Engaging the reader

You can only fulfill the purpose of what you’re writing about if you engage your reader. Who are they and what makes them tick?

This is particularly important in business. If you know what your people care about, you can speak about those things and gain their attention.

Clarify the essential part of your message and write in a way that conveys the heart of the matter in the first 15 seconds.

After sharing the essential issue, then begin explaining how you got there.

Respect the reader’s time and intellect. Engage them on the ground where they are comfortable.

Think about what could go wrong

The optimist dreams about what could go right. The pessimist has nightmares of what could go wrong. But you should do both.

If unexpected blows fall heaviest, we can mitigate pain and suffering by thinking on things that could go wrong while preserving our right to dream about what will go right.

Then execute and if it goes right, you win. If it goes wrong, at least the blow will not land as heavy.

Being “smarter” isn’t better

Just because you’re smarter doesn’t mean you’re acting smarter right now. Smarter people are often tormented with the curse of paralysis by analysis more than any other group.

That person you think is dumb is kicking your butt because he doesn't get in his own way and he starts working toward his goal without overthinking and frightening himself.

Your hope of winning fades as quickly as your fear of failing grows. We have “nothing to fear but fear itself,” because fear of the unknown prevents us from acting.

But, uncertainty doesn’t last for long. Uncertainty at the start of something new ends very quickly. Meanwhile you're still sitting there thinking and convincing yourself that you'll start later (when you're "ready.") We learn the right way to do things when we start doing them and make adjustments while we go.

Inaction breeds unrest and anxiety. Inactivity causes you to lose your competitive edge. The man who starts; wins. Imagine what you would do if you weren’t afraid.

What do you tell yourself?

If you want to do great things, first, you must tell yourself that you can and then find a way to believe you can. Without that, you might as well sit and wait for the grass to grow.

This is harder than I remember

To sit still is hard enough. To sit and rest my mind is even harder. But to sit still, rest my mind, and think about things to write about feels nearly impossible some days.

It’s particularly difficult coming back after nearly a year away from writing every day.

The resistance I feel to getting back to regularly writing will (hopefully) serve as a reminder to keep doing things that are personally good for me even if it begins to grow mundane, or I convince myself that it is no longer important (and therefore no longer find the time for it.)

The meditative nature of writing is helpful in and of itself –that makes writing every day worth it.

Management and learning how to be better

I’m about to tell the story of a bit of a self-awakening I had last week. I woke up after a very stressful Wednesday evening which turned into giving away most of Thursday because I was not willing to let go the irritation of Wednesday. I learned that what I know about managing people is not good enough. I need to learn more. I need to practice even more.

Until now I have had both an affiliative style and a democratic style to my leadership. The affiliative style builds up team members and is useful for increasing team harmony and encourages all to be a bit happier. However, this style often allows for poor performance to go unchecked and often does not offer useful advice. The democratic style seeks to give the team members a voice in decisions, assuming this will increase team buy-in and flexibility, and two-heads-are-better-than-one will lead to better outcomes. However, this style can lead to endless meetings, indecision, confusion, and frustration among team members.

The question I am working on is how and what I need to change. I have a stack of books on management that I will be reading through in the coming weeks. This will not be my last blog post about management.

What about now?

We have worry and regret about the past or the future, but almost never “the now.” Yet we waste right now taking this additional burden on ourselves. It does nothing but give away the present moment. Let us not forget, that our life is made up of many present moments one after another. Give away fewer present moments.

Personal photography in 2025

If you build kitchen cabinets for a living, you probably don’t want to build new ones for your own kitchen after you’ve gotten home from a day of building cabinets.

That’s how I feel at times about photographing my kids. I have all of this wonderful equipment, but it can sometimes feel like it’s only there for work. Meanwhile our lives are passing by and I am letting beautiful photograph after beautiful photograph slip away. They’re memories that I’ll never get back. Why don’t I keep a camera at my side at all moments? I don’t understand.

This year, I am changing. I will make a photo book of family photos each month. Fun moments, hard moments, growing moments, mundane moments. Stuff that we can look back on and remember later. The car, the couch, the blender, the hair cut, the old t-shirt, and dad’s “fat phase” (I’m working on it, cut me some slack.)

My oldest daughter will pick up the camera as well. She has an eye for it even where the technical hasn’t quite caught up. But it will. She could be very good if she tries.

I’ve attached a few of her photos from this week right here.

Clara, me, Collette.

Baby Penelope.

Penelope was in one of her best moods on this morning.

Controlling Stress

I’ve heard it’s a skill that you can improve upon. Controlling stress and mitigating internal damage from major stressors is still very difficult for me after all of these years of working on it. Outwardly, I think I can march forward, but I still allow certain stressful things to get in the way at the worst times.

Acute, but temporary stress is good for my system and makes me a better practitioner in the end. I just need to work on being more graceful in the beginning and middle parts.

The smaller dies for the greater to be strengthened

When you lift weights, the smaller cells or tissue in your body are torn and rebuilt. The harm caused to the smaller (your muscle cells/tissue) causes your body (the greater) to grow stronger.

In war, men fight and die. They are destroyed for the (presumable) good of the greater–their nation. The smaller dies for the strengthening of the greater.

Things in life seem to work that way. You give up a small present moment, for a greater future. Sacrifice of the “now” is often painful, but it leads to a more robust and stronger future.

Why I love vintage lenses

I’ve recently become interested in old photography lenses. A lens is typically considered a “vintage” lens when it is 30+ years old.

