But it looks like one.

It doesn’t yield as much juice, it has a more complex taste, and it’s a slightly different shape.

A few weeks ago, there was a challenge involving yuzu on my favourite cooking show, MasterChef Australia.

The challenge was simple, not easy.

Contestants had to pick a single ingredient and build a complete dish out of it. The only other ingredients they were allowed to use in the dish were basic things like flour, sugar, salt, and milk (referred to as “under-bench staples” on the show).

Contestants were given four options for their core ingredient. One of which, was yuzu.

One contestant named Luke, decided to create a Yuzu Crepe Cake as his dish.

You don’t need to know anything about yuzu nor crepe cakes to make sense of what follows.

All you need to know, is that a key ingredient to Luke’s Crepe Cake was a custard, and in order to make that custard, he needed juice. Yuzu juice.

How did it go for Luke? You can watch this 2 minute and 40 second clip to find out: Luke’s Crepe Cake

Watching the clip isn’t a pre-requisite for what follows.

But you should watch the clip.

**

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post titled, The Area Under the Curve.

The basic idea is this: If you’re chasing some meaningful outcome, slowly increasing your effort over time will make it more likely for you to achieve that outcome.

This is different from: A. Giving up too early, B. Keeping your effort the same over time.

If you didn’t watch the clip of Luke’s Crepe Cake, I’m going to spoil it for you now.

He had a disastrous cook.

He treated the yuzu like a lemon, only to realize that it doesn’t yield the same amount of juice.

Despite this, he juiced roughly 10 yuzus to make his custard (a key part of his cake).

When it came to judging, one of the first questions that a judge asked him is whether he couldn’t get enough yuzus, because there were plenty available for the challenge.

Another judge goes on to say that there were in fact 50 yuzus available.

Luke stopped juicing after 10.

What if the magic number to help make his custard consistency better, therefore making his entire cake better, was 26 yuzus?

A little more effort and Luke might have got there.

**

Since you and I are not competing in a nationally televised Australian cooking competition (though, please inform me if you are), then we likely don’t need more literal yuzus to achieve that meaningful outcome we’re seeking.

We need more time.

Time is our yuzu.

Let’s take Luke’s lesson to heart. Let’s not give up too soon.

There’s more time available. Let’s use it.

I think about turbulence around this time of year because our family takes an annual trip that involves being in the sky for over 20 hours. One way.

Like I did a year ago, I’m going to continue talking about turbulence as a metaphor for things being out of control.

Usually, when things are out of control, it’s easy for us to feel like we have no choice in the matter. We just have to let it happen. We have to ride it out.

It turns out that when flying through turbulence at least, that’s not entirely true.

If it’s not true for turbulence, perhaps it’s not true for other times either.

**

Let’s get technical about turbulence.

Last year, I had the incredible privilege to sit in a cockpit during a flight. Two flights actually.

My Dad was the Captain, and it was his final set of flights before retiring from a 40+ year career in aviation.

When you sit in a cockpit, you get an entirely different perspective on turbulence.

You’re able to see what the pilots actually do during it.

I noticed three things, the first happens before you ever experience turbulence.

The cockpit has a radar, and the range on that radar can extend quite far.

This means that in some cases, pilots can see the turbulence coming.

Depending on their read of the severity of it, they may request a deviation. Meaning, they ask for clearance from air traffic control to deviate off their planned flight path by a few degrees or several, depending on what they see.

The second thing pilots might do is slow the plane down.

There’s something called turbulence penetration speed, and while that is unique to every aircraft, the actual number is something that pilots can go to if they have to.

The final thing, is height. Depending on when during the flight the turbulence happens, pilots might ascend or descend to get to calmer air.

**

The coolest thing about flying these days, is that you don’t have to sit in a cockpit to see everything I just described. You can see it from your seat.

Somewhere in your in-flight entertainment system, there will be a way to view the progress of your flight. In that area, there is a cockpit view option—this only becomes available once you’re higher than 10,000 feet.

If you happen to find that, then during turbulence you will be able to see exactly what the pilots are doing. That view will show you the speed, direction (referred to as “heading”), and the height of the aircraft. When the pilots make changes, you’ll see them as they happen.

I visit this screen each time the seatbelt sign comes on.

**

So what are our choices when things are out of control?

Let’s look at those three things that pilots do:

1. Change direction - We can choose to focus our attention elsewhere for a little while.

2. Slow down - While this is self-explanatory, don’t you find it fascinating that the lesson that’s true for us is also true for a giant metal object hurtling through the sky?

3. Change height - This feels like zooming out or zooming in. We can zero in on one part of what’s out of control and try to get that in control, or we can zoom out and get some perspective on how out of control this really is.

**

There have been a few times when I’ve switched over to the cockpit view during turbulence and noticed ... nothing.

No directional change, no speed change, and the aircraft staying at the same height.

In some cases, when things feel out of control, we do just have to let it happen.

We have to ride it out.

If I take care of it, there’s a good chance it will be my last glove too.

