With Responsive Conference only 25 days away, I’ve been thinking back to February 2016, when I ran my very first unconference. That experiment paved the way for the first annual Responsive Conference later that year, and the format has been woven into every Responsive event since.

An unconference flips the traditional model of a conference on its head: instead of a pre-set agenda, the participants themselves decide what gets discussed. It is deceptively simple, but it’s also one of the most powerful ways I know to spark connection and create unexpected breakthroughs.

I’ll be teaching a workshop on “How to Run an Unconference” at the ​Conference for Conferences​ the day before Responsive, and of course, we’ll be running unconferences throughout both days of Responsive Conference 2025.

Don’t have a ticket yet?
​There’s still time!​

What is an unconference

An unconference is any event where the agenda is set by those who attend. The rules of an unconference are simple:

1. Whoever shows up are the right people
2. Whatever happens is fine
3. Whenever it starts is the right time
4. It is over when it’s over

In less flowery language this just means ditch expectation and don’t try to control the experience.

Flow of the Day

After attendees arrive, an empty conference agenda is posted on the wall with time slots and a variety of meeting spaces. Leaders share a theme or question they would like to discuss and post it in a time slot. If you post a topic, it is your responsibility to turn up to that session and introduce your topic or question. If you are not hosting a session, you are free to attend whichever of the sessions you are interested in.

Attendees are encouraged to adopt any of a number of roles:

Leader — who is facilitating each breakout
​Scribe — is someone responsible for taking notes for each group
​Nomads — give attendees permission to move between break-outs

The Law of Two Feet

Everyone at an unconference is encouraged to practice the law of two feet. The law of two feet says that if you become uninterested at any point, you are encouraged to leave and join another session. In an unconference you are also invited to take breaks at any time, with the idea that it is sometimes in the breaks that the ‘A-ha’ moments arrive.

Roles & Responsibilities

There are three main components necessary to a successful event — recruiting, production, and a strong facilitator.

A Word on Recruiting

In my experience, it is helpful to have an extended network to help with recruiting, not just a single person. All other logistics can be handled by a single person.

Production

Among the organizers, someone has to be in charge of logistics, including:

• Venue sourcing and ongoing communication
• Setting the date
• Attendee arrival emails
• Day-of logistics
• Recruiting

Facilitation

A strong facilitator can make or break any event, but especially one with as fluid an agenda as an unconference. On the day of the event, the facilitator plays a crucial role. It is essential to have one strong facilitator overseeing each unconference, to welcome attendees and provide context for the event.

How to Facilitate an Unconference

Here are some tips, most learned the hard way over hundreds of hours of practice in the last two years.

Stay Centered

Despite having spent a fair amount of time on stage, I found myself getting nervous and feeling rushed in the hours leading up to a day-long unconference. My single biggest piece of advice for a facilitator is to arrive with plenty of time to spare so you won’t feel rushed. You are responsible for the framework within which the attendee experience takes place. As such, staying grounded and centered is the single most important thing you can provide, even though in the moment it may feel like it is more important to make sure the space is set up or the coffee is ready.

Don’t Participate

This one might seem odd. It can seem like the entire point of organizing an event is to participate. In my experience, doing so decreases the ease with which I was able to coordinate new sessions, lead an end-of-day wrap-up, and refocus attendees when necessary.

In my view, the facilitator of the unconference is there in service to the attendees. I have found it gets in the way of the attendee experience to actively participate in sessions and workshops that occur throughout the day.

Practice

The facilitator should practice before the beginning of the unconference. Review these guidelines for a successful unconference and be able to describe unconference rules from memory. Practice your welcome speech.

Incorporate movement

I have always found it very useful to incorporate movement into events. When we have short periods of movement interspersed with other kinds of learning, we shortcut the passive sit-and-absorb tendencies we all learned through the education system, and which have carried over into most events. Read this article on the importance of movement within events.

Conclusion

Events are a lot of work, and something I’ve learned to produce of necessity. However, in this hyperactive digital age, I’m convinced of the value of what Tony Hsieh calls “spontaneous collisions” — the value of people spontaneously crossing paths. If you’re considering putting on an event of your own, I encourage you to do so. When we create a container — an event or gathering — we create the opportunity for emergent possibilities to fill the open space.

I’ve been delinquent in writing Snafu this last week, because…

• I bought a house and moved in
• ​Responsive Conference is coming up in 32 days
• There have been some minor family emergencies
• I’ve had several Zander Media film shoots
• The state of the world? ‍♂️

Anyway, I thought I’d take this excuse to look back at some of my favorite essays of the last few years…

​How to run an unconference – I wrote this a decade ago, but still send people to it when they ask how to get started running events. In fact, I’m going to be leading a workshop on this topic at my friend Jenny Sauer-Klein’s the Conference for Conference on September 16th, which is the preamble to Responsive Conference 2025!

