Tonight, when you’re off the clock, what will you listen to, watch or read?
I imagine that most of us would agree that this is a free choice. To watch a silly video on YouTube, read a book on Greek philosophy from the library or scroll your feeds. We have time (surprisingly called “free”) and we allocate it to focus our attention on something.
While it might seem like a free choice, well-paid people and powerful forces are working to shift our focus. Many systems are built to manipulate us into focusing on things that benefit them, not us.
If you’ve ever felt lousy after doomscrolling, you might question how free your free time actually is. It takes effort to regain our freedom of focus.
We can take this one step further. We not only make choices about the media we consume, we also make choices about our internal focus. Until you got to this sentence, I’m guessing you weren’t spending much time thinking about your high school graduation.
We don’t need research to show us that the internal narratives we focus on shift our attitude and soon become our reality. We’ve all experienced it. Soon after we stop the broken record, things get better.
Perhaps it’s not a free choice, though. Perhaps the stories we relentlessly focus on are simply the byproduct of our brain’s chemical reactions, a reaction to the world inside us and around us.
And yet… many people have learned to shift the stories they rehearse.
The first step: change the external focus. Change the people we interact with, the media we consume, the attention we offer. Not all at once, but as a habit, a persistent practice of being mindful about the triggers and amplifiers we consume. If you’re not happy with what your attention is bringing you, you can change it.
Aristotle said that we become what we do, but before we do, we focus.
And the freedom and responsibility of that focus belong to us.
Colleagues you care about are coming over for dinner. What should you make?
Some people don’t care if it’s delicious, as long as it’s interesting.
Some don’t need it to be interesting, but it needs to start on time.
Others define delicious differently than you do.
One couple doesn’t care at all about the effort you put into it.
A few don’t care if you’ve worked hard to create a spectacular meal, they’ll notice that the kitchen is a mess.
One person is really concerned that the food match their dietary needs.
And many are paying attention to the sustainability and cost of what you prepared.
Some are uncomfortable if you put in too much of effort.
The lesson is simple: empathy matters and empathy is hard. The more diverse the group’s interests, the more you’ll need to let them know in advance where you’re heading.
Get clear about what it’s for before you start doing the work.
When an organization is known for speed and quality, it’s likely that if times get tough, quality will suffer before speed does. That’s because customers notice speed right away, but it takes a while to come to a conclusion about quality.
If a musician or politician is known for showmanship and wise insights, the showmanship will probably outlast the wisdom.
When we measure and compare the easily visible, we may be setting ourselves up for disappointment.
If you’re never going to need to do this again, and it’s easier to do it than to instruct someone else to do it, by all means, do it yourself.
If doing it yourself will give you joy or satisfaction that is greater than the productivity boost you’ll get from leverage or better tools, please do it yourself.
But if you’re going to do it more than once, and the customer can’t tell if you did it yourself or not, perhaps you should have someone else do it or build the tools to get it done more efficiently.
Next time will happen sooner than you expect. Better to invest a bit more now than to spend for that shortcut again and again.
Unreasonable commitment is unreasonable. It happens before there’s a guarantee it will work. It’s out of proportion to what others think is standard. Unreasonable commitment is dedication, persistence, care, energy, connection and investment that doesn’t seem to make sense.
You can’t do this in everything, and you probably can’t do it all the time. That’s why it’s unreasonable to expect.
I’ve been fortunate enough to do hundreds of podcasts. The hosts are even kinder and more professional than you’d imagine, showing up for months or years with virtually no listeners. They do it because they care.
But only one podcast host had me in tears before we began recording.
Last September, I spent the day with Mel Robbins and her team of more than a dozen professionals. We recorded for four hours, two episodes worth, and then they quietly spent six months editing the work.
Mel’s even more Mel-like in person. She’s fully present, committed and yes, over the top. Our conversation led to my new book and course, and it also reminded me that better is possible. Not just for the person in front of the camera, but for everyone on the team, for the guests and for the people listening.
Neil Pasricha wrote about Mel a decade ago. Before last year’s bestseller or the Golden Globe nomination or the podcast hit its stride. It’s a choice.
Unreasonable commitment doesn’t seem like a good plan until after it works.
He also understood the process of organizing a plant to build a car.
Scott Belsky knows how to use Photoshop and remembers what it was like to run a small business.
And Sarah Jones knows exactly what is required to be on stage, alone, in a crowded theater.
The world keeps changing (faster than ever) and leading our team (and our career) requires us to do things we didn’t used to know how to do.
In essence, the CEO of every organization, of every size, is more incompetent than ever before. It’s not enough to know how to use the product and have empathy for your customers.
Are you making decisions about AI, supply chains, vendor management, the sales pipeline or employee health?
It’s hard to wing it if you haven’t flown before, and now most of what CEOs do (even for companies of one or two people) has little to do with the actual product or service on offer.
One alternative is to freak out, bury your head and hope for the best.
The other is to use the system to learn about the system. Instead of winging it, find the time to learn enough to make good decisions and to understand the tools well enough to benefit from hiring people to use them.
Because that’s what CEOs make. They make decisions.
And this week, I’m launching a video course that covers the ideas in the book. You can find the course, and how to get it at no extra cost, here.
We’re surrounded by problems. Problems create the arc of our days, and solving them creates value for ourselves and for others. There are big problems, the ones that are on a grand stage, and local problems, related to our career, our peers or our projects. If it’s a problem, it can be solved.
The best reason for me to publish a book is to help inspire conversations and the momentum that leads to change. Books give us an excuse to engage, and they create a portable bundle of ideas that are easy to share.
Several hundred people have already read and listened to the book, and the conversations it’s creating (and the stuck that’s disappearing) are thrilling to see.
In talking with folks over the last year and a half, the same theme returns–the frustration of being stuck. We see our world changing and feel the tension, but it’s easy to lose sight of what we can do and how we can show up to make an impact.
Without a doubt, there are situations everywhere. Situations are uncomfortable and unhappy, but they have no solution. We can’t do anything about a situation, so our best course of action is to acknowledge it and get back to work on the problems we can solve instead. Gravity is a situation, getting to the moon and back is a problem.
My approach to bringing this book to the world is to give booksellers the confidence they need to support it by enrolling as many pre-orders as I can. By creating digital interactions and courses, I’m giving readers a chance to engage with the ideas now, and then receive the book/audiobook when it ships in September.
I appreciate your trust, and I hope you find the book and the course useful.
March 11, 2026
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