Daily Thought for Change

“So what do you do when the doubt creeps in? When you think maybe you’ll never get what you want, and all the effort is a waste?”

I asked a friend on our Friday hike this morning.

“I just don’t let that thought take space. I don’t give it my focus.”

That’s a superpower🦸
Every high performer I’ve worked with, or read about, shares this ability: they don’t indulge unhelpful thought loops. They redirect their focus to where it's needed to help them keep going and eventually succeed.

What fascinates me even more is how selective our mindset strength is.
We can be relentless and disciplined in one area of life… and completely chaotic in another.

I see it all the time.

Brilliant founders who’ve built multi-million-dollar companies saying things like:
“But I have no discipline around food. If I crave something, I must have it.”

These are people who’ve pushed through failure for decades. They’ve survived the kind of pressure most humans never experience. They’ve done the hardest things.
And yet they doubt their “mental skill” in this tiny, simpler area.

It fascinates me how humans work.

It’s never a lack of ability.
It’s a lack of mindset skill transfer (which you can learn and improve).

We often forget we already have everything we need to succeed. We forget our wins. We forget the mindset we’ve practiced for years in one context, and don't see how it applies to where we need to overcome current challenges.

Conversations like this remind me that all of us already possess the strength, discipline, the systems of self-management we think we’re missing. We just haven’t learned to reuse it everywhere we need it.

We learn and adapt in some areas (like business) better than in other areas (like fitness or food).

We stay closed-minded somewhere, stuck in our ways like it's our fate, while being flexible like rubber elsewhere.

So if you’re doubting yourself right now, try asking yourself this with me:
Where are you already succeeding, big or small?
And how can you apply the same mental system, the same way of focusing, to the part of your life that needs growth?

That’s usually the unlock.

What area of your life needs a skill transfer?

"What’s the most common cognitive bias founders have that makes them fail?"

The same one that makes them succeed: optimism bias.

It’s the bias that keeps you moving when logic would stop you. It convinces you the mountain is climbable, the idea is workable, the market is waiting. Without it, you’d never start.

But optimism bias also has a shadow side.

It makes you overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes and underestimate the negative ones. You start selectively processing information - spotlighting every green light, ignoring every red flag.
That’s how founders end up surprised by the exact storms every naysayer saw coming.

Then there’s overconfidence bias, optimism’s loyal sidekick.
Without it, again, no company would exist. Why would you start if you didn't believe you are THE ONE to make it happen?
With it, you might believe the ride will be smooth, or that early success means permanent success.

The danger?
a) You’re not mentally or emotionally prepared for the setbacks, delays, and gut-punches that are guaranteed.
b) You don’t build reserves for the rainy day because you’re so sure YOUR rainy day won’t come.

My approach as a coach has matured a lot over the last 10 years.
I stopped trying to “fix people.”

Now I help founders, leaders, organizations to double down on their strengths, including the biases that got them this far, AND build guardrails to protect them from the dark side of those strengths.

Guardrails like:
• Decision rules that prevent you from riding the emotional roller-coaster straight into a bad call that you'll never recover from.
• Teammates who do the due diligence before your enthusiasm closes the deal.
• Pacing growth and building systems that can scale before inviting in more customers.

Every superpower has a flip side.
If you don’t design systems to counter it, the flip side eventually bites.

A good way to spot your own biases?
Look at the places where your expectations consistently don’t match reality.
Or review your failures, which overly optimistic people rarely do, because they assume things will “just get better.”

So… can you name some of your biases?
(Overly optimistic, big-picture, fast mover, insatiable learner are definitely some of mine. Every one of them has a shadow.)

If someone looked at your calendar right now and judged your life by it - your values, your goals, your priorities - would the judgement reflect who you are trying to be, what you are trying to build, or to broadcast into the world?

Yesterday I led the Founder OS workshop at Africa Tech Festival, the biggest yearly tech event in the country, and I did one of my favorite modules to teach:
A scientific approach to living a good life. I call it the Work-Life Integration System. It has 5 simple steps.

It's not about the “perfectly balanced” life, or the one you see in glossy magazines.
It's about the life that feels good to you. That keeps your soul content.
All you need is a calendar, and a bit of unfiltered honesty.