​The free pass system – I’ll be sharing this essay with new friends for the next decade. It’s such a simple reframing of boundaries and expectations in friendship, and has already improved mine.

​Some reflections on turning 39 – I got more positive feedback on this article than most. I think the mix of practical reminders and authentic reflection worked.

​Tilting at windmills – Choosing your battles is an essential skill, as is not arguing with reality. But the idea of going to battle against unrealistic odds when you choose to? It’s a little bit crazy, and I kind of love it.

​AI inflection point – One of the unexpected benefits of my foray into housing was this AI inflection point. This technology is transformational, and anyone who isn’t addressing it in their daily lives is going to be left behind.

​How to buy a used car – My girlfriend is buying a used car and I referenced this article to remind myself of what we should look out for. (I think that’s a goal for all great writing: write what you want to read and will reference in the future.)

​How to run a self-experiment – I’ve been running self-experiments since discovering the term from my old professor Allen Neuringer. The idea is to test hypotheses in small ways and on yourself, but to do so as rigorously as possible.

​How to fast – Another reference article and on the habit in my life that is the hardest thing I do. And also, likely, one of the healthiest.

​Discipline isn’t hard – In a world that is convenient and comfortable, we need manageable discomfort in our lives. But it doesn’t have to come through force. Instead, I want a re-definition of “discipline” back to the original meaning of the word.

​Habits for hiring – Hiring and managing people is hard work. And when you find great people, it makes a world of difference. These are some lessons about hiring and management I wish I’d learned a decade sooner.

​How to change someone – This article got me started. It is about my father, published with his grudging permission, and I think about it regularly. You can’t change people, and anyway it is none of your business.

I’ve never thought of myself as a great salesman. But a few months ago, two friends asked me for help with their sales and self-promotion.​

That resulted in teaching a cohort of ten people about sales. And when the 10-week cohort wrapped recently – just two months out from Responsive Conference – I didn’t have the time to run the cohort again.

Instead, I recruited some of my students and a handful of other volunteers to practice sales by selling tickets to Responsive.

I started the workshop by telling my own Responsive story, which goes something like this:

The future of work

In 2015, I was introduced to Responsive.org, a movement started by 6 organizational design nerds to describe the tensions facing organizations in the twenty-first century. As someone who’s worked in dozens of different industries – and seen a lot of the same dysfunctions across silos – I related to the challenges described. Moreover, the manifesto isn’t prescriptive. It doesn’t propose to solve everyone’s challenges.

I asked the authors of Responsive.org what I could do to help, and someone suggested I run an un-conference. I expected 30 people to show up, and instead we had 300 travel from across California for our free 1-day event. Attendees ranged from global CHROs to baristas from an employee-owned, self-managed community kitchen.

I realized there was an appetite for these topics and – never having been to an HR or organizational design conference, but as a longtime circus performer – decided to try my hand at building an event of my own.

7 months later, the first Responsive Conference was a resounding success. Chris Fussell came and gave a talk about “team of teams.” Joel Gascoigne argued that teams should be either fully distributed or entirely in one location, but nothing in between. Tony Hsieh (RIP) sat in the back with his entourage and took copious notes. I got lucky and the ideas espoused in the Responsive.org manifesto had struck a chord.

And those arguments – including “the rate of change continues to accelerate” and “the future is increasingly hard to predict” – have borne out a decade later. Once fringe, those ideas are now commonly accepted. And Responsive Conference continues to serve as an intimate, immersive gathering for founders, executives, and people leaders from around the world to build more resilient work.

What a story does

Having both lived that experience, and told that story a thousand times, I can reiterate with ease. But then comes the essential step of helping other people tell their own stories. Which means, first, we have to reverse engineer my story.

My story does several things:

• It’s entertaining – it shows how a circus performer can end up curating a business conference.
• It’s self-revealing – It helps people know a bit about me with some self-deprecating humor and humility.
• It’s intriguing – it invites the audience to consider learning more about the event or inspires someone to take a risk and start something of their own.

My story isn’t a hard sell. (I despise hard selling.) I don’t conclude with a “please buy a ticket to the conference!”

The goal is to connect, entertain, and leave the audience wanting more.

After sharing my story, I asked the members of our newly christened Sales Squad to draft their own stories about Responsive Conference for review.

If they’ve attended Responsive Conference previously, what impact did it have? If they haven’t, what’s their connection with the future of work that inspires them to participate?

Homework

Everyone has a story. Write a short version of your founding story – whether for a project, business, or personal mission – in less than 300 words.

What led you to start?
What problem were you trying to solve?

In a low-stakes conversation, tell this story to someone new. What questions do they ask? What do they laugh at? What lands?

A few weeks ago, a salesman from an AI lead generation company cold-called me.

