Most people wouldn’t call me “outdoorsy.” I am what many might refer to as a “city slicker.” When I was a boy, my father and I would go camping a few times a year, but that was about the extent of my exposure to the natural world, and I haven’t been in many years.

Despite this, three things are true about me:

1. Despite not being woodsy, I’m handy and competent. (These are traits that I didn’t so much come by naturally, as much as my father hammered them into me as being essential.) So I didn’t think I’d be useless if dropped in the woods, just inexperienced.
2. I actually really enjoy nature on the off chance I get to experience it. I think very fondly of those boyhood camping trips.
3. I like doing things I don’t normally do.

So this weekend I drove into the William Penn State Forest, abandoned my car, and hiked out into the woods far away from any formal camping areas and got myself lost, to see what would happen.

I brought one backpack of limited and untested gear that I had actually put together a few years ago as a sort of emergency bag. That was about a third of my motivation, in fact: I had made an emergency bag but realized I had no idea if it would be worth anything in an actual emergency, and I wanted to test stuff. But the rest of the motivation was just because I hadn’t done anything like this before. As Captain Kirk said: “Because it’s there.“

I had a great time. I got well and truly lost on purpose, but kept track of my orientation and landmarks and such. I hiked for about 4 hours before I made a camp, and then was so exhausted from it that I slept in the early evening. I woke up at about midnight when it started to really pour, and since I didn’t think I’d get back to sleep anyway (turns out even this experience was no match for my persistent insomnia), I decided it was a good opportunity to see if I could find my way back off the mountain in the middle of the night, in the rain.

(Hey, I said I was handy and competent, not smart.)

So, in the woods in a state forest, in the middle of the night, in a rainstorm, it’s dark. But I had a compass and a flashlight, and a truly remarkable walking stick I’d found, so I was sure I’d be fine. Slick rocks on a mountainside, climbing over fallen trees, cutting through thorns; I’ll be fine.

Turns out I was right. It was actually really exhilarating to have no visual cues to my journey, using only orienteering skills I was mostly making up as I went along, hacking my way through dense forest. When I did spot a big landmark that I had previously noted as being unique enough to recognize later, a looming shadow black even against the prevailing darkness, it was a great thrill. I was able to navigate back to where I’d left my car in a shorter time than my initial foray, since I was moving with more purpose and not exploring. I left my walking stick propped against a tree; I hope someone else finds it as useful as I did – it’s not an exaggeration to say that it saved me from more than one fall down a mountain.

Have faith in yourself. You can do anything.

And look! I made a very decent camp:

Today my oldest daughter (age 7) participated in her first sparring tournament. She’s been in karate for a few years now, but has never done this kind of tournament before, and she was very excited. In her bracket, she came in dead last.

I was so, so proud of her!

She fought like a champ. She got more points in every progressive round, so she improved every time. She absolutely never showed a hint of being disheartened or doing anything less than her best. She congratulated every other kid that beat her like she was cheering for a best friend, even the ones she’d never met before today. And when it was over, she bounced around grinning from ear to ear about how much fun she’d had.

We absolutely talked about what she can do better – she was quite realistic about her performance, but not negative. She had clear ideas about what to improve and how to practice. She focused on the positive aspects too, like how she did win her last round once she found her “zone.” She also noted that this was her first tournament, which wasn’t true of any of her opponents. She’s certain she’ll do better next time; so am I.

As we talked about all this, I told her I was so incredibly proud of her. Half-joking (but in that way where I knew the answer was important), she asked me: “Even though I came in last?”

I hugged her. “You didn’t come in last. You did better than every single person who didn’t even try, who isn’t pushing to do better every day, like you are.” She hugged me back hard.

The truth is, I’m glad she didn’t come in first. She’s naturally good at a lot of things, and sometimes I worry that if she doesn’t come up against enough resistance she won’t develop a strong sense of perseverance. Given how excited she is for the next tournament, now I’m worried about that a little less. Daddy didn’t raise no quitter.

Ideas are an input. As inputs go, they’re not all that valuable. For instance, they’re significantly less valuable as an input than hard work, or time, or tools, or really almost anything.

But at the same time, they’re essential. Great accomplishments require ideas, but ideas alone will never get you there.

Too often, I think, people feel like they need to start with a “Big Idea” in order to get anything done. If they don’t have some perfect, awe-inspiring idea they don’t ever get started. But while an idea is important, it’s not primary.

You can start collecting all sorts of other resources first. And you should! Train yourself on anything, save money, become healthier, meet people. The more juice you have to spare, the easier execution will become.