1. Define what matters (to you).
The buckets that make life feel full right now, not in some “someday” future.
For me: health, relationships, learning, fun, and meaningful work.
For you, it might be different. Maybe one of your buckets is singing. Or baking. Or anything that needs to be for your life to feel complete every day.

2. Define what success looks like (to you).
What would “good” life look like in each area today, this week, this month?
Write it down. Make it visible. Make it as detailed or simple as it needs to be to guide your choices well. (You can see my example below)

3. Identify specific actions you will take consistently.
Different visions require different actions. Everything has a matching cost. You can't wish to be one of the world's greatest and think that amateur moves will get you there. Match "the price" with the prize.

4. Schedule time.
Nothing meaningful manifests without spending time and effort on it, without putting "the reps" in.
And remember: we humans are terrible at estimating effort. We have this optimism bias.
So set your expectations right to avoid getting frustrated and quitting.

5. Reflect and adjust.
Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly - whichever works for each goal.
You’ll change. Your priorities will change. What a good life is for you will change.
Let your calendar evolve with it. It should serve your life, not own it.

Fulfillment = clarity + consistency + reflection (to adjust).

There’s no ONE way to live a good life.
But there is ONE way to live a good life for you.
Are you living it?

I removed the 1-click option on Amazon and made a rule for myself: I can only buy things on Saturdays.
That little bit of friction made me far more mindful about where my money goes.

You’ve probably been there, late at night, half-tired half-bored, buying some trinket that, by morning, looks like complete bananas, asking this in your head,
“What was I thinking?!”

Good friction.

I never keep at home what I don’t want to overeat. If I want ice cream or cookies badly enough, I’ll need to walk to get them.

Breakfast.

Easy.

I pre-boil eggs for a week, I have my sardines ready - I don’t have to have a single thought about what I’m eating and it turns out to be great every time - as I planned/shopped/prepped it.

My gym clothes are out the night before. The gym’s a pleasant ten-minute walk away.

No friction for the things that make my life work.

Then there’s bad friction.

When I open Zoom for a client call and it asks me to verify my identity again, or it needs to update itself right when I need to get to work - I want to cancel my zoom subscription right away. (But too much friction to find a better solution)
When I try a new AI app and get hit with a maze of options and no roadmap - I cancel that trial immediately.
When someone sends me a pitch so complex I can’t even tell what they’re offering - I remember Alex Hormozi’s line:
“Confused customers always say no.”

That’s bad friction. It serves no one.

I’m reading The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder. It’s a great reminder that what we actually do depends less on how good something is and more on how convenient it is.

So, over to you, dear reader,
When you design your projects, products, or systems, do you design for the right kind of friction?
Are you making the right things easy and the wrong things hard?

When the system is broken, blaming “bad behavior” for bad results doesn’t help much.

When I coach someone through changing their diet, my first question isn’t about their willpower, or about how to get them grow their discipline. It’s always about their setup. 

What makes their current choices so convenient?
Where is the system stacked against them?

Most people aren’t weak. They’re just living inside systems that make the wrong choice the easy one.

Have you ever wondered why no good coach works on people's willpower?

People are the most adaptable species on this planet. If we keep getting the same results, rising obesity, chronic loneliness, disengaged teams, burnout, it’s not because humans suddenly got worse. It’s because the system around them rewards, nudges, and normalizes those outcomes.

The system is optimized for the results it's getting.
And we are the system designers.

Take food.
Our food environment isn’t designed for health, it’s designed for convenience and profit. Try walking into a supermarket hungry and see how much “willpower” helps when 90% of what’s in front of you was engineered to hijack your brain’s reward system to eat more, to spend more, to "indulge". You’re not broken. The system is working exactly as intended. And you are just adapating.

Or workplaces.
When I hear leaders complain that people resist change or don’t innovate enough, I ask: what’s the system rewarding?
If promotions go to the safest hands, if meetings eat every hour, if “mistakes” are punished and reflection time doesn’t exist - then resistance isn’t a people problem. It’s a design outcome.

The same principle applies to our personal lives.
If you want to wake up earlier, make your bed time a non-negotiable.
If you want to exercise, make your "gym" the path of least resistance.
If you want your team to be more creative, build systems where it’s safer and more rewarding to try something new than to play it safe.

When you change the system, people’s behavior follows faster than any motivational speech could ever achieve.

