The day before the worst day is the worst day. When you’re in it, you can be in it – there is an active place for what you need to do and feel. The night in the garden, there’s nothing.

It’s my view that a major barrier to people realizing their most altruistic tendencies is a lack of confidence in what will help. We know there are problems in the world, but often they seem so vast or so challenging that we’re paralyzed, not out of a lack of desire to help, but by ignorance in the face of such seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

If you’ve felt this way, I have a wonderful thing for you to do: Keep your eyes open for those who seem to have found a way to move the needle on a problem you care about. And then, pile on.

Imagine you care about the plight of abandoned or unsheltered animals, but doing anything meaningful about it seems beyond your reach at the moment. You work full-time so you can’t volunteer at the shelter, but your income is stretched too thin across too many bills to meaningfully donate money, either. What can you do?

You can find those people who are volunteering at the animal shelter, and you can help them. They’re making some sacrifice in order to give their time, and you can’t. But you can make them a snack the night before, and drop it off in the morning before work, along with a note that says how much you appreciate their work. For people volunteering to solve a problem like that, a little gesture can mean the absolute world. It can mean the difference between whether they have the emotional resilience to volunteer again tomorrow or not. It can mean the energy they need to save one more animal this week.

Transferring the burden of helping off of the shoulders of the helpers is as meaningful as working on the problem directly. And it can often be done differently, allowing for people with different life circumstances to all contribute. Including you.

How would you answer if I asked you: “Is my pizza late?”

You might ask me how long I’ve been waiting. I tell you it’s been 35 minutes. So what’s the answer?

Hopefully, you’re thinking that you still don’t have enough information, because that would be correct. The next question should probably be something like: “How long did they tell you it was going to take when you ordered it?”

If they said 25 minutes, then yeah, it’s late. If they said 45 minutes, then it’s not. And if they didn’t say, then it isn’t late.

Now, if they didn’t say, that’s its own issue and they could probably improve their communication. But it still doesn’t make the pizza late. Of course, there’s an amount of time that a pizza could take that would likely be “late” even without a clear expectation upfront. If you ordered 3 hours ago, that’s probably late. But how about an hour? On a busy Friday night? The point is that without clear expectations, there’s a wider range of reasonable disagreement over what “late” is.

Which also means you have a bigger chance of being the jerk if you accuse your delivery driver of being late when the pizza gets there 40 minutes after you order it.

This is a common human error: we ask for something or give a direction and we don’t attach a time expectation to it. In our heads, we have one, but we don’t communicate it. Then, when the ask doesn’t manifest in the time we imagined, we get salty.

Don’t have salty pizza. Be clear about the clock, and you’ll deal with far fewer late arrivals.

Anything you cannot compromise on is a weak point. Your non-negotiables are your biggest vulnerabilities.

There are two lessons here:

1. Minimize your non-negotiables. The more things you refuse to be flexible on, the weaker your overall position in life, your career, your relationships, whatever. You’ll always have some; make them count.
2. Protect your position. If there’s an aspect of your life that you simply need to be a certain way, then you need to take extra steps to ensure that, above and beyond what you’d need if it was just a “nice to have.”

Think about someone with a peanut allergy versus someone who just doesn’t like the taste of peanuts. The person with the non-negotiable is more vulnerable; the wrong salad can put their life in danger, and so they might miss out on delicious meals, etc. They also have to go above and beyond to ensure their meals don’t have peanuts – they eat at restaurants less, check more thoroughly, carry emergency meds, etc.

Now apply that to anything in your life. If your current salary at your job is a “non-negotiable,” then your position is vulnerable. You’ll put up with more that you don’t like rather than walk away for a lower salary with more satisfaction and happiness. So you need to protect yourself: If you truly can’t make a dime less, then you’re in a bad, vulnerable spot. If your current income is matching all your bills exactly to the dollar, think how vulnerable you are! You either need to reduce your bills (if you can – things like medical conditions or other factors can make that difficult), or find more income, even if it means giving up leisure time, etc. Otherwise, you’re so utterly exposed to even the tiniest hiccup totally destroying you. One stray peanut and your throat closes up.

