Tonight we had a really terrific storm. The combination of the recent heat wave and the tremendous wind sent up all sorts of strange atmospheric phenomena. For instance, in the moments after the storm had abated, the entire outside was bright, neon yellow-green.

It was fascinating. The entire outside was a radically different color than it normally is. It was like wearing filtered glasses. People were out on the streets marveling at it. It really was something you couldn’t capture in a photo, because people have seen filtered photos before and that’s exactly what it would have looked like. But seeing it with your own eyes was something else.

It occurred to me that the most likely explanation was just that we were seeing the same sort of water-based light fracturing that produces rainbows, but from a different angle. We were inside the rainbow.

It’s a fun reminder that everything you see is a combination of the angles from which you’re seeing it, and the lenses you’re seeing it through. Nothing really looks like anything – it’s all just you, and how you look at it.

If you ask to borrow someone’s tools, you had better return them promptly and in the same condition as when you borrowed them. That applies to just about anything you can borrow, but tools especially. Don’t be useless.

As a general rule, if you find yourself apologizing for something that you’re still doing: don’t apologize, just stop.

If you’re still doing it, then you’re not really apologizing. You’re excusing. You’re making excuses for why it’s still happening so that you can keep doing it.

Do what you’re going to do. But don’t insult me.

Sometimes, you know in advance that a particular iteration of a very enjoyable thing is going to be the last one. This is a gift – go out with a bang.

In pretty much any professional context, you will have to have meetings. You will have to join forces with other human beings on occasion to make forward progress on tasks and projects.

People hate that, and it’s perfectly understandable.

“Meeting” is such a dirty word for so many professionals, but I get it. Meetings aren’t the problem – bad meetings are the problem. And most of them are bad!

It always surprises me a little that professional meetings are so bad. Why should it surprise me? Well, because good meeting culture – proper processes for how, when, why to have meetings, who to involve, etc. – is a 10x force multiplier for effectiveness, engagement, productivity, and all that great stuff, while bad meeting culture is like trying to take off in a snowstorm. But even more than the obvious benefits is the fact that it’s not very hard to invest in getting your meeting culture to “great,” not just good!

Like anything, running good meetings is a skill. And like any skill, some people are really good at it. Because many people don’t realize that meeting culture has the impact that it does, those skilled facilitators are often languishing. But here’s the beauty of it: You don’t need any particular subject matter expertise to run an incredibly effective meeting on a subject. So a very small number of people with the right skill could support an entire organization.

We recognize this, broadly, for a lot of other skills. Most people in business accept that if you want an effective talent pipeline for your company, you need people who are skilled at recruiting and talent development, not subject matter experts on the divisions they’re hiring for. Some familiarity helps, but the core skill for what they’re doing is far more important. (A very skilled recruiter who knows just a little bit about engineering will be far more effective at hiring engineers than a very skilled engineer who knows just a little bit about recruiting.) Same for sales, marketing, HR, etc. We recognize that those skills are amplifiers, creating the pathways for the core of any business to function at its best level.

But not every organization has caught on to “Meeting Facilitation” as a similar skill. Being able to run meetings is just lumped in with “general leadership” and managerial skills (which are already woefully under-invested in by most organizations). There’s no “Meetings Department” the way there is for Sales, HR, Marketing, etc.

But imagine if there was!

Imagine if any time you needed to get some group collaboration and work done on an ongoing project, there was a skilled facilitator on your staff who could design and distribute an agenda in advance, manage the logistics of invites and scheduling, guide the discussion productively and arbitrate disagreements, point out bias or fallacies in thinking while the meeting was taking place, take and distribute accurate and effective notes, create follow-up action items and hold people accountable to them, ensure that everyone in attendance can actually helpfully contribute and that only those who can actually helpfully contribute are in attendance, and manage a host of other aspects of good meeting culture?

Did you maybe not realize just how much goes into truly great meeting culture? Well, that’s my point now, isn’t it?

A lot of toys for babies and toddlers just have a bunch of satisfying little knobs, buttons, and levers to mess with. They don’t do anything except provide some tactile feedback, but that’s plenty! Plenty of adult toys do this, too. I have a little “fidget cube” at my desk that’s just what it sounds like: a palm-sized cube with a different kind of button or switch on each side, to just fiddle with when I’m deep in thought.

Of course, as an adult, I at least know those buttons are fake. But like the toddlers, it seems like many adults don’t realize just how many buttons they’re pushing in their lives don’t do anything.

