The big block of ice will melt faster if you break it into smaller pieces. Increased surface area. So it is with big tasks – simply sub-dividing them is progress. Things start moving on their own.

The larger the task or more frequently you perform it, the greater the impact of finding ways to automate as much of it as you can.

If you do one load of laundry every two weeks, then the benefit of any improvements in efficiency is pretty small. You’re probably fine doing it the way you’re doing it. But if you do four loads of laundry per day because you have a particularly large and messy family, then it’s absolutely worth it to find ways to improve that system.

“Automate” can mean a lot of things. It can mean finding ways to save labor via technology, but it can also mean delegation or outsourcing. For instance, if you actually were doing four loads of laundry per day, it would almost certainly be worthwhile to hire a laundry service and then do something more productive with the enormous amount of time you’d save.

Your own mental and physical effort can only stretch so far, and you can’t make more hours in the day. If you want to scale, automation is the key that unlocks your cage. Invest the time to look for solutions.

This Too Shall Pass, he said. Like Vonnegut; So It Goes. And it will. It will.

It will.

When you have a non-Newtonian fluid, like oobleck, the harder you hit it the more resistance it gives back. You can crack it with a hammer, but you can also slowly push your finger into it with almost no resistance. Go faster, and it sticks.

Sometimes life feels non-Newtonian. You can’t go faster, you can’t push harder. Tiny and slow.

There is no pain.

You are receding.

A distant ship.

Smoke on the horizon.

Thirty years ago, my father volunteered at my middle school to get the newly purchased computer lab up and running. That meant him spending most of each weekday over the summer in the otherwise empty school (his actual job was weekends only). Since most weekdays at that age were spent with my dad, that meant I was there, too. Far from an unpleasant isolation, we had a great time together messing around with new technology. I also didn’t really have anything else to do – I hadn’t yet made any real friends outside of my family.

Early that same summer, a woman moved to our town from somewhere else in the state. She didn’t know anyone and came for her full-time job. She was also a single mom working hard to make two ends meet, and so her dilemma was what to do with her son during the day while she worked. Since she was registering that son for the town’s middle school, she discovered that the school’s computer lab/media center was technically open all summer, even though the only two people there were my dad and me. Still, this was perfect for her, and she started dropping her son off every morning when she went to work.

And this was how I met my oldest and best friend.

We spent every day that summer together, and just about every day after that. Chalie (yes, “Chalie,” not “Charlie” with an “R,”) was the absolute best friend I could have ever asked for, at every age. I could dedicate this blog exclusively to stories about him and I’d still be writing years from now. He showed me what friendship was. He showed me how you could be loyal to someone while still pushing them to be better. How you could forgive someone over and over and over again without ever accepting that they couldn’t be more. How to show up for someone when they need it, and especially when they don’t think they do.

We had so many shared jokes and references other people said it was like the two of us spoke our own language that they couldn’t follow. We had our first job together, we practically lived at each other’s houses, we were more less in constant contact. There was never enough of him. He was funny, and smart, and adventurous, and generous, and cool as all hell, and he saw the absolute best in everyone, even if he knew you’d have to work hard to let it out.

He traveled the world. He lived on different continents, spoke multiple languages, smuggled things across borders, and found love. In all of that, he never “went away” from me. We’d live thirteen thousand miles apart and he’d talk to me every day. To outsiders our adult lives couldn’t have looked more different – he was exploring the world, I was raising a spectacular family – but we shared those trials and triumphs together. There was never a millimeter between our understanding of one another.

His nickname when we were young was “Superkid.” Even his mom called him that. I knew lots of people who knew him (he was that kind of famous, friends everywhere, you’d be so astonished who’d already know him when you walked into a place you were certain he’d never been before) that didn’t even know his real name, because “Superkid” was who he was. He was one of the most hyper-competent people I’d ever met, could solve anything, never worried. I was his sidekick, his shadow. In every way, he was cooler and smarter and better than I was.

