Journal
Notes fromthirty yearsin the room.
Short essays on why capable people stall, what confidence is actually made of, and the difference between a hard season and a wrong direction.
- Mindset6 min read
The story you tell about your life is doing more work than you think
Everybody has a sentence they say about themselves so often they have stopped hearing it. It is usually the most load-bearing thing in their life.
- Confidence5 min read
Confidence is a receipt, not a feeling
People come in wanting to feel ready. Feeling ready is downstream of evidence, and evidence has to be earned in an order.
- Discipline5 min read
"I'll start Monday" is a complete sentence about your priorities
Not a moral failing. A piece of information — and one of the most useful things a person can learn to read about themselves.
- Resilience6 min read
The difference between a hard season and a wrong direction
Persistence is a virtue right up until it isn't. Telling the two apart is one of the few genuinely difficult judgements a person has to make alone.
- Ownership4 min read
Nobody is coming. That's the good news.
The sentence lands like bad news for about a week. Then it turns into the most freeing thing a person can accept.
- Practice7 min read
What thirty years in the room taught me about who actually changes
Not the most talented, the most driven, or the ones with the best circumstances. After three decades, the pattern is not the one I expected.