My father used to point to the “Push to Walk” buttons at crosswalks and say: “Do you know what that button is for? To give you something to do while you wait for the sign to change on its own.” (Of course, that isn’t true, though it is true that most of those buttons don’t work; they’re relics from when most crosswalks weren’t automated. Now that they are, the buttons are vestigial and truly don’t do anything, but they weren’t installed just to give you something to do.)

I read a lot about how to make better decisions. I read books on economics, psychology, statistics, and pretty much anything that addresses the mechanics of how humans make decisions. Most of my work is helping people make better decisions, so I’d better be good at it – though the reason my work appeals to me is that the question of human decision-making is fascinating to me to begin with.

I say that because after all my study, all my applied work, and all my experience in this field, I can confidently say that a sure path for most people to make better decisions is to make fewer of them.

Your mental energy and attention are finite resources. Likewise, your ability to learn from past decisions requires that the results of those decisions… well, actually result from the decisions you’re making. And both of those things are harmed by pushing a bunch of fake buttons, which is what most people do all day.

We are fooled (by a variety of intentional and unintentional features of modern life) into thinking that we have agency over a great many things that we do not, in fact, have any agency over. So first, we waste time making decisions about that thing (depleting our mental resources), and then later, we incorrectly attribute some future effect to being the result of that decision, clouding our judgment further about decisions we will be asked to make later.

Now, I’m going to give you a very controversial example and do something that I almost never do on this blog: talk a little about politics.

The example is this: I live in a very, very partisan state in the United States. In national elections, states like mine are called ‘reliable.’ There is zero chance that my state will deviate from the political party it has supported for ages in the upcoming national election for President of the United States. Given that condition and the rules of that election in this country, the absolute most sensible and rational thing for me to do is not only not vote, but to not even care or pay attention to it.

I can feel people’s hackles getting raised as I say it. People don’t like that, I’ve found. Hence why I don’t normally talk about it.

“But it affects you!” they cry. Sure, but that’s not the question. The question is: Can I affect it? And since the answer is no, why waste the mental effort?

“What if everyone felt that way?” Then the starting conditions would be different, and a different choice would be rational. I’m not exploring hypotheticals, I’m making good decisions based on the true and actual conditions of my life.

My small town has local elections. About 200 people vote in them, give or take. If I round up a few of my buddies and cousins, we can go make a major swing in that election. I can also go to town meetings (or just the local bar) and talk to most of those 200 people, too. At the local level, things affect me and I affect them, so it’s sensible to pay attention and care. That’s me being a wise shepherd of my limited resources for good decision-making.

At the national level, not at all. But here’s what happens: national politics (which actually has far less of a direct effect on your day-to-day life than various influences want you to believe) consumes your attention. You are cajoled into caring about it, goaded into expending limited mental energy trying to decide things about it. Forming and debating and defending opinions about it. Caring about it at the expense of something else. And then putting in the effort to vote. In real terms, you’re doing as much to affect the universe as that toddler with the big plastic button toy or me with my fidget cube. But you think that decision – your individual decision to pull a lever – had a profound effect on the world. If your guy wins, part of your brain attributes that to your actions. If life is generally good for you in the next four years, that same part of your brain will link that to the decision you made. That link will be utterly false, but it will further reinforce that you should do it again, like a mouse hitting a button and getting cheese.

Now, this isn’t just about politics, so I’m going to leave that be. But energy-draining and confusing Fake Buttons are everywhere. There are a thousand Fake Buttons on the dashboard of “Being a Good Parent,” and about 3 real ones. We get so distracted by all the fake ones that we don’t have the energy or knowledge to press the real ones at the right times.

There are a thousand Fake Buttons on the dashboard of “Making Healthy Dietary Choices” and about 3 real ones. Every weird label and misleading claim and bullshit statistic on an advertisement in the grocery store makes you think that your life will be dramatically different if you just tweak this level of this one weird protein or something, but they won’t add a second to your lifespan. What they will do is distract you from the basic concepts of good nutrition and exercise.

It goes on and on and on. Most decisions in your life are Fake Buttons. Most things either don’t matter at all, or they do matter but you can’t meaningfully affect them. But you sure can stress yourself out all the time! And you can cloud your judgment and deplete your mental resources so when you do get to those real, important decisions you either miss them or make bad ones.

“Go with the flow” is actually really excellent advice if you want to make better decisions in your life. Try it this week. Pick something you normally stress or obsess over and see what happens if you just stop thinking about it entirely. I’m willing to bet that the answer is nothing at all. I’m willing to bet, in fact, that if you stop pushing that particular button, the crosswalk will change all on its own.

