Daily Thought for Change

How do we make better decisions, business predictions, bets about the future, so we end up more satisfied with our choices?

That’s rarely what works in a complex, unpredictable world.
That’s how you get financial crises no one saw coming, or pandemics no one could forecast the path of.

It’s through reps.

Mark Egan shares in the article in the BIT new newsletter:

“When doctors were 80% sure a patient had pneumonia, they were right only 20% of the time. But when weather forecasters predicted an 80% chance of rain, it really did rain 80% of the time.”

The difference?
Weather forecasters get a lot more prediction reps.
They practice constantly, every day, seeing outcomes and adjusting their gut feeling accordingly.

Doctors, on the other hand, make far fewer “predictions” they can quickly test and calibrate against reality.
So their gut stays untrained.

One other study found something similar when comparing big vs. small life decisions.
People make better choices about where to eat than which house to buy. Even though one is considerably more important.
It’s not that restaurants are simpler, it’s that we’ve had hundreds more chances to practice deciding what we enjoy.

We don’t really know what we’ll like until we try it.
And if we don’t try often enough, we don’t develop that “gut feeling” muscle that gets better with each round.

So whether you’re leading a team, running a business, or trying to improve your speaking, selling, or decision-making - nothing beats reps + reflection.

Get more cycles. Test more predictions. Calibrate your gut feeling.

That’s how intuition sharpens.
That’s how judgment becomes less biased. Not through another training. Reps.

So, how many reps did you get in this week on the things that matter?

There are things in life we want, and then there are things we want most. They often stand in each other’s way.

I didn’t go to an innovation summit I really wanted to attend today. I felt FOMO. And it felt good.

There’s a fable about a donkey who stood between a stack of hay and a bucket of water. Equally hungry and thirsty, he couldn’t decide what to go for first. He died because he didn’t move at all. Afraid that choosing one meant losing the other.

Watching brilliant people speak is inspiring. But if it keeps you from doing the work that you are meant to do - it’s not inspiration anymore, it’s distraction dressed up as productive learning.

⭐If you want to stand in the spotlight someday, you can’t spend all your time watching others in theirs.

I told a friend about my dilemma, wanting to go, trying to justify it as a great networking opportunity, but also knowing I had work to work on, that mattered more.
He asked, “What do you want most?”

And I realized: it’s not about knowing more things from more people. It’s about shipping my own thing.

Maybe, just maybe, I can make a better choice than the donkey. And figure out what I need most before it’s too late.

PS: If the donkey had known dying of thirst is faster, perhaps he would’ve chosen differently.

Competition as the highest form of collaboration for a greater good.

I finally read The Inner Game of Tennis. It’s been sitting on my list for far too long. One thoughtful instagram post from Daniel Pink finally tipped me into, “Fine. I’m reading it now.”

This year marks the book’s 50th anniversary, and somehow, it feelt so current, more relevant than ever.

It made me, for the first time, realize how powerful competition can be for unlocking human potential, and how for so long I didn't get it at all! 

For years, I avoided competition because it felt like a zero-sum game. Someone wins, someone loses.

But competition, done right, isn’t about proving you’re the best. (And someone is a loser)
It’s about discovering the best in you and in others!

When you see someone doing something better, it’s an invitation to explore your own limits. You try, you experiment, you grow. In that pursuit, you stumble upon new techniques, new ideas, new courage and skills you didn’t know you had.

That’s the kind of competition that doesn’t drain you - it elevates you and others. It doesn’t create enemies, it creates partners in growth.

As Gallwey writes in The Inner Game of Tennis:

“Each player tries their hardest to defeat the other, but in this use of competition it isn’t the other person we are defeating; it is simply a matter of overcoming the obstacles the other presents... Both players benefit by their efforts to overcome the obstacles presented by the other. Like two bulls butting their heads against one another, both grow stronger and each participates in the development of the other.”

Imagine if we led teams, companies, or even industries this way -
where competition becomes collaboration in disguise,
and every challenge makes us all stronger.

So, over to you, dear reader,
If competition was about advancing the field you care about,
what would you try to be the best at?

“Choking is a performance phenomenon where pressure leads to a significant decrease in performance, even for skilled individuals. It occurs when high-stakes situations cause increased anxiety, self-consciousness, and distraction, which interfere with cognitive functions like working memory and attention.”