I was given a very interesting offer when I purchased the glove and I’d like to talk about what the offer was really offering, and why it was so easy for me to say yes.

**

Baseball gloves are made of leather and the good ones are usually quite stiff.

A glove feels best when it’s broken in, and I’ve heard an encyclopedia worth of tricks to try and break-in a glove, including running it over with a car.

When I went shopping for my first glove, I told the folks at the store that I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I just wanted to invest in something that I would have for a long time. When asked, I told them that the closest I intend to come to playing competitive baseball, is playing catch with our son on a paved road.

After explaining this, they helped me pick out an 11.75 inch Rawlings R9 Pro in baby blue with navy stitching. It’s a beauty.

When I went up to pay, the person at the counter asked if I had heard of their new “break-in” service. I said no, and he explained that for a fifth of the price of the glove, they would use this fancy machine to help break-in my glove in 45 minutes.

**

From the very little I’ve come to learn about baseball (I only became an ardent fan this year), everything about the game feels like a lesson in patience.

A hitter has to practice patience at the plate, trying not to swing at everything.

A team has to practice patience as they play through all nine innings of a single game, without ever knowing how long a single inning might take.

An organization has to practice patience as they make their way through 162 games in a regular season.

A baseball glove itself, is a lesson in patience.

Despite what the encyclopedia says, the real magic of breaking-in a glove comes from years of a sweaty hand trying to safely enclose a ball in a pocket.

**

I instantly said yes to the break-in service.

What it was offering me, is what we have an abundance of in our world: shortcuts.

When combined with our desire for immediate gratification, the result is virtually impossible to resist.

Did it work? Was it worth the price and the 45 minutes?

I guess so? But if I’m being honest, I don’t know.

Sure it was less stiff than it felt on the rack, but it was still pretty stiff.

**

A shortcut might make sense if you’re playing a short-term game.

But like properly breaking-in a baseball glove, most worthwhile games are long-term ones.

Let’s be patient enough to play them.

At the age of 14, he had bad pitch, bad tone, and was told that he wasn’t meant to be a singer.

Undeterred, at 17 he started practicing for two hours each night.

At 28 he started to like his voice, and finally at age 29, he’d done it.

**

The other day, a colleague of mine came to me with a problem.

She has been trying to help her team to understand certain procedural things that need to be done as part of their job, and they just can’t seem to do them correctly.

She told me all of the various ways she has tried to explain the procedures: in-person training, 1 on 1s, written checklists, and plenty of, “Do you have any questions or need to clarify anything?” Which was always met with, “No we’re all good, we get it.”

She and I sat together for almost two hours as she explained all the various things that she had tried, to no avail. She was looking to me for some perspective or perhaps a tactic she hadn’t thought of, and I came up with nothing.

As I write this sentence, it’s been three days since our conversation.

I think I finally have something to offer her.

It involves math, which is a shame, because I’m not very good at math.

**

Let’s start with a simple graph. Effort over time:

Now let’s imagine two scenarios.

One where effort stays steady over time:

And one where effort gradually increases over time:

Now let’s go back to our original graph, and imagine that an outcome we desire—the thing that we’re putting effort toward—exists for us at some point in the future.

For my colleague, this will be the day when most/all of her team are able to do the procedural things they need to do correctly. For Derek Sivers, this was the day when he became a singer.

You might start to see where this is going.

If our level of effort over time remains static, we may not reach the outcome we desire:

Even if that level is pretty high to begin with:

The magic happens when we slowly (because fast just isn’t realistic) increase our effort over time:

**

If there’s an outcome you’re seeking, that you’re just not finding, ask yourself two questions:

1. Is my level of effort slowly increasing?

2. Am I being patient enough?

If the answer to both is yes, then you probably need more patience.

The area under the curve will eventually catch up.

It’s a cooking competition, featuring mostly home cooks, four regular judges, and some celebrity guest judges.

50+ episode seasons, four new episodes per week, no drama, all food. If you love food, it’s the best.

Something I love studying each time we watch, is the way that contestants pair flavours together.

The other day a contestant was asked to hero tonka bean in their dish. Do you know what a tonka bean is? I’m guessing not. They hadn’t heard of it either. They smelled it, it smelled sweet, but then they tasted it, and it tasted bitter.

They ended up creating a tonka bean tart and pairing it with date, chocolate, caramel, and orange.

It blew the judges’ minds.

**

Flavour pairings serve as an interesting mental model to explore things beyond food.

Suppose you work on a small team, and further suppose that it’s a great team.

What happens if one team member leaves and is no longer part of the team?

Will there be a sense of loss? Surely. Can you ever replace that person exactly? Surely not.

If we adopt the mental model of food pairing here, if a single ingredient was no longer available to make a certain dish, you wouldn’t try to replace that single ingredient.

Instead you would ask, what does that ingredient represent? Sweetness? Acidity? Umami?

Once you understand this, a world of ingredients opens up.

Here’s a small mental exercise to try: Can you name what you represent to a team (or another person) that you care deeply about? If I forced you to narrow it down to just three specific sentences, could you?

I represent someone who ____________?

