What does snorting cocaine and working with AI have in common? The non-stop rush. After a week in Virginia, talking with students, faculty, and industry professionals, it felt like I’d traveled back in time to Miami in the 80s. There was the normal population behaving, well, normal. And then there were these individuals that were completely racing, all the time.

Obviously, the fundamental flaw in this comparison is that there is no upside to cocaine, but there is plenty of incredible benefit to AI usage. That is why people who get a taste of this new wonder drug are so quickly hooked. Your productivity accelerates astronomically. And the more time you spend tuning your work with AI, the more productive you get. When you build an app in one day that would’ve taken weeks before, you get a huge dopamine hit. And when you discover how to effectively use an agent to help drive your workflow, you get another hit. Articulate your playbook for triaging bugs, and you get another hit.

Your Energy Flywheel¹ is spinning faster with every AI hit you take. In all of my workout mentality focus on revving your Energy Flywheel, I never thought there was such a thing as running your flywheel too hot. But AI is like adding nitrous oxide into the system. It’s dangerously fast. Unchecked, your AI-accelerated flywheel can spin so fast that it’s stressing the infrastructure that’s holding the flywheel in place. The centripetal stress is threatening to tear the wheel itself apart. The bearings are reaching their functional limits. One slight change in any part of the system can lead to a catastrophe.

You can’t run nitrous through your engine continuously. The engine needs to cool down. So too do you need breaks from AI-injection to keep your flywheel sane.

No manager or colleague is going to talk you out of taking more AI hits. You’re all together at the “party”. You have to self-regulate, for your long term sanity.

Here are some key comments from my conversations last week that raise warning flags for me. Have you found yourself saying any (or perhaps all) of these? We’ll dive into each in more detail below.

1. “I feel guilty not working when my AI is.”

2. “I’m simultaneously exhilarated and exhausted.”

3. “I’m learning a ton, but I feel like I don’t know anything.”

Race against the machine

“I feel guilty not working when my AI is.”

Feeling guilty about your contribution level to your team’s output is a pretty typical experience. You’re working with your colleagues and noticing day after day that they all seem to be working more intensely than you. It’s not that they’re staying later than you or taking shorter lunch breaks, it’s just that when they are sitting at their desks working, they seem to be focusing more than you are and moving through their work faster.

This is something that I experienced in my first open space working environment, and it actually helped my productivity. My colleagues were all modeling this behavior, so I knew it was possible. And I found a renewed focus when I felt the pressure of letting my peers down.

Human to human, peer pressure can be a positive. But when that peer is a machine, you need to keep in mind the biological and physiological differences at play. It’s a losing proposition to try to keep up with a machine that never needs to eat, drink, rest, or sleep.

Set more humanly realistic expectations, using a Play the Long Game² mindset that ensures your routines are sustainable. To avoid “losing the plot entirely”³, put checks in your system. One professional I talked with last week has a “Touch Grass” status on his Slack, to let his team know he was outside taking it all in. In these breaks, remind yourself of how much more productive you are, and congratulate yourself for being productive enough.

You’re never going to outpace AI, but you will always outdream AI. Remind yourself that your uniqueness is what is most valuable, and give yourself the needed down time for actual dreaming.

“Don’t stop me now …”

“… Because I’m having a good time, having a good time.”⁴

When I hear, “I’m simultaneously exhilarated and exhausted,” it reminds me of my first experience managing a multi-geo team. Most of my feature teams were in Washington, but I had two feature teams in India, 13 hours ahead of us. We would crank all day in Seattle, and then while we were sleeping our colleagues in Hyderabad were cranking away. Any given day, the volume of visible progress was exhilarating.

When my team was all local in Seattle, there were a few members that would end up staying later at work. As the early riser, I would arrive at work the morning after with a manageable amount of work to get up to speed on what had progressed the evening before. I would quickly catch up and then start setting things up for my team for the day ahead.

With my multi-geo team, I arrived in the morning to find 10 people’s worth of progress (and questions and follow-ups) that I needed to catch up on. I struggled to contain my morning catch-up routine, and eventually tried to solve this by bringing my laptop home at night and checking mail before I went to bed. It was exhausting.

The solution was to uplevel my approach to the management of my team such that I wasn’t robbing energy from tomorrow to get through today. That same upleveling mindset can help make your partnership with AI more sustainable.

Where is frustration highest with your AI agents? What additional guidance can you give the agent that will lessen this frustration? What new agents can you introduce to offload some of your duties? If the volume of work that the agent is generating is becoming overwhelming for you to review, construct a reviewing agent and evolve it to the point where it produces an accurate and succinct report for you to digest.

The “AI accelerated workflow” space is still in its infancy. The downside is that there aren’t yet many hard and fast best practices. But the good news is that new ideas are coming constantly. Keep your eyes and ears open for them. Brainstorming with colleagues about their AI flows is a great way to riff off of each other. Make it a conversation over a team lunch and you’ll be tuning your system while you’re touching grass.

Let the learning sink deep

AI accelerates learning and makes it more engaging. AI can tailor instruction to your exact base of knowledge to ensure that you are efficiently learning new material in a way that relates to your own frame of reference. And the fact that the generated lesson plan is uniquely yours will increase your own interest level in the learning experience.

In the movie The Matrix, you see a futuristic learning ideal, where the computer feeds you new knowledge via a direct neural link. In seconds of transfer, Neo wakes up and declares, “I know Kung Fu.”

AI isn’t there yet, but the dopamine rush from the current just-in-time, tailored-to-me education is already more than enough to leave you hungry for more. It’s easy to just learn one more thing. In The Matrix, once Neo experiences this lightning fast learning, he can’t stop. Tank tells Morpheus, “Ten hours straight. He’s a machine.”

“I’m learning a ton, but I feel like I don’t know anything,” captures the gap between The Matrix ideal and the AI reality. AI is helping to present the information to us in a way that eases absorption. But how do we make sure it sticks? There have been a number of studies on AI’s impact on “durable knowledge” and “deeper semantic processing,” warning of the potential for AI to create “cognitive offloading and superficial learning.”⁵

In 2011, well before today’s AI boom, there was a study on the “Google effect”⁶, where convenient 24/7 access to searching the vast internet led people to rely less on independent retrieval of information. “Why do I need to remember important dates from the Civil War when I can just ask Google whenever the need arises?” There is a lot of truth to this, but if there isn’t enough knowledge in your brain for independent retrieval, we create an overreliance on the computer.

Spontaneous thoughts are the gems delivered to you compliments of your own Default Mode Network (DMN)⁷. Your DMN has no access to Google (well, not until Neuralink pulls this off). Your brain, independently and marginally directionally, is constantly processing and synthesizing all of the knowledge it has accumulated. This leads to novel thought where you can experience “A-ha!” moments, big and small.

Give yourself down time between each learning experience. In 15 minutes, you can create very meaningful space for learning reinforcement. Here’s the full progression of the Learning Reflection habit.

• Crawl: Record (2 minutes) - when you’ve completed a learning exchange with AI, create a page in your External Brain⁸ and copy all the relevant links and dialogue to that page.

• Walk: Summarize (3 minutes) - add a short summary of that learning experience to the top of the page. Don’t let AI write that summary for you!

• Run: Reflect (5 minutes) - Re-read the entire page once more and update the summary with anything you missed. Then set a 2min timer, close your eyes, and just think about that.

• Fly: Uplevel your Learning (5 minutes) - Pop the stack and reflect not on the material you learned, but on the learning experience itself. Did you become a better learner? What new learning device or strategy did you discover? Add these insights to a “How I Learn” page or section in your External Brain.

Footnotes

1. Revving Your Energy Flywheel

2. Play the (Really) Long Game

3. When Using AI Leads to “Brain Fry”, Julie Bedard et al (HBR)

4. Don’t Stop Me Now, Queen (Spotify)

5. The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Learners’ Memory: A Systematic Review, Siavash Rokhsari (CEE Journal)

6. Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having Information at Our Fingertips (Science)

7. Boredom is the Mother of Reflection

8. External Brain

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At Microsoft. there is training that managers go through around handling delicate situations and the processes to follow. Within that training is the escalation path to follow with HR (Human Resources) if you as a manager witness or are told about any inappropriate behavior, more precisely termed an “HR violation.” So I knew what needed to be done the first time I was put in this situation … and had to report myself to HR.

Daniel sent me an email at 7pm, titled “not so funny”. I read this mail at 8pm (this was from an earlier time in my career before I’d established my Inviolates¹ and my Triage Shield² that would have had me reading this mail during my workday). The mail detailed an incident when I told an insensitive joke to members of the team I was leading. I immediately felt bad. Daniel went on to share their family history that made the joke especially hurtful. Now I felt even worse. And then came the worst part of all: the mail gave the date of the incident … two years ago.

I experienced a horrible sadness. I had hurt someone close to me. And I had obviously created an environment where that person didn’t feel comfortable telling me about it when it happened. How much additional pain did that cause this employee as they tried to bottle it up? Was every interaction with me in the intervening time a reminder of this incident? What else had I done to my team that they had kept inside? I had prided myself on my dedication to my team and the “2nd family feel” that I always tried to nurture. In an instant that was replaced with complete doubt. I felt helpless, ashamed, and depressed.

Everything stopped.

But when you are a manager for 50 people, “stopped” is not an option. In coaching sessions with new managers, a phrase I commonly use is, “When you have a bad day, your team has a bad day.” Bad things happen, and you need to give them due space and attention. But you also need to contain it, boxing it in as best you can, so that life outside of that event can proceed, and you can be part of it. You need to develop your Compartmentalization muscle; to avoid “stopped”.

