A machine may be made up of many gears, doing many things – the machine as a whole may have many functions. And yet, it may all be turning due to motive power applied to a single, central gear.

That’s you. You’re the central gear.

You’re the motive power; the gear that turns all the others. All the other functions of your life happen because of that central effort.

Now, if we look at a machine – a watch, a car, whatever – and it isn’t working, we might first check the motive power. Is it on? Is power being applied to the turning of the central gear?

If it is, then one of two things is wrong. The central gear might not be properly connected to other gears; it might be spinning freely, with nothing to catch its effort and power. Or there might be too many gears connected to the central one, such that they’re jamming each other up and working against one another.

The incredibly important point is this: neither of those problems are solved by applying more motive power to the central gear!

If the gear isn’t connected to anything, then spinning it faster isn’t going to do squat. And if it’s jammed, then applying more motive power is just likely to break something.

Reconfiguring is necessary. If you’re putting in your effort and you’re not getting results you want in your life, then you need to install different gears. Your goal shouldn’t be to change the way you’re spinning, either! You’re spinning just fine – but you might be hooked up to the wrong machine.

Take a look at the things you put effort into in a given week. How many of those things are being ignored or wasted? How many are generating secondary effects that are acting against you in some other way? Don’t change the amount of effort you put in until you’re sure that motive power is the problem.

It likely isn’t.

Seeing things that you don’t usually see is worth it.

It might hold very little direct value – it’s still worth it. Expanding your imagination, sharing experiences with your fellow humans, and even just stretching the muscle of your wonder are all worthwhile endeavors. They’re a good thing to spend a few minutes or a few hours on.

Seeking out moments that have spectacle. Invite others. Laugh about it. Gaze in wonder.

Happy New Month!

I am a sucker for theme, and July happens to contain my favorite holiday. So this month, my resolution is to break away from the things that do not serve me. To sever ties with things that hold me back and that demand more from me than they’re giving in return. We all have these connections in our lives – connections that once served us but have grown to be a burden instead.

Throw some tea in the harbor, make a few declarations, and emerge more free on the other side.

“I’m excited about it. I’m also excited for it to be over.”

This is a common sentiment. Sometimes really great things are still work; still intense. The best moments of your life might rapidly become torture if you had to maintain that energy every day.

This isn’t a contradiction! We need a variety of all sorts of stimuli in our lives. I love a quiet night in with a book – but seven of those in a row and I start to go a little stir-crazy. I also love doing escape rooms, but I don’t want to do them every day.

Don’t feel bad about stepping back from something and taking a breather. But remember – the finish line isn’t the finish line. Sometimes we’re so eager to be done with something, even something we love, that we don’t put the proper bow on it. We allow the true value of the moment to escape our lives without “getting what we came for.”

This is especially true when a particularly good moment requires a lot of prep work. Consider a huge party that you prepare for weeks in advance. You’re doing weeks of work for a single day/night of fun, and by the time the date arrives, you’re just so eager to put all the work and stress behind you that you don’t even enjoy the party.

If that’s familiar, then remember – work serves a purpose. If the work is more work than the fun is fun, you’re making a bad bargain with yourself. If you’re repeating “it’ll all be worth it when it’s over” instead of “it’ll all be worth it when it happens,” then you’ve crossed that line.

When you’ve reached that point, stop. You’ve prepared enough; if you can stop preparing right now and still have the event, do it. If you can’t, then abandon it – the event isn’t worth it. And no matter what, enjoy those moments; life is about living it, not waiting for it to be over.

Make a list of all the people whose opinions you care about. Close friends, colleagues you work with, parents, whatever’s true for you.

Now, observe your behavior for the next week or so. How much time do you spend interacting with people not on that list? How often are you finding yourself getting upset or into arguments because of people not on that list?

If someone wasn’t on that list, they should have no capacity to anger you. They shouldn’t rile up any strong emotions at all. And you should be spending very little time on activities directed at them.

You have a kingdom, and the citizens of that kingdom are everyone on that list. What happens outside of that kingdom doesn’t concern you – so don’t spend any of your kingdom’s resources on it.

The further ahead in the timeline of a project you make key decisions, the more powerful those decisions are. They have better leverage over the whole project, they’re made under less pressure, and they’re more closely aligned to a holistic vision for the entire project.

If you do nothing else, try to write out a vision that contains major decision points at the beginning of any project. Tactically, things will happen – you’ll pivot and react. But reactions shouldn’t be major decisions. They should be adaptations to keep you close to your vision despite the realities of the road conditions.

If “road conditions” cause you to want to make such a major decision that the project is changing – then you’re starting a new project.

It’s a harsh thing to learn, but the more you want to hear something, the more likely it becomes that the person saying it isn’t genuine.

If you’ve never heard the fable of the Fox and the Crow, it’s a simple story – the crow has something the fox wants, so the fox flatters the crow until the crow easily gives up the morsel and the fox steals it.

One lesson is: people being nice to you are sometimes lying! And… sure, that’s true. But that’s not really a helpful lesson, because it offers no method for determining who’s genuine and who isn’t. Surely some people are just nice, right?

But there’s a deeper, and more helpful lesson in that story. The crow was able to be tricked because he valued the external validation. It so affected his mood that it affected his judgment.

All scams start with implicit flattery: “You can’t be scammed because you’re just so smart, so you’d obviously spot it if I was scamming you.” If you allow yourself to be led into dark alleyways, you’re likely to be mugged. The way to avoid being mugged isn’t to try to figure out who is and isn’t a mugger, it’s to not go down dark alleyways with strangers at all.

