Yesterday, I was a guest speaker on two fellow writers’ mastermind group. At one point, the three of us reminisced about “the glory days” of Medium. We were part of a larger chat group of around 50 people, each a strong writer in their own right, and it seemed as if every day, someone else’s article was going viral on the platform.

“We had a bit of a healthy competition going on,” my friend Todd said. Who would write the next piece that would blow up? Todd related Simon Sinek’s idea of having a “worthy rival,” someone you enjoy going head to head with in a friendly fashion. And friendly it always was between us, indeed. At the end of the day, it was about clapping for whoever was winning—and there was always someone to clap for, which reminded us we were all fighting the same good fight together.

As we were talking, I realized there was another reason our contests never turned sour: We were competing at self-expression. This is one of the many beauties of writing. Nik was not trying to out-Todd Todd, and Todd was not trying to out-Tim Tim. First and foremost, everyone was competing with their own self from yesterday, hoping to dig a little deeper into their soul this time and wrestle an even more unique, more original piece from the muse. That’s why, whenever you saw someone else’s fireworks, clapping was the only logical response: There was no way you could have written that story, but it was marvelous to be around to witness it.

Some arenas in life are governed by clear rules and hard numbers. You either make the world’s fastest production car, or you don’t. Thankfully, most offices, platforms, and chat groups aren’t fighting physics. Compete at honest self-expression, and you’ll always look forward to the next round.

Why are people still playing Assassin’s Creed II, a 16-year-old video game, in 2025? Why are new gameplay videos and reviews put out on Youtube daily? It’s a great game, sure, but how could it be more fun than consistently playing the latest releases? It’s because we know what we will get.

As a first-time player, you can rely on its hallmark status as one of the greatest video games ever made. And when you replay it, it only gets better. You look forward to the stories, the places, the characters, missions, and even the quirks and frustrating control mechanisms. There’s nothing unfamiliar, and everything is awesome—what a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

Most of the time in life, you have no idea what you’re going to get. So who wants to endlessly extend uncertainty in their free time? Chances are, after the third new release which failed to meet your expectations, you’ve had it. You want some comfort and nostalgia, and as a form of active rest, there is nothing wrong with that.

Sooner or later, we all learn that we can’t force life’s hand. It’ll tell us where it wants us to go whenever it decides to reveal the path to us. Handling our ignorance well is an art form, and art requires energy—don’t be afraid to recharge that energy with outlets where you know exactly what you’ll get.

I don’t remember the exact moment, but it was a time when my life was changing, and I didn’t want it to. I seemed to sit in front of a mountain of transformation to work through, and I just couldn’t bring myself to start. It might have been only a meeting or bothersome task I was sitting at my desk for, but ultimately, it was this much deeper tension which got to me.

Thankfully, I was still stewing in some wonderful sentences from a great book, and so, by fate or by accident, I grabbed a marker and wrote “Life is surrender” on a piece of paper. Sometimes, life only begins once you let go, I realized. When you say, “Okay, I have no idea how I’ll do this, let alone get through this, but let me show up for it. Let me start, and maybe the rest will somehow wash over me like a wave, retreating back to the ocean before I even realize I’m feeling cold.”

I carried that attitude into the task, and the next one, and the next one. Now, a few months later, transformation is—as always—slowly unspooling, and my pace feels more comfortable once more.

Whenever you have the energy, do start life from a plus, not a minus. Start! Direct! Envision! But you won’t always have the energy. Yet in those moments, you can still surrender. You can accept. You can go slowly. And you can do things without wanting. That, too, is empowering. Sometimes more so than even the most impassioned speech.

The paper sign still sits on my desk. Every now and then, I glance at it. It’s okay. Change happens. Allow yourself to float in its current. Life is surrender.

“How can smart, ambitious people stay working in an area where they have no long term ambitions?” Chris Dixon asks in a post called “Climbing the wrong hill.” He relates the story of a young investment banker who, after already putting in his notice to go work at a tech startup, got baited into staying at the company he hated. More money, more responsibility—more time spent climbing the wrong hill.

