Daily Thought for Change

Are you putting yourself in the right place to win?

There’s a spoon and there’s a fork.

Each serves a different purpose.
You eat soup with a spoon. You twirl spaghetti with a fork.
Try mixing them, and you’ll end up hungry and frustrated, barely catching any soup, letting the noodles slide off before they reach your mouth.

The same applies to people.

When you try to average humans, fit them into generic molds, you end up not quite with soup, nor with a lot of noodles. You lose texture, flavor, brilliance. You get a forgettable meal instead of a one-of-a-kind, many-course dining experience worth remembering. Ever wonder why in top-tier restaurants every dish seems to have its own silverware?

Are you a fork or a spoon? On strengths and boldly owning flaws.
Are you in a place to bring your excellence into the world?
Or still trying to be good enough at everything, hoping someone notices what a good, well-rounded person you are?

Excellence doesn't try to do everything. It’s okay to miss out, because it is committed to the one thing.

Lately, I’ve been listening to the CliftonStrengths podcast, taking their extended assessment today, and pairing it with a pack of resources from the Positive Psychology toolkit on strengths-based development.

Partially, I want to set myself up to thrive - do great work, deliver more value, win more often.
Partially, I want to become a better facilitator of strengths-based growth - for teams, for organizations, for change agents like you.

Positive psychology research reminds us,
Focusing on fixing what’s wrong doesn’t guarantee a life that feels right.
Eliminating disease doesn’t equal thriving health.
Fixing flaws doesn’t create high performance.

In fact, the most successful people?
They’re anything but well-rounded.

I’m asking myself today,
What are the strengths I should double down on?
What flaws can I make peace with?
And what projects or paths will stretch my gifts and feel fun doing it?

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive" ~ Howard Thurman

A good strengths assessment can help.
I’m doing this CliftonStrengths 34 today, it's more work-related.

But you?
What are YOU built to do best?
And are you letting the world taste that?

What are you optimizing for? Do you know?

Every morning I go for a walk.
Most mornings, I’m mildly uncomfortable.

Not because I enjoy suffering, or doing some cold exposure protocol - just dressed too light for the weather.
I throw something over whatever I’m already wearing and head out.

When I’m visiting my parents, my mom always asks,
“Why don’t you wear something warmer? Something comfortable? Why walk around cold?”

She means well.
But she still doesn't get it about me,
Comfort isn’t what I’m optimizing for.

Freedom, simplicity, thinking deeper about fewer things are.

The fewer decisions I have to make in the morning, the more energy I have to think about interesting things. Like things I want to write about.
So I wear the same few outfits all year round.
Not because I don’t have options, but because I don’t want to spend my choices on things that don’t matter to me.

Am I cold sometimes? Sure.
Do I care? Not really.

Mild discomfort is a price I gladly pay for the ability to drop into deep thinking right away.
It’s a trade-off I’m choosing, on purpose.

Here’s a lesson that might help you understand the world, and the people around you, a little better,

Everyone is optimizing for something.
And most of the time, you don’t know what it is.

Your coworker who triple-checks every email?
Maybe they’re optimizing for safety.
Your partner who wants to plan everything in advance?
Maybe they’re optimizing for certainty or control.
Me, walking around underdressed in the cold?
I’m optimizing for cognitive space and creative flow.

When you understand someone’s parameters, their quirks and behaviors make a lot more sense.
They’re not “weird”, they’re just optimizing for things you don't get.

Here’s a question that might shift your next conversation, team meeting, or even a first date:

What are you optimizing for?

It might be the most underrated question on all the assessments.

PS Also a great thing to know before getting into any partnership, negotiation or project.

The most important word of my life

I learned a new word. And it might be the most important one of my life.

I picked it up during a podcast with Anne-Laure Le Cunff that I recorded this week, but the lesson has been growing in me for years.

A story

My mom is always in everyone’s business. Not in a gossipy way - more like a loving command center.
She makes sure everyone’s warm, fed, well-rested. She checks if you’re okay, whether you want her help or not. And she’s just as devoted to her own growth - constantly learning, taking care of her health. I think she’ll live a long, fulfilling life.

My dad is the opposite. He doesn't want to be bothered.
And yet, he’s the one who taught me to meditate, started me on English and music lessons when I was 6, introduced me to fasting and healthy eating.
Still, he’s struggling with his health more than ever now.

