Based on my little hour by hour analysis, spending time with friends is a net loss. Weird, huh? Perhaps. For me, there’s a high opportunity cost for spending time with my friends, I must be highly intentional and present with the friends I choose to invest time with. Why could I throw that time away? Why waste it on people who don’t help me be a better person?I love the friends I have. They’re important to me. There are more valuable things I could be doing; exercising or spending time with myself (something I don’t do enough). But, when I do invest time with them, I know that time is precious, scarce, and important. If you chose to see the glass as half full, go ahead. I choose to savor every drop.

No way around it.If you want your long term goals, you must sacrifice now via your work. You could think to yourself: ugh, what could I be doing if only I wasn’t working right now?You could also think to yourself: what more might I be able to do if I only focused a little harder in this moment?

I have used up about 53% of the hours I may have left to live; there may be 300k+ hours remaining for me. How will I allocate the scarce resource that is time?In order to answer that question, I thought about the value of time. How do you assign a value to an hour?Financial value — an hourly wage.Emotional value — a sense of fulfillment.Long-term impact — my life or health span are materially changed by that hour. I then assign a balance factor — some type of prioritization/weighting — to the emotional and long-term impact scores because I want to prioritize certain types of activity. Example: exercise, or time by myself to study. When I combine it all together I get the value of an hour. Then, I consider, if I am doing one activity, what is the cost of that activity? I look at opportunity costs.If I am working as a musician, I assign the value of 27, then I am not spending time at home with my family, value of 30. I have to increase the hourly wage of working as a musician so that the difference between the value of an hour as a musician and the cost of leaving home is greater than 0. Why do this? Because time is scarce. Because prioritizing and doing what matters, matters.

A band leader I work for did not organize himself and called me the day before a gig asking if I’d show up. I declined. I love the band. I get so much joy from playing with that group. I also love my time. I enjoy rest. I want to spend the time I have doing other things I care about. It may appear difficult to release yourself of things you care deeply about, but you can. The world didn’t end.The show went on.I got to see “Argyle” and enjoy some alone time.

Be careful not to complain about the behaviors of others. It’s possible you made a choice to allow, and or tolerate, their offensive behavior from the start.Instead of complaining, make better choices next time.

I needed a wake up call. I said to someone the most overrated set of words I’ve ever heard. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”I hate that phrase. I can’t believe I said it. Then I found this post from a few years ago. I needed the wake up cal.“I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”Life requires action, but action requires energy, and energy is born from rest.Rest leads to boredom, and boredom is the friction required to act.That’s why inaction is as powerful action.You’ll be dead when you’re dead.You’ll sleep to stay in the game.We need you in the game.

I wrote this post on the Moral War around this time last year.In The Great influenza, author John Barry describes how viruses work. They attach themselves to certain receptors in the body. The virus replicates itself. It disguises itself. It destroys from within mercilessly. As much as we try to develop medications to cure them, the best advice is to let it run its course. The even better advice is, “the best offense is a great defense.”Moral wars are like viruses. When we battle each other on the field of morality, we battle for something intangible. That intangible is greater than us, it cannot be quantified, it’s deep, it’s often linked to power. Moral wars never end well.The problem with morality and righteousness is morality and righteousness. When everybody’s belief sets are different, who’s truly right? When the word looks different to everyone, who has the right to say their perspective is the most accurate?I believe the answer comes from reconciling differences — compromise. We observe the world and the brain reconciles what it sees with probability of how things are and creates vision for us. Why can’t we do that amongst ourselves?What’s the hard part about taking various worldviews and reconciling it into one view we all can accept? My working theory — who wants to admit their view wasn’t entirely accurate?

A Learning a Day’s recent post featured a quote:“The grass is greener on the other side because it is fertilized by bullshit.”The grass is never greener. We only think it is because of our perspective. Walk to the other side of the street and look back. If the sun hits it just right, and you’re in a “just right” mood, you’ll see the grass on that side looks greener. Your brain lies to you. It creates a picture of the world based on probability and your physical senses. What you think you see is not what’s actually there at that second. You only see so many waves of light, you can only hear so many decibels, you can only perceive 3 dimensions. If you have a pet, like a dog, the world the dog sees looks radically different than yours. Does the dog see the actual word as it is? The grass is never greener, and things aren’t always what they seem.Leave space to be wrong. Leave space to be content with the present. Leave space to be discontent just enough that it pushes you try something new… with open eyes.

I spoke with a team member today about feedback.The team member asked me why I don’t give more feedback. Shocked.What’s feedback? It’s a boomerang. It’s the communication someone gives you when they experience your work. Why do leader screw up feedback? Because there’s a perception that feedback must be said/delivered a certain way. Some leaders have a perception that we must preserve the self-esteem and confidence of our team and couch our perceptions in ways that helps people feel safe. I believe something else.When I improvise jazz, the musicians supporting me and I engage in a dialogue — a dance. I express a musical idea and other musicians pick up on it or don’t. In the moment, we are rapidly building upon and destroying ideas. We are engaged in each other’s work. We are focused on making our work better together. That’s feedback too.My belief towards feedback is that feedback is a form of engagement. It’s a dance. It’s you sharing your work with me and me being curious, wondering, asking about, reinforcing, and expressing skepticism about the work. It’s you sharing your thoughts back with me. It’s us building something better together.It’s me saying, “I’m jazzed to get into this… what should we look at first? I’m super curious about this… how are you thinking we do … with it?”It’s not me asking, “may I give you some feedback?”Leaders: something to think about. How do you break out of the “leadership best practice” mode and be more human with your team?

I admire effective coordinators. They act like air traffic controllers. Carefully taking time to understand the position of everyone in a space, and then working collaboratively to bring people in and out safely. In order to coordinate effectively, you need to know a couple of things:All of the players in your space.The goals, hopes, and dreams of all the players in your space.The terrain of your space. Your agency. Know the amount of change you can make.The ultimate goal.Perhaps there are more things a great coordinator should know… the above is just a start.Cheers to effective coordination. A skill you and I could work to better develop within ourselves.