Reminders for myself

If you work on anything worthwhile, sooner or later people will care about it and will want you to send progress updates. These could be quarterly investor updates, weekly updates to your boss, emails to adjacent teams, etc. Here are tips on how to do this well.

Understand your role, and with each update add to the body of evidence that you’re a

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Outlook

“Perfection is impossible. In the 1526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches. Now, I have a question for you.

What percentage of points do you think I won in those matches? Only 54%.

In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play. When you lose every second point on

And when I practice letting go of how I think things are supposed to look and instead cultivate a trust in the unfolding that is taking place, often in unseen ways, the Here-ness of challenge or pain or depression or grief or (anything) softens even 5%, and that 5% adds up fast when I don’t assume it’s nothing.

To move toward fully living

Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Attention isn't free. It's the most valuable thing you spend.” - Unknown