Hill climbing is a common problem in mathematics: Dropped into a random, perhaps foggy terrain, how can you find the highest hill? Many algorithms offer an answer to this problem, but some are better than others. If you simply go higher every time you can go higher, for example, you might end up on the nearest hill but not necessarily the highest one.

While the best algorithms solve the problem with a good amount of randomness or repeated ascents before making a decision, when it comes to our careers, we might not want to throw darts in the dark or start from scratch over and over again. Life is short, after all.

Thankfully, we have a benefit the algorithms don’t, Dixon says: We can clearly see the landscape surrounding us. We know what hill we’re on, and if we don’t like it or conclude it to not be high enough, we can most likely point to a higher, better hill right from where we stand. The problem, then, is not differentiating between local maxima and global maxima, as the not-highest and highest hills are called in mathematical terms. The problem is getting down from whatever hill we’re on.

“There is a natural human tendency to make the next step an upward one,” Chris writes. Rather than slide down the hill we exerted so much effort to scale, we’ll keep climbing—even when we already know it’s not the hill we want to die on. While we all struggle with the magnetic pull of short-term thinking, “this effect seems to be even stronger in more ambitious people,” Chris suggests. Ironically, the very drive to excel prevents them from excelling at what they truly care about. It’s too hard to let go of the current hill.

While discussing Chris’s piece, my fiancée and I realized his theory applies well beyond careers. Whether you’re planning a vacation, playing video games as a hobby, or booking a restaurant, there’ll always be both local and global maxima. You can book the first hotel that looks decent in your target area or search for hours to find the very best deal. You can beat a game’s main story over the weekend or play for weeks until you’ve unlocked every achievement. And you can either go to the pizza place around the corner or compare Google ratings for 20 minutes, then take a 15-minute drive for the best slice in town.

While the ego problem always remains—can you admit your mistake when the pizza at the five-star place actually tastes like rubber, and then go look for a better one?—we do have a choice in which algorithm we want to run: Are we seeking a local or a global maximum on this particular occasion? In honor of the mathematical terms, my fiancée and I decided to call it “Laximizing”—settling for good enough—and “Glaximizing”—chasing perfection at all costs.

In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz suggested that laximizing—being a “satisficer,” as he called it—is better for our happiness in most areas of life. If you worry too much about minor choices, you’ll end up spending most of your time worrying altogether, and that can never make for a contented life. At the same time, it won’t do to laximize your entire life, will it? You’ll suffer from a lack of meaning, feeling challenged, and, going back to Dixon’s idea, possibly climbing a hill atop which you’ll only find misery.

But which algorithm to run where? As we were learning to use our newly found terminology, my fiancée and I realized we tend to use different strategies in different arenas. While I was self-employed, I used to glaximize my job. If the work wasn’t good enough, I wouldn’t ship it. Now that I work full-time for someone else, it’s my creative writing time I’m glaximizing. Financial incentives have moved into the background, but the art itself? No compromises! I’ll take my time and do it right, even if it takes me forever to write my next book.

My partner, meanwhile, used to glaximize her career until a few years ago. She would go above and beyond at work and keep changing jobs every two years or so to find the next rung on the ladder. Now, she has held the same job for multiple years and tries to get the absolute most out of her spare time. Planning weekend activities, traveling, figuring out which nice restaurants to visit—she’d rather have quality experiences than just more of them.

When it comes to laximizing vs. glaximizing, it’s useful to know where you and your loved ones differ. You’ll avoid conflict and be able to divide and conquer. I like my bathrooms spotless and my movies highly rated, so I’ll deal with those things. My fiancée, meanwhile, is the planning master undefeated in spreadsheeting and putting together bigger events. Wherever the other wants to lead, each of us can go with the flow, and where one might obsess a little too much, the other can be the kite line tethering them back to the ground.

