It is vital that you think about what you want in a neutral time and space. Before you even have options, you should focus on your desires as an inner conversation.

Why?

Because the stuff you don’t want constantly launches itself at you and tries to convince you that you do, while the stuff you do want sneaks up on you and you won’t even notice unless you knew to look.

Think about the old adage, “don’t grocery shop hungry.” If you do, you end up buying nothing but overpriced, flashy junk on the eye-level shelves with colorful packaging. If you’d made a list, on your own, of what you wanted to cook for the week while you were still home, you’d have gone in and found those things, even if they were tucked away.

This is true about everything. People take horrible jobs because they come with a fancy logo on them. They date terrible people who ‘clean up nice.’ They buy impractical, costly cars because of a good sales pitch. All these things happen because you decided to get before you decided what you wanted.

Most people wouldn’t know what they truly wanted if it bit them, so take the time to think about it in advance.

People don’t sign things enough. I mean, in general – an artistic flourish, a maker’s mark, a signet stamp, something. But you should be marking the things you’ve done!

There’s a reason artists sign their work. It’s not just for ownership – the artist will sign a painting even when they’re painting it for other people. It’s because your work is a reflection of who you are as a professional, and the more work you create, the stronger of a reputation you can build.

If people know it was you, that is.

But okay, there’s a world of difference between Picasso signing a masterpiece and you signing a slide deck, right? Heck no. They’re both professional creations that you worked hard on, and you want to reap the benefits.

Think of it like this: if Picasso sells a painting for $10,000, he’s getting more than ten thousand dollars. He’s also getting an increased reputation – one that allows him to charge even more for his next painting. He gets more opportunities to communicate with the artistic community.

But if you get paid to make an earnings report and by the time it reaches senior leadership it’s basically anonymous, you’ve missed that opportunity.

Remember what I said about “maker’s marks?” Your signature doesn’t have to be a literal one. It can be anything that marks it as yours. A specific style can become known as yours. A gimmick like a particular animal as a brand. It can even just be helpfully putting your email address in the footer of each page in case anyone has questions.

But make them yours. You work too hard to do otherwise.

A man walked down the street and saw a crumpled-up piece of green paper. Excited at the prospect of finding a $100 bill, he eagerly picked it up and smoothed it out. Alas, it was but a humble $1 bill, so he crumpled it back up and threw it on the ground. He wanted a hundred dollars, not one!

He kept walking and soon found another crumpled bill, but again it turned out to be only a $1 bill so again he discarded it. The route he walked was littered with bills (maybe an armored car had overturned nearby or something?), but they were all ones, so they all got discarded.

This happened three or four hundred times before the man finally threw up his hands and declared “There are no hundred-dollar bills out here! Guess I’m just destined to be poor forever!”

This happens more often than you think. The small opportunities and wins you discard while you’re searching for the perfect solution can add up to what you want. Don’t discard a positive just because it’s smaller than what you want if it’s bigger than what you have.

Jokes can be an incredibly dense information-transfer mechanic. They’re wonderful as a tool to learn a whole lot about a new domain.

Around 15 years ago, I was working in an environment that had, for whatever reason, a lot of hockey fans. I wasn’t particularly interested and definitely didn’t have time to dedicate to learning, but I wanted to know “enough to be dangerous” – in other words, enough to chat with my coworkers. I struck gold one day when I overheard a joke:

“Do you know how to make an Ovechkin? It’s a white Russian but with no cup.” [Cue sound of laughter.]

Now, I said I don’t know anything about hockey, but I know a good joke when I hear one, especially by the reactions. Without having to know anything else, there were many facts I suddenly knew:

1. Ovechkin is a hockey player, and he’s obviously Russian in origin.
2. He hasn’t won a Stanley Cup. (I actually knew what that was!)
3. The fact that he hasn’t won a cup is somehow weird – or else there wouldn’t be a joke worth telling.
4. The fact that people get the joke means that Ovechkin is probably an above-average player both in terms of ability and in terms of how well-known he is.
5. Therefore, he probably deserves a Stanley Cup, but has been held back for some other reason.

Those all turned out to be true – and that’s a LOT of information to transmit to someone with very little foundational knowledge via a single line!

(Incidentally, in 2018 the Washington Capitals did win the Stanley Cup, so finally that joke no longer works – go Ovechkin!)