He’d yell at me for saying that, though.

He had so many friends, friends he held onto for so long – a skill I’d simply never mastered. The fact of us being friends for three decades was surely because of his ability to keep friends, not mine. And yet somehow, with all those amazing people to choose from, he kept coming back to me. He never let me down once, and I know I’d let him down dozens of times. He’s rescued me more times than I could say, and I’ve never had to repay the favor. I will never know why he put up with me. It would certainly have been easier to write me off. But not only did he never give up on me, he kept me at the very top of his list. He called me his best friend. He would introduce me as his brother.

Last night I said goodbye to my best friend, my brother, my Superkid. After an intense but far too short battle with cancer, he left us peacefully. I was never able to bail him out of jail or save him from a burning building or carry him down a mountain or any of the other things he deserved a thousand times over for all the ways he’s done the same for me. For all the ways he’s made my life immeasurably better and made me so much better than I could have hoped to become without him. I was never able to do any of that, because he never needed it.

But last night, I was able to hold his hand. I was able to walk with him to the very end of his road. I was able to be at his bedside, my brother, my best friend, my Superkid. It isn’t enough. It isn’t nearly enough. I have so much debt to him that I will never be able to repay.

And I know what he would say. He would tell me to pay it back to other people, instead. To forgive them, and be a better friend to them as he was to me. To give all that energy to people I don’t think deserve it, instead of hoarding it for the people who do.

I will try, Superkid. I will miss you every day, and I will hold you in my heart, and I will use your memory to wedge open that door inside me that too often shuts, and I will let people in, instead. I know you would want that, and I certainly owe it to you.

I love you, my brother. Farewell, Superkid.

Go then – there are other worlds than these.

You cannot ask people to act against themselves. People can sacrifice, yes. But they will not oppose their fundamental needs. If you build your plan assuming they will, your plan will fail.

The rock. The hard place.

There’s no middle path, sometimes. Impossible choices still need to be made. What do you do then?

It’s helpful to imagine myself on the opposite side of my own desk. I get stressed and frustrated and stuck, the same as anyone. A big part of my job is helping other people get un-stressed, un-frustrated, and un-stuck in exactly the same kinds of circumstances. So when that happens to me, I can run myself through my own process.

Because it is a process. There are systematic steps to take. Reflection, contextualization, research, planning, action.

1. Reflection. Why am I stuck? What have I tried? What’s holding me back? Get answers, challenge them for honesty, get better answers.
2. Contextualization. Where does this problem fit in the overall goal? Go big. Look at the whole picture. Is this even a real problem? Is the solution somewhere else on the map?
3. Research. Okay, now I know where I am, where I want to be, and what’s in between. Time to look for solutions that have worked for others in the past, best practices, tips and tricks. The world is full of knowledge, and I don’t have to reinvent every wheel.
4. Planning. Now I know what I need to do, more or less, to get to Point B. So I plan out the individual steps and get to work.
5. Action. I do the steps, I iterate when things need adjusting, and I get where I need to go.

Walking other people through this process doesn’t even require that they know about it. It’s just a series of questions I ask, challenges I make, support I offer. Some part of it is getting people emotionally safe enough to see it, being a hype-man or a shoulder to lean on as the case warrants. When it’s me, I can cut through a lot of that.

(Tangent: I once reached out to a really great manager, who had helped me like this many times before, for help. He was very busy, but still took my call. When I explained my problem, he said: “You know me pretty well, you can probably guess all the things I’ll say here, right? So just pretend I said them and skip to the part where you feel better.” It was amazing, and it worked incredibly well as a way of empowering me to grow beyond needing him as a crutch. I’ll always be grateful for that moment, and I do that to myself frequently now.)

The only important thing is to remember that I have a process. When it’s me who’s stuck, it can be a tricky, hidden fact. But the process works; that’s why I use it.