So minimize the things that you can’t negotiate on, even if that means adopting a more flexible position overall – driving a used car instead of a new one so you don’t have to be as reliant on nothing ever disrupting your career progression is a wise choice! That way you can minimize the number of vulnerabilities you have to defend with outsized effort.

Avoid the peanuts, try the asparagus.

Have you ever had that moment where another person uses exactly the correct kind of language for the setting, and manages to do it in such a way that leaves no doubt as to the venom behind their words?

We live in a culture where the actual words someone says are often given far more weight than their intent, their meaning, or even their actions. We police “bad words” said even in benign or educational contexts while people use double-speak and entendres to bully coworkers or students.

Don’t be that person. Say what you mean, and mean what you say. Be polite, but choose the words that match your meaning, and adjust your intent to do the same. Someone who doesn’t speak your language but hears your tone should come away with the exact same impression as someone who reads a transcript of your words with no tone at all attached. And the actions you take should match both.

Sometimes the act of searching for something and not finding it is more damaging to you than just not having it. Maybe you’re looking for a raise from a boss, an apology from a friend, affection from a partner, understanding from a parent. And maybe you just aren’t going to get it.

The best thing you can do is stop looking for it. Constant attempts to find what simply isn’t there will do more damage to you than a quick realization that you’re barking up the wrong tree, followed by a pivot to a new strategy for reaching your goals. You can’t make something be there by wanting it, but you sure can make yourself miserable.

Don’t allow the most important parts of your contentment to be dependent on the actions of others. Don’t drink that poison.

Arcades still rule. A hundred years from now, it might be a thing you hear about on whatever the equivalent of a “weird history podcast” is, but my kids get as much joy from them now as I did then. And the games are way better.

Find pockets of fun. They’re all over!

There’s an old axiom in business that says that whenever you want something, you can get it “good, fast, cheap – pick two.” And there’s a corollary to that which says sometimes you don’t even get two.

And of course, each of those things is on a spectrum. Something can be the cheapest option but still not cheap enough to be in your budget or give you a positive ROI on your problem.

So for each solution, do a quick check – which is cheapest, which is best, and which is fastest? And for each one, then ask: “How cheap is cheapest? How good is best? How fast is fastest?”

Sometimes the best solution is just the one that gets you out of a bad situation the fastest. If you can’t solve a problem, maybe you can swap it out for one you can. “Out of the frying pan, into the fire” can be a good thing if you have a bucket of water – wouldn’t help with the pan, but might put out the fire.

The point is, don’t always try to optimize. Just try to move. Out of the frying pan, if you have to.

Give to get. It’s a simple concept, but hard to remember when you most need to “get” something.

If you need kindness today, remember that you have an infinite capacity to give kindness within you. Start with a small act or gesture toward someone. Keep it going. Soon, you’ll receive kindness yourself – maybe not from the people you were kind to! In fact, maybe it will just come from yourself, as the acts you perform allow you to take some pressure off your own shoulders.

Or maybe one small act of kindness starts a great reaction and you end up with a new friend.

Whatever you feel like you’re needing, give it. It may seem strange to think “I need money, so I should give it,” but consider – you don’t need money, you need something else. Finding out what that is and giving some of it in a different way can be a boon.

Whatever you need today, I sincerely hope you get it.

What’s the difference between assigning a task and outlining an objective?

Here’s a task: “Go to the grocery store on the corner and get linguine, bell peppers, zucchini, olive oil, basil, and parmesan cheese.“

Here’s an objective: “We’d like to eat a delicious Italian meal tonight, with a maximum budget of $100, between the hours of 5:30 and 7:30.“

What’s the difference? Think about giving someone the task versus the objective. The goal is the same – at least, as you understand it. You want to eat a tasty Italian meal tonight. But will it happen?

If you give your dining partner the objective instead of the task, they have context. That enables them to actively drive toward the goal. Without that context, plenty can go wrong. If they get to the store and they’re out of linguine, your partner doesn’t know what to do. They have to call you and relay the problem, then you have to get actively involved. You have to listen to them detail all the other things that are available, or you have to give unclear instructions like “then just get anything instead.”

What if the grocery store is closed for renovations? Where should they go? Without context, maybe they end up buying bulk items from a superstore, which doesn’t fit your specific need at all. Or perhaps they buy frozen varieties that won’t be ready by this evening. The point is that every minor speed bump either requires them to call you back in for more input and effort, wasting valuable time and energy, or causes them to make likely (and predictable!) mistakes.

