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Category: Thinking Clearly

Downloading Key Moments

Published on August 10, 2026

A good practice after an experientially rich weekend, is to deliberately and carefully store a key moment or two into your long term memory banks.

What you do is simple… carefully review the experience in full and narrow in on the moment(s) you want to save.

Replay them as vividly as you can… inviting all of your senses to participate.

And then—and this is the key—imagine yourself remembering that moment far into the future.

Repeat both of these steps for as long as it feels appropriate for you.

And if you don’t, all that’ll happen is the moment(s) will get picked for you (or none will get picked at all). For better or for worse…

AI And Writing

Published on August 5, 2026

One of the most annoying tasks I used to do before publishing a video was typing out the captions. One letter at a time. One line at a time. One time-marker-in and time-marker-out at a time.

A one minute video could easily take 30 minutes to caption edit.

This is an excellent AI use case.

If I could push a button and have all of my words captioned into a video? I would do that without hesitation—it would save me so much time.

And it’s not even like it’s taking a job away from somebody who would love to do that kind of work—typing out captions manually is a pain in the butt for just about anyone I’d say.

What I refuse to do, however, is push a button and have AI write the pre-captioned words for me.

There’s a magic that happens in the labor of writing.

One that literally updates my brain’s software in real time… one that sparks creativity as I push and pull and plug various different thoughts into and out of each other… one that uncovers gold nuggets as I dig into various life experiences and memories with upgraded software and enhanced creativity…

There’s no magic in having the words written for you.

But having your words—your hard-earned, carefully-curated, imperfectly-selected words—transcribed, turned into captions, or otherwise used after the fact… is a mundane bore of a task that could easily be outsourced to AI and could easily buy you back mountains of time that you could spend… you know… laboring for magic instead.

Not All More Is Created Equal

Published on August 2, 2026

We can put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do more… more that gets added on top of the ton we already do… which usually happens when we compare ourselves to others…

Or we can choose to do less… which is usually best done when we remove the distractionary, unimportant stuff from our day…

…Which opens up space. Blank space. Blank canvas space. Boring blank canvas space.

The kind of boring blank canvas space that’ll inspire you to do more. That’ll pull you to do more. That’ll get you lost in the more.

What Are You Doing All That Work For?

Published on August 2, 2026

After a school tour, a trial class, and feedback from my instructors, I met with a father about signing his two kids up for martial arts classes.

The class schedule, we soon realized, would be an issue.

His work schedule was sporadic and would only allow him to bring one of his kids in one time per week—and he didn’t have any alternative help.

I told him one time per week wouldn’t be enough and that I wouldn’t recommend signing his child up until he was sure he would be able to bring him in to at least two.

He agreed and we set up a follow up time when he could sign his other child up.

When that day came, he surprised me and told me he was ready to sign up both.

I asked him what changed and he said: I requested an extra day off work so that I could make this work. This is important and I realized I needed to make it a priority. Otherwise, what am I doing all that work for?

He continued to tell me that even though money might be a little more tight, seeing his kids grow up to be the best little humans they could be was priceless. And he felt our program could help him do that.

…What are you doing all that work for?

I Struggle With Perfectionism

Published on July 28, 2026

Before I publish or share or create anything—I want it to be subjectively perfect.

I obsess over the smallest of details and will stubbornly refuse to ship until I either exhaust my list of details or myself.

And even when I exhaust myself… I still oftentimes won’t ship. In fact, I’ll use it as an excuse to further delay projects.

Most recently, I’ve been recording videos. And my goal is to keep the process as simple as possible—for the reasons I just outlined. One platform, one message, one take.

And of course, like clockwork, my social media algorithms have suddenly started feeding me video optimization content.

Things that talk about angles, and lighting, and transitions, and iPhone camera settings, and titles, and subtitles, and hashtags, and music choice, and captions, and hooks, and triple hooks, and the god hook, and green screens, and editing tips, and virality hacks, and…

…And this is exactly why I stopped making videos before.

My current mantra is this: reject optimization at the outset.

…Simply get into a rhythm producing content in a way that’s aligned with me—not the algorithm.

Not that there’s anything wrong with playing the social media game… just that it’s not for me right now.

The reason this blog has lasted as long as it has is because I’m not trying to hack anything. I’m not trying to optimize or broadcast or write for what ranks well on search engines.

I’m writing for myself—in hopes that it also might help others.

And I need to remind myself that these videos are going to serve the same purpose.

Onward.

…And What We Can Do About It

Published on July 25, 2026

One of my employees sat me down in my office yesterday and explained to me why he thinks some of our students are getting bored and what we can do about it.

It’s the… “and what we can do about it” part that impressed me.

People come to me with problems essentially my entire work shift each day.

Parents having problems with their kids, kids having problems with other kids, instructors having problems students, students having problems with the curriculum, something in the school is broken and has become a problem, associates realizing that something in our system is broken and has become a problem, and so on.

Granted, it’s a career I love and this isn’t a complaint about the problems I’ve professionally chosen to take on.

It’s more so a highlight of how valuable and refreshing it is to have somebody come to me with… solutions.

And it makes them stand out because the default seems to be, “It’s not my job to fix this…” or “I’ll deal with this later” or “I can’t wait to get home tonight to watch my show…” and it gets swept under the rug and/or forgotten about and/or pawned off on somebody else.

A rule that was told to me years ago that I try my best to carry with me for everything I do is, “Don’t come to me with a problem unless you also have a solution to go with it.”

Build Something Better In Its Place

Published on July 22, 2026

If you’re going to boycott something to starve it of resources (of your own at the very least), don’t forget to actively invest your resources elsewhere to help the alternative grow.

Because not participating altogether isn’t helping anything better grow just as it isn’t helping what you’re avoiding grow—you’re essentially just becoming a bystander/spectator.

Don’t like what you’re seeing on social media?

Don’t like what you’re hearing on the news?

Don’t like what a company did to their employee(s)?

Starving it of your time, energy, attention, and money is an excellent option.

…Creating social media that you wish you saw more of?

…Covering stories and/or spotlighting people that you wish you read more about in the news?

…Choosing to buy from companies that have good culture, good business integrity, and high moral code?

Now that’s the type of effort that leads to a better world.

It can’t just be about tearing everything down and/or opting out of the system altogether.

It has to be about building something better in its place.