… is constantly learning new things and thinking of practical ways to apply them.

… makes the complicated feel simple.

… cares a ton about the quality of what we do.

To pair something well, we must first understand what it represents.

That goes for food, and people.

“...people think I have a style as a drummer. Part of me thinks that it’s because they don’t know all the influences I’m drawing on at any given moment. But part of me, just as quickly, wonders if there’s any difference.”

- From Creative Quest by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson

We are the sum of our influences.

Do you believe that, dear reader?

Let’s try something.

Pick any domain in your life that you care about being good in.

It could be a specific skill, like wanting to be a good cook, a good writer, a good musician, or even something broader like a good parent, a good partner, a good leader, or a good friend.

Now, once you’ve chosen your domain, I want you to imagine a Venn diagram with three intersecting circles.

On each circle, I want you to imagine a single source that is influencing the way you think or behave within your chosen domain.

With three circles in your Venn diagram, I’m asking you to imagine three distinct sources of influence.

Let’s call this the three circles question.

Can you name your circles easily? Are you ok with them? In other words, are you aware of them and can you accept them?

If I had to name my circles as a writer (at the time of writing this sentence), I think they would be made up of the following people:

1. Brian Dean - The founder of a niche marketing blog called Backlinko that I used to read religiously over a decade ago. I haven’t read his work in years, yet it was his style of short sentences with line breaks that really drew me in as a reader. He makes large topics feel small.

2. Billy Oppenheimer - The way that Billy weaves connections between disparate stories is something I both admire and attempt to copy. I only discovered his work relatively recently, and am fairly certain that I’ll be a lifelong fan.

3. Malcolm Gladwell - He has a gift of truly making anything interesting. When I think of the saying, to be interesting, be interested, I think of Malcolm.

It’s funny, even as I list these for you now, I’m aware of them, and yet I’m not sure that I can fully accept them.

I’m asking myself a few questions: Why aren’t there any fiction writers? Why are they all male?

I’m sure that if I kept adding circles, I could comfort myself with answers to those questions, but that’s cheating. The entire point of this exercise was to choose only three circles.

You can repeat this exercise in any domain of your life.

If you look hard enough, you can even use it to understand the domains of people you admire. If you’re not into hard work, I guess you could just ask them how they would answer the three circles question.

Going back to the top: We are the sum of our influences.

If you really believe that, then the three circles question matters a lot.

If you want to change the way you think, act, or both, consider changing a circle.

Or perhaps all three.

I wish I had taken a picture of her “self-portrait,” from her JK class. It was priceless. All I remember is that her eyes were highly disproportionate to each other and made up roughly 80% of her face. And I remember her body being mostly just … face.

When she was first drawing things, she would just draw anything.

All of her drawings had intricate stories behind them, regardless of how identical they looked.

As she got older, I began to notice an interesting behaviour.

She would start a drawing, then crumple it up and throw it away.

If the drawing had slightly “higher” stakes, like drawing a card for someone, the odds of crumpling would go way up.

**

I recently came across a term in Questlove’s incredible book, Creative Quest.

The good-taste governor.

I’ve written about taste before, and what struck me about this term, The good-taste governor, is how it reveals the dark side of developing taste.

When we start doing or experiencing a lot of something, we develop taste in that thing.

The good-taste governor shows up somewhere along our taste journey, and their primary source of power is judgement.

They essentially help us decide what’s good and what’s bad, according to our taste.

A question I’ve been wrestling with is: Why does the governor show up in the first place?

The answer led me back to my least-loved friend, comparison.

**

The reason our daughter started crumpling her drawings, was because her good-taste governor told her they weren’t good.

She has been drawing since a young age, she has seen a lot of drawings—both her own and many others. She has things to compare to.

We both develop and refine our taste through comparison, and it is comparison that gives birth to our good-taste governor.

The danger is, when it comes to creating things, the more powerful our governor is, the higher the rate of crumpling.

Key word: allowing.

Sometimes you have to say, “Relax, good-taste governor. Just let me draw stuff.”

My son got a baseball glove for Christmas last year, and now on every nice (or nice-ish) day, we go outside for a catch.

Until recently, we had been playing catch across the width of our street. Sidewalk to sidewalk. Occasionally, we’d go the length of the street and throw some longer balls to each other.

The other day, we decided to see what the Major League players do. So we got some measuring tape and chalk, and decided to mark out 60 feet and six inches on the street. The exact distance from the pitching mound to home plate.

**

Stephen Ango is the CEO of a software company called Obsidian.

He also likes to bake cookies.

During his interview on The Other Stuff (a Toronto-based podcast), one of the show’s team members—Alex—attempts to make Stephen’s Deluxe Chocolate Chip Cookie, using Stephen’s own recipe.

Stephen’s recipe has 14 ingredients, including one ice cube.

During the show, Alex says to Stephen, “I definitely learned a lot about you while making it. I did a lot of research on you leading up to this, and I think if I just made the cookie I would have got the same amount of information.”

**

Since 2015, John Mayer (musician, soundtrack to my late high school and early university years) joined the Grateful Dead’s offshoot band, Dead & Company.