I knew that. I replied to Daniel asking for a 1:1 the following day, which they agreed to. I then “powered through” the next morning with this weight. At 1pm, I had an in-depth 1:1 with Daniel. Immediately afterwards, I wrote-up a recounting of our conversation which I shared with Daniel … and then raised to my management and the HR department. Then, at 2pm, I closed my office door and closed my relight blinds (a shut door meant you were busy; a shut door with shut blinds next to it meant you were seriously busy). I sat down in my comfy meeting chair, laid my head against the chair back, closed my eyes, and let the full internalization happen: sadness, anger, second-guessing, regret, failure, disbelief, embarrassment, disappointment, …

Read more

My sister Sue passed away on Easter Sunday. The non-medical cause of death was a broken heart. She lost her husband John on Easter Sunday last year, and a year without him was long enough for Sue.¹

The Good

I have a unique and special relationship with each of my seven siblings. Sue was my partner in clown. We all had fun as a family, but Sue and I took it to another level, mostly for the amusement of each other. As much as I enjoyed the buzz of our larger family get togethers, Sue and I enjoyed withdrawing as a pair and sharing a laugh. Sue is a blunt, even crass, individual, and I picked up a healthy amount of irreverence from my 3rd sister. Jokes were welcome on all solemn occasions, even funerals. It wasn’t meant in disrespect, but rather about building our bond and helping each other through the awkwardness of the situation.

Sue was my movie buddy. Good movies were better with Sue. In Star Wars, both Sue and I fell in love with Harrison Ford (Sue’s crush on Sean Cassidy had run its course, and she was looking for a new crush. My love of the Lone Ranger had run its course, and I was looking for a better hero.) So when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, Sue and I were first in line. “Gusts of wind and tongues of fire” was a phrase I kept saying after the movie, referring to the ark of the covenant scene. And Sue teased me about it ever since. (My final words to my sister included that line with a laugh. 🤗)

Bad movies became funny movies with Sue. Jaws 3D and Streets of Fire were quite painful movies to sit through. But thanks to Sue, they left a hilarious mark. As Sue’s body began to fail, with me being too far away to get to her in time, my solution was to make a Sue playlist and start playing it. And when Streets of Fire’s “Nowhere Fast” came on, I tried to belt it out the way Sue and I had done every time we listened to it together … sadly, I only got through the first line. 😢

Christmas and Easter were two holidays that excited me beyond sleep. Sue was my guaranteed all-nighter companion, huddled together in either of our bedrooms quietly sharing stories so that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny didn’t hear us. Eventually I would pass out, and (I’m sure relieved), Sue would happily finally get some rest.

When Sue’s husband passed away, I went home for the funeral, and then spent several days with Sue, along with my brother John and sister-in-law Christine. Among our adventures during this time was a walk through our old neighborhood together. This is the last walk I ever took with my sister, because the next time I came to town was six months later, and her health had already quickly deteriorated. At her passing, I said the same thing that I said about Hobbes: fast beats slow.

I miss my sister, but I know she’s in a better place … and resting in peace.

The Great

I have already talked about the appreciation I have for my seven siblings². “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” There are countless instances of our siblings calling us together in our adulthood, perhaps the earliest being the construction of my sister Beth’s deck on her brand new townhouse in Maryland, followed by a family get together.

If my siblings had just given me a great childhood, I would have already been thankful beyond words. But what I continue to get is the gift of a living and growing family bond that gets stronger every year. We do our share of reminiscing, but we are also constantly building new memories.

My brother John started a tradition (accidentally?) by calling us all together to surprise brother joe for his 50th birthday. 14 years later, that particular tradition ended when I reached my 50th … and then we moved on to the next tradition.

Relationships are living things. Nurture them and they grow. What I have with my seven siblings (now six 😢) has carried me through some very tough times. What Sue’s passing has reinforced with me is the need to double down on this, and savor it even more than I already do.

A week after Sue’s passing, six of the remaining seven of us got together for a family wedding of one of our 15 offspring. As I climbed aboard the flight to return to Seattle, I texted the “Bogdan Sibs” group: “Such a great weekend, family. Every visit with you is a true gift. Love you all.”

Be the architect of moments that matter³. As Peterson said, “Keep the relationship alive. Living things die, after all, without attention.”⁴ Never take long term relationships for granted. They are your foundation, whether you realize it or not.

The Sad

The first two sections of this post were the easy part. I sat down and wrote those in 30 minutes. But my weeklong writer’s block that followed Sue’s passing was due to this third section. Sue’s story would be incomplete without this section. So I kept pushing on the block and, eventually (at 9pm on a plane after my Bogdan family visit), I broke through.

I lost Sue finally at 1am on Sunday, April 5, 2026. But I lost Sue initially at 3pm on some afternoon in 1999 (or maybe it was 2000) … when she fell down the stairs in her townhouse and ended up in the ER. I visited her a few weeks later when she was rehabbing in cognitive care. The good news is that this low point didn’t last too long. The bad news is that the full Sue never returned.

Sue was an alcoholic, and given the healthy dose of stubbornness that runs in our family’s genes, there was nothing and no one that could stop her. Despite the excessive drinking that led to her fall down the stairs, she was not dissuaded from continued drinking. Lying in the ICU in her final hours, she was asking for alcohol.

Sue and I created thousands of memories over our first 30 years together. After her fall, all we ever did was reminisce. Our relationship wasn’t a living thing anymore; it was in stasis. Sue stalled. It may be crass for me to speak this, but given that Sue taught me irreverence, it seems fitting: I lost my Sue decades before she breathed her last breath.

Every sibling birthday party was accompanied by the drama of Sue’s arrival. She missed exits, turned herself around, got herself frazzled, and inevitably we had to talk her down and guide her in for the landing. And our time together with Sue was fine up until the moment that it wasn’t. And no one, including Sue, had any idea when that was coming.

The lesson that Sue taught me in all of this is the significance of compounding effects. Interest compounds … but so does debt. You can stack good on good, for your own longevity. Or you can stack bad on bad, for your own demise. So make sure you point your ship in the right direction, otherwise every action is taking you farther away from your own ideal.

Addiction is lethal in the slowest and most painful way. Addiction is individual bad decisions, compounding to bury you in their aggregate. You focus on the combined weight of thousands of bad decisions, but the fundamental shift is to focus on stopping the next bad decision. That’s the only winnable fight.

My sister never asked for help, and rejected our offers of advice. Addiction lures you into isolation. And to the extent that stubbornness is involved, this isolation can be strengthened to the point of it being an unfortunate fortress of solitude. It’s not weak to ask for help. It’s strong.

I’ve been missing most of my sister for the last three decades. Now I’m missing the rest of her.

“I’m not afraid to die. I’m not afraid to live. And when I’m flat on my back, I hope to feel like I did.” - U2, “Kite”

“Get busy living, or get busy dying.” - Andy Dufrane, “The Shawshank Redemption”

Footnotes

1. Susan B. Clayborn Obituary (Affinity)

2. The “Share a love story” section of Lead with Love

3. The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath (Goodreads)

4. The “Love is a verb” section of Love It Or Leave It

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I’m going to attempt to reference a political movie without making this a political post. Wish me luck. While the connections from this movie and the current Middle East events are obvious, I assure you that is not the motivation behind this post.

In Charlie Wilson’s War¹, Gust Avrakotos is a CIA agent who partners with Charlie Wilson, a US Congressman representing Texas. The movie details how a small group of individuals in various circles join forces and leverage their influence to fund rebels who are fighting the Soviet army in Afghanistan in the early 80s. The final scene in the movie is at a party celebrating the rebels’ success in driving the Soviets out of their land. The movie closes with a private exchange between Charlie and Gust out on the balcony.

Gust: “Do you know the story about the Zen master and the little boy? …
There’s a little boy, and on his 14th birthday he gets a horse, and everyone in the village says, ‘How wonderful, the boy got a horse.’
And the Zen master says, ‘We’ll see.’
Two years later the boy falls off the horse and breaks his leg, and everyone in the village says, ‘How terrible.’
Then the Zen master says, ‘We’ll see.’
Then a war breaks out and all the young men have to go off to fight but the boy can’t because his leg’s all messed up, and everyone in the village says, ‘How wonderful.’”
Charlie: “Then the Zen master says, ‘We’ll see.’”
Gust: “So you get it.”
Charlie: “No … ‘cuz I’m stupid.”
Gust: “You’re not stupid, you’re just in Congress.”
Charlie: “Send ‘em money?”
Gust: “You’re gonna start with the roads, move on to the schools, factories. Restock the sheep herds, give ‘em jobs. Give ‘em hope.”
Charlie: “I’m trying.”
Gust: “Yeah well try harder.”
Charlie: “I’m fightin’ for every dollar. I took you from 5 million to a billion. I got a Democratic Congress in lock step behind a Republican president.”
Gust: “Well that’s not good enough, because I’m gonna hand you a covert classified NIA right now and it’s gonna tell you that the crazies have started rolling into Kandahar like it’s a f*cking bathtub drain.”
Charlie: “Jesus Gust, you could depress a bride on her wedding day.”
Gust: “Hey, listen to what I’m telling you.”
Charlie: “You did a hell of a job for the son of a soda pop maker.”
Gust: “We’ll see … Said the Zen master.”

This is great story about the importance of playing the long game². Gust has been steadily raising Charlie’s awareness³ on the situation in Afghanistan. And at a moment when it seems that their work is done, Gust tries to create yet another moment of insight by telling the Zen master story.

