You have something you want, and you don’t have it. The first question to ask is: who’s saying no?

Many people don’t ever ask this question and leave their desire and ambition on the shelf, with nothing stopping them from claiming the prize. If someone is saying no, then you can work on either convincing them or bypassing them. But often, no one has said no at all!

Maybe because you just haven’t asked. Maybe there’s no one to ask. But if you’re feeling stuck, try to answer that one question. Often, it’ll provide a lot of clarity.

I’ve got some advice for people feeling “burnt out” and overwhelmed, but you won’t like it. In fact, you’ll hate it. I know, because I give this advice professionally all the time. It works. It works really well. But people hate hearing it.

You have to cut the gas line. You’re burnt out because the fire is too intense, and it’s too intense because you keep feeding it. You can’t add a new technique or a new method or a new structure to it, because that’s still adding fuel to the fire.

You’ve got to put out the fire first, and rebuild. There is absolutely zero possibility that you can maintain your current levels of output, without interruption, and still cure your “burnout.”

I know. You don’t want to hear it. You don’t want to hear that (at least for a short duration), you’re going to have to just accept getting less done. Maybe making less money. Maybe pumping the breaks on your advancement. Maybe putting a major project on hold.

If a jet plane is going so fast that it’s about to break apart, it might be possible to redesign the plane and get it to where it can fly just as fast – maybe even faster! – without blowing up. But it is impossible to do that without landing the plane for a while.

You can’t do repairs while maintaining 100% efficiency, especially if 100% efficiency was killing you.

This is the first step: accepting this as truth. From a stationary position, a thousand different methods can work to rebuild your engine and do things right. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution there, because there isn’t one. But literally none of them will work without you taking a break.

I know you don’t want to hear it. If you were the kind of person who swallowed that pill easily, you probably didn’t get here in the first place. But the sooner you accept it, the sooner it’s over. And the sooner you can fly again – the way you were meant to.

Many organizational systems have a “miscellaneous” compartment. Whether it’s your workshop in your garage or the org chart of a company, occasionally inputs or tools don’t fit neatly into the broader categories you’ve created. Rather than create dozens of smaller categories, each with only one entry, we create some catch-all. A “miscellaneous” drawer for all the odds and ends, that sort of thing.

There’s nothing wrong with that, on the surface. But you have to occasionally step back and ask a simple question: is my miscellaneous category several times larger than most of my other boxes?

If so, you’ve got a problem. I’ve seen it plenty of times: imagine a toolbox with one drawer for “hammers,” one drawer for “wrenches,” and one drawer for “everything else.” That last drawer is not only going to be much bigger than the rest, but it’s also going to be pretty shoddy as an organizational tool! If you have a tool drawer with hundreds of gadgets, widgets, sprockets, and sockets – it’s time to organize a little deeper, don’t you think?

The same thing tends to happen in organizations. One person or department is put in charge of sales. Another person or department is put in charge of IT. And then some person or department gets put in charge of “everything else.”

They don’t call it “VP of the Miscellaneous Department,” of course. But that’s what it is. Whether it’s something like “operations” being used as this catch-all term for WAY too much stuff, or an “administrative assistant” doing a thousand different jobs, this is the workforce equivalent of dumping all the extra tools in one drawer.

Having no space for the et cetera is bad; it results in either things just not getting done if they don’t fit into the proscribed existing boxes or the creation of endless pointless categories for single incidents. But no department or role is more at risk from scope creep than the miscellaneous department, whatever it’s labeled. You can absolutely drown in et cetera.

So, audit your et cetera. If 60% of the objects in the “miscellaneous” drawer are screwdrivers, then make a screwdriver drawer. If your administrative assistant is spending 75% percent of their time correcting errors on timesheets, then make a dedicated position for that – both to do it, and to improve the process. I’d give some more examples, but you get it.

Et cetera.

Sometimes you mess up. You fail, you falter, you fall. And when that happens, you have to make a difficult choice from among three options. The choice is difficult because all three options are sometimes correct!

The three options are: quit, try again, or change.

Sometimes it is absolutely the correct choice to quit. Sometimes you try something and what you learn from the very first failure is that you have made a grave error in judgment and you should walk away from the whole thing. It’s sensible to do that when it’s appropriate! Maybe you attempt to jump a gorge on your skateboard and you end up really, really hurt – you barely survive. Once you’re healed, it’s very sensible to just not do that again.

Sometimes you should try again. You might have almost made it, or you might just need a little more practice. Maybe the stars didn’t align this time, but they could. And sometimes you should change your approach considerably, but still aim for the same goal.

How do you know?

When the horse bucks you and you’re laying on the ground, it can be hard to get a sense of the right answer. Is this horse a lost cause? Do you just need to get back on? Or do you need to walk it around a little first and get it calm, then maybe try a different riding technique?

A lot of it depends on how steep your success ramp is.

All goals need a time frame, or they’re not goals. You can’t ever succeed or fail if you don’t define “by when.” So a true goal is never “tame that horse.” It’s “tame that horse by the end of the year.” You don’t have infinite time in your life.

