Maybe the most important thing you can put in next year’s plan is a stopping point. A good plan should leave room for the life it is supposed to support. Know what enough is. Years ago, in a sociology class, a professor told us about Indigenous people of the North American plains. The detail I carried away, whether I remember every anthropological detail correctly or not, was this: when maintaining life began taking too much of the day, they moved. I don't remember what was o

You do not have to finish the hard thing before you are allowed to put it down. For almost two years, I had a lawsuit running in one corner of my life and a family dispute running in another. I would not recommend either. Having both at the same time seems especially inefficient, like deciding to carry two ladders through a doorway because one ladder apparently was not enough. They were very different situations, but they shared one feature. In both cases, I believed a line h

You can leave the tax booth in an afternoon. It may take years to stop keeping the books. I used to be a CPA. This probably explains more about me than I would prefer. Accounting trains you to notice certain things. Rules. Exceptions. Bright lines. The small but important difference between something being a bad idea and something being prohibited by generally accepted accounting principles. Later I went back into operations, where this became even more useful. Give me a proj

I have friends on five continents and obligations in almost every room. The roof needs attention. Work waits. The dogs have needs, several of which they invent shortly before dinner. There is always something to repair, answer, learn, pay, plan, or carry from one side of the house to the other. None of this is imaginary. I get busy. That is my excuse for falling out of contact with people I genuinely care about, and it is a reasonably good one. The trouble with a good excuse

One of my mentors told me years ago that when a meeting ended, I should get the notes out with the invitation for the next one. Do it right away if possible. Strike while the iron is hot. It was annoyingly good advice, so I followed it for most of my career. I started blocking thirty minutes after meetings and keeping the room a little longer. That gave me time to clean up my notes, send out the action items, and get the next meeting scheduled before everyone began rememberin

My house will be perfect someday. Unfortunately, I live here now. When I bought a chácara, a small farm in Brazil, I imagined a sensible sequence. Repair the roof. Fix the gate. Install the lights. Finish the landscaping. Invite people over. The chácara proposed a different sequence. Repair one thing. Discover two more things. Make coffee. Watch Bento and Chico inspect the work. Move a chair into the shade. Start living anyway. There is always another project. The roof is und

I finally got the life I wanted, and immediately put it on a project plan. The Dream Arrives with a Punch List Six months after buying my chácara in Brazil, I had a mountain view, two blue roan cocker puppies, and enough unfinished work to keep the foreman in my head permanently employed. The mountain was putting on a perfectly good sunset. Bento and Chico were conducting a detailed inspection of the grass. I was looking at the wiring. The dream had arrived. I handed it a cli

People were expecting us in Nova Friburgo. I was the only one worried that they were waiting. The meal that slowed me down Last week, I returned to the place where my journey toward Brazil began and spoke again with Dutra, one of the first Brazilians I really came to know here. About five years earlier, he picked me up from Santos Dumont Airport in the evening. I had spent most of the day in the air, and we still had a long drive into the mountains ahead of us. Somewhere alon

The SPOT link landed in my WhatsApp. I was no longer watching. The Moment I Entered the Experience A friend invited me to my first hike-and-fly competition in Pancas, Espírito Santo. I went to observe, and for the first couple of days, that is exactly what I did. I watched pilots study the sky and the mountains. I listened as they discussed wind, clouds, possible routes, and changing conditions. I watched wings spread across the ramp, fill with air, and carry people away from

As I write this, I'm in Petrópolis. It is the sort of place that slows your neck. You find yourself looking upward more than forward. Cornices. Stonework. Windows framed by another century. Roofs built by people who assumed someone, someday, would still be looking. I had every intention of learning the city. There were museums marked on the map. Historic houses. Imperial stories. Architects whose names I had already forgotten before I pronounced them correctly. It felt import

A reflection on staying playful, teachable, and free enough to begin again. At the end, this is not really about being bad at something. It is about staying free enough to be new. Why adults stop playing Most adults do not lose play because life gets too serious. They lose it because they become competent. They learn which rooms make them look useful, capable, respected, and in control. Then someone invites them into a dance class, a language exchange, a new game, a song, a k

The clipboard is useful until you begin carrying it through your whole life. On a walk, Chico and Bento can turn a perfectly straight path into a map only they can read. Their noses drop to the ground. Their bodies begin moving from side to side. A pile of leaves becomes important. Then a tree root. Then a patch of grass where, apparently, an international incident took place sometime before breakfast. Their tails wave behind them like two small flags announcing that the inve

I want to get there. And in my determination to get there, I sometimes miss that I am here. Last week, I wrote about how I keep recreating the same circumstances in my life. Apparently, I enjoy field-testing my own material. As I write this, I am six months into owning a chácara, a small farm in Brazil. I have just bulk-purchased nearly all the lighting fixtures. I am two weeks away from hosting my first Fourth of July Festa Julina, an event I hope will become a tradition. Th

I thought I needed a different life. What I needed was a different agreement with the life I already had. About seven years ago, I started looking for the exit. People I respected were getting sick. Cancer. Heart attacks. Stress-related illnesses that seemed less accidental the longer I watched. They were capable people. Responsible people. People who had carried the load for years. People like me. I did not know exactly when the bill would arrive, but I understood the arrang

The work stops feeling special right before it becomes yours. That is where most people get suspicious. Not when it is hard. Hard can still feel dramatic. Hard can still make you feel chosen. Hard can still give you a story to tell. The real test comes later, when the work becomes ordinary. When the walk is just a walk. When the practice is just practice. When the sentence is just the next sentence. When the better choice does not come with a trumpet sound. At some point, the

Growth gets dangerous when it stops feeling like news. You can stop feeling excited by real progress. Then you may assume progress has stopped. I know because Spanish became boring. That is often when the work is finally becoming yours. The first warning sign is usually quiet Class starts. The material looks simple. Your hand slows down when writing. Your mouth knows more than your grammar can prove. You correct the same mistake again. Nobody applauds. You return anyway. At s

Momentum feels like proof. That is why it fools people. Momentum feels great. That is why people confuse it with the system. When things are working, everything feels obvious. You have energy. You have rhythm. You know what to do next. The behavior starts carrying itself. That part is real. It is also not the whole truth. Because momentum disappears. · You get sick. · You travel. · Family needs something. · Work interrupts the rhythm. · The weath

You do not always need a new life. Sometimes you just need to spend more time in a room where your future already feels normal. Your Environment Votes Your environment is not neutral. It votes. It tells you what matters. It tells you what is strange. It tells you what is expected. It tells you what you can get away with. And slowly, if you are not paying attention, it teaches you what to accept. That is why change feels so hard when you are trying to do it alone. You are not

Your life can change before your identity believes it. Sometimes your life moves first. Your routines shift. Your standards shift. Your environment starts changing. And still, somewhere inside, you keep relating to yourself like the old version of you. That creates friction. Not external friction. Internal friction. You accomplish something, and it does not fully register. You improve and still talk to yourself as if you have not. You enter a new room, but some part of you is

You don’t lose to effort. You lose to what surrounds your effort. You’re doing the right things. You’ve started. You’re showing up. You’re taking steps that used to feel out of reach. And still… It feels harder than it should. Slower than it should. Like you’re pushing uphill. This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s an environment problem. Every environment has a baseline: What’s normal What’s expected What’s ignored You don’t notice it when you match it. You feel it immediate