You have certainly experienced your own Charlie moment, where you think your work is done, only to find that, as Gust says, it’s not good enough. The more complex the mission, the more likely you’re going to encounter this phase, perhaps even repeatedly, during the execution. This is the benefit of the iterative planning approach, where you keep yourself open to the suprises to come.

Let’s explore the components to a successful extended mission.

• Define long-term success

• Establish an initial best guess plan

• Follow-up: Course correct regularly

• Follow-through: Keep your eye on the prize and drive success

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Stephen Covey’s 3rd habit² is “Put First Things First.” In his presentations, he had a “big rocks” demonstration that involved a volunteer from the audience, a large clear bucket, a large jar of pebbles labeled “small things”, and ten big rocks that are each labeled:

1. “planning and prevention”

2. “relationships & family”

3. “key employment issue”

4. “major project”

5. “big opportunity”

6. “sharpen the saw”

7. “service, community, and church”

8. “vacation”

9. “block of time just for yourself”

10. “mental”

He begins by asking the somewhat rhetorical question, “Do you ever feel like you get bogged down in the thick of thin things?” Then he begins to pour the huge jar of pebbles into the clear bucket, “All these little, small things that tend to fill our lives, and little by little they just accumulate.” When the jar is empty, the pebbles almost entirely fill the bucket, with only a small space left at the top.

Stephen then asks the volunteer to try to fit all the big rocks in that bucket, without going over the top of the bucket. They can typically only fit four or five of the big rocks in.

Stephen calls out some of the big rocks they’ve left behind, “You’ve given up your ‘vacation’, and you have no ‘special block of time just for yourself’.” Then he brings out a second clear bucket and tells the volunteer, “You could take a completely different approach. You could work out of a new paradigm.”

The epiphany that most people have at that moment is to put the big rocks in first. After placing all ten of the big rocks, the bucket looks full. But you can see there’s lots of room between the rocks. When they pour all the pebbles in, these “small things” freely slide in and around the big rocks. And when the pouring is complete, everything fits.

Stephen Covey’s “big rocks” demonstration from 1994

“Put the big rocks in first” is about prioritization. If you don’t intentionally do this, then all the pebbles will fill your day, your week, your month, … And you’ll starve the big rocks.

What are your big rocks? Step back from the “day to day grind” so that you can take in the big picture. What things are most important to you? What Stephen calls big rocks I call Inviolates, because you need to hold them sacred, and protect them at all costs. When it comes to any planning you are doing, you need to prioritize the Inviolates. They may seem skippable in the moment, but in the aggregate, you’re going nowhere without them.

In 7 Habits, Covey says, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

Here’s how to identify, nurture, and protect your own Inviolates.

The architected calendar

This is what my weekly calendar looked like at the height of my Group Engineering Manager role.

This was the starting point for each work week, as everything listed here are the recurring meetings on my schedule. So for other people to grab time with me, this is what we have to work around. If this seems stressful, you should’ve seen what it looked like before I architected my calendar.

Yes, I only have 9 hours of unscheduled time per week, but every single meeting here is an established touchpoint for the people and the projects that I oversee. So those 9 hours are for the surprises, not for normal operation. And, over the years, that has proven to be more than enough space.

This calendar of perfectly placed blocks was the result of many meeting negotiations⁴:

1. “Does the meeting need to happen?” What warrants in person discussion vs. what can happen over mail?

2. “Do I need to be there?” Check your FOMO; and think about effective delegation.

3. “Does the meeting need to be that often?” Could you get away with meeting every other week?

4. “Does it need to be as long as it is?” Could you get away with meeting for 25 minutes instead of 50?

5. “Does it need to be at that time?” Can you request a different time that would be more ideal for you?

And, from an Energy Flywheel standpoint, I have made sure that the energy givers and energy takers are properly interleaved to rev my flywheel and keep it humming all day and all week.

Put the Inviolates in first

Do you think that it just magically worked out that all of my Inviolates fit around this schedule? Of course not! My Inviolates are sacred, so I bend my schedule to fit around all of my Inviolates.

Establish a daily pattern. Mine was simple at the time of this snapshot, because my boys were all grown up so there wasn’t the varying home schedule for school drop off and pick-ups or for the various after school sports and activities they were involved in. Mark all home hours as unavailable. And respect that. I got to work at 6:10 every morning and left at 6. And work never followed me home.

This creates the canvas that you can start your architecting inside of. Now you add the Inviolates.

• Journal & Blog - I start each day with writing. Sitting in a quiet office with no movement happening in the hallways yet, it is the perfect way to start my day. I still have this on my post-Microsoft calendar, it’s just 90 minutes now instead of 50.

• Eat, E-mail, Map out Day - Grab something to eat while I Triage all my Comms⁴. Now I have all necessary context paged in and I’m ready to map out my day. What do I absolutely need to address today, and where can I place it on my calendar (moving meetings if necessary)?

• QII - An hour every day dedicated to Quadrant II⁵ work. Never starve your proactive, planful mode.

• Lunch, Home Check-in, E-mail - Grab something to eat, check phone for texts and email from family and friends to see if anything needs addressing, and then Triage all my Comms again.

• ToDo transfer, Mail wrap-up - Make sure all of my newly noted ToDo’s find the right home in my External Brain⁶, do a final Comms Triage for the day, and then head home.

Identifying your own Inviolates

My calendar and my Inviolates are just examples. What you choose for your Inviolates and where you put them on your calendar is entirely up to you. Here are my pro-tips on how to identify your Inviolates and where to put them in your day.

1. Start small. I reached the point of three contiguous hours of Inviolates in my morning, but I didn’t start there. Keep Admiral McRaven’s words in mind as you embark on your Inviolates journey: “If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.”⁷ The first step for me was a 30 minute “email & map out day” Inviolate. My days felt more in control and productive with just this small regular investment. As you add more to your Inviolates, you should notice your Energy Flywheel getting a predictable boost with each iteration.

2. Front load proactiveness. The further into the day you go, the more that the “small things” will begin to pile up and demand your attention. Embrace the quiet of the morning (both in your mind and in your office). The first Inviolate to add to your schedule should be at the start of your day.

3. Have proactive bookends to your day. After you’ve established a start-of-day Inviolate, it’s time to add an end-of-day Inviolate. Here you reflect on how the day played out for you, what went well, and what didn’t go so well. Then pick one item you want to try to improve the next day. This brings closure to your workday, and your reflections here are notes to your future self, to be read at your next start-of-day Inviolate.

4. Embrace a midday pause. The next level Inviolate is the proactive pause you use to split your day. As a Group Engineer Manager, my midday pause was an opportunity to catch my breath as well as course correct for the day. And, in divide and conquer fashion, it changed my calendar from one large chunk to two manageable chunks. This further revved my Energy Flywheel daily. When I pivoted to my Director of Learning and Development role, where I had far fewer meetings and far more deep work blocks (yay!), my midday break became a 50 minute bike ride around campus.⁸ It was my midday meditation on wheels.

Keep nurturing your Inviolates, and they may just take over your calendar, in the best kind of way.

Footnotes

1. The “Be the architect of your day” section of Revving Your Energy Flywheel

2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey (Goodreads)

3. The “Creating space on your calendar” section of Revving Your Energy Flywheel

4. Triage Shield, Managing Email, and Herding Chats

5. The “Important vs. Urgent” section of Play the (Really) Long Game

6. External Brain

7. Admiral McRaven’s commencement speech @4:44 - 6:12

8. Fortuitous FlyBy (Strava)

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My brother John is a retired Army Colonel, and over the years he and I have spent a lot of time sharing leadership pro-tips from our respective jobs. He told me several times about the Right Seat and Left Seat Ride Program that he participated in on each change of command. Right Seat refers to the role of passenger. Left Seat refers to the role of driver.

Here are the relevant excerpts from USAREC Regulation 350-1, Training and Leader Development¹:

• “The Right Seat and Left Seat Ride Program gives new leaders an opportunity to accompany departing leaders through their operational area prior to the change of command or transfer of authority/responsibility. The program provides an excellent opportunity for training and mentoring incoming leaders.”

• “The Right Seat and Left Seat Ride Program ensures continuity and the passage of knowledge between outgoing and incoming leaders. The program is normally 10 days in duration, which consists of 5 days riding in the right seat and 5 days riding in the left seat.”

• “The program is flexible and represents the normal day-to-day activities of a company commander. The departing commander is the trainer for the Right Seat and Left Seat Ride Program. During the first 5 days, the outgoing commander will conduct normal operations with the new commander observing from the right seat. During the last 5 days, the new commander will take the left seat with the outgoing commander serving as an observer and mentor. The outgoing leader will provide their expertise and guidance.”

When John walked me through this, I loved the sound of it and thought about how smooth of a transition this would provide versus the normal role transitions I experienced at Microsoft: (a) leader leaves, (b) there is an interim leader, (c) we hire a replacement leader. I have experienced so much disruption in this latter approach that I was in search of the opportunity to apply this Right Seat / Left Seat procedure.

That opportunity came with my transition into the Director of Learning and Development role I created². Being an entirely new role, there was no time pressure to get me into the new job immediately. My role had been Software Engineering Manager overseeing a team of 60 people. My team had been purring along, and I wanted to keep it that way.

I talked to Neil, my replacement, about this and he was on board. Then I shared this process with my team in the form of a blog post before the transition started. For the first week, Neil shadowed me to every meeting and stood over my shoulder while I worked through my mail, repo tracking, and OKR tracking processes. The second week I shadowed Neil and stood over his shoulder. It worked beautifully, with Neil saying he felt more prepared than he ever had for a new role.

