The most important skill to learn if you want to be hyper-competent is patience.

Think about this: the best drivers (say, the top 20% in terms of efficiency of movement, control of the vehicle, situational awareness, etc.) get stuck behind bad drivers far more frequently than the worst 20% of drivers do. It’s simple math: if you’re a very competent driver, you’re moving around more efficiently and you’re seeing more road overall. If you’re average, then sometimes you’re stuck behind a bad driver and other times you’re the bad driver someone else is stuck behind, and it all washes out. But if you’re very good, then most other drivers are by definition worse, and you’ll end up stuck behind someone who is hindering your movement far more often.

Hence, if you want to be very good at anything, patience is an essential skill.

Lots of technically competent drivers end up dead because they didn’t have the patience to avoid a road rage incident or let their tempers cloud their judgment. In any sphere, lacking patience can easily eat up any advantage you have from skill. Plus, you’ll be miserable all the time, since you’ll almost always be interacting with people worse than you at the thing in question! If you can’t be patient with those people, you’re setting yourself up for an awful time.

If you can’t keep a cool head behind someone doing 30 miles under the speed limit in the left lane with their blinker on, then you can’t do anything tough.

This is a cup. It can hold this many tears. When it’s full, you have to get moving.

Sometimes we can’t cope. And yet, we have to. The world leaves us no other choice. I think, on net, that’s a good thing. We can do amazing things when we have to, so it’s good that we have to. Because when we don’t have to, wallowing is addictive. Being coddled is addictive. It’s so easy to forget who we are, the amazing people we can be.

Fill your cup of tears when you need to, as you must, on occasion. But when it’s full, you have to get moving.

Tonight was the local Christmas parade in my small town. It’s a fun, joyous affair – decorated fire trucks, swarms of kids running around, music playing, and a big Christmas tree lit up on the lawn of the elementary school. Like many such local celebrations, there were people in costumes – Santa, reindeer, the Grinch, even Jack Skellington. Oh, and there was Dominick the Donkey!

Did you not know that last one? Then I can probably guess what culture you’re not from.

Because if you’re an Italian-American and/or you’re from the NJ/NY area, you definitely know who that is. But if you’re not either, then there’s a good chance you don’t. It’s a funny little cultural quirk, one I love dearly (probably because of how much my father did).

But I love funny little cultural quirks in general! I love the big things too – language, faith, dress, food – but I really love the little tidbits. The weird little rituals that aren’t even big enough to think of as “your culture” until you meet someone who doesn’t know them. Those are the real personality of a place, of a people. The rough edges and third dimensions. I hope we never forget them.

Hee haw!

There is a difference between being behind and falling behind. Being behind can just be circumstantial, a spike in duties that temporarily overwhelmed you. But if the delta between what you need to do and what you’re accomplishing each day/week is getting bigger, you have a problem.

Sometimes the answer is to work harder. More often, the answer is to do less. Check your obligations and see which ones it’s time to release. You can’t do everything, after all – and you can’t do anything if you fall too far behind.

Being creative generates a lot of energy – more than it consumes, if you’re working on something you enjoy. The problem is what to do with the excess! If you keep your creations to yourself, you often find that energy burning you out or frustrating you. But if you share with others, the energy is infectious. It creates a beautiful feedback loop of inspiration and collaboration; others become inspired to create as well, and share that energy back with you. No matter how small or “silly” what you’re working on might seem, someone out there will love it and you’ll encourage one another. Go live out loud!

When I think about the people who I consider to be very smart, the people with the most deep expertise aren’t who I’m thinking of. When I think about people who are smart, I think about people who are thoughtful.

Deep expertise on a topic is impressive, don’t get me wrong. But you can get there by being focused, determined – and of perfectly average intelligence. It’s a matter of time and effort. On the other hand, when I think about people who carefully consider things, change their opinions or views in the face of new information, and hold their decisions when they don’t know enough – these are the people I think of as geniuses.

The funny upshot is that the smartest people I know are also the ones who say “I don’t know” the most! It’s a very smart thing to say. Most of the time, you don’t know. But only smart people can see it, and only thoughtful people are comfortable admitting it.

Choice is a funny thing. If you ask the average person to pick between two drinks at a restaurant, they probably can do it quickly. Make the choice three drinks, and they’re happier, because it’s more likely that they’ll find a drink closer to their ideal. You’d think that would scale, but it doesn’t. Give them a choice between twenty drinks, and it might take them half an hour or more to decide.

Give them a list of one million drinks, and the choice becomes impossible.

Think about the replicators on Star Trek. If you’re unfamiliar, replicators are a magic box that can create literally any food or drink. Yet every time we a character ordering from them, you know what they get? Their “signature item.” Each character has a thing they like that they almost never deviate from. You can order literally any drink in the universe, and you get hot tea, every time!

But that makes total sense to me. If I had a box that could give me any of 10 different drinks, I’d probably rotate through most of them pretty regularly. But infinite choice paralyzes us with infinite chances to get it wrong. If there are one million choices, after all, then there are 999,999 choices that aren’t the best choice. And if you’re the kind of person who agonizes over whether or not there could have been a different choice that made you slightly happier, those odds will stop you in your tracks.

The only way to effectively make a choice in that scenario is to essentially forgo it entirely. You can say “surprise me” to the replicator, or you can just order the same staple every time. You can also try to restrict your own choice in some arbitrary way, like saying “I’m only going to even look at the first 20 items on the menu,” because actually evaluating one million different options is impossible.

(Of course, self-restriction in that way opens up lots of possibilities for abuse of the choice architecture. If you don’t believe me, think about the last time you went to Page 2 of a Google search, and then think about why companies will pay so much money to be on Page 1.)

I say all this to highlight a problem. Our modern society has become one of infinite choice. Search engines, job boards, dating apps – all of these things give us millions of options, and give everyone else millions of options too, to the point where nobody can simply coordinate any more. You can’t buy a lamp without being offered a choice of a million lamps. You have a choice of a million jobs to apply to, all of which have a choice of a million candidates to interview. There are a million singles in your area, and you’re one of a million singles in theirs.

No wonder everyone feels stressed and powerless.

My advice is this: Restrict yourself to the real. Buy a lamp from among the lamp stores within walking or driving distance from your house, and only if you physically go there. Make all your choices in person. Reject the artificial inflation of your choices. There might only be one lamp store in your town, and it might only sell four different lamps. But trust me, you’ll be happier.

I won an award at work this week, and it cracks me up:

The contents of the award are nice, and I’m proud of them. Apparently they reflect numerous pieces of feedback I’ve gotten from clients and coworkers, and the sentiment they express is something I definitely work hard to cultivate. I’m happy to get this award!

But it cracks me up because the title of the award category is “Unstoppable.” Ha! I work in training & development. I don’t know what’s “unstoppable” about either my work or the way I perform it, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ll just continue doing what I’m doing.

After all, you can’t stop me!

When my children were younger, I read to them every night.

It’s not that I’ve stopped. It’s just that on more and more of those nights lately, they’re reading to me instead.

What sublime satisfaction! To hear the voices of my children lift the words from the page while I close my eyes and smile. To hear the sounds of my investments in them echoing back to me.

I’ve never been big on letting others do for me. But when what they’re doing is gently taking the very reigns you’ve held for them for so long, there’s a poetry in it that calms the storm of the soul.

I hang on every word.

There are few things in life more joyous than when a child asks you to play and you are able to say yes. To engineer your life in such a way is a noble goal and a grand accomplishment.