Once you have all those things, it’s easier to step back and say “Okay, what can I do with this stuff that makes sense? I know how to do X, Y and Z; I have this amount of money saved, and I’ve cleared out this much time in my calendar each day/week/month. I know these people with these skill sets. When you put all those jigsaw pieces together, what picture forms?”

That’s a lot easier than sitting down with absolutely zero resources and trying to come up with a great idea. Even if you do come up with something, you’ll be daunted by how much work you’ll have to put into it, and great ideas will sound worse.

The amazing comedian Mitch Hedberg once joked: “I write jokes for a living, I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that’s funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain’t funny.”

How true that is! If you think of an amazing idea that will take a ton of work, you’ll convince yourself it isn’t that great of an idea after all. But if you’ve already done the work because you were smart and collected resources all the time, then the idea is already halfway to fruition.

Train your ideas to work for you – you don’t work for them.

People often feel intense trepidation at the thought of a bold move when it comes to getting what they want. I understand why; for many people, being “noticed” is the last thing they want. People fear the spotlight and the scrutiny that comes with it.

The old adage, “Fortune Favors the Bold” is correct, though!

When it comes to achieving your dreams, bold moves just work. Putting yourself out there and exposing yourself to failure is impressive; ironically, it’s exposing yourself to failure that dramatically reduces the chances of failing!

One of the mental roadblocks for most people when considering a bold move is to equate the level of boldness with the amount you have to lose if you fail. But it’s not like that at all!

In a casino, if you want to win $5,000 you have to bet $5,000, which also means that’s how much you lose if your bet doesn’t pay off. But in the world as you know it, that’s rarely the case!

For example: Applying to a job. Right now, you don’t have that job. If you want to apply, you can do one of two things:

1. Do what everyone else is doing and click “apply” on the link provided, fill in some boxes, and hit “submit.” Not bold, low chance of success, and failure means you don’t get the job.
2. Do what no one else does and create something wildly impressive and unique and show it to them in a creative way. Very bold, high chance of success, and failure means you don’t get the job.

Now think about that. The failure condition in both cases is exactly the same. You don’t even have anything to lose in the first place, because you’re going for something totally new! There’s no “greater failure” to accompany your greater effort. You just increase your odds of success.

This applies to everything. Asking someone on a date? Do it in a fun and creative way. Aiming for a promotion? You won’t get fired for being too impressive, so the worst case scenario is just not getting it. Whatever you’re trying to get, if other people are involved, you have to impress them. No matter how uncomfortable, you have to seek the spotlight, at least a little – that’s where the winners stand.

In the casino analogy, imagine you had a “free play” token, and two slot machines to choose from: both paid out five grand on a jackpot, but one had a 2% chance of success, and the other had a 75% chance.

Same jackpot (the job, the date, whatever). Same cost (your effort). Same condition on failure (just being back where you started). The only difference is chance of success.

Those machines are labeled “Ordinary” and “Bold.”

Pick Bold.

If time is a river, I’ve been swimming upstream all day.

I scheduled an appointment today, and when I got there it turns out I needed a document I won’t have for another week. Then I was an hour late to a video conference because I apparently don’t understand how British Daylight Savings Time works.

If I had known I would need the document, I wouldn’t have gone to the appointment. If I hadn’t gone to the appointment, I would have seen the notification that the video conference had started and been able to jump right on. And if I had known the video conference was actually starting an hour earlier, I would have been able to do a thing for my daughter that I had told her I wouldn’t be able to do because of the video conference.

Timing is everything, as they say.

None of these things were critical, and they all resolved fine. A rescheduled appointment is only the most minor of inconveniences. The host of the video conference was understanding and had no problem reviewing some information with me, and we’re meeting again in a week. My daughter is of course perfectly capable of waiting for this small favor, it just meant being a little more patient. So nothing burned down or exploded and nobody died.

But it was such a reminder of how important those small details are, and how quickly they can cascade when you miss even one.

I received a comment yesterday that really resonated with me. Before I tell you what it was, I want to talk about why it meant a lot to me.

I look around me, and every day I see people being absolutely amazing at their thing. Their job, or hobby, or passion – I just see people crushing it, and I love it. I always make sure to say so any time I can. I like telling people that I was impressed by their accomplishments.

Likewise, I enjoy a good compliment on my own successes. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t always take them well; I find myself defaulting to comments about how it could have been better or how I’ll improve the next iteration. I always make sure to express sincere gratitude, though – such comments really do mean a lot.

This comment I received, however, was very different. It made me realize that there’s a kind of compliment worth giving that I don’t give enough.

The comment I received was (paraphrased slightly): “I see how hard you’re working on this particular flaw you have, and I respect and support you for it.”