Why?

My most important word might be the reason.

Generativity

It’s a concept from developmental psychology about the drive to contribute to the well-being of future generations.
It shows up in parenting, mentoring, building communities, passing on what you’ve learned.
It’s about leaving something better behind.

And something inside me shifted when I heard it.

When I was younger, I wanted to achieve.
I wanted to do big things. Mostly so people would see me, notice me.

Now, as I move toward my 40s, that drive hasn’t faded but the fuel has changed.
I still want to achieve.
But now it’s less “look what I’ve done,” and more “here’s how I can help.”

That’s generativity.

Psychologists say it’s the central challenge of midlife. Between the ages of 40 and 65, your health and mental well-being increasingly depend on your ability to contribute meaningfully to something beyond yourself.

One study found that people with a strong sense of generativity were more likely to make better health decisions.
They took care of themselves not for vanity, but because they had a future to serve.

Those who felt stagnation, the opposite of generativity, were less motivated to look after themselves at all.

So take this as unconventional health advice:

Contribute.
Mentor.
Volunteer.
Engage with your family or community.
Be the person who makes someone’s day better. Open the doors when someone's rushing in front of you.
Use your work to improve someone’s life - your client's, your customer's, your coworker's.

It’s not just good for the world, it’s good for your heart, your health, and your sense of purpose.

Your superpower at this stage of life might not be about doing more for yourself.
It might be about doing more beyond yourself.

What would change if your success became about what you gave, not just what you got?

Which way from here?

I want to work on interesting projects. And I’m not doing that right now.

That was my wake-up call.

A moment of honesty, a thought I woke up to, that forced me to stop just chasing clients, or looking for the next job, or business opportunity, and start thinking more deliberately about what comes next.

One evening before falling asleep, I ended up watching a video by brilliant behavioral scientist Matt Wallaert (who I’ll be interviewing soon on the Change Wired podcast - stay tuned). In it, Matt shared 4 questions to ask yourself when navigating a career transition.

I figured I’d share my answers with you - to keep up my writing practice, hopefully spark something useful for you, and help me figure out what’s next.

I want to work on interesting problems.

To me, that means applying my experience to real-world challenges. I want to find problems worth solving and solve them.

I want to learn, research, do some data work, build hypotheses, integrate knowledge across disciplines, and create solutions. Then I want to apply those solutions, in collaboration with people - stakeholders, teammates, partners.

Half of my time spent deep-thinking, creating, learning.
Half connecting, coaching, speaking, working with others.

Behavioral design. Systems thinking. Making things better.

The geeks. The thinkers. Framework builders. Scientists. System designers.

People who obsess over clarity and complexity in equal measure.

And I want to collaborate with business people, creatives, policymakers, social entrepreneurs - those who live close to the problems.

One of my favorite things in the world is building bridges - between disciplines, between people, between mindsets. I want more of that. Third of my talent is system thinking and design, third is tinkering with solutions, third is communication with diverse groups of people, translating their points of view into something they all can relate to.

Results. Real change. Impact you can see.

Imagine this, sitting on a bench, looking at the world around you and thinking, "Because of me, this sh*t works a bit better"

Helping people thrive. Helping clients helping others have access to more opportunities.

Creating outcomes that last, even when I’m no longer in the room. Building sustainable systems that keep on giving. Expanding our collective knowledge.

I want to be useful. I want to make a dent. (One might say, don't we all?)

This one took a minute.

A client once said to me, “I don’t feel like I’m making a difference. How do I have a bigger impact? You know, thousands of people.”

I asked him, “Well… who do you want to impact? And why? Probably not all the people?”

The “why” matters. I believe we care most about the things that once caused us pain.

For me, 2 themes stand out:

• Potential left unexplored. I always wanted to do so much but for a long time I couldn’t. Wrong country. Not enough money. Not enough access. So much time wasted figuring out how to find a fit, instead of letting my potential go into full bloom.

• Systems that harm instead of help. I hate seeing people waste their life energy stuck in loops - bad food, toxic habits, addiction, passive distraction - when all it might take is one right nudge to move them toward health, purpose, possibility and potential we all have.

I believe we can design the world as a garden for human potential not just scatter seeds and hope for the best.