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Andy Weir tells a good story. After Drew and Charu read his first novel, The Martian¹, they got the four of us to go see the movie when it came out. When Project Hail Mary² came out, Drew, Charu, and I read it and loved it. So last week, we got the family back together to go watch Project Hail Mary. It was very well done. Highly recommend!

No spoilers here. I just want to share the premise of each of these two stories. In The Martian, they’re trying to figure out how to get Mark Watney, a stranded astronaut, off of Mars and back to Earth. In Project Hail Mary, an isolated Ryland Grace is trying to figure out how to research black matter in a distant galaxy and send his findings home to save Earth from this same black matter.

Both of these stories center around intense and extended problem solving. Both Mark and Ryland have their pity party moments, but in Finite Bitching³ fashion, they are quick to turn their attention to the task at hand and begin to Work the Problem. Once Mark groks the gravity (no pun intended) of his situation, he says, “In the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option: I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.” Well said. Little problems require a little science. Big problems require a shit ton of science. Work the shit out of the problem.

“Work the Problem” is a phrase perhaps most famously used by Gene Kranz, lead flight director for NASA’s Apollo 13 mission. 55 hours and 55 minutes into the Apollo 13 mission, there was a major failure on the spacecraft. At the same time that commander Jim Lovell radioed, “Houston, we’ve had a problem,” mission control was already reacting to a whole bunch of simultaneous alerts flashing on screens around the room.

The panic was building, so Gene Kranz worked to settle people down, “Let’s work the problem, people. Let’s not make things worse by guessing.” Gene went on to highlight how to keep focused on the problem. “Okay, now let’s everybody keep cool. We got the LM [Lunar Module] still attached. The LM spacecraft’s good, so if we need, to get back home we’ve got a LM to do a good portion of it with.”⁴

For the next 87 hours, mission control and the astronauts worked together to solve the problem. Gene later described the flow as, “Everybody seemed to be moving in the right direction without being directed.” Lovell celebrated the victory of “Initiative to think outside of the box. When things go wrong, how do we repair them?” These are articulations of Work the Problem at its finest.

Space is probably the most unforgiving environment, so the Martian and Apollo examples are extreme, but the Work the Problem lessons here are broadly applicable. You can probably even put yourself at ease when you encounter any problem by telling yourself, “This can’t be as hard as Watney’s or Kranz’s problem, so I’m sure I can figure it out.”

You have a problem in front of you, and you have time working against you. Focus on the problem at hand, and get to work.

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When a team reorganization gave me a dev manager position in Windows, one of the first problems I spotted was that we didn’t have good clarity on how all the different roles and responsibilities of our team were being handled. If I asked enough individuals, I could eventually figure out each. But there was a lot of hunting involved.

My solution was to add a “Team Chessboard” table to one of my whiteboards. I created seven columns:

• Team Member - Name of the team member.

• Key Strengths - Beyond the standard engineer skills we expected, what does this individual excel at, to the point that they model this skill and could even teach the team how to grow this skill?

• Ambassadorships - What is this individual passionate about? What do they advocate for? This could include aspects of software engineering, things that improve team dynamics, or aspects of team culture.

• Team, Organization, Division, and Company - These represent the four meaningful altitudes in our company. What responsibilities does this individual have at these different altitudes?

With this table on my whiteboard, as I had 1:1s with my 8 leads and skip 1:1s with the 40 developers that reported to those leads, I would ask for their additions to this table. I would create a row for them and we would fill in the columns accordingly. “I organize all of the team’s lunch and learns.” “I am passionate about design.” They were also welcome to call out additions to make to the other rows. “Linda is our Watson contact for the division.”

Along the way, many people asked about why I called this the “Team Chessboard.” I said, “We’re not playing checkers, we’re playing chess. Our team is not a collection of uniform one-dimensional pieces. We are an aggregation of individuals, each with unique abilities. The pieces need to make their value adds known, and the players need to strategically utilize all the pieces for maximum win potential.”

Obviously, talking about people as game pieces can be dehumanizing. When I spotted any negative reactions, I would first say, “Well certainly you’d rather be a chess piece than a checkers piece, right?” That helped some, but my second response was far more empowering. “The players of this game are the leaders on our team. So, if you want to lead¹, our Chessboard presents you with that opportunity.” (At the bottom of this post, I’ll share the evolution of this metaphor that gives team members even more power. But first I want to expand on what our Team Chessboard unlocked for us.)

This table grew over time, with regular “oh yea” additions, as new responsibilities were given to us, and as individual team members came and left. I never thought to do anything more with this until an office move forced my hand. The chessboard had lived entirely on my whiteboard for several months. Now I’d have to take a picture and recreate it in my new office, or … I could seize this opportunity and make an addition to our Team’s External Brain².

I created a “Chessboard” page in our Team’s OneNote and transcribed the content from my whiteboard.

Over time, our published Team Chessboard accrued win after win. Here are the five key wins, in the order we discovered them.

1. Create clarity

2. Encourage contribution

3. Model scope growth

4. Publicize opportunities

5. Turn our Rewards Discussions into team strategy sessions

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My father joined the Navy at age 18. He always spoke appreciatively of the Navy for whipping him into shape. Obviously never knowing what my father was like as a kid, all I could witness was the after-Navy man. What I saw was a man with a strong work ethic who had a lot of healthy self-discipline routines and had a very hard time sitting still for any prolonged period of time. A perfect example of how this manifested itself: whenever my parents came out to visit me in Seattle, I needed to have a long enough list of projects so that my dad could have some productive time while he was out.

When it came to behavior, my dad used general, non-scientific terms such as “whipping into shape” and “control yourself.” And those worked fine for me growing up. I didn’t spend all that much time pondering over what came easy for me vs. what was a challenge for me. My peers also talked about my behavior non-scientifically, using words like “spaz” and “random”. I always credited my six brothers and sisters for being harder on me than any of my peers (I say this in the most loving and appreciative way), such that by the time I reached the point of hearing words like this directed at me, I had a pretty thick skin and rarely thought much of it. I knew my family loved me and I was as encouraged to give them a hard time as they were to give me a hard time.

By copying my dad’s behavior, things seemed to work pretty well for me. It wasn’t until well into my Microsoft career that I started to look at my behavior more objectively and scientifically. Why was I so routine-oriented? Why would I have unpredictable surges and lulls in my execution? Around this time, I read Scott Peck’s “The Road Less Traveled.”² Among the many takeaways I got from this book, one that was especially important was how he presented therapy. At that time, there was a huge stigma associated with seeing a therapist. If you were seeing a therapist, it meant you were crazy. Scott countered that, saying that the healthiest individuals are the ones that seek therapy, because they are prioritizing their health, and taking specific steps to understand more about themselves.

Scott’s perspective resonated with me. As a computer geek, I saw therapy as debugging my brain. And given how much I had learned about software through my debugging experiences, I actually became excited about going to therapy. From my earliest therapy, we replaced those general terms from my childhood with more scientific terms: “ADHD” and “addictive behavior.” There was no judgment or labeling associated with the use of these terms. It was all about understanding. As we talked about this science, I could replay my experiences and see how these behaviors were exhibited in my dad and in myself. The genetics behind this made that none too surprising.

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Charu and I had a “provide alternatives” rule with our boys. When we were picking which activity we were going to do or which restaurant we were going to go eat at, anyone could throw an idea out, but you could not simply respond, “No.” Instead you had to respond with another suggestion, “Instead of Subway, how about Taco Time?” This rule keeps the conversation going, which generates more ideas for consideration. The generalization of this rule would be: favor conversation expanders over conversation enders.

When someone is asked to do something, a very relatable and understandable response would be, “I don’t have the time.” But that’s not much of a conversation expander. It fails to give important information to the requester, and were the requester to probe any further, it would most likely come across as pushy.

The conversation expands when you ask yourself, “Why don’t I have the time?” Here are seven alternatives, from easiest to most challenging

1. Suspension: “I will get to that in <ETA>.” - You’re telling the person that you are temporarily booked out, but you can schedule this for the given date. If that date works, then you’re all set.

2. Delegation: “You should ask <person>.” You’re telling the person that you’ve delegated this problem space to another person or team. Now they can forward their ask on to that owner.

3. Negotiation: “I can help with <part of ask>.” - This is a “meet me half way” response. You’re telling the person you can help with part of their need, but then they’ll either have to take on the rest themselves or find another owner for that part.

4. Prioritization: “I’m not prioritizing that.” - You’re telling the person where it ranks in your relative prioritization. This will get you into the discussion of importance, and perhaps uncover other motivations or benefits that move this ask up your priority list.

5. Optimization: “Let me figure out how to fit this in.” - You’re telling the person that you’re the right owner for this, but need to do some tuning to figure out how to work this into your sustainable rhythm.

6. Confession (Short-Term): “I’m behind on what I’m supposed to be doing, so I can’t even entertain an additional ask.” - You’re making it clear that you’re currently underwater, and focused right now on finding stability. This opens the door to a deeper conversation with the asker.

7. Confession (Long-Term): “I don’t think I have time. But, in all honesty, it’s not something that I know. Time is elusive to me.”

Or “I don’t regulate my time and therefore I don’t know what amount of time I would have.” - This is a conversation ender because most people wouldn’t know what to do with this response. But it’s captured here for completeness, and as the setup for the deeper dive below on confessions.

The first three of these are pretty straightforward in terms of the follow-up conversations they generate. Now I want to expand on the last four.

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The only family home I remember is on Teddington Drive in Richmond, Virginia. I was four years old when we moved into this house. I have no memory of the house on Covey Street where we had lived before. The closest memory I have is walking out the door to the Covey house and getting in our station wagon … on the day we were moving.

