If things are going well and you’re comfortable, that’s exactly the time when you need to disrupt yourself a little. You need to push to a new goal, take on a new challenge, or assign yourself something new to build. This is even more true the older you get.

It’s not just because it’s good for the soul, even though it is. It’s because it’s inevitable that your comfort will be disrupted anyway, from the outside. No machine lasts forever, and you will have new challenges thrust upon you by life, whether you want them or not.

When that happens, it’s not good to be out of practice. If you’re too comfortable, too sedentary, then those challenges double in difficulty. The very act of building a new machine becomes overwhelming, regardless of the inherent difficulty in the task itself, simply because your life is so solid. It’s good to have solid walls, but they go both ways.

Is your life good right now? Excellent – go find a way to make it a little harder. Just choose a good payoff for your challenge, and you’ll grow in all ways, and your new machine will be even better than your old one.

Happy New Month!

It’s time to revisit old goals. There are wins and losses, and I’m generally a forward-facing guy. But some of the goals I’ve failed to meet this year are important, and it’s time to build on what progress I made and cross a few finish lines. So this month, I’m taking stock of where I want to be by the end of the year and comparing that to the goals I’ve set so far and refining the plan. There are things to do before 2025 is complete, and I have four months to accomplish them.

Wish me luck, and may your own goals be revisited well!

Nothing lasts forever, and yet everything does. A moment may end, but the moment will always have existed. Nothing can undo what has been done, and so the moments you love can stay frozen in the amber of your heart for all time.

Carry what you want.

“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” So waste it with the best people.

Sometimes, you destroy something to understand it.

Think about dissecting frogs in school, if you did that. You’re taking something apart, destroying it. But it’s a physical thing, an object – the understanding it grants you is far greater. Objects only have the value we imbue in them, and our greatest value is knowledge.

So take apart that old toaster or whatever. Don’t cling to a thing so much that it stands in the way of enlightenment.

What’s your definition of “not doing anything?”

For some people, “I’m not doing anything today” means that they’re literally doing nothing but filling the time. Maybe watching some TV or reading, puttering about their home, whatever. For other people, “I’m not doing anything,” means that they have five different chores, six emails to send, two errands to run, and they’re going to get dinner out – but since all of those things are normal for them on a Thursday afternoon, they think of it as not doing anything special.

This is an example of how everyone’s baseline affects how they communicate. People have different baselines for all sorts of things: How busy they are, how they’re feeling, how work is going, how hunrgy they are.

If you’re going to be interacting with someone a lot, it’s good to get a feel for their baseline. How your employees feel about stress, or your partner feels about hunger, or your children feel about boredom are all baselines you should know.

And you should know your own baseline! Sometimes the world will be difficult to navigate if your baseline is far off from the average in some way, and you don’t know about it. But if you do, the adjustments become much easier.

At least, they do for me. Maybe your baseline is different.

I am a storyteller. It’s in my nature, and that goes along with a voracious appetite for consuming good stories as well. I love hearing people’s stories, and I love most fiction. Compelling cinema, great novels, brilliantly-crafted television: it’s all great fodder for me.

I do have a particular animosity for one type of flaw in fiction, however. I can “suspend disbelief” for any outrageous concept. Your story can have magic or wondrous technology that breaks the laws of physics, whatever. I do think it’s a mark of good storytelling if your magical conceits are internally consistent, but even that isn’t always a dealbreaker for me.

What is a dealbreaker is when a story relies on humans acting in ways humans simply never act. Humans in Star Trek are far more virtuous and altruistic than humans of the real world, but that’s built into the show – the writers address it directly quite often, talking about the advancements not only in technology but in culture several centuries in the future. That’s believable to me – after all, even though modern humans might seem selfish at times, we’re wildly more altruistic and peaceful than humans were a few thousand years ago (or even a few hundred). When someone sees a neighbor with a shiny new toy, they might be jealous, but 99.9% of them don’t even feel the urge to beat them to death with a rock and take it, even though that’s absolutely in our biological nature. So if time and culture can get us from there to here, I can buy that in the future we go even farther.