At the core, choking happens when someone who’s already learned the skill stops trusting the system, their own mind-body system, to do its job. Instead, they try to control what should be automatic. They bring in System 2, the slow, deliberate thinking, to a game that demands the speed and grace of System 1 (instinctual, habitual responses).

It’s like trying to consciously think through how to tie your shoes or drive a car during a high-speed chase. You freeze. You fall apart. You lose access to what you already know.

You see it everywhere. Someone over-prepares a speech, then stumbles through every word because they can’t stop thinking about themselves.
Or a tennis player, like in The Inner Game of Tennis, who hits perfectly in practice but falls apart under pressure because they stop trusting their body memory.

I find many leaders do the same. I call the problem "leadership choke"

They hire brilliant people, then don't let it go, having troubles "delegating" - which in reality the fear of not being in control.
They overcontrol, overplan, overmonitor.
They don’t trust the system, their people, enough to let them do what they do best.

Leadership choke — when leaders with great teams end up performing like rookies because they can’t stop thinking for others, can’t stop over-managing, can’t stop tightening the grip.

The paradox is, just like in sports:
When you’ve done the work, when you’ve built the system, when you’ve trained the people — the highest performance doesn’t come from control. It comes from release.

The best leaders, like the best athletes, trust the process they’ve built.
They create conditions for flow, not for fear.
They know when to step back so the system can step up.

Over to you, dear reader,
Where in your life, your leadership, your work, have you already built something solid but still can’t let go?
What might happen if you stopped tightening the reins and simply trusted the system you’ve worked so hard to create?

Houston, we don’t have a roadmap.

The beauty of the human body, and mind, is that they haven’t changed much for centuries. Biology (and psychology) evolves slowly. That makes it predictable. Once you understand how people think, feel, and decide, you can build around that. You can rely on that. That's how coaching method gets better and better, and better - as we keep developing deeper understanding of us.

Technology, on the other hand, is the opposite. It shifts under your feet every few months.

Every week now, I find myself asking:
How can I reimagine what I do - how I work, deliver value to clients, build relationships - in light of what’s changed?

Paying attention has become the new competitive advantage. And less and less people are in control of what they pay attention to.
Noticing. Being present. Interpreting signals. Catching shifts early enough to turn them into opportunity.

That’s what great, enduring companies do.

They build on what doesn’t change, human needs, and adapt the how.

Take Amazon.
Jeff Bezos once said, “I can’t imagine a future where customers want higher prices or slower delivery.”

The what, that stays constant:
People will always want lower prices, more choice, ease of access.

The how keeps changing, from bookstores to e-commerce to one-hour drone delivery...
Amazon didn’t bet on a trend. It bet on human nature.

Or look at Netflix.
People have always wanted good stories and easy entertainment.
The DVDs, streaming, and AI recommendations were just different vehicles for the same timeless desire: “I want to watch something I’ll enjoy, without friction.”

Universities launching degrees in “Applied AI” make me laugh a little.
We’re still figuring it out. There’s no playbook yet.
How do you teach something that’s changing every month, something we don't understand the evolution of?

Maybe what we should be teaching is how to think, how to learn, how to see what endures beneath the noise.

Maybe it makes more sense to master timeless principles - psychology, behavior, decision-making, trust, storytelling - and then learn to use any emerging technology to serve them?

Because tools change.
The way humans work doesn’t.

So a good question to ask,
What are you building on - trends, or timeless truths?

I love reading something that makes me think every morning.
That’s why there’s always an open book on the coffee table by where I write and work.

Lately, I’ve been stuck in my goal of speaking fluent Italian. Progress slowed. Then I started paying attention to Duolingo’s rankings, leaderboard, and competitions. Suddenly, I was learning more, 2x more, not just in the app, but outside of it too.
Staying on the leaderboard kept me consistent.

I used to think I was beyond gamification.

Turns out, I’m not.
And since it’s aligned with my long-term goals, why not let it work its magic on my psychology?

Yesterday on my podcast, I had a guest, Ricardo Lopes Costa, the author of "The Fantastic Engagement Factory: How to motivate people on a large scale with gamification".
Ricardo told me a little story about a cupcake stand outside his house.

