Refuse to let cruelty turn you cruel

Refuse to let cruelty turn you cruel. Refuse to let cruelty harden you, stupidity embitter you, or outrage reshape your character. The best revenge is not becoming like them.

Ease the burden you can reach

Help what’s right in front of you. Big problems don’t excuse small inaction. Ease the burden you can reach. Help the person you can help. Small acts still matter.

Don’t have an opinion about everything

Don’t have an opinion about everything. You don’t need to judge every preference, habit, or headline. Fewer opinions mean less misery and more energy for what counts.

Contribute to your community

Contribute to your community. Choose to build and support real, local, human things. Success that extracts and optimizes without giving back is empty. Invest in places and people that matter.

Prioritize stillness

Prioritize stillness. The world will be loud and chaotic. You don’t have to be. Build time for quiet activities without chatter, notifications, or constant input, so you can think clearly instead of reacting emotionally.

Treat people well

Treat people well. You can’t control cruelty in the world, but you can control whether you add to it. Be kind. Be fair. Be patient with your family, your team, and strangers alike.

Things won’t always go the way you want

Remember what your job is. Things won’t always go the way you want. There will be uncertainty, upheaval, and unfairness. You may worry about what comes next, but none of that changes what’s required of you. No matter who is in charge or how chaotic things become, your job remains the same: to be good, to be wise, to stand for what’s right, and to resist what’s wrong. The stakes may change. The duty does not.

Read old books, not the news

If you want to understand what’s happening now, read about what happened before. Choose ideas with a long half-life, like history, psychology, biography, and philosophy. Today’s chaos isn’t new, and it won’t be unique. Books remain one of the most reliable tools for navigating uncertainty.

Focus on what you can control

Focus on what you can control. Get very clear about what’s up to you and what isn’t. Global events, other people’s choices, the economy, and the weather are outside your control. Your attitude, your emotions, your desires, your attention, and your response are not. Who you are is up to you. Focus there.

Reduce Super Surveillance

Limit how much time you spend tracking problems you cannot meaningfully influence. Redirect attention toward issues where your actions can produce real change. Notice when your own problems feel enormous compared to others’. Actively compare them to similar challenges you’ve already solved.

Admit There Is No Hidden Effort Reserve

Acknowledge that all your time and energy are already allocated. If something isn’t getting done, decide explicitly what you’re willing to deprioritize to make room for it.

Build daily social connection into your life

Build daily social connection into your life as deliberately as you would exercise or sleep. Each day, initiate at least one genuine interaction: call a friend, share a meal, chat with a neighbor, attend a meetup, or engage a stranger with simple curiosity and warmth. Treat human connection not as a byproduct of life but as a core health practice, knowing that frequent, low-effort social interactions compound over time to support emotional well-being, physical health, and longevity

How much you truly own

Stop trying to multitask, and instead design your work to minimize task switching. People who believe they multitask well usually perform worse than they think. Declutter by category, not location, so you can see how much you truly own and make clearer decisions.

Deliberately include short bouts of vigorous activity

Each week, deliberately include short bouts of vigorous activity, such as hard intervals, sprints, heavy lifts, or fast climbs, where your breathing is rapid and effort is near your personal limit. These minutes deliver outsized health benefits per unit of time and confer protective effects against mortality, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some cancers that moderate and especially light activity cannot replicate, regardless of how long they are performed. However, remember that light and moderate activities are still important.

When you're relaxed

Sex hits better when you're relaxed. Conversations hit better when you're relaxed. Money feels special when you're relaxed. Sleep feels deep when you're relaxed. Food tastes better when you're relaxed. Everything makes sense when you're relaxed. Nothing kills a man faster than the weight of his own thoughts. Stay calm. Please don't stress over things that are out of your control.

You’re a perilous man

You’re a perilous man if you can go through hard times alone, then restrategize, reset, restart, reform, rebuild, and rise as if nothing happened.

