My Best Boy, my Number One Son, my Handsome Mr. Man – he turns six today. As you might imagine, we celebrated in quite the epic manner – games and snacks and toys and treats aplenty, music and dance parties, and joyous family fellowship.

Even though the day was all about him, he thought almost exclusively of others. He bought gifts for his sisters with his birthday money. He gave everyone else a bite of his ice cream before having a single bite himself. He offered to play any game I wanted.

He makes me proud. Happy Birthday, my son.

Sometimes, when you’re forced to improvise you actually create something better than the primary option. Improvisation is innovation, and that’s the process that yields progress.

So it’s not the worst thing in the world when Plan A fails. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

There are certain kinds of goals where the target number is zero. You’re awarded if things don’t happen. If you’re trying to avoid the flu, then the correct number of “times you get the flu” is zero. The same for “number of times this store gets robbed” or “number of times I crash this car.”

Those are good goals, of course! But they can’t – they can not – be your only goal. They can’t even be your primary goal. Ever. Or you’re screwed.

Consider: If my only goal is “crash this car zero times,” then that’s super easy. All I have to do is never drive it. In fact, that’s the best strategy – every course of action that involves even going near that car is a bad move.

Let’s consider that you’re a guard at a bank. Your goal is to have the bank robbed zero times. But if that’s your only goal, then your best move is to lock the doors 24/7 and never open them. Guess what, you’re the best guard in the bank’s history! Of course, the bank won’t do any business, but that’s not how you’re evaluated. As the bank closes up in bankruptcy, you can apply for your next job as the “Best Bank Guard Ever” with a perfect rating.

Defensive Goals have to be tempered by ambitious ones. In an organization, the bank guard can’t ever be in charge. The person in charge has to be someone with a revenue target or some other affirmative goal – because otherwise zero of anything is easy to reach. And within a single person, you always have to temper defensive goals against, you know, life. It’s easy to catch zero colds and crash a car zero times. Just never leave your house.

I find that a good practice is to assume that your opinions are minority opinions by default. Don’t fall into the trap of assuming that everyone already agrees with you. It forces you to examine your views more critically, to come up with actual arguments in their favor. It denies you the easy option of simply claiming that you’re already in the right just because a lot of people agree with you.

Plus, your opinions actually are minority opinions far more than you realize. You are in far more echo chambers than you think. If you go around always thinking that the world is already on your side, you’re going to be very dismayed when that turns out to be false. And you won’t be prepared to defend the position you think is right – if you even do think it’s right. After all, it’s easy to agree with opinions you think everyone else has.

Oh, and don’t fall into the trap of just being counter-culture for its own sake, either. Some people take this advice the wrong way, and try to make all their opinions unpopular just to be edgy. I’m not talking about that – I’m talking about assuming your opinions are minority opinions even among people you want to like you. If you imagine even the other punks disagree with you, you’ll be smarter about what you believe.

You sometimes hear motivational phrases like “It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.” They’re referring to things like a diet, or parenthood, or your career, or some other large aspect of your life. The well-meaning advice is that you can’t try to do it all at once; you need to pace yourself.

Sure. But sometimes, it’s a sprint!

Some things you really do need to do in short bursts, and some things you need to do in longer campaigns, and sometimes you’ll need to do the same thing in different modes at different times. So it’s important to know how to do both!

Take work, for example. There will be times when you need to approach a project as a marathon – pacing yourself to avoid burnout, keeping yourself focused and productive over long periods, and maintaining integrity over the scope and focus of the project. And there will also be times when you need to get a lot of stuff done in a short window, and those are different skills and mindsets.

Most people’s struggle comes from determining which is which, and in switching between “modes” when they need to. If you pace yourself for a marathon you’ll lose a sprint, and vice versa.

Sprints are goal-oriented. You’re starting with the end in mind and doing what it takes to get there. Process improvements can be made later; right now, you get across the finish line however you have to. Marathons are process-oriented. Small improvements can have big impacts, so you should make those adjustments as you go and care deeply about how you’re working.

My biggest piece of advice is simply don’t mix and match. If you have a sprint task in front of you, then don’t work on your marathon tasks until the sprint is over. Whatever modes work for you will rarely work together.

A wise mentor once told me that attitude isn’t a static quality. You don’t just “have a good attitude.” Your attitude is a resource that can be shepherded, attacked, depleted, and replenished.

On top of this astute observation, he offered me actionable advice. In order to show up as your best self whenever it’s important, you need to protect your attitude. You’re going to need that resource to be a great partner to your family, or to nail the big presentation at work, or to finish the grueling race, or to make it through chemotherapy. Big things need that resource.

Little things don’t, but it’s very, very easy to “nickel and dime” away our attitude.

His advice centered around recognizing which actions and situations would deplete your attitude for no benefit, and refusing to engage despite whatever other allure they offered. Arguing with people unnecessarily, whether online or in person, was one of his favorite examples. Banging your head against a brick wall was another.