Unlike the modern masterpieces of electronic engineering that we use in photography, these vintage lenses are far more analog. They have finely machined metal, smooth focus rings, and glass elements that move around to bring your image into focus. They’re heavy, solid, smooth, and just beautiful.

They generally lack the advanced coatings and clinically “perfect” look that you get with modern lenses. They have character and a more organic feel.

I find that they not only render a beautifully natural image, but they also force you to slow down and become a mroe technically precise photographer.

Focus is all done by hand so you need to learn to gauge distance and the feel of the focusing ring for each lens. You look twice before taking the shot. It’s more satisfying when you nail the focus.

The aperture is also manual. You begin your exposure by physically changing the size of the opening in the lens. This has implications on the amount of light that the camera sees, but it also changes the depth of field in an image (more blurry background, or more stuff in focus.)

Vintage lenses present a different flavor of photography. One that is slower, more technical, and more organic.

I still wouldn’t trust myself to use them in my commercial work, but you gain a new respect for the photographers who used manual lenses and film cameras in the bygone decades.

My hope it to begin sharing some photos shot with these older lenses here soon.

The problem with AI

I do not believe in the promised future of AI. In fact, I am closer to a Luddite in the AI world than a fanatic in favor of neural networks being our new overlords.

I think the average person stands to lose much more than they might gain from Artificial Intelligence.

As far as I can see, AI is not intelligent at all. It’s a massive calculator that can guess at words and numbers that ought to appear in certain orders and make a reasonable guess based on its set amount of input.

AI cannot create something new or novel. It can only present you with information (or forms of information) that are new to you. At its core, AI is still limited to purely mechanical operation. What is mechanical is not self-sustaining or self-reproducing. On the contrary, organic matter can do both.

When AI finds a way to bridge the gap and step from the mechanical world into the organic world, then I will be concerned. I do not, however, believe this will be possible and like all technology, it does not grow at the same speed for the same amount of time.

Progress in tech is non-linear. It ebbs and flows–and eventually hits a brick wall of diminishing returns. AI is nearly at its brick wall. It will become a useful tool for a select number of uses and we will look back at the early 2020s as a time when the world was sure we’d have flying cars just any day.

The Resistance comes quickly

Incredible how quickly good habits deform and how quickly bad habits pop up in their place. When it’s time to stamp out the bad habit and return to the good, the process feels agonizing. This is only my second day back to writing and it’s fallen to the bottom of my to do list.

Not a good sign for the future.

But the resistance doesn’t know me. I never give up. More specifically, I never give up when I am still thinking about something. I give up when I get distracted and forget. I don’t know if that counts as giving up.

My good will will break my bad will and I will never give up the fight to improve myself every single day.

Let's try this again in 2025

Hello again.

When I started writing my daily blogs in late 2018, I remember writing that I was afraid that I would only commit for a few days before quitting. Instead, I made it to late 2023 posting six days each week without missing any time (at least, that’s how I remember it.)

When I write, I read more. When I read more, I think more. When I think more, I do more things. When I do more things, I feel an unspeakable sense of fulfilling the purpose for which I was placed on this earth. So I will start by writing again.

2023 marked a few somewhat significant shifts in my life as well as trying some new things. These new commitments dragged me away from the stead routine I had. Or rather, I began to prioritize other things above my daily routine. This did not help me to have a more healthy, steady, or productive 2024. It was fine, but could have been much greater.

That brings me to today. Day #1 of 2025. I have been mulling my plans for 2025 for much of the last month and they look like this:

Read every day.

Write every day.

Make a drawing, photograph, or video every day.

Ride my bike every day.

Lift weights every day.

Drink more water.

Sleep more consistently.

Make content again.

If this year will be good, I have to make it good. God-willing, I will do just that.

It’s always the right time to do the right thing

Is it prudent? Is it wise? Is it tactful? Yes, maybe, or no. Who cares? When in doubt, always choose the right thing because when we do what is right, there is always an element of good in the decision we have made–even the difficult decisions. You’re always right to do what’s right.

How to be more healthy

The Salerno School of Medicine is simple (if you are able to read Latin.) Si tibi deficiant medici, medici tibi fiant haec tria, mens laeta, requies, moderata diaeta.

In English: If you don’t have a physician, let these three things be your medicine, joyful mood, rest, and don’t eat much.

I prefer to live without a physician as much as I am able and these rules work well. Be happy, get good sleep, and eat as little as you must.

I don’t know if they’re right, but the principles align with what makes me feel good. Therefore, I concur.

Time to fire up the engine again

Since late 2018 I’ve written a post on my blog for six days a week and hardly ever did I miss a day.

I haven’t posted a blog here since the 14th of December and today is the 31st of January. I guess you could say things are going pretty well.

There has been a bit of a shift in the workload in my life since about September and coincidentally since then, I have been more inconsistent with my blog posts (and reading in my personal life) than ever before.

The hope is to break the seal and not establish a new habit of NOT writing. I want to re-establish my reading and writing habits and I can only start one day at a time.

I’m hoping for another solid five-year run of writing and (hopefully) improving my writing as well.

The artist and the politician

“Robust is when you care more about the few who like your work than the multitude who dislike it (artists); fragile when you care more about the few who dislike your work than the multitude who like it (politicians).”

— Nassim Taleb

Some personal goals

To have the ability to help a friend but the nobility to conceal it and have more and more friends as I get older, yet need them less and less.

Not “getting anything done”

When I feel like I am not getting anything done, I stop trying to get anything done. The reality is usually that I am just not happy with how much I still have on my to-do list. When I stop “trying to get stuff done” I still get a lot done, but I also tend to feel more accomplished.