At one point in life

At one point in life, you have to get serious. Delete numbers, stay away from people that aren't real, hustle harder, get your health right, your spirit right, your mental right. Stay focused. You've got to demand some respect. Not just from people but YOURSELF too.

It’s up to you to make it better

If you’re in a place in life you don’t want to be, it’s up to you to make it better. To reframe it by focusing on the positive and approaching it with enthusiasm. In the end, your positivity and enthusiasm will contribute to creating the outcome you’re after. Once you apply this mindset to all aspects of your life, you conquer fear. Fear basically has nowhere to go.

Everyone discovers an extra gear in a crisis

Everyone discovers an extra gear in a crisis. The rare skill is accessing it without one. The only controllable variable in any situation is you. Oddly, it's the last one people adjust.

Infuse some humour into your expression

When you next speak to someone, be the one to make the interaction 5% more fun than it would otherwise be. Obviously, align the vibe to the appropriateness of the situation, but don’t be the guy who dampens the mood. Lift it up a little. You don’t need to be Robin Williams in your interactions. Just bring a sense of lightness to your expression, be it in person or in writing. Notice how you begin to enjoy your own company a little more.

There are bottlenecks in every process

An essential feature of every bottle is the neck. No neck, no bottle. There are bottlenecks in every process, every project, and every method. Something is limited. We can pretend that’s not the case and avoid the discussion. Or we can see it as an opportunity. Successful organizations are good at embracing and working with their bottlenecks.

It’s your fault

Those are harsh words. They imply agency, responsibility, and failure. Agency and freedom go together. We have more choices than we want to admit. What do we make? The answer is simple: choices. Owning our choices is a celebration of our future agency. You don’t get yesterday over again, but you do get to make new choices tomorrow.

Room temperature

Left alone, a cup of coffee will gradually cool until it reaches room temperature. Stable systems regress to the mean. Things level out on their way to average, which maintains the stability of the system. The same pressures are put on any individual in our culture. Sooner or later, unless you push back, you’ll end up at room temperature.

Make and take

In a world of automation, AI, and outsourcing, what exactly do we do for a living? Perhaps we make decisions. And what’s in short supply? A willingness to take responsibility. If you choose to sign up to make and take, there have never been more tools or more leverage available to you.

Nothing important is for everyone

When we encounter a thoughtful critic, we need to quickly understand who is speaking to us. If the work we made was intended for someone just like this, and they don’t like it, we need to do a better job next time. The criticism will help us understand how to improve. However, if the work we created wasn’t for someone with the hopes, needs, and expectations of the person we’re hearing from, we can forgive ourselves (and them) by acknowledging who it’s for and why.

A mindset that can handle uncertainty

The ultimate form of preparation is not planning for a specific scenario, but a mindset that can handle uncertainty. A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.

The goal is to live your life

Somewhere, at this very moment, someone appears to be doing better than you. Their progress is faster. But comparison is a poor use of energy. You were not meant to inhabit someone else's story. You have your own work to do. The goal is not to beat their life; the goal is to live your life. Keep your eyes on your own paper. Stay on the path and continue forward, even when progress feels slow.

Thoughts can be consumed or dismissed

When you drink water from a cup, it becomes part of you. When water falls on you like rain, it evaporates a few minutes later. You'll always feel the rain, but you don't have to drink the rain. You can let the thought pass, and in a few moments the sun will return. You don't have to claim everything you feel.

The only thing you can control is the next action

You can't make time go faster or success come sooner. The only thing you can control is the next action. There are two ways to grow: by adding or by shedding. Do you need to add something, or do you need to shed something?

Read something new every day

It may seem like reading is a waste of time. We have Google and ChatGPT. Why bother? The more you read, the more snippets of information stick in the mind and contribute to a vast tapestry of creative connections that fuel your creative genius. It’s accumulative.

Do nothing when you are angry

Don’t fuss; don’t fight; don’t react; don’t argue, and for God’s sake, do not hit send on that comment. You invite unnecessary drama into your life - and this can quickly derail you.