I hadn’t accomplished anything; hadn’t reached any milestone or success. I was struggling. But this person took the time to tell me that my struggle was appreciated and the work I was doing, even before reaching my goal, was worthwhile.

I don’t do that enough; I think most people don’t, in fact. We compliment the visible success, and not the (often) invisible work to get there. The comment wasn’t just encouragement – she didn’t say “I know you’ll get there if you keep at it!” Encouragement is valuable too, but she went beyond that and actually told me that the struggle itself, right now, had merit.

That’s extremely important. Some things you never fully “succeed” at. You just keep pushing, keep improving, keep struggling. It’s easy to get discouraged, and to think you’re doing nothing but treading water and that you’re stuck with your flaws forever.

Taking a moment to tell someone that you see them improving can mean the world, then. I’ll endeavor to do it more, and I appreciate so, so much that it was said to me.

It has been a wild few days for me. I’ve gotten a lot done in a short period of time.

I had to push myself harder than I normally go, and I had to really prioritize hard. I wasn’t super thrilled with what my “behind the scenes” work looked like. I felt sloppy for a lot of it.

But the end result was excellent. I accomplished my goals, and the end users of my work were really happy.

All these things that I do – they’re marathons. Consistent effort over time. But sometimes within the Greater Marathon you need a burst of speed and energy to get over a hump, and it’s good to remember how to sprint.

Yesterday I made my 200th post on The Opportunity Machine.

Neat! It feels like approximately five minutes since I posted my 100th post (which I wrote about here, and haha I also said “Neat!” at the beginning of that, I’m so lame). That’s a powerful lesson; don’t try to get to 100 posts, or 200, or any particular number. Of anything. Just take the steps. You’ll get there.

Lofty goals are meaningless alone; daily action makes the world go ’round. Stick to it. Make it a habit, a part of who you are. The results will fall into place around those habits. Put in the big rocks, and treasure the occasional glimpse of your success, but stick to the action goals. Even if your eventual plans are ten years away, make bite sized steps towards them. You’ll face plenty of failures, but you’ll learn from them, and then you’ll let them go.

Incidentally, this happened at the same time as another little milestone – I just passed 20,000 words in my book! They’re very, very raw and the more I write the more I realize just how big of a task the editing process will be. But you can’t edit what isn’t written, so for now I’m just focused on getting the raw clay down. One of the big barriers I used to have was being too much of a perfectionist about my own writing. This blog has REALLY helped me cure that, because when you have to deliver something every day, they won’t all be gold. But they will be valuable none the less.

There is value in virtually anything you choose to do to challenge yourself, anything you do to not just be a passive bystander in your own existence. Pick a thing and do it once. Then twice. From there, it’s all fun.

I often try to categorize behaviors I observe in others in an attempt to understand the patterns of that behavior. My goal is better prediction, so I can get ahead of potential problems or hurdles in order to more effectively manage my relationships with others.

I know that sounded pretty clinical, but really that all just meant “I try to actually think about why people behave the way they do.”

I also draw a lot of connections between observed patterns of behavior and certain results or other behaviors. Today I’m going to write about one such connection I’ve observed.

I’ve worked with a lot of people in my career. I’ve worked in some pretty large corporations and most of my career has been very workforce-focused, so I’ve interacted with an above-average number of people. And I’ve noticed what appears to be a good early indicator of career success.

A lot of people (a disheartening amount, I would say), automatically group everyone employed by the same company into two categories: “people I work with” and “people I work for.” In other words, they class-divide their workforce in their own minds, and treat the two groups as being incredibly distinct, often even adversarial.

(I should note: Though I see this more often in non-managerial employees, the phenomenon absolutely exists in management, in which case the two categories are “people I work with” and “people that work for me.” Just as unhealthy and everything I’m about to write applies to both.)

That’s fundamentally an unhelpful way of looking at the organization of a team, and if you do that (from either side of this imaginary line!) you’re hurting both yourself and your organization. A big early indicator of career success seems to be avoiding this trap.

As soon as you fall into this trap, you’ve put an unnecessary emotional bias into every interaction at work. Organizational hierarchy should exist only as a tool of efficiency, to help solve problems and organize work. It’s not a moral judgement or a relative measure of “worth.” Whether you’re an entry-level employee who sees managers as an unpleasant intrusion into your life, or a manager who sees non-managerial employees as pawns for you to command, you’re up to your ears in a terrible mindset that will rob you of success.

Not only do we all work together and have shared goals, but we aren’t distinct species. Those lines are all made up, and they get plenty blurred as well. As organizational needs change, so may those categories. Even if you don’t consider the relationship adversarial, just thinking of certain co-workers as fundamentally “different” because of their place in the org chart is not the way to succeed.