The jokes of a culture carry a lot of information. Another example: when I was visiting Italy, I was given a tour of an absolutely beautiful scenic town by a wonderfully friendly local. As we took in a particularly lovely view from an overlook, he apologizes for the single factory that could be seen – in his mind, it marred the view somewhat. As someone who grew up around dozens of factories, it didn’t phase me in the slightest, but I was curious and asked what was made there. He said “concrete.”

Did you just laugh? If you did, I can tell you your national origin. If you’re wondering why on Earth anyone would have laughed just then, I can tell you that you’re certainly not Italian-American and from the Northeast.

It’s a deep stereotype both about and among Italian-Americans that they’re all stonemasons and work with concrete. Every Italian in New Jersey, New York, etc. has some uncle that made concrete steps or something like that. So my fellow Italian-Americans thought the story of me finding the one factory in rural Italy and it being one that made concrete was hilarious.

But if you didn’t know that, you could guess. If you heard me and all my cousins laugh at that story, you could gather it up.

And the thing is, every culture has these. Not just ethnic and regional cultures, but workplace cultures, industries, fandoms, etc. They all have their “in-jokes.” Jokes require a lot of shared information to be funny, so if you don’t think a joke is funny, chances are good that you don’t have the shared foundational knowledge. But if you’re trying to get it, jokes are a heck of a way to pick up clues.

Today I’m thinking about a strange pattern of human behavior that I’ve been able to witness on occasion. It’s far from universal, and most people probably won’t ever see it. Still, it’s been on my mind and I’d like to explore it a little.

I know a handful of people who, specifically in the time that I’ve known them, have gone from being private individuals to being public figures in some way. I’m not talking getting elected President or becoming Taylor Swift-level famous, but definitely people that have entered the spotlight.

Importantly, this transition also came with some amount (in some cases all) of their income or status (or both) coming from that. So people whose blog or YouTube channel or whatever “took off” and now that’s what they do.

This puts me in this interesting position where I know these people, privately and personally, but I also know their public persona. And how they differ.

Now, a quick aside – everyone is different in different situations, and that’s fine to a degree. I act differently in a professional context than I do with my friends or relatives. I don’t act radically different, but I do show different sides or emphasize different things, and that’s fine. So in the sense that someone’s public persona is their professional context, it’s fine that it doesn’t map perfectly onto their private life.

But sometimes the gaps are pretty huge.

A few things I note: one, the more time you spend in the public eye, the more you’re dragged towards the extremes of whatever you do or say or represent. You pretty much have to in order to keep adding fuel to that fire, but that’s a dangerous road.

Two, that particular direction – more and more extreme versions of yourself – starts to become the only way you can grow. Deviations are punished. Learning, changing your mind, evolving – punished. Even starting over fresh is hard, because your old reputation follows.

So, you either get repetitive or you keep pushing further and further out, which in turn isolates you further and further. Your own Overton window moves with you; the further out you push, the further behind you leave the majority of reasonable voices until you start to believe that the rest of the world really is within 20% of your viewpoint, even though by now you’ve gone really, really far afield.

I think this is maybe a macro version of a micro concept I think (and talk) about a lot – not investing your own agency into other people. I talk about it a lot in one-on-one or small group settings; how to retain your independence, how to not let other people take power away from you, etc. But if you become a “personality” with ten thousand followers, that’s ten thousand people who you’ve given control of your life to.

We think of these big public figures as manipulating their public, but it’s the other way around. They push you. The only thing you can extract back is resources, but not opinions. A massive online pundit can get his followers to give him money, but he couldn’t make them change their political views.

That’s why the only people who can survive under those conditions for very long are the people who only care about the money/wealth/personal power, instead of actually caring about an agenda. Who cares if you can’t evolve if you never cared about your topic in the first place – if it was just a vehicle to extract power?

Be careful out there. The best bubbles are small ones.

Dr. Henry Jekyll didn’t set out to create a potion that would turn him into a maniacal lunatic half the time. That was the experiment going wrong. What he was trying to do was create a serum that would take all of the nasty, horrific parts of us – the parts that became Mr. Edward Hyde – and separate them. His thesis was that his chemical would, in fact, create a Hyde-like character, but that it would be a separate entity from Jekyll.

Why did he want to do this? In the book, he wanted to create his Mr. Hyde so he could kill it.