When talking to Rick Rubin about how he studies the Grateful Dead’s former lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, John says this:

“If you listen to a guitar player playing long enough, you’ll understand them. Especially as a guitar player. You can sort of reverse engineer who someone must be, based on hundreds of thousands of choices. If you take all those choices that he’s making, a lot of times he’s making the sensitive choice. Not the pelvic, not the sort of histrionic, incendiary, he’s making the sensitive choice. That’s changed my guitar playing.”

**

The first thing you realize after measuring 60 feet and six inches is that the distance between the pitching mound and home plate is far.

Like, really far.

After a few (mostly failed) throws to my son from this distance, I instantly gained an entirely new appreciation for the game that I’ve fallen deeply in love with.

Henry “Hank” Aaron (Baseball Hall of Fame, 2nd most home runs of all time at the time of this writing), has this line in his autobiography:

“All I had to go on was the scouting report, but a scouting report doesn’t compare to a career of face-to-face confrontations. That’s the only way to really get to know a pitcher.”

Many times, we think we understand things because we’ve read a scouting report.

True understanding comes from face-to-face confrontations.

p.s. If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy this one from a few years ago, “The Map is not the Territory.”

Here’s one from Rapscallion in Hamilton, Ontario:

One from the Drake Devonshire in Wellington, Ontario:

This one isn’t a washroom sign and I didn’t take a picture of it, but I did write it down. It’s from Public in Kitchener, Ontario:

**

I was at another restaurant (Willibald in Ayr, Ontario) recently and the topic of conversation at our table was centered around the word intention.

I left the conversation briefly to go to the washroom and ended up taking two pictures while there.

Here’s one:

and here’s the other:

Let’s break these down.

With the first image, the fact that it’s laminated and branded leads me to believe that this sign was posted in every washroom at the restaurant (I did not verify this, but I believe it’s a decent guess).

The last sentence on that sign tells me a lot. It was typed with intention. “We’re on a septic :(," is almost like a short story, isn’t it? To me it’s saying, “Hey, we’re out here on a farm doing our best. We may not have the most modern amenities, and we’re hoping that you can empathize with our plight.” It’s the emoticon at the end that really does it for me. Someone chose the sad face.

The second image shows a sign that I am almost certain only applied to the particular washroom that I chose (again, I didn’t verify). It’s the lack of lamination and branding, and the presence of two lines of blue tape that gave it away.

Again, so much intention here. My favourite word choices here are tricky and jiggle. Also, the placement of the sign itself is exactly where it would be most useful—I know, from experience.

Both of these signs clearly hold a lot of intention.

And yet, do they feel different to you?

For instance, does one feel more real than the other? More vulnerable?

We can do a lot of things with a similar level of intention, and yet the impact of our actions can be felt very differently.

There’s something about the hand-written sign on the blue masking tape that I loved.

In fact, I preferred it to the laminated and branded one (Yes, I understand they were communicating different things).

The sign reminded me of a line from The Creative Act by Rick Rubin (Pg. 281):

My own note next to this line is: Mistakes are a point of universal connection.

The blue sign doesn’t necessarily have a mistake, but it contained a higher likelihood of one. When you choose to write something by hand, you leave behind the comfort of autocorrect. You are choosing to inject vulnerability into your words, regardless of what those words say.

In our quest to do things with more intention, we must choose to bring vulnerability along for the ride.

It will make our pursuit feel more human.

What I’m usually doing is curating or creating content for a workshop that I need to facilitate.

I try to stay true to a simple rule: Make it clear and engaging.

Sometimes, in the process of building a workshop, I get stuck.

I’m not sure if the particular activity I’m working on will be engaging enough, or whether the content I’ve curated or created will land clearly enough.

It’s really hard to anticipate how someone in a workshop might respond to a given element, regardless of how well I know the audience.

What usually gets me unstuck, is narrowing down the audience.

Down to just one person.

**

“One of my main goals starting out was that I wanted to be the artist that I would want to be a fan of. “ - Billie Eilish, Musician

“I do everything because I like, if I don’t like, then I don’t do.” - Dani DaOrtiz, Magician

“Deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.” - Charlie Munger, Investor

“We create our art so we may inhabit it ourselves.” - Rick Rubin, Producer

**

The audience that really matters, is an audience of one.

You.

Design the activity that you want to participate in.

Cook the food that you want to eat.

Curate the playlist that you enjoy listening to.

Write the book that you want to read.

Look for what you find interesting, and follow that.

In addition to getting unstuck, another benefit I’ve found when applying this filter in practice, is that it’s much easier to know when you’re done.

When you’re trying to please an audience of more, you run the risk of endless tinkering. You think that if you tweak just a little more, then it will be a little more appealing. It won’t. It’s a bottomless chase.

Each time we try to please an audience of more, we’re entering the realm of guessing.

To stay within the realm of truth, focus on an audience of one.

You.

Back in school, we occasionally had guest speakers in some of our classes.