Most of all, however, we can help each other ask the right questions: Is this the right hill you’re climbing? And are you following a formula that’s in line with how important this issue is to you?

Whether it is for pizza, jobs, or hotels, the majority of people often competes for the same mediocre options. At times, settling for average can be a valid strategy, but if it doesn’t come with ease and speed, then why laximize in the first place? Similarly, while glaximizing is important where we’re determined to climb the highest hill, it can lead us astray in battles which are barely worth fighting to begin with.

Who you marry, where you live, why you get out of bed in the morning—for the big decisions, Chris’s advice remains rock solid: “When you find the highest hill, don’t waste any more time on the current hill no matter how much better the next step up might appear.”

And for everything else? Make sure you lift the fog from the misty valley that is life. Know where to laximize, where to glaximize, and which approach the people you care about bring to which occasion. This way, no matter how lengthy or consequential a decision, at least you’ll make it with open eyes—and isn’t that always the first step to not getting in our own way?

According to LinkedIn, most people seem to have at least three jobs nowadays. I see it all the time. “I’m a freelancer, coach, mentor, and writer.” But it’s not just our bylines that might be a little crammed.

Scroll through someone’s list of experiences. Check the duration. How many “until present” claims can you find? Sure, people may list their full-time job, a small side hustle, and maybe some volunteer work, but if none of your titles ever seem to expire, how can I know what you’re focused on?

Are you really still working on that project? Do you intend to ever take on another coaching client? If not, it’s okay to close the chapter. Freeing, even. Put in the date. “Until April 2025.” There. Done. Doesn’t that feel great?

I remember putting end dates on my freelancing and coaching segments on LinkedIn. I was excited to move on. Those were not meant for me, and that’s alright. With others, I wrestled so long, I struggled to remember what the correct end date was by the time I was finally ready to accept my departure. In the end, however, wrapping up was always helpful.

What are you actually working on today? Where are you truly trying to go? Know yourself, then tell us. Nobody can wear all hats “until present,” and it’s refreshing to meet someone who refuses to try.

All he wants to do is sail back home to England, but, as John Blackthorne learns the hard way, 16th-century-Japan isn’t exactly a place you can enter and leave at will. Surrounded by samurai and the cunning Lord Yoshii Toranaga, who aspires to become Shogun, John is glad to keep his head longer than a week.

As time wears on, however, he manages to prove himself useful to Toranaga. Among other things, he teaches the Lord’s cannon regiment how to actually aim their devices. For his services and intel, John receives not only comfortable shelter and home support but also, at one point, a pheasant the Lord hunted down himself.

As he carries the bird back to his house, Toranaga, all excited, explains to his staff that now, for a few days, the bird must hang outside to preserve it. After all, it should become “the best pheasant this village has ever prepared,” and cleaning game this way is an old English tradition. He tells everyone to listen up and that no one should touch the animal for a while. Due to the language barrier, however, most of what he says falls on deaf ears. So, in hopes of making himself clear, he proceeds in broken Japanese: “Forbidden, yes? If touch, die!”

John’s staff is aghast. In Japan’s warm climate, all the pheasant will do is rot and smell. But for lack of communication, they put up with his request. Over the next week, John goes about his days. He smiles at Fuji, his maid. He laughs with Uejiro, his gardener. And he keeps training Toranaga’s soldiers. One rainy day, however, as Blackthorne returns home, something in town seems to be amiss.

When he enters his yard, John can see the pheasant missing from its hook near the bungalow’s roof. Meanwhile, his staff are shuffling about, looking at their feet, no one daring to meet his eyes. “What is it? What’s the matter with everyone?” Shakily, Fuji points at the place where the bird used to be. “Oh, the pheasant? Who took it?” “Uejiro,” Fuji responds. “Our gardener? It’s fine. It’d been up there long enough anyway. Old bastard should get a medal just for being able to climb up there.” But when he tells Fuji to fetch the friendly face, she only has bad news: “Uejiro is dead.” John’s jaw drops to the floor, but as she bows her head, fully expecting him to take her life as well, Fuji reminds him of his own words: “If touch, die.”