Even if they do everything exactly as you asked, they may miss other opportunities. On the way to the grocery store, there’s a new Italian restaurant that just opened. Eager for customers, they’re running a special tonight from 5 to 8, get a full Italian dinner for only $60! The partner who had the task walks right on by, while the partner who had the objective makes a reservation for 5:30.

If you’re not going to give an objective, you might as well simply do it yourself. Assigning tasks without context might work for very basic tasks or things the other person already knows how to do well, but it’s a very poor way to create new initiatives or projects.

So why then do so many managers and leaders tell people what to do, instead of sharing what they’re trying to accomplish?

Generally, three reasons drive this behavior: Lack of Clarity, Lack of Trust, and Need for Control.

Lack of Clarity happens because leaders are often bogged down in day-to-day tasks and don’t give themselves the time to think strategically. They also might not get much clarity from their own leaders, who simply assign them task after task. Many people, leaders included, rush from one to-do list item to another without understanding the context at all, or what they’re trying to achieve. Do this instead: Ask yourself, “What will the result be if this series of tasks is completed successfully?” Be SMART about this question – in other words, make sure your answer is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. If you can’t identify those features of the “result,” then chances are you’re chasing a bad goal and don’t even realize it. Once you do have the answers to all of those things, then you have clarity about your objective! Now you can just give the objective to the person who will be taking the bulk of the actions, and they’ll have what they need to use the full power of their mind on the task, coming back to you only as truly needed, which will be rare. Of course, that brings us to…

Lack of Trust, which is what happens when a leader can’t let go of the idea that the people under their charge couldn’t possibly accomplish these things without constant micromanagement. If you don’t trust your team or your partner to deliver on creative solutions and fulfill objectives, then it can be hard to give them. Of course, this is a vicious cycle. If you never trust a partner to “make a nice dinner,” then they never learn what you mean by that. So of course, they never can. As a leader, you need to give your people space to try this, and even to fail. If you don’t, then you simply can’t scale, can’t ever escape the constant need to pull every lever yourself. You might as well go grocery shopping and cook dinner yourself, because you’ll end up doing 80% of it anyway.

So let go of the Need for Control. You thought you were going to get a home-cooked Italian meal, and instead you ate at a delicious restaurant. You got everything you wanted – the food, the time, the budget. But you aren’t happy. Why? Because it’s not what you envisioned. You need to let go of the need to control the outcome, and instead set parameters. If you wanted a home-cooked meal, you could say that! You can set the objective however you want, and it’s important to be honest about what you really want. Many leaders assign tasks because they either don’t know what they truly want, or can’t articulate it well, or don’t want to admit it.

If you give yourself the space and time to think strategically, it will be easier to determine what you really want and what really matters. (Hint: It’s far fewer of the details than you think now!) Then, you can define those objectives in a SMART way. When they objective is met, check it against what you set as the goal. If the goal is met and you’re happy, success! If the goal met all the criteria that you set and you still aren’t happy, then it’s time to acknowledge that what needs to change is how you communicate!

Ask yourself why you aren’t happy. Be as specific as you can, remembering that your objection should also have to do with your objectives. Is your objection Specific, Measurable (and thus improvable), Achievable (you weren’t asking the impossible?), Relevant to the true objective, and has a Time-bound solution? If so, then the only thing that needs to change is that you needed to communicate that part of the objective better. But if not – and this is more likely – then you simply need to move away from the negative emotion that comes from a good outcome that you didn’t steer.

Replace it with the positive emotion that comes from watching a garden grow. That’s what you want, after all. A team of people who can pursue objectives and thus propel initiatives forward. It’s the difference between trying to get an army of wind-up toys to march across the floor versus toys with their own batteries. There’s only so much winding you can do.

If you want to truly elevate your leadership, this is the essential component. You need to be able to define and communicate an objective to someone. This is an amazing skill for life in general – not just office management. It’s the secret to getting what you want and building rapport with the people who deliver it. It’s a force multiplier for all your goals. And it’s the biggest stress reliever and productivity hack you’ll probably ever encounter.

It’s just objectively good.