Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash Happy 4th of July week For years, I have shared periodically what I’ve been reading.  Increasingly, I have found my goal to be to start more books but finish less. Hopefully this is not a sign of a lack of commitment, instead, far too many books are published that could have been 80-100 pages (and not the 250-300 that seems standard). Once you get the main ideas, there is not a lot to be gained by persisting to the end. I have found a nice side effect to be though, the books that I do finish are generally of exceptional quality. So that end ..read more

Photo by Loic Leray on Unsplash What if the next 20 years look at lot more like the last 2 than the prior 20?  How should you lead and build organizations in a world categorized by change, uncertainty, and shortage?  And more over, how would you generate financial results that build wealth for your shareholders, team members, and yourself? COVID as Prelude, Not Conclusion The COVID-19 pandemic marked the beginning of a shift in the business environment from the environment of the past 40 years or so.  The Pax Americana heralded by the election of Ronald Reagan, hi ..read more

This has been the hardest of the three parts of this series to write, and has occupied most of the several months long period of time I’ve been working on / off on this series. Before beginning this section, I want to acknowledge the danger of commenting on a life stage where you lack personal experience. And while I cannot offer a point of view in-formed by direct experience, I can share what I have observed and read. So where to begin? How about here: No One Actually Believes They Are Old! Growing up, we would often make the 14 hour drive from our home in Virginia to deep south Alabama to s ..read more

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” —Jim Carrey Last week, we unpacked the first 10,000 days and specifically looked at the idea of The Dream, an orientating direction to start off in life. A key feature of this direction is the simplicity, formula like approach to living. If I do these things, then I will get these outcomes. As young people, this sort of linear causality is all we know – and is only further reinforced by school. The rules of the school economy function almost exactly this way. T ..read more

“But one doesn’t expect out of life what one has already learned that it cannot give, but rather one begins to see more and more clearly that life is only a kind of sowing time, and the harvest is not here.” Vincent Van Gogh Life itself as a concept has a scale of almost unimaginable vastness. 8 billion people on Earth each living a unique life. Yet even a single life has its own degree of vastness. Based on my birth year and corresponding life expectancy, my own life could easily extend for 80+ years. Certainly the old cliches contain that kernel of truth that cliches do. The days are long ..read more

Choosing between great and great isn’t easy “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.   F Scott Fitzgerald  When considering the scope of time and specifically human civilization, the modern world registers barely a blip on the timeline.  Wherever you choose to mark the beginning of this era, but let’s say since 1850 or so, there has been an explosion in human development that is actually unparalleled in the course of human history. Commentators have remarked that today’s ..read more

And how the Romcom Sweet Home Alabama explains why Photo by Lukas Kloeppel on Pexels.com Holiday travel is unsufferable.  No matter the mode, the airports are crowded and the highways are full.  Memorial Day weekend might possibly be the lone time of the year that the average Buccees is stretched to capacity. (If you don’t live near a Buccee’s – explanation here).  The logical explanation for all this travel is clearly that we live in a more mobile society.  A natural consequence then is of course people live further from home and will use common holidays as a natural ..read more

There is tremendous power in curating your goal list Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com Several years ago I was at an event for a non-profit’s leadership team, board members and most engaged volunteers.  In the course of the keynote speaker’s remarks, he asked for the mission/vision statement of the organization.  Like many of these sorts of statements, this one listed four or five priorities that the organization wanted to address.   After hearing it, the speaker took a minute to reflect on each of the priorities and offer some thoughts on each that would be worth consi ..read more

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner Photo by Monoar Rahman on Pexels.com My high school English teacher and I often failed to see eye to eye, and for good reason.  As an generally enthusiastic, periodically obstinate, and frequently arrogant 9th grader, I (and several others) made the less than ideal choice one lunch period to lock ourselves in our dining room in order to keep out a group of obnoxious middle schoolers.  While a much longer story, it is important to note that I attended a brand new school for high school that at times that first year was a ..read more

or is good enough sometimes just that? Among the many pleasures of house shopping is seeing how someone else lives.  Even more so after buying a new home – you constantly wonder, how did these people live like this?  No dimmers on this light switch, atrocious lighting, you call that closet storage – all actual quotes about our home. This begats the question – why do some make such choices?  Is it a failure of vision – an inability to envision a better future?  Or is execution the scarce commodity? Or maybe the busyness of life got in the way and the benefits weren’t worth t ..read more