My most recent memory of one was from university, but if I’m being honest, I can’t remember who they were and what they talked about. I only remember the class they came to. My 4th year Integrated Marketing Communications class.

Since graduating many years ago, I’ve had the honour of being a guest speaker in a few classes. Including Integrated Marketing Communications.

I recall being so excited to be a speaker. I felt as though I had gained some perspective since my days as a student and I was eager to share that. Especially to students in their last year of school (4th year). That was a particularly anxiety-ridden time for me, and I wanted so badly to share the type of thing that would have helped an older version of me to feel less anxious.

I was given a few different opportunities to speak, and each time, the perspective that I so wished to pass on, didn’t really make it across the channel. How do I know? Well, in the way that you just know things when you’ve done them.

Like the guest speakers I don’t remember as a student, I added my own face to the list.

The puzzle I was left with for years, was this: Can perspective truly be delivered by a giver or is it something that has to be earned by the receiver?

**

Andy Hearnden is one of my favourite chefs. His YouTube channel Andy Cooks, is something I’m watching on a daily basis these days.

Andy has over 20 years of professional cooking experience. Sometimes, he cooks with ingredients and techniques that are far beyond my reach. For example, he uses wagyu beef a lot.

I’ve never eaten wagyu beef, nor am I in a position to frequently afford wagyu beef to cook with at home. Andy has probably eaten a lot of wagyu beef, and so he knows how good it is. Naturally, that’s why he uses it and talks about it. He has a perspective that I simply don’t have, yet.

The thing about perspective, is that once you have it, you see everything with it. It becomes easy to talk about. It gives you a new language. It’s easy to forget what life was like when you didn’t have it.

Unlike the wagyu beef videos, the videos of Andy’s that I love most, are the ones where he applies 20+ years of experience to something that costs less than $1.

Like instant noodles.

Here’s his 10-minute video on how to take simple instant noodles to a whole different level — well, five different levels actually, including a wagyu beef option.

Instant noodles are something I can understand. I speak the language of instant noodles because I buy them and cook with them all the time.

When Andy makes a 10-minute video on how to up your instant noodle game, he is delivering perspective in the right vehicle for me. Instant noodles are my vehicle. Wagyu beef is not.

All those guest speakers and I, we were wagyu-beefing it. I wonder if we should’ve been instant-noodling it instead.

That’s the puzzle my friend helped me solve.

He said that the onus for delivering perspective, is completely on the giver, not the receiver.

As the giver, you have to find the right vehicle for delivery.

He was the co-director of a documentary called, “Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music,“ which showcases the best musical performances from Saturday Night Live over the last 50 years. At the time of this writing, I haven’t seen the documentary, but I have listened to Questlove talking about what he went through to make it.

In an interview on Score (a podcast), Questlove says that over the course of two years, he watched all 1000+ episodes of SNL. He watched over 1500 hours of a show, to help create a 2 hour and 8 minute documentary.

**

Before designing the Daylight DC-1 (the world’s first human-friendly computer), Anjan Katta (the founder) did his homework. In an interview on Dialectic (another podcast), he says this:

He would read every review of every handheld gadget that came out. Including all the comments on YouTube reviews. Imagine how many hours that took.

**

Both of these examples make me think of a question I heard once, that echoes in my head often:

When we go very deep on a thing, or we experience a lot of a thing, we’re building our taste in that thing. This works with things we literally taste, and also with things we hear, touch, see, or smell.

The reason Tamara’s question echoes in my head so often is because of the word deploy. She’s challenging us to act on the things we consume or experience.

This question is particularly potent if you consume or experience a lot of a given thing.

The longer I’ve sat with this question, the more intrigued I’ve become about how people deploy their taste.

**

Our friends Greg and Whitney are huge fans of The Tragically Hip. Greg practically knows every song on every album, and can even recall the year that particular album came out. Until recently, I could barely name one song by the band.

A few weeks ago, Greg and Whitney took my wife and I to see a musical that featured songs from The Tragically Hip, and on the drive we asked Greg to tell us about the band.

We essentially asked him to distill over 30 years of consumption, 30 years of building his taste, into an hour-long drive. What he told us ended up being a gift because of how we were able to then experience the musical that we were going to see.

Greg deployed his taste in the form of a story, which ended up being a gift.

**

My friend Will is super into pencils.

We were part of a gift exchange a few Christmases ago, and his contribution was a set of his favourite pencils: The 9850 HB Wood-Case Pencil by Mitsu-Bishi Pencil Co.

I ended up being the lucky recipient of his gift.

As you might imagine, his gift wasn’t just a set of pencils, he obviously had a story about why those particular pencils. Being the thoughtful human that he is, Will typed this story (in a very unique style of font and paper) and attached it to the set of pencils. Here’s a line from it:

Will deployed his taste in the form of a literal gift.

**

How will you deploy your taste?

The entire floor was lined with tables and papers, and proctors circled around like the human equivalent of CCTV cameras.

I was in a fairly large program in my university, which meant that when I wrote an exam, so did several hundred other students. Hence, the gym.