The stand ran a simple game: a spin-the-wheel raffle. Winners could pick as many toppings as they wanted for their cupcake. Ricardo's little daughter kept going there, even though she wasn't much into cupcakes.
The line for that stand was more than 2X longer compared to other food sellers next to it.

Not sure how good that was for the cupcake eaters, but it was great for business.

It shouldn’t matter if my book is open or closed to get me reading every morning.
It shouldn’t matter whether Duolingo has a leaderboard for me to keep learning Italian.
It shouldn’t matter whether there’s a prize to win for buying cupcakes.

And yet it does.

Because we’re people with human psychology, which is driven by instincts and emotions first. We aren't machines or AI (which also seem to have caught some human tendencies to be biased)

It was a good reminder for myself to put a bit more thinking into designing experiences for people and myself to move us towards our desired goals with the psychology of motivation and all the biases in mind - towards our goals of learning, improving, creating more positive impact, not just more fun that leads nowhere. (PS all companies that get you hooked have been doing it forever)

It might be a good nudge to you, dear reader, to ask ChatGPT or your other favorite AI agent - how can you use gamification strategies and other known cognitive biases to help me do/achieve/change more/less of X?

Let's play for good🧁

"Function-focused design assumes people have the motivation to complete tasks and focuses on efficiency. Human-focused design assumes people do not always have motivation and aims to create more motivation at every step." - Yu-Kai Chou, world-known gamification expert.

I take a cold shower every single day.
Not for the health benefits.
But because afterward, nothing in the day feels that hard anymore. Discomfort doesn't stop me.

This morning, my Uber driver told me he does the same.

He wakes up at 5am, does a quick workout, takes a cold shower.
“It makes me feel right,” he said. “Calmer. More confident. More disciplined. My friends laugh at me, but when I skip it, my brain just doesn’t feel right.”

I smiled.
Because he’s right. And research agrees.

I often remind people in my workshops on emotional intelligence and stress resilience:
“Exercise is 1.5 times more effective than therapy or medication.”

Your brain really isn’t quite right when you don’t do what you were designed to do — movement.

Maybe cold showers aren’t that essential. But I have my reasons to keep doing it. Just like my Uber driver this morning has his.

Then he asked me,
“How do I motivate my friends to do more of things like this?”

After years of coaching, I’ve learned that motivation, the REASON we act, is deeply personal.
The reason I take a cold shower might be completely different from yours.
But the secret is always the same: you have to connect what you do to why it matters to you.

If you want to do the right things — the things that make you better — you first have to know why they matter.

Find the payoff, that’s personal, then the action.
Draw a bright line between what’s already important to you and what you need to do more of.

Nietzsche said it best:

“He who has a why can bear almost any how.”

Want to help people change?
Help them figure out THEIR why, or at least, help them start asking the question.

Who does what, when, where, how often, and with whom?

During one of my recent masterclasses, a participant shared they were struggling to stay motivated to exercise.

So, I walked them through a little if–then scenario - a simple but powerful way to make an aspiration more concrete so it actually happens.

Most of us make plans like, “I’ll start reframing my thoughts this week” or “I’ll pay more attention to my negative inner dialogue”, "I'll pay more attention to my food this week"

The problem with that?

Our brains don’t work that way.

So with clients, when they say “I’ll practice it this week,” I stop them.
And we repeat together, a few times if needed:

• What exactly will you do?

• When?

• Where?

• How often?

• With whom (if relevant)?

It sounds basic, unnecessary, trivial. And it works.

Because when you talk yourself through the exact scenario of what you’ll do, you’re programming your brain for action the way it’s built to operate:

Trigger (when, where) + Action (how, what, with whom) + Reward (acknowledging progress).

That’s how you also support your long-term motivation. Not through abstract inspiration but through brain-friendly design.

The if–then approach, also known as implementation intentions, is one of the simplest and most evidence-based tools we have to program your brain for new practices and habits.

“Implementation intentions are highly effective, as research shows they can double the chances of achieving goals by turning vague plans into specific, actionable "if-then" statements. This strategy works by automating responses, so when a specific situation is encountered, the desired behavior is triggered automatically, reducing the need for willpower and conscious decision-making at that moment. By pre-determining the when, where, and how of goal-related behaviors, individuals can better handle distractions and self-regulatory problems”

Lasting motivation isn’t about pushing harder.
It’s about designing your brain’s autopilot to work for you, not against you.