Most people aren’t rebels. They’re just responding to what’s around them.

So when we see behavior that no longer serves our bigger purpose, the question isn’t “How do we fix people?” (Or yourself)
It’s “How do we fix the system so doing the right thing becomes the natural thing?”

“The system that’s safe only if people don’t make mistakes is not a system made for humans.”

I read this line in a behavioral science course from Irrational Labs, and I loved it so much!

Because it reminded me that’s how many of us treat our systems, goals, and habits, ourselves, what we want to do more or less of - in this inhuman way!

We expect ourselves to get better. We expect ourselves to get perfect.
When a more realistic, and ultimately more effective, approach is to accept humans as we are and build systems that work with our nature, not against it.

That’s what the Netherlands did with the Vision Zero project.
By redesigning roads for human error, not by persuading people to get better with another "shaming campaign" - they cut road deaths from 3,300 in 1971 to about 582 in 2021 (even more so now), even with a 300% increase in traffic.

It’s the same principle that helped me coach over 100 leaders to change their habits - speaking, eating, sleeping, thinking, prioritizing, finding more time for things that matter - and finally get results after years of struggle.

When we design systems that assume people will get tired, distracted, or lose motivation, the outcomes improve by a lot!

That's why I so love applied behavioral science, which doesn’t try to make us superhuman. It helps us make a change as we are.

I love this phrase from Yu-Kai Chou (world-known gamification guru):

“Function-Focused Design assumes people have motivation and optimizes for efficiency.
Human-Focused Design assumes they don’t, and creates motivation every step of the way.”

When I work with clients (and myself), I never assume we’ll suddenly become perfect.
Instead, I ask:

“Hey, given the probability that you’ll get tired, will forget things, and there will never be enough time - how can we design our approach so that even then you succeed?”

The results of this approach are just keep getting better.

Setting yourself up for success means accepting your imperfect humanity.
Do you?

I interviewed Jez Groom yesterday, an applied behavioral scientist who once helped an entire country, Mexico, get a bit leaner and healthier, someone who helped establish behavioral science at Ogylvi.

Where did they start to get Mexico leaner? With a movie.
A national campaign that simply made people aware that where they were… wasn’t where they wanted to be.

Before anyone will change, they need understanding, the emotional realization that the current path isn’t working or won’t work soon.
No awareness, no movement.
Why go through the pain of change if you don’t think there’s a problem?

When you’re trying to help someone change, a whole country, or just your team, you have to make sure they feel the gap between where they are and where they want to be. Without that, all the logic, tools, and incentives in the world won’t matter.

Welcome to the TTM.

A framework that emerged in psychotherapy that has been proven to be quite essential for human change: The Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM), or simply, the Stages of Change.
It says we move through predictable stages:

1. Pre-contemplation (not aware)

2. Contemplation (aware but not ready)

3. Preparation (getting ready)

4. Action (doing)

5. Maintenance (keeping it up)

6. Termination (it’s who you are now)

When I followed up with Jez and asked where he’d start a behavior change program, once awareness is there and his answer was another applied behavioral science golden nugget:

“Once there’s awareness, just get them to do something, anything, that shifts them from a non-doer to a doer.”

It’s that simple. And that's what I use in coaching all the time now. Even in the most stubborn cases.

If you don’t exercise, start standing more.
If you eat no fruit or veg, start with one apple.
If you never plan, do a 1-sentence reflection.
If you’ve never used AI, just open one tool and play.

...

Start where you are.
Change comes in stages.

That’s where most communication about change, especially internal change programs or marketing — fails.
They throw the “whole salad bowl” at people who don’t even know vegetables exist.

Don't send someone an elaborate email if they didn't agree to read a single sentence from you.

And now ask yourself, where are you or your team in the stages of change?
Are you creating awareness first, or trying to dump change like an icy bucket of water on people?

PS The most effective Change Management models start with awareness - Adkar or Kotter model. All “habits guru” agree - start the new habit tiny.

I recently got a programmable pressure cooker.
You set the program, set the timer however long in advance, toss in the ingredients (shops now cut and wash everything), and that’s basically it.
I forget it exists until it’s time to eat.

It still feels like magic every time I glance at the clock around 5 p.m. and realize - dinner’s ready.
No extra thinking. No interruptions.
My food system works. Once-a-week groceries, the rest is automated.