People who view their co-workers at different managerial levels not as distinct categories but simply as co-workers with a different function do much better in their careers. If you work in the marketing department as an associate, you probably view Jim in IT as just a co-worker with a different job function than you. You should view Sarah, the director of the marketing department, the same way – just a co-worker with a different function than you. If you are Sarah, you should view Steve the marketing associate the same way; not as someone “below” you, but someone who’s job is closely related to yours but different.

What’s strange to me is that the idea that people whose job is to help organize other people would somehow be considered “different” in the first place. This idea is so unusual to me, yet so apparently commonplace, that I started giving serious thought to why the idea seems to be so pervasive, and why people who haven’t even entered the workforce yet seem to have it automatically, so frequently!

Here is my theory: School. Forget about what you do in school, and just think about how it’s organized from a workforce management perspective. In school, there are absolutely two distinct “classes” of people. You have the student body, and the staff. There is no crossover; they are truly distinct. You never have one of your other teachers also sitting as a student in a different class, and no student ever gets “promoted” to teacher mid-way through the school year for good performance. The lines are absolutely rigid.

And of course, they’re often adversarial! Sure, students are ostensibly there to learn and teachers are ostensibly there to teach. But talk to any high school student OR teacher and you’ll hear plenty of stories of conflict. Students try to get over on teachers, teachers try to wrangle students, and the inherent power struggle is a constant, pervasive feature of high school life.

So most people go through years of existing in an environment where there are clear, distinct authority figures who have tons of control over you. Even if you’re a teacher’s pet with no conflict, you’re still viewing teachers as fundamentally “above” you; someone to sidle up to and impress. Your relationship might be adversarial or it might not, but the environment teaches you that in either case it’s not equal. They’re not your peers.

If you go to college, it’s the same scenario, so whether you go to college after high school or don’t, doesn’t matter. What happens is that whenever you’re done school, you’re dumped into the workforce, and you encounter a situation that superficially looks a lot like what you just left.

You see “authority figures,” a small number of elite, usually older, people, and then a larger mass of people under them. This looks a lot like school looked, and since you have plenty of experience there and virtually none in the work force, you automatically start to draw the same conclusions. Since you could never cross the student/staff line, you start by believing you can’t cross the employee/manager line. That those two groups are distinct, that they have totally different goals (not just different functions but serving the same goal), and that they’re probably at least to some degree adversarial.

You learn to view the world by class, in class.

I find that mistake completely understandable, all things considered. But none the less, the people that don’t make that error will do much better.

“Knowledge Proximity” is an important thing when it comes to solving problems.

Heck, it’s important for even knowing the problems exist. To understand why, you have to understand the life cycle of “the problem” as a discrete entity.

Very, very rarely do problems happen all at once, starting out as massive issues. Yeah, every once in a while a jet plane falls out of the sky onto your office building and now you’ve got a big problem, but that’s absolutely the exception.

Problems start small, so small as to be almost invisible. Then they spread like a fire, like a virus, like a ripple in a pond – use your preferred analogy. When they’re that tiny, the same thing is true about them that’s true of any tiny thing: you can only see it if you know to look and you’re looking very closely.

That means you need both a level of knowledge of relevant warning signs, and you need to be close to where the problem can originate. The people with those two qualities in any organization are generally the people in the trenches.

A brilliant leader, manager or CEO can come up with great strategies to solve big problems. But no matter how brilliant they are, they can’t see every small problem before it becomes a big one. And who wants to be a brilliant leader spending all your time putting out fires? You’d rather be building something.

One of the first things you should build, then, is a really good pipeline of knowledge from the trenches about what’s happening out there. In a certain sense, the cashier at a local McDonald’s knows a LOT more than the CEO does, even if they don’t know what to do with that knowledge.

Scale, of course, becomes a problem. One CEO can’t listen to direct first-hand reports from a million employees. So you figure out how many people a good manager can pay attention to, and layer accordingly. But then you run into the problem of all those layers just serving to insulate the top leadership from the trenches even further. You can’t listen to a million people directly, but you also can’t expect to put ten layers of management between you and the trenches and expect to get timely, accurate or honest information.

This is one of the reasons that large-scale organizations, whether they’re corporations, governments, etc., have such inefficiencies when compared to smaller ones. The only real solution is to both layer, and provide autonomy to the greatest extent you can to those layers. That way, the information doesn’t actually have to make its way from a cashier to a CEO before action can be taken.

If you’re a leader, respect the knowledge proximity of the people in the trenches, and build everything you can to get access to it.