Which way from here?

A practical way to think through transitions

Great multi-preneurs, prolific scientists, and visionary artists share one powerful mindset:

They know when to explore.
And they know when to exploit.

Psychologists call this divergent and convergent thinking.
I call it a superpower for navigating transitions and making personal and business breakthroughs.

EXPLORE: You try things with no fixed outcome. You follow curiosity, not KPIs.
EXPLOIT: You zoom in, go deep, figure THE thing out. You build. You ship. You solve.

Whether you’re reinventing your business, pivoting your career, or reshaping your life - this rhythm is essential.

TO EXPLORE: get curious.

What am I curious about right now? How can I engage with it in the real world?

Not just reading. Not just watching videos.
Go do. Attend that event. Join the workshop. Talk to weird people. Tinker. Make. Touch. Smell. Embody.

TO EXPLOIT: ship something.
When something grabs you, go deep.
Turn the thread into a project. Solve a problem. Build a prototype. Sell something.
Write the book. Launch the service. Paint the damn thing.

It’s like digging for gold.
You don’t always know where it is — so you explore.
And when you find a glimmer? You dig.

Get digging! Your curiosity is your metal detector.

PS ⚠️Exploration never feels urgent. Which is why most people never get to it. It gets sacrificed for efficiency and urgency. That’s how companies lose relevance. And people lose direction and get stuck.

The goal of getting better

“Well, that’s not specific enough. What will you actually do this week to get better at planning?”

That’s what I asked a client after we explored a few blind spots that might be slowing him and his company down.

After a pause, he shared something personal:

“These days I don’t feel like I own my days. It feels like they’re decided for me. Things just happen. I’d like to steer my ship more, not just respond to one emergency after another.
Yes, let’s focus on getting better at planning.
And apply what helped me get into the best shape of my life to my work life now.”

And then… he was happy to end the session without a plan.

This happens often when someone sets out to “get better” at something that doesn’t have a clear finish line. How do you know when you're better at planning? What does “winning” look like when there’s no scoreboard?

You define it.

You set your own finish line.
You answer the question:
“How will I know I’ve arrived?”

But, here's a caveat, when you’re just starting, or not sure how to measure it yet, or where it is you end up going, pacts often work better than goals.

"How will I know I'm moving?" - might be a better question to ask.

In "Tiny Experiments: how to live freely in a goal-obsessed world," Anne-Laure Le Cunff defines a pact as a short-term, focused commitment to an action, framed as "I will [action] for [duration]". It's a way to turn curiosity into action and learn from small, repeatable experiments, rather than getting bogged down by rigid goals. 

If you’ve never had a planning habit, then spending 5 minutes each morning mapping your day is the needed, simple move forward. Ask:

• What matters most today?

• What do I want to accomplish?

• Why does it matter?

• When will I do it - before the world tells me what to care about?

It’s not about chasing some ideal outcome.
It’s about showing up. Consistently.
And then reflecting. Adjusting. Learning. And growing.
That’s how we get better at things we’ve never done before. Because often, it's hard to set goals when you haven't tried something at all.

In the Tiny Experiments Anne-Laure shares a powerful idea: in a fast-changing world, it’s better to commit to a flexible practice, not a rigid goal, which might have to change.

Reflecting on my own life, I see it clearly, when I made a pact with myself to show up, everything changed.

Not when I set the perfect target.
But when I committed to:

• Write every day (not finish a book).

• Plan each day (not map the next five years).

• Train every morning (not “get fit” by summer).

So maybe that’s the way of life?

Start a pact. Not a goal.
Choose what you want to get better at.
Choose your practice.
Choose your time, place, your tools.
And then show up.

Have you ever tried it?

#100DaysOfWriting
#100DaysOfExercise
#100DaysOfMorningWalks
#100DaysOfGratitude
#100DaysOfColdOutreach

...

What could YOUR 100 days be?

What data are you listening to?
That might be a more important question than what the data says.

In my recent conversation with decision-making consultant and behavioral scientist Brooke Struck, we dug into what it really means to make good decisions, individually, as leaders, as teams, as organizations, as societies.

One topic we paused on:
What does it actually mean to make evidence-based decisions?

Brooke’s take: everything is evidence-based.
Your feelings? Data.
Your gut instinct? Also data.

