if the question was framed “You meet someone who’s everything you want, except they’re destitute through no fault of their own (i.e. they’re not lazy or irresponsible). They’re otherwise perfect. Would you date them if some organization was willing to give them a stipend equal to 50% more than the median income in your area while they dated you?”

What these questions both do is essentially take that slice of the circle out of the equation. Now, for some people, that slice is already absent. Some people don’t have “attractiveness” or “wealth” in their circle at all. Other people have it as a very large slice. People are so varied and strange and cool that anything you think is odd or unusual might very well be so in terms of statistical representation, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen or that it doesn’t work for those people. So when I tell you that there are already people who care absolutely zero about their partner’s appearance or income and are perfectly happy, don’t scoff just because you don’t feel the same way.

Or think of it like the career example, because that might be easier to wrap your head around: imagine that no matter what job you took, you’d get a decently above-average salary. Wouldn’t that significantly expand the number of jobs you’d consider taking? Surely there are several jobs that you know you’d love and would meet all the other criteria, but you don’t take because they simply don’t provide you with the amount of income you require. So by simply removing one of the many criteria you use to make such a decision, you broaden your pool.

So basically the interpretation I have is a straightforward one – anything that increases the mathematical likelihood of me achieving my goals without undue side effects is generally a good thing. So why then would anyone not say “yes” to the initial question?

I can think of two primary reasons: Associated Effects, and Moral Purity.

By “associated effects,” I mean the fact that no quality about a person truly exists in a vacuum. For instance: your healthy habits absolutely affect your physical appearance and on average, people in better health tend to be found more attractive to others. So assuming I took this drug and found someone attractive no matter what, it’s still possible that I may decide that I don’t want to partner with someone with terrible eating habits, lack of personal care, a drinking problem, heavy smoker, etc. I might artificially find them attractive, but I don’t want them in my life. However! While I think that many other people may respond this way, I think this is discounted by the phrasing of the question itself: “someone who’s all the things you want.” For me, that would mean that they’re healthy and have generally positive habits, so that eliminates the possibility of someone who is unattractive because they smoke a lot of meth or drink ten liters of soda a day.

Then there’s “moral purity.” I think some people might simply have a problem with the artificial nature of it all. Certainly I have a certain ill feeling when I consider the reverse: if I imagine discovering that my partner loves everything about me but has to take a drug to not feel physically repulsed by me, that might make me feel a certain way. I wouldn’t want a partner to feel that way. But that line of reasoning forces a very base, chemical/biological reaction to carry a lot of romantic weight! I mean, consider this scenario: you meet someone who you find wildly attractive. There’s 100% spark – but you despise everything else about them. By your definition, they’re a terrible person who would rank a 0 in every other category in your pie chart. Yet the spark is undeniable. Would you call that “love?” Would you date that person? Marry them? Would you advise a friend or family member in that situation to just take the plunge because truly they must be “the one?”

Certainly not! But if 100% Spark and 0% Everything Else isn’t love, then why should we say that 0% Spark and 100% Everything Else isn’t love? Find a couple that’s been married for 50 years and is still moon-eyed over each other, and I guarantee it won’t be because of “spark.” It will be because of lasting, enduring partnership built on all those other pie slices.

My honest guess is that if such a drug were invented and some people took it, it could wear off in six months and no one would notice. People who are fundamentally compatible bond, and whether that bond endures or not has to do with the people within it and the circumstances around it, not the spark. The whole reason we even use “spark” as a metaphor is because a spark doesn’t sustain – it either ignites something else or goes out.

So if the only thing standing in the way of you and something amazing is one tiny detail that is almost guaranteed to be temporary – physical attractiveness in a partner, a long commute for a job, the color of the paint on the walls of your dream home – just pretend that pill exists, and take it.

When a problem is easy, we see a solution clearly. That clarity solidifies the answer into a single point in conceptual space – no fuzzy outer area, no grey borders between right and wrong. Two plus two equals four.

