Doing the Damn Thing

“Make training your mind the foundation for everything else in the year ahead.”

Sam Harris’s advice is hitting differently this year. I’ve dabbled in mindfulness and meditation for over a decade, but understanding how to stay present and see how the mind is distracted amidst the constant barrage of algorithms and chaos of our current world is a learned skill. It takes continuous practice.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. A lot happened in 2025: to me, to you, to all of us. I spent most of it out of balance and let a lot of things happen, rather than take control of the things I could. I still had a good time, learned a lot, and helped people. But, I was mostly passive – and maybe that’s what I needed after several years of experimentation, learning, and transition.

Those moments have all passed and the outcome is where I am right now. I don’t do resolutions but I do like to have a “word of the year.” For this year, that word is, simply, “do.” I read a lot, listen to a lot of podcasts, ideate with friends, but I struggle to execute sometimes, if not often. This year, I want to take the lead, try things, reemerge from my cocoon, and see where that takes me.

I’ll share more about where I’ve been and what happened in my “while I was 46” post next week. For now, here’s the direction I’m headed, ideas for how I might help you, and tools I’m finding useful.

When I decided my word for the year, I knew that focus and time boxing were going to be important. I’m not consistent yet – it’s a skill that takes practice – but I’m thinking in hours and priorities now. I start each week with a big list in Tick Tick, and loosely map out how many hours I think the prioritized items will take in my trusty Expedient notebook. This is not about maximum productivity. Instead, it’s about choosing things to say no to, moving them to a “sometime” list or deleting them entirely. This exercise is extremely therapeutic.

I’m a collector of tabs, hobbies, and places to visit. I want to experience everything, but I’m learning to accept that’s just not possible. Drew Holcomb says it best in Maybe:

I can’t afford to spend any more time out of my mind
Maybe we’re not supposed to try everything
Maybe we’re lost in what we want, not what we need
Everything is never enough
Takes you away from what you love

I’m learning I won’t be able to try everything there is in the universe. That’s a tough realization. In Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman tells us,

"The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control—when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen. But you know what? That’s excellent news."

I’ve read books and taken courses on writing. I’ve listened to podcasts about habits, completed focus courses, and, and, and… it’s almost like it was an excuse to not do the damn thing and fail. A therapist once asked me, “do you think you didn’t prepare enough for that keynote so you had an excuse if it went poorly?” That was a slap in the face. It’s the fear of failure that impacts us in so many ways. But failure is a critical part of this game called life. And you can’t play the game without failing. Trying to avoid failure or control the narrative too much means we stay closed, we stay protected, but we’re also limiting our exposure to all of the awesome that the universe presents. We limit our potential. We limit our connection to other beings. And at the end, we’re no more safe than we would be if we put ourselves out there.

As I meander through this post and my brain feeds me information from my archives, I practice writing it out, refining and filtering. I wrote about fear and doing it anyway over at Ethical Methods the other day (with even more Burkeman references, heh). One of the psychologists he quotes in The Antidote is Saras Sarasvathy:

“Start with your means. Don’t wait for the perfect opportunity. Start taking action, based on what you have readily available: what you are, what you know and who you know."

Instead of waiting until I learn one more thing, read one more book about techniques, or take one more course on productivity and focus, I’m just doing the damn thing – with Ethical Methods, with relaunching Emergent Radio, with this blog, with showing up – and learning from what the universe sends back.

It’s freeing.

☮️❤️