We do too many things in a binary way in modern society, I think. Take work – you’re either at work or you use some PTO and take a vacation. On or off. But that’s too extreme! Imagine there was a different bank of days you had called “Easy Days.” You still have to come to work and do your basic job, but you’re free from all meetings, new projects, or other unusual stressors, including any responsibility to answer emails. If you could trade 2 full PTO days for 5 of those “Easy Days,” would you? I sure would!

Just an idle thought, but more things should have scaled middle options.

People are way too concerned about layers of qualification beyond the highest relevant one.

Let’s assume that you’re not allowed into 2nd grade unless you pass all your classes in 1st grade. Then you can’t go to 3rd unless you pass 2nd, etc. If you know someone passed 12th grade, does it make sense to care if they passed 5th? One of two things is true: either they did, or they didn’t need to!

I think about that when I see job ads that want 10+ years of experience but also want a college degree. Why? If they have ten successful years in the industry, then either they have a degree that enabled that, or they didn’t need one!

This is just a reminder to not care about proxies when you can observe the direct thing in question.

Sometimes you need to solve a problem before you know exactly what kind of problem you have.

Imagine you can’t find your wallet. That’s a problem that you need to solve, but there are details you don’t know yet. Maybe your wallet is between the couch cushions. Maybe it’s on the floor of the convenience store you just visited. Maybe it was lifted by a pickpocket and they’re draining your bank account right now. Those are different kinds of problems, and you aren’t sure which one you have just yet!

What should you do? Start from the bottom.

It doesn’t make sense to panic and immediately call the bank to cancel your credit cards. It makes sense to try to solve the easiest version of the problem first – look in the couch cushions or the floor of your car. That’s not only the most likely situation, but it’s also the easiest to solve, and the attempt doesn’t hinder other attempts if it turns out you have to go up one level. But if you go with the most extreme solution first, then even if you find the wallet in your couch later, the cards are all already canceled and that’s a big headache.

Time is a factor, of course, but often the easiest solutions are also so quick they won’t meaningfully affect the major ones if you need them.

Remain calm, work your way from the bottom up.

My children absolutely adored my father, and the feeling was mutual. We were all so lucky for the time we shared together, even though it wasn’t enough.

Tonight, my son reasoned out that he’s now past the point in his life where he’s had more lifetime without his Pop-Pop than with him, and that made him extra sad. So the children and I all listened to some of his music together, and cried together, and hugged and talked about how much we missed him. It was very sad, but it was sadness together, and my father would have been proud that we could share that.

He lives on. In his grandchildren, in the joy he left, in the music we hear, in the adventures we share. He is in every moment. We miss him, but we hold him still.

Emulate, don’t denigrate.

There is a very common – nearly universal – mode of human thought that goes like this: “That person has more of what I want than I do. Therefore, they’re my enemy, and they’re stealing from me and/or harming me directly, and I can only get what I want by villainizing them.”

This is so common that you might not even realize how many things people say that essentially boil down to exactly that phrase.

Here are some uncomfortable truths: 99% of people who are doing better than you in some area are completely unconnected to and unaware of you. They’re not taking out of your pocket and they aren’t stepping on you, even accidentally. They didn’t cheat. They might have gotten lucky or they might have worked harder or they might have made better choices, but they didn’t do it on your back. And even more uncomfortable: they would probably be delighted to help you.

Even if they aren’t helping directly, anyone whose success is visible to you is basically lighting a path for you. You can see what they’ve done!

Replace jealousy in your heart with inspiration. Worry not about what others have, but be curious about how they got it. Learn, find joy, and get better.

The best cure for our self-limiting beliefs is conversation with other people.

Today I spoke with someone who was working on the self-limiting belief that any attempt at delegation on her part as a manager was inflicting some sort of serious harm on her team. She believed her role was to protect them from work by doing as much of it herself as possible. I have plenty of other posts about why that belief itself is harmful to everyone involved, but for today we’re just going to talk about her process in overcoming it.

As we worked together on her view, she came to a few really impressive breakthroughs and was ready to start empowering her team. But one factor still had her stuck: how to tell her team! Because she had this initial belief, she also believed everyone viewed it that way – and that her team would be very unhappy with her delegation, even though she recognized its benefit hersself.

I had her have a few conversations with other people who were team members of other teams, and their response was universal: they wanted meaningful work, to be included in the mission, and they wanted their manager to be doing things to help get them resources, connections, etc. – not just grinding on tasks they not only could do, but would help develop their skills and resumés to do so.

Our most self-limiting beliefs often lie to us and tell us that everyone believes that thing, which is why it can be so hard to overcome them ourselves. But get other people’s views and mix them into your own, and you’ll see the world more clearly!

When you pull weeds, you have to get the roots. Don’t treat a symptom of your problem and then lose focus. Even in the face of other problems, stay on target. Get those roots first, then you can plant everything else.

Emergency supplies are needed in a disaster area. You try to jam them all onto a small plane, and the pilot tells you the plane will crash with all that weight, if it even takes off at all.

“The supplies have to get there,” you respond, ignoring the warning. Later, no supplies reach the destination at all.

You have so much work to do that you’re staying until 9, 10, 11 PM, and going in again by 7 every day. A colleague tells you to cut back on the work a little before you burn out.

“The work has to get done,” you respond, ignoring the warning. Later, no work gets done at all.

There is a world of difference between making an excuse and explaining the cause of a failure.

The difference is responsibility, accountability, and ownership.

Let me give you two examples of bad ways to respond to making a mistake which resulted in a failure of some kind:

1. Sue misses a deadline at work and an important client is left in the lurch. When Sue’s manager asks her why this happened, Sue says: “The system was being buggy and so it was impossible for me to complete the tasks in the time I had, so even though I worked hard, I couldn’t meet the deadline. This isn’t my fault at all and so I shouldn’t be held accountable for the client complaints.” Sue is making an excuse: she’s explaining the cause of the failure fully but taking no accountability for the result.
2. Christine misses a deadline at work and an important client is left in the lurch. When Christine’s manager asks her why this happened, Christine says: “I’m sorry, I know it’s totally unacceptable. I’ll reach out to the client and smooth things over and let them know I’ll be able to have the deliverable to them by first thing tomorrow. This won’t happen again!” Christine is owning the failure and taking responsibility for both the outcome and the solution, but did you notice what she didn’t do? She didn’t explain the cause of the mistake!

If the system used to perform the work is having technical difficulties, that is valid! But often people with good work ethics are so intrinsically opposed to “making excuses” that they never even explain the circumstances because it sounds like an excuse.

As a manager, things like technical issues with my team’s main tool are of vital importance for me to know, and fixing them would genuinely go a long way towards ensuring that the original mistake doesn’t repeat. The problem with Christine wasn’t that she didn’t work hard enough, but she’s treating it like it was – and applying “work harder” as a fix. But the system is still going to be buggy, and Christine is still going to have a hard time.

The correct approach, of course, is both. You need to take accountability for the result even when there were valid obstacles, because of course part of your job is solving those kinds of problems and proactively communicating about them. But you also need to actually explain what would give you the ability to correct the mistake in the future. As long as you’re owning that future, you’re not making excuses – you’re making progress.

To land, gently, on the branch. That is your finish line, and your starting position. Your moments of rest between moments. There is nothing else; there is no ‘done,’ no tomorrow to postpone to. There is moment and moment, a nest for an egg, a moment and a moment again.