In fact, most human decisions, according to science, are made through emotion first, then justified with logic afterward.

So the better question isn’t "Is this backed by data?"
It's: "Which data did you decide to listen to?"

Let’s say you decide to diet, and then fail.

It’s not because you don’t know what’s healthy.
It’s because in the moment, based on your physical, mental, and emotional state, the tradeoff felt worth doing something else.
Short-term desire beat long-term intention.

Same with exercise.
In the moment? It spikes cortisol, blood pressure, and inflammation.
Unpleasant, stressful, unhealthy, one might even say!
Long-term? It helps you live longer, think clearer, feel better, it lowers your stress from life.

Which data are you listening to when taking action?

Innovation?
In the middle of it, it's a hot mess!
Confusion, wasted time, lots of effort with no progress, no visible ROI.
And yet, that’s exactly how great companies stay in the game.
That’s how they win the game.

Tough conversations?
With a spouse, a friend, a team member.
They feel like threats to the fragile peace you’ve got left.
But not having them?
That’s how relationships slowly die.

“So evidence is an interesting thing in this, right? Because a lot of people will say, well, we should pivot because of this data point. And unless you peel back the layers and look at how that decision was made, that can look like a very rational decision-making process on the surface. Oh, this person is making a decision based on a data point. The challenge is that there's so much evidence out there. Once you’ve reached a conclusion, it’s not difficult to find data that supports it.”
— Brooke Struck

That’s the paradox of modern decision-making:
There’s always a data point to justify any decision.

So the real skill?
Choosing in advance which kinds of evidence you’ll listen to when taking action.
Which metrics matter.
Which feelings deserve your attention.
Which outcomes you’re optimizing for.

Because if you don’t choose consciously, you’ll end up chasing the data that matches your doubts, fears, or bias.

What decision are you facing right now?
And which data will you decide to listen to?

PS Figuring out a life turn on your journey, change of career path midage, it's not supposed to look straight, planned and clear - it's supposed to look like fog, mess and no meaning. But is this the data that will define long-term fulfillment? 🎧 Our full conversation with Brooke is on Change Wired podcast.

My most trusted tool for dealing with overwhelm?
A piece of paper.

Whenever my mind gets cluttered, I grab a pen and write everything down.
What’s swirling in my head. What’s worrying me. What’s unfinished. What’s uncertain.

It’s cathartic, like opening a window in a stuffy room.
Suddenly, I can breathe again. My mood lightens.
The same thoughts that felt heavy in my head seem much less intimidating on the page.
Like a graveyard in daylight, still there, but not so scary anymore.

I first learned this practice from David Allen and his wildly and globally popular GTD (Getting Things Done) method.
Once you’ve dumped it all on paper, don’t stop there.
Go item by item and give each thing a home:
– Trash it
– Calendar it
– Or do it (if it takes < 2 minutes and matters)

This simple process does a lot more than organize your day.
It clears cognitive bandwidth - your brain’s limited processing power for solving problems, making decisions, learning, and self-control for better food choices.

“When cognitive bandwidth is depleted, it becomes harder to manage tasks, solve problems, and even make good choices.”

No wonder we spiral down when we try to hold it all in.

Want better sleep?
Write things down before bed. 

Want to reduce anxiety and worry, emotional baggage?
Capture open loops of thoughts and unfinished tasks in an external system you can rely on.

Want to make better decisions?
Free up mental space first - otherwise it's like running a slow computer with 30+ tabs open. Same exact thing happens to your brain.

This doesn't have to be just a personal ritual, it works in teams, families, leadership groups.
Instead of just talking about what needs to be done, create a collective ritual:

- Make space.
- Hold time.
- Set purpose.
And do the mental unloading together - mental dump time.

Your brain is not a storage device. It’s a decision-making machine. Free it up to do what it does best.

As David Allen likes to say, "Your head is a crappy office" - a brillian observation that science backs up.

How do you fix overwhelm?

How do you make better decisions at work and in life? How do you come up with original work, better ideas, even solve some of the world’s biggest problems? Or simply become a better parent or partner, better human, better leader?

No Rush Rule

Wherever I live, wherever I travel, I carry with me a simple list. It's taped above my desk.

The “Good Day List.”
Just a few ingredients. But all of my days have these.