Mom had a piece of wall art that she hung above the kitchen sink the day we moved in. And it stayed there until the day she moved out, 40 years later.

Mom loved this prayer. Mom lived this prayer. When we cleaned out our family home before selling it, my sister Ann claimed this art and it is now hanging in her kitchen. I don’t have a physical reminder. But given how much I saw Mom demonstrating it, I didn’t need it. This prayer is etched into my brain, and onto my heart.

Prayer of Serenity
God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and the Wisdom to know the difference.

The Prayer of Serenity has been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous, as it perfectly captures the struggle we face in life to control what we can control and to let go of the rest. My family’s genes gave us a proclivity to addiction (accept). My father’s biggest addiction was alcohol. Mine is video games. Pop overcame his drinking (courage). I’m doing alright managing my video games (courage in progress).

Your overall effectiveness as an individual comes down to how well you can recognize what things you can change and what things you can’t change, and then how well you can direct all of your energy to what you can change. This is Stephen Covey’s first habit in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”². Habit #1 is called “Be Proactive”, where Covey introduces the two circles: the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence.

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I met Karl Stock on June 3, 1991, my first day on the job. Karl was my first skip manager at Microsoft¹. I learned a ton about people management from Karl over the four years that I worked with him. But more than that, I have had a terrific longstanding friendship with Karl. We’ve hiked and biked all over the place. And in recent years, on multiple occasions, I’ve visited Karl and his family down in Arizona².

There are countless treasured conversations I have had with Karl over the years, including one piano story. When Karl’s kids had grown and moved out, Karl and Martha decided to move to a smaller place on Bainbridge Island. Karl is a people person, and while he had collected many things in his house over the years, he hadn’t thought much about those things. In their downsizing move, he was surprised to find out that he was having a hard time letting go of certain things … because of the memories that they held.

He had a beautiful grand piano. Both of his kids had learned to play on that piano. Just looking at the piano reminded him of sitting with them at the piano or hearing them from the other room as they played. It made no sense to keep this piano, and yet he couldn’t imagine parting with it. I asked, “What if you just take one piano key with you? Would that be enough to remind you of all of these wonderful memories?”

I didn’t think much about this conversation at the time, but a few years later it was my turn to practice what I was preaching, when me and my siblings got together to clean our childhood home out before we sold it³. Forty years of memory accumulation. I was glad we had seven of us to work through this. It was an incredible experience to have all of us together again under the roof, one last time.

As the cleaning process went on, each of us began building our own separate save pile. These were the things that each of us was going to take with us. The rest went into the huge dumpster that had been dropped off in our driveway the morning we got there.

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Look at that photo! Not staged. Not doctored. Not photoshopped. Not AI-generated. 100% natural Hobbes. This is 2-year-old Hobbes with his favorite toy. That bear is the “totem” I’ve chosen to remember Hobbes by. It is now sitting in my office.

I was the last kid my parents had to ship off to college. I was ready for the college experience, but I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my parents. I was always very attached to my parents … strike 1. I am also a somewhat emotional person … strike 2. And then there was the fact that I was last in line … Mom and Pop’s final farewell … strike 3.

Friday night we loaded up the van. Saturday morning, the three of us set out on the four hour drive from Richmond to Blacksburg. We chatted the whole time about school and the different friends of mine that would also be at Virginia Tech. This dialogue was all part of their plan to get me more ready for being without them. They had a plan for this whole day. And not filling me in on their plan was actually part of the plan (foreshadowing).

We unpacked the van and they helped me get all settled in to 609 Lee Hall. Then we drove off campus to get lunch. Over pizza, our conversation continued, but now there was a sadness entering the conversation. We knew that soon enough Mom and Pop would have to hit the road for the four hour return trip. I started doing the mental arithmetic and figured in another hour they’d be gone. I was getting quiet.

After lunch, we climbed back in the van and started heading back to Lee Hall. As we approached my part of campus, Pop said, “This move-in traffic is way worse now. Son, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to park by your dorm. Heck, I don’t even think we can get back down that road.” There was a pause. I was at immediate attention … and alarm. Pop looked at Mom and said, “Cookie, we’re gonna have to say our goodbyes here.” Then they both looked back at me.

I stumbled. I stalled. “Uhhh … uhhhhhhh.” Mom gestured me forward. There was room enough in the van for me to basically kneel right between them. I gave Pop a hug. I started crying. I gave Mom a hug. I started balling. We exchanged our “love you”s. Then I stepped out of the van onto the sidewalk, shut the door behind me, and watched as the van drove away. I kept my head down as I walked back to Lee Hall, keeping the tears to myself.

When I saw them again a few months later, I commented on the need for us to do better at goodbyes than my unceremonious college drop off. That’s when Mom and Pop explained how intentional that was. Pop told me that on move-in day, when I got up to use the bathroom at lunch, he told Mom, “There’s no way that actually leaving Jeff is going to be easy. He’s already showing us that. We have to have a clean break or we’ll never get out of here.” Mom concurred, and the executed their plan to perfection. It sucked in the moment, but there was no way for that moment to not suck. So the point was, don’t prolong the suck.

Today, as I reflect on the abruptness of Hobbes’ exit, I’m remembering my college move-in experience and wondering if my parents had shared their pro-tip with Hobbes.

Just after midnight on Monday, Hobbes had his first seizure. 84 hours later, Hobbes left us. Hobbes never gave us any medical drama. For 13 years, he’d been a healthy dog. So when the four of us left the vet on Thursday morning and sent the news out to our family and friends, there was widespread shock. “What happened?” “That came out of nowhere.” “He was fine last week.”

There is tremendous sadness at the loss of Hobbes. But I’m thankful that the suck happened quickly. We only had to see our doggie struggle for a couple of days. When it comes to dying, fast beats slow.

Ten Hobbes Lessons

I am inexpressibly appreciative of all that Hobbes brought into our lives. Hobbes taught us how to be better humans. Here are the ten Hobbes lessons I valued most, in no particular order, other than saving the best for last.

1) Don’t just help one person … help everyone you meet

Our original motivation for getting a dog was to be a buddy and grounding force for our younger son, Drew. Drew’s blend of Bogdan and Kalyan energy gave him some unique challenges growing up. His written response to a prompt in 4th grade captures it best. Prompt: “What does ‘ready to learn’ mean to you?” Drew: “I think ‘ready to learn’ means to not talk but listen, not to be wild but calm, not be loud but silent. BUT you might be so silent that you burst up in flames at recess.”

As parents of energetic boys, we already had a full plate just with their activities. But we accepted the challenge of adding a dog into the mix because we saw the opportunities for helping our kids. We continued to be surprised, every day, that Hobbes wasn’t just there for Drew, he was there for Luke … and Charu and I … and our extended family … and our friends.

Hobbes was there for everybody. There was no shortage of cuddles, tail wags, licks, and grabs.

2) Stop and sit

As we were driving home from the vet, I asked the family, “What is the biggest thing that Hobbes taught you?” No one answered that question at the time. It wasn’t a time for much talking. But later that evening we came back to the question. Charu, Luke, and I all had the same answer. Hobbes taught us to stop. If you were at your desk for too long, Hobbes would let you know that enough was enough. He’d walk over to you, stop, and look up at you. Then he’d wait.

It was a brilliant tactic. His cuteness won most of the time. You could reach down and pet him a little bit, or you could use that as an excuse to get some quality cuddle time with Hobbes and either sit on the floor with him or move over to a couch or chair that he would then join you on.

When I was working at Microsoft, my morning routine was rock solid¹. I was up at 6am and out the door at 6:20am. At 6:30, I was sitting in my writing chair at work doing my daily writing block². And for the first year after Microsoft, I kept a very similar morning routine. I just replaced the office with the treehouse³. Then, last year, I decided to move my office from the treehouse to the actual house.

For years I had had complete control over my morning. I decided when I was going to have my first interaction of the day. Now, with my office being inside my home, that was something I no longer controlled. Now, about midway into my 60min writing session, I would hear the clicking of Hobbes’ nails on the hardwood as he pranced towards my office. Hobbes was the second one awake in the house, and he was in search of the first one … me.

Initially, I was bothered by this. I was so dependent on my isolated ritual of 10min stretch, then 20min workout, then 60min writing, that I felt thrown off by Hobbes’ intrusion. Over time, though, I realized this was his first greeting of the day … and mine … and it should be savored. That’s when this intrusion turned into a beautiful ritual:

As soon as I hear his prance, I step to the side of my desk so he could see me. I kneel down and open my arms and say, “Good morning Hobbesey.” He walks up to me just far enough for my hands to reach him. When my hands reach the back of his head, he sits down so that he can pull his head back against my fingers as I massage the back of his head and his neck. When I stop, that’s his cue to get up and walk straight into me. Then I lean over him and pet him from head to toe, massaging his sides and telling him that he’s such a good boy. And as I’m doing this, he’s nuzzling into my legs and rubbing the sides of his head on me. His taile is helicoptering at 1,000rpms for this entire exchange.

This morning when I woke up, I experienced for the first time, an uninterrupted morning routine. I didn’t like it one bit. And now I’m getting ready for a full day without any of Hobbes’ welcome interruptions, such as him joining me for my morning coffee and read.

Thank you, Hobbes, for reminding me of the importance of being in the present tense.

3) Be gentle

Drew’s answer to my “biggest thing that Hobbes taught you” question was, “Be more gentle.” Drew is our “bull in a china shop” son, and we all kid him about it to this day. When we first got Hobbes, Drew had to learn very quickly how to be gentle with this weeks-old puppy. The more time Drew spent with Hobbes, the more instruction he was getting, in the form of immediate feedback from Hobbes. Hobbes was a loving dog, but he wasn’t afraid to let you know when you were annoying him. Drew learned that signal earliest.