So in our minds, we often associate “easy” with “clear.” Thus, we apply an equal reversal to both concepts: if “easy” is “clear,” then “difficult” must be “ambiguous.”

Hogwash. But easy to understand how people get there. They see a big, complicated problem and because the answer isn’t clear, they assume that the answer must also be “somewhere in the middle” or some such nonsense.

To be certain, some problems in your life will have answers that aren’t clear. It’s not wrong to acknowledge that. What’s wrong is thinking that every difficult problem you face lacks a clear, single answer just because it’s difficult to figure out what that answer is.

Most humans are so bad at determining cause and effect that we actually get it exactly backwards. Not only do we fail to identify the correct causes for the effects we’re examining, we actually mistake the effect for the cause in the same chain.

If you’re frustrated by something, try saying out loud the effect that frustration has on your life. Then reverse the two and see if that sentence helps explain your frustration. Here’s an example of a frustration: “Girls won’t talk to me.” So here’s what that sentence looks like if you say out loud the effect this has on your life: “Girls won’t talk to me, so I’m bitter and mean.”

Now flip it around: “I’m bitter and mean, so girls won’t talk to me.”

If there’s a lightbulb floating over your somewhat embarrassed face, then congratulations. A moment of introspection has given you a better course of action.

Let’s try it again: “I never get promoted.” The effect it has on you: “I never get promoted, so I half-ass my job.” The Flipside: “I half-ass my job, so I never get promoted.” Ahhhhhhhh.

Now, there’s definitely some “which came first, the chicken or the egg” going on here. But it doesn’t matter! Whichever came first initially, now eggs create chickens and chickens create eggs and that will go on forever unless YOU stop it. Don’t look for self-righteousness in blame or fault-finding. If the cycle is “I don’t get promoted, so I half-ass my job, so I don’t get promoted, so I half-ass my job, so I don’t…” then it doesn’t matter where it started – it matters where it ends.

And it ends with you, choosing a different course.

My co-worker told me a quick story about a client she’s working with: the client wanted to follow some creative pursuits away from her demanding career. She felt a particular burst of inspiration in that vein, and in that moment bought a desk plant so that she could associate that plant with the creative inspiration every time she looked at it.

I liked this, and it gave me an idea.

Imagine if every time you set a goal for yourself, you also bought a small plant to put in a window box or on a shelf in the sun. And you made a label with the title of the project, like “Exercise” or “Write That Novel” or something.

Then you only watered that plant on days when you worked towards that goal.

What would you have? A lush, growing forest of successfully completed or in-process tasks? Or a bunch of dead plants?

Imagine what this rule would do for your visualization of your ideas. First, you’d have a constant reminder to work on your goals every single day. Sure, the lives of the plants depend on it – but so does your life. The plight of the plants is just more immediate, more visible.

Second, it would be a great, intuitive way to see when you were taking on too many projects or ideas. You only have so much room in the sunlight for your plants, after all. Only so much time to water them. Oh yes, it’s a great idea to start painting again – but which plant will you move aside to make room for this one? Priority and focus are necessary in your life.

The tree that grows is the one you water. Treat your goals thusly.

There are two doors in front of you. One is unlocked and in fact wide open, and behind it is $100,000. The other is locked. You’re told that behind that door is $200,000, and the person telling you this offers to sell you a key to that door for the price of $125,000.

What’s the smart choice, here?

People are, in my experience, radically over-concerned with theoretical end results to the exclusion of both “what is actually happening” and “what is the cost to even approach the theoretical end result.”

You could just take the free $100,000. But many people just say “200k is more than 100k! Therefore, Door B is the better choice!” Absurd. Even if the key was cheaper, remember that you don’t even know that Door B has $200,000 behind it!

There are open doors all around you, and you can have a really great life by going through them. Don’t bash your head on the locked one just because you think something good might be behind there. Start with what works.