But sometimes stories that are ostensibly set in the modern-day “real world” feature humans as virtuous and noble as any Starfleet captain as the default, and that just becomes unwatchable to me. Procedural crime dramas that feature entire major city police departments whose members never lie, cut corners, or take the easy road instead of the difficult one are far more unrealistic than any faster-than-light spaceship or magic wand.

Why do I care? Because I think our fictional narratives are so important because they show us how our culture sees the world. Stories of romance can teach you to be romantic by showing you what tugs on the heartstrings of your fellow humans. Stories of bravery can show you how to overcome adversity and inspire you to do so. Stories about pain and loss can give you a connection to your own, and to others that feel as you’ve felt.

But all of that only works if the humans you’re experiencing that narrative through actually… act like humans. They can be noble, aspirational figures, of course – especially the main protagonists, who often should rise above the average in terms of the virtues of the soul. But they should also carry their flaws, bring their nobility to bear in realistic ways, and exist in a world where the average level of virtue is similar to what you’ll actually see.

If you read romance novels where every character immediately swoons at every suitor’s gesture, that’s not going to teach you much about how romance works! If your action hero is so amazing that he never even needs bravery or cleverness to overcome anything, then it might be a fun distraction for 90 minutes, but it isn’t adding anything to your own reserves of inspiration when you need it.

I believe in the power of stories, of fiction, to connect us to a wider world of humanity. And the stories I love the most are those crafted by people who have obviously met other humans, and understand them a little themselves.

You need to eat. Sometimes, that means you need a slapped-together peanut butter sandwich right now. Other times, that means saving your appetite for a really great meal you’re going to spend several hours preparing. The decision of whether to meet a need (or even a want) soon but with a lesser option versus “holding out” for a better option later can only be made by you, but you should make that decision with intention.

Our desires will often drive us toward the quicker option. That’s not always the wrong choice, but it’s definitely the wrong choice to default to. Instant gratification is a trap that can drain us of the mental resources we need to build a better life. Desire is fuel. It’s a resource that, when carefully cultivated, can turn into ambition and dedication, planning and prosperity.

When you need to eat immediately, do so. But as often as you can, for eating or anything else, plan and prosper.

I like vegetables. I’m not a vegetarian, but there are definitely multiple days each week where I don’t eat meat at all, simply because my overall diet choices prioritize a lot of veggies, beans, etc. I get a lot of my protein from things like cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, etc. (I mention this because encouraging “Meatless Mondays” is a great way to advocate for less meat consumption, as opposed to strict vegetarianism, if that’s your thing!)

While I don’t have any problem with going meatless, there’s one thing I strongly dislike: imitation meat. Not because I have a problem with the taste or whatever – some taste good and some don’t, just like any other food. I have a strong dislike of the concept.

If you don’t like something (like meat), you don’t have to imitate it to replace it! You don’t have to create a version of that thing that’s as close as you can make it. You can just not do that thing! You can just grill portobello mushrooms instead, or even create entirely different dishes. There are so many delicious things you can eat that aren’t meat! You don’t have to go through all the extra rigmarole just to imitate your adversaries.

Life is filled with “veggie burgers.” People’s attempts at duplicating a thing they don’t even like, just to appeal to people who do like it. But the people who like meat don’t want a thing that’s (in their eyes) almost like meat but worse. I’ve never seen a hardcore carnivore won over by a plant burger. But I’ve seen them absolutely demolish a pizza with peppers and onions on it, in a way that makes me feel strongly like they could live on just that for the rest of their lives.

The point is, if you think your different way is better, then stay different. Sell your ideas based on their own merits, not based on how closely they can come to the ideas you’re trying to defeat.

It’s so easy to put off a major task with smaller, more achievable ones. To some extent, that’s okay – getting anything done is at least forward progress. But remember, you will never run out of small, productive accomplishments within your reach, so it’s very easy to fall into the trap of never making progress on the major thing. Don’t let it loom too long.