The thing I remember more than any of the exams themselves, was the waiting room. The small and very cramped hallway facing the series of closed doors that led to the gym.

The space before the exam.

Every time we had an exam in the gym, hundreds of us attempted to fit into this hallway.

The behaviour of students in this hallway was patterned.

Some were lying down, buried in notes, almost trying to bathe themselves in last-minute knowledge.

Some would stand around stoically waiting, with one of those endless stares.

The worst ones, in my opinion, would be the ones talking out loud about all the concepts on the exam, which would should send a shockwave of nerves around to those listening, making them question their own knowledge of the concepts being discussed.

Some, like me, would be wearing headphones, just making simple eye-contact, with maybe the occasional fist bump.

**

In professional tennis, the space before the match is the tunnel.

In all grand slam events, this tunnel is truly an experience. It might be lined with names, dates, and pictures of previous grand slam winners, or it might have an iconic quote like this:

When players enter the tunnel, their teams who have been with them up to this moment, leave to their their seats in the players’ respective boxes. The players are left to be alone, with each other.

Most players are silent here. Headphones on, hoodies up, endless stare out to the court. Rafael Nadal was famous for sprinting and running around, as shown in this clip (This was taken at the French Open, a tournament he won 14 times, which earned him the title, “The King of Clay.”).

**

If you look at your own life, you will always find a space before a big moment.

Perhaps not even that big. Maybe you’ve got a lot to do today, so the space before may simply be your own bed, where you lie awake in the morning waiting for the spark of courage that will magically move your feet to the floor.

What happens for you, when you enter the space before?

In this space, I often face a giant mirror. Not a trick mirror, or a broken mirror, a simple mirror.

Of all the obstacles I’ve had to overcome while preparing for this particular moment, the mirror presents me with the final, and often the biggest one.

Self-doubt.

So in the space before, when I’m staring at the mirror, how I will I respond?

Will I flip my hood up and look down? Will I lie down and try to bathe myself in last-minute comforts? Will I stare endlessly ahead? Will I run around like a caged animal?

The answer to the question that meets us in the space before, will dictate how we show up in the moment after.

José was recently on the endlessly entertaining podcast, What Now? With Trevor Noah, and toward the end of the episode, Trevor asked him a powerful question.

The context here is that since founding World Central Kitchen in 2010, José has prepared and served food during some of the most devastating humanitarian crises across the world. He continues to do so at the time of this writing.

Trevor’s question to José was simply this, “How do you maintain your hope?“

José’s response:

“I believe there is more goodness than hate in the world. What happens is goodness, goodwill, and the common good it’s very humble and it’s very ... doesn’t have a big voice,” he continues, “It seems hate is what has a big voice and it screams and with very short sentences it’s able to rally everybody.”

**

When I was much younger, I used to play a lot of tennis.

At one point, when I was probably 12 or so, my mum found me a new coach. I think she had been referred to this guy from some other people I was working with at the time.

Apparently this new coach was a big deal.

There’s a quote I think about that’s often attributed to Maya Angelou, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

To this I will add: People will also forget what you looked like.

As I type these words, I have no recollection at all about what this tennis coach looked like.

I only remember that he made me feel like crap.

In my memory of him, he would be wearing Wimbledon whites, sitting on the sidelines, and yelling directives at me, while his assistant made me move around the court trying to hit a series of progressively challenging shots.

He had a big voice. Sometimes he screamed. He would often use short sentences.

**

A few years ago I did some work trying to visualize my inner critic.

We all have one. What does yours look like? Do you know? Look and see next time they show up.

Mine? That tennis coach. Sitting in his Wimbledon whites. Yelling short sentences at me.

Just like our outer world, our inner world is a balance of good and bad too.

We should take José Andrés’ words to heart about ourselves. There is more goodness than bad in us.

The thing to be mindful of, is that goodness has a quiet voice.

In a world dominated by noise—ego, comparison, expectation, righteousness, entitlement—we have to be patient and willing to hear the whispers of goodness, then respond to them.

They are always there.

In a book of the same title, journalist Alfred Lansing does a masterful job of detailing the harrowing true story of what Shackleton and his team had to go through after that moment.

Toward the end of the story, after facing an endless amount of do or die decisions, Lansing describes a final obstacle that Shackleton had to face: Descending a very tall mountain.

“There was no need to explain the situation. Speaking rapidly, Shackleton said simply that they faced a clear-cut choice: If they stayed where they were, they would freeze—in an hour, maybe two, maybe more. They had to get lower—and with all possible haste. So he suggested they slide.”

We may have never heard of Sir Earnest Shackleton had he not chosen to slide down the side of a mountain.

**

I’m not a fan of uncertainty.

I can’t say that I’ve met many who claim to be fans, though I’ve certainly met many who are far more comfortable with it than I am. I am married to one such human.

There’s a line from a book I love, which makes me want to become more of an uncertainty fan. From Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland:

“You have a choice between giving your work your best shot and risking that it will not make you happy, or not giving it your best shot - and thereby guaranteeing that it it will not make you happy. It becomes a choice between certainty and uncertainty. And curiously, uncertainty is the comforting choice.”