The next day, John, with the help of his translator Mariko, requests to leave Japan immediately. But Lord Toranaga still has plans for him, and so, for better or for worse, John must explain his worries. “He asks what troubles you,” Mariko interprets. “I’m troubled by your whole damned country,” John responds. “Life has no value to you. Only the meaningless rituals you are trapped in. Like Uejirou. Who died for nothing.” Why didn’t anyone consult John about the pheasant? How could they just put an old man to death without a second thought? John is deeply scarred by everyone’s behavior, and yet…

“It is my understanding that you ordered no one to touch that bird,” Mariko remarks. “And by law, your house could not disobey that order. Nor could they allow the rotting pheasant to ruin the peace of the village.” To deal with the conundrum, John’s staff asked the village headman, but he considered it to be a homemade issue, and, therefore, the home had to resolve it. In the end, Mariko explains, Uejiro volunteered. He stole the stinking pheasant, buried it, and took his punishment with pride.

“The bird meant nothing to me,” John says, still incredulous of what has occurred. But, like Fuji, Mariko reminds him—this time in his own language: “Your words gave it meaning.” It is only here that it finally dawns on John that, even in a foreign country and in a foreign language, his words still have consequences: “I killed him. Lord forgive me. I killed that old man.”

Whether it’s a snide comment at work, a book which kindles emotions deep in your soul, or a few words uttered carelessly, misinterpreted to a terrible degree: In the end, it’s you who gives life meaning. No one else.

“You are the creator and the interpreter of your life in every moment,” Shannon Lee writes in Be Water, My Friend. “Even if the meaning you are using came from someone else, you still chose to adopt this meaning and use it. You are in charge.” Upon hearing the same phrase, one person chooses to be insulted. Another chooses to feel compassion. One decides the world is a terrible place, another the world is a place which deserves healing.

“Realize that you are powerful,” Shannon encourages us. “Don’t give your agency to others or to negativity or to circumstance. Don’t hinder your abilities. Your world has no meaning except for the meaning you give it, and maybe there’s no need to give it any meaning. Stepping stones or stumbling blocks—the choice is yours.”

After the incident, John weighs his words more carefully. He re-erects the rock Uejiro had placed in his garden. Following an earthquake, he offers Lord Toranaga his swords, for a samurai must never be without them. John even tells him a fake story about the origin of those swords, a story the entire village has maintained for decades in order to keep Fuji’s memory of her father intact.

True purpose or meaningless rituals? The importance of everything lies entirely in our own hands, heads, and hearts. You give life meaning. Never abandon that power.

Being a world-famous author. Selling a million books. The first time I realized these two things needn’t go hand in hand, I was listening to Tim Ferriss talk to Noah Kagan on his podcast. “The half-life of fame,” Tim said, “is going to drop precipitously as algorithm-chasing becomes more and more dominant and more and more determinant of what is surfaced.”

There used to be only a handful of cable TV networks. If they all played Oprah Winfrey’s talk show, of course everyone would know Oprah. And they did. But now, Tim said, everyone gets their own, personally curated feed. There are millions of creators and micro-influencers, and micro-bubbles of attention they inhabit. Instead of having your pick of 10 fashion bloggers, you can probably find 10 in your town alone, another 10 dominant in your country, and then another 10,000 across the globe who are also creating interesting work.

Even in your personal sphere, you can notice it, Tim explains. 15 years ago, the viral video of the week would indeed last all week. Everyone you talked to on the regular had seen it. Nowadays, most people will not recognize most of the memes you send them, and even the ones who are infinitely more popular than anything from 15 years ago used to be fizzle out after a few hours of fame.

