Rage fades. As brightly as it burns, it’s like trying to cook dinner over burning paper. You can’t do it – as bright and hot as it might get, it’s out too quickly. It’s just tinder, it’s not fuel.

So sometimes you just let it burn a little. You put it somewhere safe and you let it burn out. Packing it down can do the opposite – it can give you coal. Something with some sustained heat to it. And that’s exactly what you don’t want.

Sound and fury, signifying nothing. It is what it is. Don’t make it more.

Imagine that you’re doing something. A task, a project, whatever. It’s somewhat complex, but utterly within your competency range. In other words, you’ve got this. It’s easily a one-person task; in fact, additional people would probably make the task take longer, because the additional coordination would take more time than an extra person would save by contributing to this particular kind of task.

Now imagine that while you’re competently attending to this task, someone else interjects. They have good intentions and are trying to help, but because of the aforementioned circumstances, they are completely hindering you. They’re making the project take more time, they’re annoying you, and they’re doing all this despite the fact that they’re competent. They could have done the task alone, just as you can – they just aren’t self-aware enough to back off.

You’ve probably experienced this, in one form or another. It’s annoying as heck, isn’t it? Frustrating and unpleasant! Your task is taking longer, you feel untrusted, and in order to set a proper boundary it feels like you have to dismiss the other person’s skill set. You have to say “You’re hurting more than you’re helping,” even though that’s only true because of the nature of the task, not the other individual. It’s a big pain in the butt.

Okay, now I have some bad news for you. Sometimes – not always, but sometimes – you’re the second person.

“Not me,” you cry. “Never! I’m always helpful, surely I’m never an extra cook spoiling the broth.” Yeah, you. Of course you’re helpful, but we just went over how that isn’t the problem.

Here’s a situation that’s really hard for people: You see someone doing something. You know in your heart that trying to help will only hinder, but you also don’t want to seem unhelpful – or even worse, lazy. So even though you know you’re actively hindering the other person, you “help” anyway. Maybe the boss is watching. Maybe you just can’t overcome the social awkwardness.

It’s a mark of great confidence, intelligence, and respect to be able to just let someone cook. Very often, it’s exactly the best move. If nothing else, pay them a compliment – and then do your own thing.

People are marvelous about working together given a few basic conceits. They want to understand the directions, that’s all. They want to know what they signed up for. You don’t need a crystal ball, but you need to be willing to trust them with your best guess. When kids ask “are we there yet,” that’s all they really want. When you don’t know, that’s okay. Just share.

Some things just need two parts to work, and there’s no substitute for either.

A lock and key is a useful object. It can secure things, limiting access to only you. It’s handy! But a lock without a key and a key without a lock are both utterly useless chunks of metal.

If you have a key but no lock, it doesn’t matter how many more lockless keys you get. Still useless. Same with locks.

Some things just need their other half to be useful – and people are very often like this. No human is great at everything, nor wants to do everything. If you hire a very introverted but clever data scientist to run a whole company, she may enjoy some tasks more than others. Maybe she’s great at operations and lousy at sales. That problem won’t get fixed by hiring more introverted but clever data scientists!

It’s not just that you can’t do everything. It’s that a lot of what you can do isn’t valuable without the other piece. A battery doesn’t do anything on its own, and an electronic device doesn’t do anything without the battery.

Two (or more) people might come together and create absolute brilliance, but the key – pardon the pun – is in putting them together the right way. If you feel like you’re running in place, it might just mean you need to do exactly what you’re doing, but with someone new.

One of my worst habits is wanting to do personal projects “all at once.” When I start something, I tend to overdo it rather than taking appropriate breaks. Conversely, if a project looks like it will take more juice than I currently have available, I don’t start at all until I do.

Today, I started a major project that I knew I couldn’t finish. But I made progress – real, solid progress. And now, the full task is smaller.

I haven’t beaten this bad habit entirely, obviously. But hey… it’s a start.

Tonight, my oldest daughter said: “What’s the point of cleaning something if you can’t mess it up again?”

She then immediately followed that little gem up with: “That was smart. You should write a blog about that. You could say: ‘Tonight my daughter said, “What’s the point of cleaning something if you can’t mess it up again?” And as I thought about that, I realized how right she was.’ And then you could write about what you think about that. Because that’s how your blog always goes.”

Oh. My. God.

Forget about AI, the real danger is in your children just absolutely nailing you like that. Part of me feels very seen and appreciated, but another part of me just feels gutted knowing how easy it was for my daughter to reduce me down to my core elements.

Hey, at least I’m consistent, right? And she’s very clever and observant about people. And, much to my delight, she pays attention to what her father says. This could all be worse.

Oh! And yes, of course she’s right. Cleaning is a reset. To put something into a ‘ready’ state. If you aren’t using that thing, whatever it is – why have it?

When possible, I try to use communication to help people. I try to talk about things that I know about so that that information can be of use to people. I try to structure my conversations so that they lead people to figure things out. I try to compliment people.

The things you know about and the things you need are often very far apart.

Practice at helping people isn’t practice at asking for help. Those are different conversational methods.

Whenever something isn’t working, you have no incentive to protect it. Our inclination is to yield to the sunk cost fallacy and think that anything we’ve put effort into is worth shielding, but that just prevents us from getting to the root of the problem. No matter how much you’ve worked on something, if it isn’t functioning as intended then it’s worthless – so you might as well flip it on its head. Break it; shuffle it up and put it back together. You have nothing to lose, no matter how much your brain stings at the idea. But you might gain something. You might actually fix it, or you might realize how to build it better. Or you might just break the hold it has on you, which is worth everything.

I generally think of myself as smart. But I’m careful not to count on it.

I was shopping with my oldest daughter recently and we were browsing a camping supply store. While she was looking at stuff she wanted, I found a merino wool shirt I wanted. The hanger was threaded through with some sort of “security wire” that kept it from being removed from the rack.

I scowled. What a dumb thing, I thought. Are we really so worried about theft that I have to be inconvenienced in this way? That I, in turn, have to inconvenience an employee to come over here and what, unlock a shirt for me? Ugh. So I looked around, made eye contact with an employee across the store, and called him over.

He was cheerful enough, and his smile didn’t falter when I explained what I wanted. He then took the shirt off the hanger and handed it to me.

The hanger was threaded with security wire. The shirt was just… hanging on the hanger.

We both laughed about it (the guy had a good sense of humor), but it was also a really good reminder about how “smart” works. You’re smart when you’re in your “zone of genius.” That means both A.) talking about your area of expertise, and B.) having your ‘thinking cap’ on, i.e. not stressed, not distracted, not hungry, not tired, and consciously deciding to bring your higher intelligence to bear rather than going through whatever you’re doing on auto-pilot because it isn’t that important.

When you’re not in your Zone of Genius, you’re not a genius, no matter how smart you might be while you’re in it. So be careful counting too much on your own intelligence, and give other people grace when they make mistakes. They’re probably just well outside their particular zone, but they’ll be back at some point. So will you.

The more convenient something is, the less resilient it is to any sort of damage or change.

If something – an object, a process, whatever – is very easy to use, even streamlined, then chances are good that when it breaks, it really breaks. Yeah, that iPhone is real sleek. But you can’t fix it if it breaks.

Things that are clunky and inconvenient are also often resilient. A key component of making something convenient is hiding all the moving parts, so you can’t get at the things that need to be tweaked when the whole process goes belly up.

So be careful; a little inconvenience is good for you.