Drew and Hobbes had their share of on periods and off periods. Their bond wasn’t immediate. It grew steadily over time. Where they ended up is what matters: they ended up true brothers.

4) Be aware of when others need care

Hobbes knew when you weren’t doing well. Bodily injuries are obvious, but Hobbes was equally aware of the internal aches. If your belly was upset, or if you were having an especially blue day, Hobbes was first on the scene. He’d hop on the couch next to you and lean against you. You could pet him as much as you wanted. He wasn’t going anywhere!

We got to return this favor in Hobbes’ final hours, when he was the one that needed care. The only way Hobbes could sleep on his final night was by being held. Good thing there were four of us to do the rotation. Here’s my 4am cuddle … one of my last good cuddles with Hobbes.

Thank you Hobbes for showing us how to take care of you.

5) You’re never too old to learn

Drew taught Hobbes how to “shake” at age 10.

Charu taught Hobbes how to “fetch” at age 11.

Never stop learning⁴.

6) Stay active

There was no stopping Hobbes. In his final hour, he had enough energy for one last family walk.

7) Stay vigilant

Even when he’s tucked into his favorite spot on the bed, Hobbes remains on the lookout.

8) Travel together

As the African proverb goes, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Hobbes didn’t always enjoy the travel part, but if it meant being together, he was all in.

He was also smart about making sure he was included in trips. His favorite tactic was to block the exit.

9) Kill them with kindness

If Hobbes liked a food, he learned the sound that the container for that food made when it was picked up, when it was put down, when it was opened, and when it was dispensed. He wasn’t a bully about it. He would simply show up and stand in your field of vision. You knew what to do after that. After all, he had trained you well.

10) Be the Hobbes you want to feel in the house

And now for the best that I saved for last. Thank you Hobbes for teaching us how to properly greet each other!

It has been said many ways, because it is universally true. Dogs are the best greeters. Regardless of the day you’ve had, or any household drama that has unfolded in previous days or weeks, when you walk in the door, you are guaranteed one thing … your dog will greet you and love you.

At dinner last night, I said to the family, “To keep Hobbes’ spirit alive in our family, we now all have to be each other’s Hobbes. When anyone comes in the house, give them a Hobbes-worthy greeting.” Charu said, “Well, I won’t lick your face, but I can do the rest.” It will be impossible to hit this consistently. But whenever we do, Hobbes will be smiling … and so will our family. I gave Charu a big hug when she woke up this morning. And I gave Luke a big hug when I saw him this afternoon. So I’m off to a good start!

This was Hobbes’ favorite perch in the house. From this couch back, he could see the front door. He was at the ready for his next greeting. It didn’t matter if you were family, friend, or a stranger, Hobbes’ one rule was, “If you are coming in the house, then you are getting a greeting.” If you made him wait too long, the whining would start. But he wasn’t whining for him. He was whining for you. “Come here and get some of this. You know you need it.”

Among the thoughts shared by our many friends and family, this was my favorite. “Please let me be the person my dog thinks I am.” I’m better for having known Hobbes, and now it’s my duty to live up to the bar he set.

Footnotes 🐾

1. Habit-Propelled

2. Play the Pause

3. Divided Space for Undivided Attention

4. Lifelong Student-Teacher

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My good friend Barney was the first person that I connected with after being laid off (two years ago yesterday), meeting with him for coffee the Wednesday after my last day at Microsoft. I was deliberate about starting with Barney, as he is a fresh start SME, having intentionally constructed a career of serially working himself out of a job. The key line from our meeting was him saying, “Don’t just jump in the next thing that looks comfortable or familiar. Instead, enjoy this in between time. And just stay open … to anything.” A few weeks after our meeting, Barney sent me a link to an episode of the Good Life Project podcast called, “How To Love Midlife: 12 Ways Life Gets Better with Age“¹, which featured Chip Conley.

The podcast episode began with some statistics clearly designed to elicit a key moment of insight²: 50 years old is actually the middle of your life. So when you’re in the retirement age range of 55-65, there are actually far more years ahead than you realize. The central topic of the episode was The Modern Elder Academy (MEA). The mission of MEA is, “We believe midlife isn’t a crisis – it’s a calling. Thanks to advancements in health and quality of life, midlife now lasts decades longer than it did a century ago. Our mission is to disrupt societal beliefs around aging and help people in the second half of their lives create the exciting, fulfilling, purpose-driven lives they crave.” Chip sums it up perfectly as, “Midlife isn’t a crisis, it’s a chrysalis.” Midlife is the transition between the caterpillar that consumes and the butterfly that pollinates. MEA recognizes that a meaningful role for people in the latter half of their life is spreading wisdom.

Two months after my Barney meeting, my sister Ann sent me a book as a gift: Arthur C. Brooks’ “From Strength to Strength”³. This book also stressed how long we have, and detailed the two important phases of life: the first phase of fluid intelligence, and the second phase of crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is all about you learning, and organizing and reorganizing your knowledge. Crystallized intelligence is when you reach the point of having enough depth and structure to your knowledge that you have wisdom to share. And in the final chapter of that book, Arthur also calls out the Modern Elder Academy.

Two completely separate resources that led to the exact same conclusion: recognize and celebrate the transition from chiefly growing to chiefly sharing. In your first career, your focus is on the growing. Then, for your second career, or as Arthur calls it your second curve, your focus is on sharing. This was the right frame of mind to get into after my exit from Microsoft. That set in motion a very deliberate two year journey, that brings us to today, the start of my third year of my second curve. Here’s a look back at the last two years, and then a look forward at the year ahead.

• Looking back

  • Year One: Play the Pause

  • Year Two: Establish my Second Curve

• Looking ahead

  • Year Three: Uplevel my sharing

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In 1965, Jackie Deshannon sang, “What the world needs now, is love sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” Those words still ring true today, and we have it in our power to break the cycle by bringing more love. I propose we use this Valentine’s Day to increase the world’s supply of love. My contribution to the global love meter is the following recipe. Follow this to make February 14th a Lovely Day.

1. Set the tone: Kick your day off with two very good love songs.

2. Digital love: Make your social media be a love fest.

3. Physical love: Hug someone you haven’t hugged in a while.

4. Situational love: Bring love into one setting you haven’t intentionally brought love before.

5. Spread love: Share a love story.

If the above recipe works out well for you on the 14th, then repeat it on the 15th. And if it still works out on the 15th, then try it again on the 16th …

1) Kick your day off with two very good love songs.

Set the tone for the day by queuing up two love songs of your choice. While you’re listening to the songs, bring up the lyrics view so you can more deeply absorb the love. This will get you set to be an Ambassador of Love for the day.

You pick the two songs that work best for you. If you’re struggling to come up with two really good love songs, here are my top ten suggestions, leading off with Jackie (spoiler alert: I plan on listening to all 10 of these Saturday morning while Charu and I are driving out to Lake Chelan … here’s the playlist version if you want to do the same: Be The Love).

1. What The World Needs Now Is Love (Jackie DeShannon) - “What the world needs now, is love sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.”

2. Lovely Day (Bill Withers) - “When the day that lies ahead of me seems impossible to face. When someone else instead of me always seems to know the way. Then I look at you and the world’s alright with me.”

3. Little Things (Michael Franti & Spearhead) - “You know that it don’t cost a dime just to spend a little extra time, to throw a little smile to somebody passing by you. And you know love don’t cost a thing but it’s worth more than any diamond ring. ‘Cause in this great big world it’s the little things.”

4. Learnalilgivinanlovin (Gotye) - “Give away love, and give it for free. No strings attached, just don’t ask for it back.“

5. Let Your Love Flow (The Bellamy Brothers) - “Let your love bind you to all living things. And let your love shine and you’ll know what I mean. That’s the reason.”

6. One (U2) - “One love, we get to share it. Leaves you baby if you don’t care for it.”

7. Keep It Comin’ Love (KC & The Sunshine Band) - “Keep it comin’ love. Keep it comin’ love. Keep it comin’ love. Keep it comin’ love.” As Prince sang, “There’s joy in repetition.” 🙂

8. Love Is In The Air (John Paul Young) - “Don’t know if I’m being foolish. Don’t know if I’m being wise. But it’s something that I must believe in.”

9. (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher And Higher (Rita Coolidge) - “I can stand up and face the world again. Your love is lifting me higher.”

10. Joy To The World (Three Dog Night) - “Joy to the world all the boys and girls now. Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me.” See my love story below for the awesome people that introduced this song to me at a very young age … and continue to live it to this day.

Now you’re in the right frame of mind to start spreading love.

2) Make your social media be a love fest.

I’ve told you before to fight the feed¹. Today, that fight will take the form of “killing them with kindness.” Commit to only responding lovingly to the posts you read on your feeds today. Only loving comments, and only supportive reactions (🙂, 👍, ❤️, etc).

3) Hug someone you haven’t hugged in a while.

Find someone you haven’t hugged in a while and give them a big hug. Hug them like you mean it. Hold the embrace for a couple seconds longer than you normally would.

This reminds me of my Mom’s reaction to a poem I had written many years ago. I sent this poem to Mom in an email (one of the earliest emails I ever sent her).

Time to Live

Time?
Where is the time?
Beyond the daytime away at work?
Beyond the nighttime routine at home?
Beyond the weekend chores?
The time to be partner and parent?
The time to search yourself?
The time to write these words?

Seek out the moments.
Don’t squander the opportune seconds wishing for minutes.
Sway with your partner as you did the first time you danced.
Hold your child as you held him the day he was born.
Savor every instant.
Live.