A million people is just 0.01% of the world’s population. If I keep writing good books and selling them for a reasonable price, can I get one of my books into the hands of that many people? I don’t see why not. I start with the ones I know, and then I go from there. Fame? That’s not required, is it?

In the end, Tim finds the right questions to ask: “If what you do is less and less persistent, meaning it has less and less durability, what game are you signing up for, and what does winning that game look like?”

Fame is dying, and that’s okay. Maybe, instead of more superstars, all we need is folks doing good work in every corner of the globe.

In late February and early March, we had a remarkable stretch of sunny days. For around two weeks, the sun showed up almost without fail. Temperatures went to 10, sometimes 15 degrees Celsius, and you could walk around in a t-shirt, even sit outside for stretches at a time.

The first time the sun came out, I skipped around outside, literally jumping with joy that winter was coming to a close. On that and several subsequent days, I mentioned the weather in my gratitude journal. But one morning, I sat down on my couch, looked outside, and went: “Ah, another sunny day.” The curse of habituation had set in.

This time, however, at least I caught myself: “Wait a minute. It’s not another sunny day. It’s a sunny day. An outlier in March. A gift. A singular moment to enjoy, even if similar moments came before it in the last few weeks.” It’s funny: Once we realize we’re getting used to something good, we become extra grateful for that goodness lasting as long as it has. If we don’t, however, we not only miss out on bonus gratitude, we also stop seeing some of the original goodness to begin with.

Will you live life in monochrome or technicolor? Sometimes, the difference comes down to the smallest realization—like that today is not just “another” sunny day.

I’ve been studying Bruce Lee since 2018. If you had asked me at any point who his wife was, I would have told you with 100% certainty: Linda Lee Caldwell.

Yesterday, I looked her up again, and I noticed the list of her spouses. Her last husband’s name? Bruce Cadwell. “Hmm, Cadwell. Cadwell. Wait. Oh my god!” I glanced over to the title of her Wikipedia page, and sure enough: Her name is Linda Lee Cadwell. There is no “l” before the “d” in her last name.

How can someone misremember a name they’ve seen dozens, maybe hundreds of times? First impression–blindness. You see it once, your brain takes a picture, and swoosh, it’s filed away. “Ahh, I know this, got it. Moving on.” Except when, well, you don’t actually know this.

Every now and then, take a second look—especially at the intimately familiar.

A student said to Master Ichu, “Please write for me something of great wisdom.” Master Ichu picked up his brush and wrote one word: “Attention.”

The student said, “Is that all?” The master wrote, “Attention. Attention.” The student became irritable. “That doesn’t seem profound or subtle to me.”

In response, Master Ichu wrote simply, “Attention. Attention. Attention.” In frustration, the student demanded, “What does this word ‘attention’ mean?” Master Ichu replied, “Attention means attention.”

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We live in a world where many people seek attention without minding how they spend their own. But is attention-seeking even the behavior which most deserves your attention? Many would-be influencers never ask the question, and by the time they succeed, they realize the answer was “No,” now having to sacrifice even more attention in managing all the attention they fought so hard to attain.

But even those of us who choose not to play the public fame game can learn plenty from Master Ichu. I wake up at 7 AM every weekday morning. I start work at nine. The time in-between is earmarked for writing this blog and my next book—but that doesn’t mean a lot of writing always happens. I might read the news, get pulled into a chat on my phone, or obsess over some Pokémon card deal. The time is there, but if the attention isn’t, what does it matter?

That’s why attention management is more important than time management. Attention is where the buck stops—the most finite resource you have. “It has to be intentional, not accidental,” our attention, “and therein lies a kind of effort,” Karin Ryuku Kempe comments on the above Zen story. “It needs to be complete, not split by competing mental activity, daydreams or planning.”

Attention, real attention, is how we close the gap, Kempe says: “In awareness, we are our life. Our life is us.” There is nothing in-between.

Don’t hold back. Life is a full-contact sport. Make the time, but, more importantly, show up. Attention, attention, attention.