You can believe the fox or not – but choose your actions as you would if you’d never heard him at all.

Small changes in your own natural behavior are telling. You should pay more attention to them than you probably do.

When we’re in a healthy mental state, we improve our environment. This is true across cultures, across ages, for pretty much everyone. When you feel safe and prosperous, you improve your environment because your gut instinct is that you’ll get to keep your environment. When you feel unsafe or unhappy, you don’t bother.

Far be it from me to suggest that everyone with a clean house is mentally thriving and everyone with an unkempt one isn’t, but the relative change is important. If you find yourself suddenly skipping over small tasks because they don’t seem “worth it,” then you should pay immediate attention to that change. If it’s a symptom of something else, it’s better to know sooner than later.

Some people’s own personal narrative requires you to be the villain in their story. More than anyone else, these are going to be the hardest people to deal with in the world.

They will be the most unreasonable, the hardest to communicate with, and the most resilient to any efforts you make, no matter how genuine, to bridge the gap. That’s because they’re not after anything external; they’re after a world that makes sense and paints them as the hero. And they already have that, as long as you’re the villain.

That means that attempts you make to do nice things actually work against you (at least in terms of your relationship with people like this) because it makes them mad.

Consider an employee of a company who feels like his lot in life is miserable because he has a greedy, villainous boss. In his mind, his personal narrative, he’s an oppressed but noble hero who would be able to accomplish amazing things if only “the man” wasn’t keeping him down. His lot in life certainly can’t have anything to do with his own choices and actions, no – in order to accept that, he’d also have to accept all sorts of responsibility and he’d be staring at the reality of needing to change core behaviors and even beliefs.

Ugh, no way. Far easier – far more satisfying – to paint the boss as the villain and be emotionally satisfied.

Now let’s say this boss is a genuinely good guy and doesn’t want his employee to think of him as a villain. So he gives the employee a raise, offers some extra leadership opportunities, has open-door policies for feedback, etc.

The result is that the employee, if they’re deeply committed to their personal narrative, get’s madder. They’ll project or deflect, they’ll get irrationally angry, and they’ll assume nefarious ulterior motives for these acts – all because they can’t accept that the boss isn’t a villain. Their entire sense of identity requires them to be oppressed, so they simply can’t accept that they aren’t.

Students who think they’re only failing a class because their teacher is “out to get them,” people who claim their exes were “toxic” and wholly responsible for the relationship’s troubles, or members of a political group who think that the world would be sunshine and rainbows if not for the other side – all of these people might fall into this category.

Now, it isn’t guaranteed, of course. Some teachers really do target specific kids, some exes really are toxic jerks, and some politicians really are nefarious scoundrels. But the narrative is too easy, too satisfying, too neat to be true in every case.

What this means for you is: if you find yourself being painted as somebody else’s personal villain, it’s important to first do some introspection. Don’t get too defensive and swing the other way, falling into the same trap. Check with (for example) your other employees, in whatever way you can that gets you the most honest answers – do they also think of you this way? Or do 19 members of your team think you’re a stand-up guy? This matters – just as the problem isn’t automatically you, it isn’t automatically them, either.

But once you’ve got sufficient evidence that you’ve simply become the bad guy in someone else’s fantasy, you’ve got to see the situation for what it is. If you can simply cut ties with that person, do it. It’s the best outcome. If you can’t, then you have to give yourself emotional distance – give them as little as you possibly can, and understand the invalidity of their thoughts about you.

Lastly, and most important, don’t try to change them. Don’t try to teach them personal responsibility or convince them that you’re not the bad guy; there couldn’t be a more futile effort. Just life your life as best you can with the good guys.

There is pretty much no definition of “fairness” that’s universal enough to be useful, even in the smallest circumstances. Consider: there is one slice of cake left and two people who want cake. You might think “It’s fair to cut the piece in half and each take half,” right? But what if one person is hungrier – or the other person already had cake today? What if one person is bigger? What if one person likes cake more? What if the cake is vanilla-chocolate swirl and there’s no way to cut it in half that preserves the same ratio of vanilla and chocolate on each half, but both people prefer chocolate? What if one person is about to go on a three-week trip to the Arctic and the other is going back to their job at the bakery that afternoon?

You might have your thoughts on each of those scenarios, but the higher the stakes, the more of those opinions there are – and the more strongly they’re held. So you’re simply never going to be treated “fairly” no matter what the situation.

Keep that in mind during every exchange where your instincts are to look for a fair or equitable exchange and condition yourself instead to be magnanimous.

Offer the entire slice of cake to the entire person. Genuinely, in your heart, with no malice or desire to be rewarded. I promise you, that will make your life infinitely better than any half-a-slice of cake ever could. Your soul will be enriched, your relationships stronger, and you will be happier.

If someone is taking advantage of you, the correct thing to do is remove that person from your life, not try to build a barrier against their greed out of “fairness.” It won’t work, you’ll be exhausted trying, and all you’ll do is teach that person that they can still take advantage of you as long as you’re a good negotiator.

When the stakes are small (like say, half a piece of cake) you’re always better off just giving away your portion in exchange for a happy life. When the stakes are large, you’ll be surrounded by people you can trust, because you remembered who argued over the proper way to cut a slice of cake and who didn’t.

Now go – give a little extra today, and know joy.