Uncertainty is the comforting choice.

That’s the part that sticks with me. Yet, I so often fail to choose it.

**

We don’t always find ourselves stuck on top of a mountain with friends awaiting inevitable death.

But we face decisions fraught with uncertainty all the time.

How do we make the more uncertain choice in these moments? The apparently more comforting choice?

I don’t know. Like I said, I often fail to.

I think Rick Rubin can offer us a clue. From The Creative Act:

“Ultimately, your desire to create must be greater than your fear of it.”

Our desire must be greater than our fear.

Whatever lies on the other side of uncertainty, we have to want it.

**

Here’s a final take I’d like to offer to those of us seeking to become fans of uncertainty.

Regardless of its timing, death is certain.

Life is uncertain.

So perhaps, like Shackleton on that frozen peak, we need to make the the more comforting choice. Even if it means sliding down.

We must to choose to live.

References:

1. Endurance, Alfred Lansing

2. Art & Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland

3. The Creative Act, Rick Rubin

Well, he had one a few years ago, then it found its way to the land of misplaced toys.

I think he recently saw someone with a yo-yo on a show that he loves so it rekindled his desire for this thing.

So, we got him a new yo-yo.

A week or two later, it found its way to the land of misplaced toys.

Now he wants a basketball.

**

Have you ever found yourself thinking about something so much that it’s all you can think about, then a few days later, you can’t even remember what the thing was?

Conversely, have you also noticed that it’s been several years since something happened and it still finds its way into your thoughts from time to time? I’m not necessarily referring to grief or something overly powerful, I’m actually talking about something smaller. About the weight of a metaphorical yo-yo.

Different things resonate differently.

I’d like to explore two characteristics of resonance itself and suggest that of the two, one is more important than the other.

**

Imagine the sound of a gong.

There are two things I want you to pay particular attention to:

1. How loud was the sound you were imagining?

2. How long did the sound last?

These are the two characteristics of resonance that I’d like to explore. Volume and duration.

If you find your thoughts consumed by something on a given day, that thing is resonating for you at a high volume. It’s a loud gong. But, once you sleep on it, if you find that the volume has gotten quieter, then it’s likely that the duration is going to be short. Perhaps in a few days you would have forgotten about it entirely. This is a high volume short duration pattern of resonance.

This is our son’s yo-yo.

Then there’s the thing that enters your mind occasionally. It could be just days old or several years old, but it keeps coming up. Volume in this case may have been high or low, but the more important factor is duration. It’s long. When something has a long duration, it meets you at different points in your life, and colours those points accordingly.

Of the two characteristics that make up resonance, duration is the more important one. When you add up all the little moments of influence that something with long duration has, it will dwarf something that has a high volume.

**

So, we’ve answered the question of importance. If something resonates with us for a longer period of time—regardless of how loud it initially was—it’s more important than something that consumes our thoughts for a brief window of time.

The question we haven’t explored is why certain things have a longer duration of resonance.

I’d like to suggest a simple answer. One you can test for yourself.

If something has been resonating with you for some time, perhaps years, it’s because it’s teaching you something.

It may be a lesson that you need to keep remembering. It may be a lesson that you haven’t quite mastered yet and so the teacher keeps showing up at different points in your life in the hopes that you’ll keep making progress.

If school has taught us anything, in order to learn the lesson we have to do something. We have to show that we have learned.

So the question I will leave you with, dear reader, is this:

Of the things that are resonating in your life right now, what will you do about them?

p.s. This post pairs well with something I wrote about several years ago: Sympathetic Resonance.

Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem—in my opinion—to characterize our age.

I first heard this quote on an episode of Dialectic, where Anjan Katta references this quote, with a slight twist. He says:

Einstein says, “What characterizes the modern age is optimization of means, yet confusion of goals.”

Both of these—the original quote and its variation—got me thinking about why I don’t like meetings. Most meetings anyway.

Meetings are a means.

In the world of work—I can only speak to knowledge work from personal experience—we seem to have perfected the art of defaulting to meetings.

We’re optimizing them even further now by asking AI to get involved and note take, compress, clarify, and suggest things to us.

In her excellent book, The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker talks about an ancient Japanese idea called Ichi-go ichi-e, which roughly translates to one time, one meeting.

The idea is that this moment, in this time and place, with these people, doing this thing, will never be repeated. As such, it should be treated with with a certain level of reverence.

I fear that in our pursuit to optimize and perfect meetings as means, we have lost the ability to treat them with reverence. As Einstein said so many years ago, we have become confused about why we meet in the first place.

If you ever find yourself questioning what a meeting is about, whether it’s the first of its kind or a routine meeting, it’s worth pausing. If you wish to treat a meeting with reverence, you must first be clear about its purpose.

Let’s stop meeting for the sake of meeting.

Let’s find reverence through purpose.

It was a throwaway line.

Specifically she said, “My infinite energy is to help people say more awesome stuff.”

She used that term—infinite energy—only once in 2 hours and 26 minutes.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since I heard her say it. I have so many questions.