So whether or not you should quit, try again, or change depends a lot on how much time you have!

If you have a lot of time, then try again. Get in more reps, gather more data, practice, and practice some more. If you have a medium amount of time, change your approach. Try some variations, develop some new ideas, and see what sticks. And if you don’t have much time at all, quit. Walk away before you burn everything in your attempt.

Notice that “a lot of time” becomes “a medium amount of time” after a while! So this also ends up being your order of operations. First, try again. After some tries, change what you’re doing if you still haven’t succeeded. And if you try different things and still don’t get it, know when to walk away and save some juice for the next project.

You can tame any horse and you can climb any ramp, but you can’t ride every horse up every ramp, so be smart.

Have you ever experienced that unpleasant drop in your emotional state right after something good has happened? You experience something very pleasant, but the “reset” back to your normal state of existence then carries with it a sharp shock as the fleeting nature of all moments reasserts itself.

Perhaps this causes you to pursue pleasant experiences again, to recapture what you’ve lost. Perhaps it does the opposite: makes you reticent to pursue those experiences at all if the sensation of loss must accompany every highlight. Hopefully, it just brings you some reflection on the fact that our lives cannot be bottled and held; they must by nature always be moving from one moment into the next.

We exist in light and shadow and the same universal mechanisms that cause the sun to rise also ensure that it will set. What goes up must come down, as they say – but at least you can know it. You can have a safe cushion at the bottom for the fall, and a way to climb the stairs again.

The most persuasive appeal for vegetarianism I’ve ever heard was “Meatless Mondays.” Instead of trying to convince people of the moral imperative or health benefits of a total conversion, the pitch was simply: try skipping meat one day a week.

Many people do this accidentally anyway, this just makes them conscious of it – and lets them feel good about something they were either already doing or could do easily.

Seven people skipping meat one day a week is the equivalent of one full vegetarian, in terms of impact. And it’s much easier to accomplish!

Plus, there are large spillover effects. In the same way that “one pushup” is a great goal because you’re incredibly likely to do more once you’ve started, “Meatless Monday” can turn into more surprisingly quickly.

Pick a change that’s been daunting you. Try making a fraction of that change. Trying to quit smoking? Start with “Smokeless Sundays.” Drink too much coffee? Try getting half a cup instead of going cold turkey.

Direction is more important than distance or speed. Enjoy your half a cup.

Sometimes people want to help. Sometimes they insist on helping, in fact. And many times those people are worse than unhelpful – they’re an active hindrance. Still, you want (or even need) to maintain relationships with those very people outside of this particular circumstance. What do you do?

Have you ever seen an older movie or television show where a woman unexpectedly goes into labor and has to deliver a baby somewhere inconvenient? Someone will take charge and give people instructions, and the instruction for the husband is usually something like “go boil some water.” Do you know why?

To get the husband out of the room.

While there’s an outside chance that some sterilized water may be necessary, it probably won’t be. The main reason you have the husband doing that is so he isn’t doing anything else, like getting in the way. (Nowadays, this is a pretty sexist and patronizing view, but that’s not the point.)

So, have people boil water. Usually, this isn’t a negative – you’re doing someone a favor. They want to help, and you want them around in general. So you help them help you, even if there’s nothing to do.

When I worked at my very first job, often my boss would find work for us to do even if there really wasn’t any in order to make sure we were making money. One time he told us to go “organize the napkin shelf,” so we did. About fifteen minutes into the task, my coworker said “organizing the napkin shelf” and we split our sides laughing at the absurdity of the task we were working so diligently on. But even then we recognized that we weren’t being treated badly – quite the opposite. We were being treated extremely well, because the alternative to this task was to leave, unpaid. We wanted to work, and our boss wanted to support his employees, even without much to actually do.

This happens all the time. Your clients want to “help” with something they shouldn’t even touch. Your junior intern wants to help but it’s a sensitive task. Your kid wants to help you make dinner. No matter what the situation is, if you want to keep that person around, give them something to do. Let them organize the napkin shelf.

A model is only as good as its ability to explain.

Perfect models aren’t models anymore – they’re just, I guess, pictures. A model simplifies, but for clarity. Does yours?

Do people understand the real thing more deeply because of how you explained it? Can they make accurate predictions and realistic plans that will translate over to the living, breathing world?

Then your model is awesome. Practice that – practice modeling things. Sketch diagrams. Draw little doodles and flowcharts. Make them accurate as long as you’re not making them complicated.

See what you learn. See what you can teach.

Core upstream content. That means visible, actionable advice for an organization that also provides a landmark to return to when you get confused.

I don’t like creating “fire and forget” content that assumes people will absorb it perfectly the first time and implement it flawlessly with no challenges. That’s silly.

Instead, I try to create good starting points that also provide a way to circle back. Anchor points, “bases.”

Do this in your organization. Focus on instructional content that gives a core concept and philosophy of implementation, not endless edge cases. Let people come back to base when they need to. Welcome and guide them.

This way, you create a stable “expanding spiral” instead of trying to force a straight line that falters.