Mom responded, “With regard to holding my children the way you suggest … they won’t let me.” I took that as a challenge and continued to give her better hugs every time I saw her. I’m sure it fell short, but it was definitely an improvement.

And if that hug felt great, then feel free to repeat with someone else you haven’t hugged in a while. Just don’t spend the rest of your day hugging, because you still have more work to do below.

4) Bring love into one setting you haven’t intentionally brought love before.

What interactions that are part of your routine are overly routine? Bring some love to change it up. As Franti sang above, “Throw a little smile to somebody passing by you.” Be alert², there are opportunities to inject love everywhere!

5) Share a love story.

Now comes the best part. Reflect on all the different love stories in your life, pick one, and share it. You can share it directly with that individual, as a thanks for being part of that story. You can post it on any or all of your social media. I’ll start … here’s my 8-person love story.

I am the youngest of seven: Joey, Ann, Sue, Beth, John, Jim, and then me. We were raised by an incredible mother and father, and across the thousands (millions?) of ups and downs over the course of all us growing us, we formed a durable loving bond. One of our closest cousins, Steph, was an only child, so we “adopted” her into our pack, bringing our sibling count to eight³.

For any song from the 50s to the early 80s, when I hear it, it undoubtedly conjures a memory of me with one or more of my family members. “Joy to the World” (#10 in my playlist above) is our family anthem, boosted to that position most likely because of Mom’s love of the odd opening line, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog.” Mom would belt that out with a smile every time the song came on.

As the youngest, I watched each grow up and leave home ahead of me. And when it was my turn, I ended up the furthest away from our Virginia home … on the other side of the country in Washington. I took many trips back to the East Coast to reconnect with the family, and every visit was treasured.

When my oldest brother Joey was turning 50, he was on tour with the Lion King in Boston. John told him he was coming up for the weekend to celebrate the milestone, so Joey made space on his calendar. What John didn’t tell him was that the other five siblings (sorry Steph, we forgot you on this one) were coming as well … surprise! This was a magical weekend because it was a return to just the seven of us; no spouses and no kids. We got to be crazy kids together again.

We loved it so much that we ended the weekend with the decision to repeat this sibling reunion for each of our 50th birthdays. The birthday kid would pick the location, and we’d all get together for an extended weekend. Lots of music, lots of activities, and lots of reminiscing.

Every sibling reunion was a total treat. But there is one that rises above the rest. For Beth’s 50th, she chose to meet at our childhood home in Richmond. Our Pop had passed away 11 years earlier, and Mom had just moved into assisted living. We had to get the house ready to be sold, and what better way to clean it out than by making it a party. We had moved into that house in 1972, so it was full of 40 years of memories. Sifting through all of those memories together, deciding what to keep, and who wanted what … it was a beautiful way to close this book.

A couple of the nights at the house, after a full day of cleaning, we took a nighttime walk around the neighborhood. Words won’t do justice to the experience of me with my siblings walking our childhood neighborhood together. I was near tears (of the best kind) the entire walk. I loved my childhood so much and it was because of all of them.

At the conclusion of my 50th, we decided that the new tradition would be to get all the siblings and spouses together, since we’re now mostly empty nesters. That hasn’t been as predictable thus far, but the good news is that all of our kids are now starting to get married, and there are 15 of them! So that creates plentiful opportunities for the Bogdan siblings to reunite. One last year and two this year!

Snow Angels

As siblings, we are a crazy eight. And here’s a great example of that. In late January, as Washington was warming up, all of my siblings were bracing for a huge winter storm to come through. So on our WhatsApp “Bogdan Sibs” group chat, I sent this message: “Remember my standing ask: if there is more than 3” of snow, please send me a snow angel photo.”

Ann was first on the scene.

And apparently she enjoyed that more than she had expected, because the next photo was what she called a “snow angel pyramid”, with one angel for each of us. 🤣

Then Steph got in the fun.

She also send a video of the making of this snow angel, but I’m gonna keep that between the siblings. 🤗

Snow took longer to get to Charlotte, North Carolina, but when it did, Beth contributed her angel.

I ❤️ed all of their pictures and ended with the message, “I love my family beyond words!” Stay crazy!

Corinthians

Two of the eight of us were married when I was very young. For my other five siblings, I was old enough to be a lector at the wedding, and I read the same passage for each of their weddings. It’s St. Paul’s definition of love that he sent to the Corinthians. That’s a fitting way to close this love fest post.

1 Corinthians 12-13⁴

Set your hearts on the greater gifts.
I will show you the way which surpasses all of them.

If in speaking I use human tongues
and angelic as well,
but do not have love,
I am nothing more than a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy
and the ability to understand all mysteries and all knowledge,
and have all the faith necessary to move mountains,
but do not have love,
I am nothing.

If I give away everything to feed the poor
and hand over my body to be burned,
but do not have love,
I achieve nothing.

Love is patient;
love is charitable.
Love is not envious;
it does not have an inflated opinion of itself;
it is not filled with its own importance.

Love is never rude;
it does not seek its own advantage.
It is not prone to anger;
neither does it brood over setbacks.

Love does not rejoice over wrongdoing
but rejoices in the truth.

Love bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.

Love never fails.

Be the love. Make it a Happy Valentine’s Day!

Footnotes

1. The “Us Versus Them” section of Meet Me in the Middle

2. Raising Your Own Awareness

3. Siblings call outs in my posts:

   1. The “Your focus determines your reality” section of Ambassador of Up

   2. The “The wedding as an example” section of In Defense of Optimization

   3. The “Taking a generous view” section of Nuance and Generosity

4. 1 Corinthians 13 NCB (Bible Gateway)

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Now I want to zoom in on this diagram to talk about the magic that is unlocked in the four areas carved out by the intersections of these three facets.

1. Do + Learn = Learn-it-all

2. Do + Teach = Teach-it-all

3. Teach + Learn = Student-teacher

4. Do + Learn + Teach = Lifelong student-teacher

Learn-it-all

When Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he brought an intentional focus on culture. He said, “The C in CEO stands for Culture.”² One of his earliest culture initiatives was, in his words, “We need to move from ‘know-it-alls’ to ‘learn-it-alls.’” Microsoft’s recruiting mindset had been more singularly focused on finding very smart people. That was great from a collective knowledge and know-how standpoint. But there were unintended consequences such as “loudest voice wins” and “not invented here.”³

Personalities and egos, unchecked, had more undesirable influence on direction and results. In areas of the company where such influence was highest, it evoked the know-it-all attitudes from the team. You better know what you’re talking about, or fake it if you don’t. Competence and confidence are fine, and should be encouraged. But moving beyond that, into assertiveness and overconfidence, led to bullying and shaming.

Learn-it-all was a mindset that could counter these side effects. It encouraged more humility and transparency, raising the likelihood of team members calling out where they themselves didn’t have all the answers and needed to learn more.

“Learn-it-all” was Satya’s own version of Growth Mindset, formalized by Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset.⁴ There was a terrific reinforcement of Growth Mindset that followed Satya’s “Learn-it-all” initiative. In the bottom corner of every whiteboard in every conference room in every Microsoft location, a small sticker was added to raise awareness⁵ of the benefit of bringing a Growth Mindset to the meeting.

We sure do spend lots of time in meetings. Anything from shiproom where we’re checking the status of our product’s readiness, to design meetings, to strategy meetings, to triage meetings. And in all of these settings, a Fixed Mindset can undermine the potential of that meeting. Let’s pick the most menial of the above meeting types. Does a bug triage meeting really have potential? Certainly! It has potential for being efficient in how these bugs are handled. It also has potential for better understanding the customer’s needs, and not dismissing.

• Fixed Mindset: “I know what this customer is saying. It’s nothing new. But we have enough counterpoints from other customers to stay the course.”

• Growth Mindset: “Interesting. This bug report is questioning our decision. And we’ve seen other similar reports. Have we missed the mark? Do we need to rethink or at least hone our decision?”

Teach-it-all

This “Learn-it-all” push was the necessary first step that opened the doors to much more investment in Microsoft’s culture. And once we had enough Learn-it-all momentum, I became an advocate for its complement, “Teach-it-all”. As Lao Tzu wrote, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” Satya’s push to be better learners had worked, so now we had to get people to be better teachers as well. Here was how I pitched this to the team.

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Overindexing on activity is far from a new problem. Andy Grove’s gem from the 70s is proof of how long we’ve been dealing with it: “There are so many people working so hard and achieving so little.”¹ (bolding mine) The easiest way to move you out of an activity focus is to employ the question, “So what?” … repeatedly.

In my coaching on the topic of impact, I got many miles out of a Venn diagram that Microsoft HR provided. Here’s my own recreation of that HR gem.

This Venn diagram can be found at the top of every Microsoft evaluation form (called “Connects”) since 2014. (aside: I take partial credit for it still being featured in Connects because I was a reviewer for HR’s revamping of this Connect form in 2023, and my first piece of feedback was, “woah, you forgot the Impact Venn diagram.” HR corrected that and the diagram lives on.)

Your total impact is the combination of three things:

1. Your key individual accomplishments that contribute to business, customer, or team results.

2. Your results that build on the work, ideas, or effort of others.

3. Your contributions to the success of others.

Let’s break this diagram down.

The Three “Who”s

Calling out business, customer, and team results brings great clarity to what impact matters. In order, these three dimensions progress from direct to indirect.

1. Business - I have worked in organizations that talk about “bottom line” and ultimately fixate on business results. This is understandable, as business results are the most tangible, and are both obvious and important. Day-in, day-out, business impact is being tracked and recognized in the team’s processes and execution.