What does it tell us if we can find our infinite energy and what does it tell us if we can’t?

If we find it, to what extent should we pursue it?

Of course we can’t spend infinite energy on something, because we don’t have that, so what does it even mean to have infinite energy?

**

While I reflect on an example of something that comes to mind when I think of my own infinite energy, I would love for you to think of your own example too, dear reader.

Steve is one of my best friends. He and I have known each other for over 20 years.

One of the things we are known for is the conversations that begin at our goodbyes.

I can’t think of the amount of times we’ve come to the end of a night together and we’re standing (almost always standing) by a car (usually mine) ready to say goodbye, then one of us says something.

That something is often totally random.

A personal favourite example was a question that was something like this:

If something crazy happened and we were all of a sudden the only two people left in this city, how would we find each other? With no phones or internet obviously.

That exact conversation lasted for well over two hours. It was insanely detailed for an incredibly fictional situation.

One of my infinite energies is for conversations like that, with Steve.

**

I’d like to use this example to share some characteristics of things we might have infinite energy for.

If you’ve found your thing, I’d love to know how these characteristics line up, and if you haven’t, perhaps these characteristics will help.

I’ve thought of three characteristics and I’ll frame them as questions.

1. Is this something you want to do? - A good clue that you’ve found your infinite energy is it’s the thing you want to do, after having done all the things you need to do. Sometimes it’s the thing that makes all the things you need to do so frustrating because you want to do this other thing so badly.

2. Is this something that feels endless (in a good way)? - By endless, what I mean is that your only real constraint is time. In my example with Steve, the topics (or sometimes singular topic) we discuss could keep going and going, but at some point we come to our senses and realize that we should probably go home.

3. Is this something that has the potential to surprise and delight you? - Those particular feelings matter a lot. They point to the discovery of something new. Imagine I created a retail store full of things you’ve never seen that have been curated just to suit you. The feeling I’m getting at is what it would be like to walk through that store.

So, what’s your infinite energy?

To him though, writing a book is easy compared to what he was doing before.

R.L. Stein had many jobs before he wrote Goosebumps. One of them was working as an Editor at Junior Scholastic Magazine, where was always working on four magazines at a time.

At any given time, he was: Proofing one magazine, editing another magazine, writing yet another magazine, and planning a different magazine. Four different magazines, all at once.

Going from all of this to writing a single book felt so much easier and faster for him.

**

If you’re doing a workout that involves lifting weights, a de-load set is one where you intentionally lift a lighter weight at the very end of your workout.

The funny thing about de-loading is that it can make things that at one point seemed very challenging to you, suddenly feel ridiculously easy.

Let me explain this using some simple numbers applied to an imaginary workout.

Suppose in this workout, I had to lift the following weights: 10lbs, 25lbs, 40lbs, 50lbs, and 60lbs. In that exact progression.

Perhaps the 10lbs and 25lbs might be easy for me at first, but when I hit that jump to 40lbs that might be tough. At least initially. Then I make it all the way to 60lbs. Suppose this is my upper end.

Now it’s time to de-load.

For my last set, I drop from 60lbs back to 40lbs. This time, that 40lbs will feel very light compared to how it felt earlier in the same workout.

De-loading is intentionally easy. It’s a way for your body to take a step down from a tall ladder versus just jumping off the ladder.

**

If we want to make progress on something we’re challenged by, one way to do it would be to try something more challenging. Even for a short time. This is how we can use de-loading to our advantage.

De-loading can also trick us. Specifically, it can trick us into lowering our guard.

Back to the exercise example, when I de-loaded to 40lbs and it felt easy, you can imagine that because it felt easy I might be tempted to over extend myself.

Even though it felt relatively light because it was a de-load, I can’t lose sight of the fact that it’s still 40lbs.

In the early 80s, he won 34 out of the 35 freestyle contests that he entered.

Despite this, Rodney does not define success by trophies.

If you read his autobiography, it’s obvious that Rodney sees skateboarding as an art with infinite possibilities.

When you see the world that way, it’s not zero-sum. It’s not about winning and losing.

Winning and losing is a finite concept.

Rodney sees skateboarding as positive-sum, where when one person pushes into the unknown and creates a new known, everybody wins.

The purpose of playing the game at all is to push into the unknowns.

**

In an interview with Andy Roddick, Andre Agassi said the following about those who make it to No.1 in the world at tennis:

He then goes on to explain that once the rest of the world has seen that, they have to adjust to it.

Viewed on an individual level, it may look like one person (The No.1 in the world) is ahead of the pack for a little while. But viewed on a collective level over time, that one person shifts the entire field of players forward.

By bringing something new to the game, they made a contribution.

**

What I love most about this concept of contribution is that it can take us out of a scarcity view of the world, and shift us into an abundant one.

In many ways contribution is the opposite of competition, yet in a somewhat poetic paradox, competition can also fuel contribution.

There’s a quote I read once that explains why being measured by contribution is a powerful way to think in a world driven by ideas:

Let’s be contributors. We’ll all be better for it.