The world, as I see it, is a place for realists. Nature doesn’t care for our hopes and dreams, it deals with what’s here and now - the present. In the present, there seems to be only a few states: entropy and decay. If that’s true, then nature’s nature is to be insensitive. If that’s true, how do those who are most sensitive thrive? It’s difficult. I’m a sensitive human, and I find that my way to thrive is to acknowledge a few things:What I feel about a thing is only truly important to me.What I feel is not the same as what I perceive.What I perceive is not necessarily what I know. Therefore, when I feel especially sensitive about a topic or situation, I do the following to process and move on:I make every attempt to label the emotion. I acknowledge that it’s my emotion, and it’s important to me. I seek to understand the situation. What did I see or notice just before I felt what I felt? I determine what I I can do to prevent or improve the situation for myself and others. I thank my feeling for me being the indicator I needed to make change happen.I’m getting better at it. The goal is incremental progress. I’m less stuck and paralyzed by my thoughts. Instead, I’m moving forward and making change happen. I’m improving my situation, and hopefully, the situation of others. In an insensitive world, I’m leveraging my sensitive nature to improve what I can.Give it a try.

Playing and winning the long game may be all about positioning — being in the best position possible to take advantage of fate and fortune. That might be challenging for you because positioning for the long terms runs afoul with short term goals. Short term wins that are not tied to a long term goal rarely yield long term benefits. I find these ideas especially true when developing customer-facing products and services.

The truth of things isn’t always interesting — it’s often detailed, boring, and not as exciting as the embellished story. The types of stories that are detailed, boring, and not exciting are often long. The truth of a thing can also be ultra elegant — one or two words, astonishingly simple. The truth isn’t short… and it is.

I wonder if life is becoming too much of a zero sum game. Google “US Politics” and you’ll find hundreds of examples of people playing zero sum games. Are these games productive? Who ultimately wins? My working theory is that all but a small fraction of a fraction of people win these games. With so many people losing, why do we tolerate them?Perhaps it’s because of what it means to be part of a team. Leaders wield a great power - the power to wage war or create alliances with or against competing teams. With that great power, comes great responsibility — to look after the people — all of them — in their charge. What good is winning if everybody must suffer?

You can whittle a stick into a spear by applying angular strokes of force against the stick with a knife. In the same way, your ideas can go from “this might work” to “this will work” by applying the angular stroke of outside critique to them. As much as it might be painful to listen to the ideas of those you loathe and hate, ultimately their force acting upon you will shape your work.

If you want to improve yourself, you are required to step back and get a vector — where are you right now?Then, once you know where you are, you have to move forward through space and time. There is no other way. Movement creates disorder, and disorder allows for growth. Stay still and paralyzed in your own thoughts, doesn’t help.

Music education is for learning how to create and ship an idea that matters to those you seek to serve. The music educator teachers the student the master an instrument - the mode of communication, the language of music - the form that will be used, and then creates the time, space, and place for that magic to happen. The student generates an idea with a purpose — the student plays. Much of the communication that we do as humans could be improved through the study of music. Leaders: you can use this insight in your business as well. Substitute “music education” for your name.

I don’t enjoy receiving praise. I didn’t receive a lot of it growing up, and I don’t enjoy the feeling of it now. I almost prefer the leaders in my life keep their praise and instead respect me. I value respect over praise because respect is a form of deep admiration. I prefer my boss to feel respect towards me than to lob a “nice work” to me when I do my job. There are others like me. Perhaps you are one of those people. If you are like me, or you know people like me, consider respect over praise.

There are customers in everything that we do. If you’re a leader, your employees are customers. If you are a musician, your fans and venues are customers. If you are a teacher, your students are customers. If you want to make more from the work you do, get better customers. Why not get more customers? Would you rather have 1000 customers paying you $1 per month, or 2 customers paying you $500? I would rather work with 2! More time, more calls, more work, more outcomes, more results, more likes.. more isn’t always better. Pick your customers — the smallest number of people who want to the work you do — and serve them.

I sometimes find this time of the year tough. More difficult to keep up with important habits, more difficult to keep up with my studies, and more difficult to keep up with my writing. It’s not that I don’t have energy. I have plenty. I find it difficult to focus my energy towards important work. So where does my energy go? My mind wants to focus my thoughts towards doing and observing things. As if it was pulling my head out of my books and into the world. As if my mind was saying, “what good is that knowledge if you don’t use it.” Fair point, brain. Fair point.