Item #1?
No Rush

None of my best ideas, meaningful work, fulfilling relationships, or life’s most joyful moments came when I was rushed.
Not one.

But almost every bad decision I've made?
Done in a rush.

So I made a decision.
I will not rush.

One practical way I do it: No meetings on Mondays.
It's not that my Monday are off - urgent things pop up all the time. But because I’ve made space for it, my week doesn’t derail. And there's no rush.
It’s like having a time emergency fund.
When life happens, it doesn’t blow up the whole system.

It’s the same principle as saving money for dental work or a broken laptop - so these "small things" don't add stress.

In the book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Mullainathan and Shafir explain how lack of time, money, energy shrinks our brainpower:

“Scarcity affects both cognitive capacity and executive control… When we are short on time, money, or other resources, we become myopically focused on the near future. Our ability to reason abstractly, plan ahead, retain information, even control impulses get worse.”

Rushing doesn’t just feel bad it literally makes us worse at thinking, working, parenting, partnering… everything.

There was an experiment done, when they asked people to rush to some lecture about helping others, they put a person asking for help in the way - people rushing almost never helped.

When I read something powerful, I immediately ask:
How can I apply this to my work, to my clients, to my week?

For me, that became No Meetings Mondays.

For teams and companies I consult with, it becomes unscheduled hours, a weekly window for deep focus or handling unexpected fires without chaos.

Google’s 20% time? Not just a perk. It’s a design for brilliance.
They don’t just hire smart people.
They create conditions for them to stay smart.

And that means: they don’t rush.

Highly productive people often shoot themselves in the foot. They fill every minute to feel efficient.
But in truth, objective, science-backed truth, they’re making themselves worse at delivering outcomes.

"...our computational capacity, our ability to pay attention, to make good decisions, to stick with our plans, and to resist temptations. Bandwidth correlates with everything from intelligence and SAT performance to impulse control and success on diets. This chapter makes a bold claim. By constantly drawing us back into the tunnel, scarcity [time, money etc] taxes our bandwidth and, as a result, inhibits our most fundamental capacities.

Mullainathan, Sendhil; Shafir, Eldar. Scarcity: Why having too little means so much."

When I look at my calendar and feel rushed, that’s my signal.
Time to pause.
Time to zoom out and ask:

What’s this week really about?
Or as Tim Ferriss puts it:

“What’s one thing, if done, will make the rest easier or unnecessary?”

That’s leverage.
And it makes you smarter, better, more human.

Good day?
No rush.

PS What percentage of your days feel rushed?
Where can you build in more slack - or leverage - to reclaim your capacity to be your best?

Are these the right specs?

In the age of AI, we need to learn to speak clearly and precisely. Now more than ever.
Because when we're vague, things don’t just get lost in translation - they multiply into mess, faster.

A friend recommended an EA from the Philippines to help me free up time for what matters most. He spoke highly of him.
So, as a test, I asked for help repurposing a podcast episode:
→ A short Instagram reel
→ Captions for LinkedIn and Instagram
→ Basic audio polish
I asked that the content feel good for marketing. Meaning: compelling, curiosity-sparking, so the right people actually want to listen.

When I got the files back, I was ... surprised.
Everything seemed done. All the deliverables were there.
But none of it reflected what I actually wanted.

It was generic. AI-generated filler. Empty words dressed up like a politician's speech - lots of air, no substance, many words said, no common sense delivered.

It became clear the EA probably just fed my request into a few AI tools, copy-pasted the output, and clocked out.
Charged me for 11 hours. Probably done in one.

Was it his fault? Probably not entirely. I assumed too much.
I hadn’t listed out the specs in detail. I assumed someone "great at copywriting" would ask questions if unclear. That he’d care to understand my work before jumping in. That he knew how to "hook" people into learning good stuff.

My assumptions - his thinking, that he was meeting the specs.

In the world of AI, it's easier than ever to meet the brief - word counts, video and audio formats, file types, engineering tech assignment descriptions. And it's more needed than ever to make sure that we are precise about the right kind of specs.

Just because it ticks the boxes doesn’t mean it’s what we needed.

PS It’s like fighters cutting 10% of their body weight in days to make a weight class.
Yes, they hit the number. But is that your idea of life-long weight loss success?