That can be a tough one for a lot of people. There’s such a thing as quitting too early, but there’s definitely such a thing as quitting too late. People rarely have a good sense of where the sweet spot in the middle is. Which makes sense, because it’s different from task to task and person to person, but here are some guidelines:

1. Two is generally the bare minimum number of attempts if you’re serious about trying to do something difficult. If you try once and fail, you’ve just wasted time – you’ve gathered no data, given yourself no opportunity to learn and adjust, etc. At least with two attempts you can make a comparison between two outcomes. If I try to throw a ball at a target and I overshoot it, my second throw – made with a little less oomph – will give me at least some idea of how my adjustments affected the results.
2. If you’re approaching a task with the mentality of “it’s okay to fail X number of times because I’m gathering data,” that’s healthy and good. At a certain point though, X+1 isn’t gathering you any more actionable data. This isn’t necessarily an easy thing to determine – in fact, a huge field of mathematics is dedicated to studying exactly how many examples of something you need before you can reasonably infer something about future incidences. And unless you intend to become a mathematician, you might just have to do some rough guesses. But a good way to approach it is this: after a number of attempts that you still feel good about (i.e. you’re not frustrated, you feel like you’re learning, etc.), pause and write down your theories, plans, and thoughts so far. Then, do another set of attempts, maybe half again of the original set. Then pause for reflection again – has anything changed about your thoughts? Have you revised your theories? If not, then that’s probably a large enough data set to make an educated guess about what to do next, and it shouldn’t be “keep trying the same thing that isn’t working.”
3. The cost and risk of each attempt matter a lot. The cost and risk of trying to crochet a hat when you don’t know how to do it are pretty low. The cost and risk of attempting to climb a mountain when you don’t know how are very high. When the cost is high, you need to adjust your strategy accordingly – and I’m talking about the entire cost.

And that last point brings us back to protecting your attitude. Banging your head against the wall costs you your attitude. When you send out the same resume to a job board for the 801st time, you are banging your head against the wall. It feels low-cost because it’s a click of a button, but the real cost is your attitude. It’s draining your self-esteem, it’s frustrating you, and it’s depleting the very resource you’ll need to actually succeed at the next steps in that process – or do you want to have your job interview when you’re at your most frustrated, depressed, and exhausted?

If something isn’t working, you need to stop. When you don’t know what to do as an alternative, it’s hard to, I know. Plus, the sunk cost fallacy is real, and we end up feeling attached to the thing we’ve already tried just because we put so much effort into the attempts that we don’t want to feel like it was all wasted. But it wasn’t wasted – if you learned something. Including (often especially!) that you shouldn’t do that thing anymore.

It’s time to figure out a new thing to do. That’s hard and scary, I get it. But it’s necessary. Go out and talk to people, start doing some research, consult experts. Compare what you’ve already tried to other options. Be realistic with yourself about what you can change. And above all: Protect Your Attitude.

People who overcome a particular hardship become excellent guides for the inevitable hardships of the future. Having survived something terrible is a tremendous skill that’s – by definition – hard to get, and yet we often don’t recognize it. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” may or may not be true. But it certainly makes you a commodity.

The next time you’re doing a little self-inventory of your skills and the contributions you could make, don’t just think about the abilities you specifically tried to cultivate. Think about the trials and traumas you’ve endured. Think about what took a swing and you and couldn’t keep you down. Dig the bullet out of your arm and realize it might be made of gold.

Other people want to avoid those hardships, and your lessons can be invaluable to them. Still others have recently suffered similar fates and want a map of the road to recovery. There’s a big market for people who came out the other side. And it can be a great way to resolve some internal conflict, too – helping others is a great way to release a burden on your soul.

There is a simple trifecta of ingredients for all success. If someone has the skill for the task, the tools to complete it, and the effort to drive the endeavor, then they will – eventually – succeed.

So if someone doesn’t succeed, and it’s your job to figure out why and correct it, then your job isn’t actually all that hard.

You can usually figure out which one(s) of the three is missing via process of elimination. Start with what you know to be true: Have they done this successfully before? Then they have the skill, and likely the tools unless something has changed. So they’re lacking the effort – and addressing their motivation is different than trying to upskill them. Or, do you see them putting in consistent effort but not realizing the goal? Then you don’t have to motivate (or intimidate) them; you need to get them what they’re lacking.

Make that your checklist, reinforce it constantly. It will solve most of your problems!

My son, two weeks shy of his sixth birthday, broke his collarbone today.

For such a painful injury, he’s doing amazing. He’s tough, brave, and gracious. And even at his young age, he’s mature enough to take the lesson that previous injuries – things he once thought were so dire – really pale in comparison.

I don’t wish misfortune on anyone. But sometimes the aftermath of misfortune can really teach us some gratitude. This isn’t his first major injury (though it is his first broken bone), and he gets tougher – and wiser – each time.

May we all learn such grace from our trials!

Go back in time to a moment when someone truly had a positive impact on your life. Think about when a mentor, leader, or other inspiring figure went above and beyond to really affect your trajectory in that way. A moment that might have resulted in an entirely different present for you had it gone differently.

Now imagine that person decided that they weren’t ready to help you and stayed home instead. Or they didn’t speak up when you asked for help because they weren’t sure if they were the right person to be there. Maybe they didn’t think they deserved the chance, so they waited for a “better time.”

That’s you, right now. That’s you every time you don’t go out and be the leader and mentor the world is calling upon you to be. You have gifts to give the world, and you’re hoarding them instead – worse than hoarding them, squandering them. And it isn’t about your gain, it’s about theirs.

The future versions of you, all over the world. The people that need their moment of inspiration, their spark of purpose. They need it from you. It’s not about what you deserve, it’s about what they need.

To be selfless is to step out of the shadows. Stick out your chin, squint your eyes, and don’t let those moments pass.