When we have fear, anger, malice, despair, or anything like it – we bury it. We hide from it. We push it down and fight against it. We think we’re stopping it from taking us over, but we’re actually giving it all of its power.

99% of all fears evaporate if you not only say them out loud but talk through the actual sequence of events you’re afraid will happen. If you allow your fears to manifest a little, you can see how weak they really are.

Then you can kill them.

Every month, ask yourself these three questions:

1. What did you learn about someone else that you didn’t know before?
2. What did someone else learn about you that they didn’t know before?
3. What did you learn about yourself that you didn’t know before?

The only wrong answer to any of those questions is “nothing.” As long as you have any other answer, every month, then you’re building a better life. Three questions at a time.

Sometimes you are the captain of a sinking ship. Or at least a damaged one. Things are looking grim, and the grim people are looking at you. How do you keep everyone looking upward and onward?

Here are the three things I like to remember:

1. Small victories matter, and so does gratitude for them. When nearly everything is going poorly, gaining even a single yard of territory is a huge deal. You need to let people know that without qualifying it. Don’t say, “well, at least we got that, so good job I guess.” Cheer for your people like there’s no tomorrow. There might not be.
2. Roll up your sleeves and contribute. If the ship is sinking, people will listen to just about anything you say if you say it while bailing water yourself. There are tasks that simply don’t make sense for you to do in the times of plenty, but in the lean times, anything can serve the purpose of putting you where your people need you – in their hearts.
3. Don’t Panic. Advice so good it spawned a sci-fi empire (and earned a permanent spot as a tattoo on yours truly). Exigent circumstances don’t change what actions are valuable. Adapt as much as you need to, and not an inch more – 95% of what you normally do is still as good as it ever was. Keep people at their normal tasks, take the time to remind them why those work, and don’t suddenly get frenetic with your oversight. If you’re responding to an emergency by micromanaging or making drastic and untested changes, you’re spiraling.

Look for each little win, fight for them yourself, and don’t panic while you do it. Every dark patch can be beaten with this.

When you first move into a dark space from a bright one, you can’t see. Your eyes need time to adjust to the darkness but eventually, they do. In fact, human night vision is incredibly good when it’s allowed to be; most humans can function perfectly well in nothing but starlight if they’re given enough time to adjust to the conditions.

When you first move into a bright space from a dark one, you can’t see – and you’re in agony. The sensory overload causes physical pain. You recoil from it. You squint your eyes, turn away from the light, shield your face. The very thing your eyes need exposure to in order to readjust is also the thing you fight to avoid.

The descent into darkness is gentle. At first you can’t see, but the world gradually fades into view as more and more detail reveals itself to you. The world comes alive, sharing secrets one by one until you’re wrapped in a new world. And that dark world has literally, physically changed you – your eyes are a different shape, different chemicals start firing out of your brain.

The world makes it painful to leave it. It wraps its shadowy arms around you and it changes you in such a way that makes it harder to leave it.

There are other kinds of darkness, and they do the same thing. It wraps you up and makes the light painful. The transition down was gentle and easy. The transition up is painful and hard, so part of you – maybe a big part – resists doing it.

The first glimpse of light can be so blinding and painful that you retreat even further down.

But you have to remember that your eyes adjust. In both directions. The light won’t kill you; in fact, it will save you. You just have to endure the temporary pain of the transition. Your eyes adjust. So does your heart.

One time when I was a kid I had a bicycle tire that kept losing air. I couldn’t get more than a mile before I had a flat, so I asked my dad about getting a new tire. Instead, he suggested I patch the one I had, but I didn’t know where the problem was. The leak was slow and there was no way to tell where it was, or so I thought.

My dad took the tire over to the little kiddie pool my sister had and held it underwater while he squeezed it. Sure enough, a tiny but visible line of bubbles rose from one spot in the tire. Once the leak was found, it was easy to patch, and I rode my bike without problems the rest of the summer.

Okay, so something isn’t working about your current whatever – your business, your sales process, your daily life. You may not need a complete overhaul if you can find the part that’s leaking. So do what my dad did – put it in a different environment.

In the open air, an air leak is hard to see. Underwater it’s clear as day. You’ve been living inside that process for however long, so it’s become air to you. Someone else who’s never encountered it might be like water. Run something new through the system.

Those weird little tests can tell you a lot. If nothing else, they’re great creativity spurs – put your mind underwater and see what bubbles out.