2. Customer - Extrapolating from the direct business, how do your accomplishments ultimately benefit the customer? You move to this layer to make sure your work is actually making a difference.

3. Team - Extrapolating further, how did you help the team’s execution, and their future potential. This is another example of the P/PC balance², where Business and Customer impact are about the shorter-term production and Team is about the longer-term production capability.

Here is an example of how repeatedly asking “So what?” will move you up through the three “Who”s:

• “I worked 80-hour weeks to get this project done.” Activity

• “So what?”

• “I delivered feature X to our partner teams.” Business and Customer (internal)

• “So what?”

• “That allowed our partner teams to deliver features Y and Z to their customers.” Customer (external)

• “So what?”

• “That earned our team the trust from these partner teams to request more work from us.” Team

The Three “How”s

Now that we know the different “who”s that we can target for impact, let’s turn our attention to the three “how”s that we can utilize to accomplish that impact.

Your key individual accomplishments that contribute to business, customer, or team results.

This sits at the top of the diagram because it is the most obvious one. This is you doing, producing. When this diagram was introduced, I saw this “how” as a good counterforce against the established Microsoft culture of focusing too much on the direct product impact and not enough on the indirect customer and team impact.

This diagram didn’t change the culture overnight. But it established a clear top-down³ direction for our performance evaluation efforts. Reflecting back on the 10 years of rewards conversations that I was involved in since the introduction of this diagram, I definitely have seen teams moving steadily in this espoused direction.

Your results that build on the work, ideas, or effort of others.

This “how” is a great counterforce to the Not Invented Here (NIH) mindset from Microsoft’s established culture. NIH basically means everything I do is awesome and everything you do is lesser. Not Invented Here was a popular line of thinking in the type-A personalities of Microsoft (and, let’s face it, well beyond Microsoft). NIH comes from a focus on the first “individual accomplishments” how. Having this “how” in the picture gave people permission to consider other people’s ideas. You’ll get credit for leveraging the work, ideas, or effort of others.

Your contributions to the success of others.

This last “how” in the diagram is the collaborative counterpart to the second “how”. Building on the work of others is you learning. Contributing to the success of others is you teaching.

Managers contribute to the success of their team when they grow their employees and when they drive collaboration across their team. Mentors and coaches contribute to the success of their mentees as they guide them and pass on wisdom. Team members contribute to the success of their teammates when they share things they’ve learned to accelerate the ramp-up or growing expertise of others.

Lifelong student-teacher

There is a simplification of this impact Venn Diagram that I hinted at in the above articulation of the three “how”s.

Your total impact is a combination of what you do, what you learn, and what you teach. The default focus is on the do. This diagram encourages you to devote more energy to the learn and the teach.

You can fully integrate teaching and learning into your work by adopting a “lifelong student-teacher” mindset. This is yet another example of the P/PC balance². Doing is producing. Teaching and learning are building your production capability. You are always growing, and you should always be looking for opportunities to contribute to the growth of those around you.

As you plan out your next review period, ask yourself what proportion of doing, teaching, and learning you want to have. This intentionality will keep you from falling into the “just doing“ default mode.

Footnotes

1. “The Father of OKRs” (Chapter 2) of Measure What Matters, John Doerr (Goodreads)

2. The introductory section of Maximize Smiles per Dollar

3. Play Your Part

If you’ve ever been in a meeting with me, then you’ve seen my Angst Mug. It is my one and only coffee mug. My Angst Mug is my daily reminder that angst will be part of my day, and I need to be okay with it.

In my Earning Trust post¹, I talked about the steady increase in responsibility and scope as you move up in levels. Here I want to delve into the not so pleasant direct relationship: the level of uncertainty and ambiguity in your work also steadily increases. The more senior you become, the more time you’re spending on the more challenging problems that your company faces. What makes these problems more challenging is that they typically have less clear cut “right” answers. There are more judgment calls, with more downstream impact of each decision. I intentionally used “more” a bunch there … to capture how this builds up on a person, and can really start to weigh on them.

I always try to put this added weight in a more positive light. Whenever a colleague gets promoted, after I’m done congratulating them, I usually take that opportunity to introduce them to (or refresh their memory on) my angst progression. I was smiling during the congratulations, and I intentionally keep smiling for my angst sharing. That’s not because I’m a glutton for punishment. It’s because there truly is a positive side to angst that I want them to focus on. With a smile on my face, I say the following:

“With your increased scope will come more angst. Always remember that angst is a good thing, and should be embraced. Feeling angst means you’re acknowledging your own accountability and you are aware of the impact of your decisions. You should probably be worried if you don’t feel angst.

Here is the level of angst that should expect at each level:

• Junior: you’ve heard of the term “angst”.

• Staff: you encounter an angst-ful situation one a month.

• Senior: you may have an angst-free day, but you won’t have an angst-free week.

• Principal: you may have an angst-free meeting, but you won’t have an angst-free day.

• Partner: you wake up in the morning to find a bottomless cup of angst waiting by your bedside … and you carry it with you throughout your day.

• Executive: angst has invaded your dreams.

Angst is an indication that you’re taking the situation seriously enough. Celebrate that awareness².”

My Angst Mug is my embracing of the angst. It has a rainbow on the mug, and a smile, so of course it’s a happy mug. And yet there is the angst of a naturally occurring rainbow being a frown. 🙂

Buddhism and Brooks

More recently, I was introduced to the Buddhist perspective on pain and suffering. I love this summary: “Pain is mandatory; suffering is optional.” Arthur C. Brooks describes it as an equation: Suffering = Pain x Resistance³. These are both excellent framings. Pain is a part of living. It’s inescapable. You don’t control the level of your pain. But you do control the level of your suffering. The more you resist the pain, the more you will suffer. Accept the pain and be better, in both the short and long term, because of it.

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I don’t have a fear of commitment, but I do have a huge fear of overcommitment.

I bought my first house when I was 26. It was a dated house, and my goal was to remodel it myself to learn more about how to do all these “house things” that I’d seen my father and brothers do. I had no timeline set for the overall project; it was just my spare time project. And it was every bit as educational as I was hoping. Beyond learning an incredible amount about how a house works and many aspects of construction, the bonus learning for me was the repeated lessons on dependability, thanks to the assortment of subcontractors I worked with during my remodel.

There were a few aspects of the remodel that I decided to outsource: plumbing, tile, and hardwood floors. I used references whenever possible to find out about the quality of each contractor’s work before selecting them. But I never thought to probe into their track records for dependability. I learned the hard way that predictability of their schedule can be even more important than the quality of their work.

After a particular tile installer repeatedly didn’t show, I remember being particularly frustrated. The next day, when my plumber Terry came, I was apologizing that some of his finish work was still on hold behind the tile guy. This sparked a very insightful conversation into the industry. I said, “Terry, you don’t seem to have a problem with your schedule, but you appear to be in the minority.”

Terry nodded his head and gave me his story. “I know where these guys are. I was there, too. More jobs means more money. And it’s kinda fun to push yourself and see what you can accomplish. But then you end up overdoing it. And if you don’t notice it soon enough, you’re buried in your own promises.” I would summarize the rest of his explanation as moving from more money to enough money.

Overcommitment can be motivated by money, by status, or by a desire to please others. Regardless of the impetus, the same countermeasure applies: recognizing that the path to earning more trust with your team¹ is not by committing to more things, but by completing all the things you commit to.

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What would happen if, when you attended meetings with your team, you never acknowledged anyone in the room and never said anything? Socially, this would considered awkward. Professionally, this would impact the entire team. You would rightfully be labeled unprofessional and you’d get clear feedback¹ from management that it needed to be corrected.

So how come people get away with never acknowledging other people’s electronic communications? That’s because, quite sadly, it’s become the norm. The excuses are commonplace. “I’m buried in my mail. Can you text me instead?” “Wait, we’re supposed to be watching for messages on Slack too?”

Study after study shows the continued rise of electronic communication. So the idea of feeling behind is not at all surprising. But accepting weak electronic communication for your team will hurt you all in the long run. Regular communication is the backbone to your team’s overall health. Rather than accepting this, you can take action to address this for yourself, and model the simplicity of your approach for your teammates to follow.

At Microsoft, I guaranteed a response to your communication within 24 hours (excluding weekends, of course). That response might just be an acknowledgement that I’ve received it and that more work is needed on my part before I can respond, in which case I would also try to provide an ETA for when that response would be. “Thanks for the mail. This will take me some time to read through all of this and respond. You will hear back from me by EOD Thursday.” But for every communication that was needing a response, I gave a response within 24 hours.

Satisfying this guarantee required 60 minutes on my daily schedule (45 minutes for email, 15 minutes for Teams messages and thread). Is a 10% cost to my time worth it to make this guarantee? Absolutely, because this contributed to the team’s steady and continuous progress. And when others saw that it was possible and manageable, they followed suit and the whole team benefited.

If all we do is communicate, we’re not making any progress on our work. But if we can’t effectively communicate, then we’re also not going to make much progress either. It’s a balancing act. You need to care enough about communication to keep the team moving forward, but don’t care so much that there’s no time for anything else.

This approach builds on the Energy Flywheel², Timebox Everything³, and Triage Shield⁴ concepts I’ve already elaborated on in earlier posts. If, as I lay out my approach, you are doubting that it will apply to your situation, refer to these other posts to help convince you that we’re not all that different.

This exercise is best done once holistically. I will walk through these steps, and use my own answers as an example for you to follow. It’s a five step process to take control of all of your electronic communications.

1. Take inventory

2. Estimate volume

3. Establish guarantees

4. Compute daily cost

5. Block time on calendar

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