If you can’t win, you have nothing to lose by changing the rules of the game.

Sometimes you’re the front-runner in whatever contest you’re in. You’re the most obvious, best candidate for the job. You have the high bid on the auction. You’re the better golfer. Whatever is happening, if you’re the clear favorite – then stick to it.

But sometimes you’re not. Sometimes you’re the dark horse, the underdog. If everyone plays by the normal rules, you aren’t going to win. Those are some of the most liberating moments you can imagine!

If the normal rules won’t give you the victory, then the opportunity cost of a crazy Hail Mary drops to zero. If you aren’t the best candidate for the role from a traditional viewpoint, then you might as well pitch them with something really bold and crazy. If you don’t have the high bid or the funds to get there, then offer a strange but intriguing trade instead. If you’re not the better golfer, then try out some wild swings or new techniques – or play tennis!

The point is, you aren’t obligated to play by the rules you’ll lose by. The people who win with those rules want you to think you are – but that’s part of the trick. You can always try to shake things up. You won’t always succeed. But that’s the point – you weren’t going to succeed anyway if you didn’t. Under those conditions, you’re as free as you choose to be.

And sometimes when you shake up the rules, you win the game.

There’s a saying in economics: “There are no solutions; only trade-offs.”

Young people in America are fond of saying that it’s hard (or even impossible) to reasonably own a home with the salary you can reasonably expect. They’re wrong statistically, but obviously some of them (the ones who are complaining, typically) are at the side of the Bell curve that has the lowest buying power among that demographic, so they may be right in their specific instance. But then someone will point out: “Hey, if you move to like a Midwestern state and get a physically demanding but readily available job, you can buy a 3/2 for like seventy grand and have it made.”

Do these people leap for joy, thanking that person for changing their life with this new info? Hahahaha. No, they find some reason why that seemingly great deal is actually terrible – usually some variation on the theme of “I want the lifestyle, culture, and amenities of the major city in which I currently live.” But that costs money! Lots of people want that, hence why it’s more expensive to live in a major metropolitan area.

Trade-offs! You can have anything, but not everything.

The real point is that you’re almost always choosing your circumstances, however much you don’t want to believe you are. If you feel poverty-stricken in San Francisco, just remember that you would feel downright rich in Iowa, but you don’t want to live there. It’s okay to prefer to live in The Bay! But that’s what you’re doing – what you prefer.

I’ve never been good at not being good at things. I don’t mean I’m great at everything, I just mean that I’m not generally good with accepting that I’m not.

If I’m not good at something, I want to get better. I want to improve my skills, my tools, my knowledge. I want other people to do it, too. I’m a fixer, a compulsive advice-giver to the point where I have to create rules for myself to not do that.

But lots of people do stuff not as a means of getting better at that stuff. Some people do stuff – shockingly! – just to enjoy doing it.

They don’t even have to be good at it! In fact, they can be downright terrible and still have a blast. I’m not great at that.

(Interestingly, I’m not a hyper-competitive person. I’m fine with losing games and contests – just not against myself or against the universe.)

I’m going to try to get better at that. Ha! I can’t even avoid it here – my mind defaults to trying to improve. I’m going to try to get better at being okay with not constantly getting better at stuff! What a riot!

Here is a complaint you sometimes hear about entertainment media, like television shows or bands or what have you: “Their early stuff was great, but they changed. They moved away from the core elements that made us love them, and we don’t love this different stuff.”

Here is another complaint you sometimes hear about the same kinds of entertainment: “They were great when I first encountered them, but they just do the same stuff over and over. It’s getting tired at this point and I’m bored of them.”

Sort of a conflict, isn’t it? If you were someone who made media like that, I could understand getting a little frustrated. “What do you people even want?“

Well, I’ll tell you a secret. Let’s say you hear a really funny joke. Side-splitting, even! You say “That’s a solid joke,” and you slap the person who told it on the back, maybe even buy them a beer because of the great laugh you just got.

Now, what’s better – they tell you the exact same joke again, or they tell you a joke that has the same structure but maybe swaps around the names of the characters or the type of food they were eating?

That’s right – both are terrible!

The fact is, you just can’t repeat a joke. Anything that relies on emotional impact can’t have that same impact again. It’s just not the way our emotions work. The second joke is never as funny.

The right move – the one that’s hardest on the ego – is just to get your win and then move on. Take your victory and leave ’em cheering. When you want to do a totally new thing, unrelated to the old one, great! You’ll have an audience. Because you didn’t drive them away with the second joke.