The main benefit isn’t just saving time (or health and fitness) - it’s emptying the mind so it can think better about better things.

Most business owners and leaders I coach don’t struggle because they’re lazy. They struggle because their minds are overflooding. They try to carry everything in their heads instead of creating reliable systems to hold it for them.

"Your head is a crappy office" - trademarked line by David Allen, Get Things Done author.

Overwhelm is nothing more than trying to keep in mind more than your mind is designed to handle.
The right systems let you let go to dive deeper into what truly matters, where you want to go/grow.

Another system.

Every Friday, I go on an “entrepreneurial hike.”
I wake up, take an Uber, show up, and everything else unfolds. Over time, that one simple ritual built a network of peers who carry me through tough moments and share lessons that help me grow.

To level up, whether in life, business, or health, you can't keep adding more.
You need systems that make more feel like less - so your thinking stays free for what’s essential.

So if you’re feeling overwhelmed, stretched too thin, operating at your full capacity but not your full potential - at work, in your health, or relationships, ask yourself:

Where do I need better systems so my mind lets go and can finally focus on what really matters? Everyone can accomplish more but not by doing more and more.

Just like the pressure cooker, a good system hums quietly in the background while your best work gets done.

Oversimplification beats overcomplication.
If it’s progress you’re after, one gets you moving, the other keeps you stuck, wondering where to start.

In coaching, when I’m helping clients navigate complex problems, I ask myself:
“What’s one simplest thing that, when done consistently, will move us forward?”

Not the smartest, most advanced, or feature-rich solution,
but the simplest, doable, visible, and measurable 1 move.

If you want to lose weight, for example, you could start with one rule:
All my drinks are calorie-free until I reach my goal.
For most people, that alone is enough to make real progress.

I’m in this tough spot in my business right now, not improving, and I'm asking myself: what’s the one simplest thing that, when done, will start moving things forward?

Whether it’s energy, mood, self-esteem, relationships, or health and fitness - there’s always one simple thing that can get things moving again.

So, what’s yours?

“If I drive to the airport, I don’t choose the fastest, straightest road - I choose the most reliable one,” said Rory Sutherland, Ogilvy’s Vice Chairman.

And yet, GPS would still advise the fastest one. - I once was stuck in traffic for 1h on my way to the airport. Turns out, "the shortest" doesn't always mean "the fastest" when it's also the most popular with other drivers.

The fastest way to lose weight? Stop eating.
But it’s neither safe, sustainable, nor reliable.

That’s why calorie counting, however inconvenient, remains one of the most effective and trusted methods - it’s predictable. However unpleasant and boring. (That's where AI has a lot of catching up to do - it's simply, not predictable, however fast)

Yesterday, I was reminded just how much predictability matters to humans.

A pipe burst in my neighbor’s flat. The repair team arrived, and soon after, my apartment filled with the deafening sound of drilling all of a sudden.
Impossible to work. Impossible to think.

I went downstairs to talk to them. Fifteen minutes later, and after a few calls to the property owner, I finally got the only piece of information I truly cared about:
When will this end? - aka predictability of my day moving forward.

I didn’t care to see the wall. Or the pipe. Or the reason it had to be fixed right now. (I listened to exactly this for 15 minutes)
All I wanted was a sense of control over my day, to know what to expect, how to adjust.

In Hout Bay, where I live, water pipes burst regularly.
It’s unpredictable. But what the city got right is this: they log every incident, evaluate it, and tell residents online exactly when repairs will be done by.

I don’t mind those interruptions anymore.
We humans can all adapt, as long as we know what we’re adapting to, what to expect.

Years ago, Transport for London figured out the same truth.
They didn’t make the Underground trains faster, more frequent, or even more reliable to reduce complaints, stress, anxiety of the travelers.
They simply displayed how long until the next train arrives.

That small act of giving people clear expectations was everything people really wished for.
People didn’t need perfection, they wanted a sense of control.

It’s the same in leadership, business, sales and relationships.
When things shift, plans break, or progress slows, you don’t have to promise perfection.
You just have to set the right expectations.

Even an imperfect truth builds more trust than uncertain silence, or promising what you can't guarantee to deliver.

Good lesson for me as well in coaching, sales or building solutions and trust - certainty is what people value the most.