So, have you tried it?
What’s one new practice or habit you could reprogram with a clear if–then plan today?

Regular kind of economists make projections on the assumption that humans are logical people and we will do what’s best for us. In their world, we save for retirement because it’s objectively smart. We wait for prices to drop before buying that new phone. We eat the salad instead of the fries because the data clearly says it’s the healthier choice. And our answer for a request doesn't change if we are asked before or after lunch.

The problem?

We’re not that kind of people.

Behavioral kind of economists try to understand how humans actually are - psychology, emotions, biases-driven people whose priorities change based on the weather, when and what they ate, what they last heard from a neighbour on their walk to the supermarket, or our need to feel good about how we compare to people we spend time with (even when we don’t like those people - we just not gonna let those people look like they are getting ahead)

They study how people actually behave "in the wild".

Why we sign up for the gym in January but stop showing up by March. Why we buy stuff on sale we didn’t need in the first place. Why we keep meaning to start saving “next month” like if something would change then all of a sudden.

A traditional economist might say:

“If the retirement plan has better returns, people will pick it.”

A behavioral economist says:

“People will probably just go with whatever the default option is. And will justify the decision later with some made-up story”

Or take healthy eating.

The economist assumes that when calorie counts are displayed, health-concerned people will make better choices.
The behavioral economist knows we’ll still grab the muffin if it’s sitting at eye level and the fruit is hidden in the corner. 

I used to be a "regular kind of economist" in my coaching.

Now, I'm more of the second kind.

Instead of trying to make clients act like the people they wish they were — disciplined, rested, always in control — I help them build systems for the people they actually are: busy, distracted, often tired, pulled in too many directions.

Together, we design scaffolding for their best aspirations to grow into reality.

If you tend to forget your workouts, we put them on your calendar right after school drop-off.
If you snack late at night, we move the snacks out of sight and keep fruit on the counter.
If you overcommit, we make “no” your default response, with a think-later time scheduled when you are at your best.

When systems match reality, frustration drops. Progress happens more consistently.

I try to apply this to myself too now.
I ask: How can I help Angela — the real Angela, not the ideal one — win today?

High aspirations are great. But systems should serve the person you are right now, not the fantasy/or future version that finally has it all together.

Like scaffolding for a growing tree - it helps your best self stand taller until the roots are strong enough 🌱

Over to you, dear reader, are your systems built for who you are — or who you wish you were?

PS Great podcast from Tim Ferriss just came out to accompany this blog's reading.

When you leave yourself no way out - magic happens.
You figure it out. You always do.

"You know, I think, people who don't figure it out just don't sit with it long enough - they let themselves off the hook", - a friend shared.

I’ve been writing every day since May 2024. 531 days in a row.
No skipped days. No waiting for inspiration.
One hour, first thing in the morning. It’s on the calendar, like breakfast.

Some mornings, I sit down with no clue what I’ll write about.

I get into my chair in front of my laptop. I think about my life, my clients, something I listened on a podcast, read in a book, or heard from a friend - and suddenly, an idea shows up.

It always does. Like this morning.

The real reason I haven't skipped a day even when flying for 2 days straight?
I didn’t give myself a choice.

Something I read from Seth Godin today (who's by the way, at 65 this year, has written 10,000 blogs - my inspiration, which I also can reach at the age of 65),

“Shipped work teaches you things unshipped work never can.”

You might be waiting for the perfect idea, the right moment, or to finally feel “ready”, be "good enough".
But those who ship regularly know the truth - 
First, you commit to shipping.
Then, the great work comes.

Shipping is a habit.
And the habit starts with one simple rule: you got to show up.

Sometimes, the best hack for momentum is removing the escape route.
Like selling the masterclass before you’ve built it, announcing the project before it’s ready, promising the post before you’ve written a word! I did it. Many writers who get the advance do that same exact thing - they are paid BEFORE they have written a word.

Pressure creates clarity - it gets you on the hook!
Deadlines, and social accountability create needed flow.
And commitment to show up creates art worth talking about.

So, over to you, dear reader,
What are you putting off because you don’t feel ready?
And what’s one hook you could get yourself on so there’s no way back but forward?