I told him I was busy, but invited him to follow up with a short Loom video showing how his product could help Responsive Conference. I promised to watch the Loom and respond if I was interested.

He followed up – without the Loom, and with a generic pitch.
He lost the sale.

I posted about my experience on LinkedIn, with the takeaway that there are two types of selling:

❌ Coercive selling: fast-talking, pushy, ignoring requests to “follow up later.”
✅ Authentic selling: clear, respectful, tailored, and actually helpful.

Coercive selling might get short-term results, but it destroys trust. Authentic persuasion builds relationships. As BJ Fogg, PhD, says, it’s “helping people do things they already want to do.”

What’s surprising about this story is what happened next. My LinkedIn post blew up. A lot of people commiserated with the experience of being pitched but not listened to.

And other people – these are strangers on the Internet! – started lecturing me on the difference between a lead and a qualified customer, and told me that I owed it to the salesman to listen to his pitch.

I don’t think I was sharing a controversial take. I believe that coercive selling ruins trust. If a salesperson doesn’t listen to a simple request during the initial sale, they’re very unlikely to take care of the customer after the sale is closed. Great sales is about taking care of people.

These beliefs aren’t universally held. Apparently, there are angry salesmen on the Internet who are willing to fight about these ideas.

For the first time in my life, my response is: bring it on! I’m delighted to fight with these strangers; to tilt at these windmills.

Because the world needs more people who actually give a damn.

Homework

Find a moment (online or off) where you genuinely disagree with something. Don’t stay silent. Speak up. State your case clearly and calmly. The goal isn’t to win, but to practice not avoiding conflict when you really care.

A few years ago, a friend and I kept trying to make plans. I canceled several times – once due to a car crash – and after the third or fourth reschedule, she told me it wasn’t working for her and that she was going to deprioritize our friendship. I apologized, we talked it through, and agreed I’d take responsibility for reaching out.

I followed up for six months with no response. Eventually, she let me know she was no longer interested in being friends.

I was hurt. We’d had a clear agreement, and she’d gone back on it. That experience stuck with me – and led me to adopt my best friend’s “Free Pass System.”

When you notice someone does something that doesn’t work for you, you are responsible for telling them so. The key is to tell the other person before the issue has become insurmountable.

Tell the person that their behavior won’t work for you going forward, and why. Detail the specifics of what you want to change going forward.

They get a Free Pass up until this point – assuming you still want a relationship with this person. Grant them grace up until this point. That’s only reasonable because you haven’t told them that their behavior doesn’t work for you!

But you have to set clear consequences. Setting consequences is hard because most of us don’t have practice. First, articulate the boundaries for yourself. Then, describe them to the other person.

Consequences aren’t punishment – they’re about clarity. They tell the other person what you will do if the behavior continues, so that you’re not reacting or building resentment, but fostering the relationship that you want.

Here are a few examples:

• If someone is flaky after you’ve communicated that it doesn’t work for you, don’t schedule with them again.
• If someone shares a secret that you shared in confidence, don’t share private information with them in the future.
• If a client doesn’t pay on time, add delinquency fees to the bill.
• Boundaries can be small and nuanced – like the fact I don’t talk to my parents if they sound crabby at the start of a phone call because that’s when our conversations are most likely to go poorly.

To summarize the Free Pass System:

• When someone crosses a boundary, identify the boundary to yourself, and then to the other person.
• If you don’t want them in your life anymore, cut them out of your life.
• Otherwise, give them grace – a Free Pass – up until now.
• Describe to them the clear consequences if they do the unwanted behavior again.
• Then, if they exhibit the behavior again, enact the consequences you’ve communicated.

I don’t bemoan the loss of friendship with that person who wrote me off. As a result, I learned how to set better boundaries.

Whether in friendships, family, or business, the Free Pass System helps you set and hold boundaries. It won’t fix every relationship, but it will improve the ones worth keeping.

Homework

Sit down somewhere quietly for 10 minutes and write out for yourself one behavior that someone in your life does that bothers you. What is it, specifically, that you don’t like?

Then describe the boundary you will set – anything from a timeout to removing them from your life – if that behavior happens again.

Finally, share your Free Pass and its consequences with the person involved.

I just wrapped up ten-week series exploring a different approach to selling. During our last session, each attendee taught one of the topics we’ve spent the last few months discussing. These are a few of the takeaways…

• Sales as service – Sales is best conducted as a service. When we set out to provide an incredible experience for our prospective customer – creating “unreasonable hospitality” to quote Will Guidara – sales feels easy and the right customers feel silly saying no.
  ​
• Believe in what you are selling and who you’re selling it to – If you don’t believe in what you are selling, stop. If you don’t believe the person you’re selling to, stop. Authentic selling comes from trusting the person you are talking to.
  ​
• Attitude – Being present with your customer is a superpower. If you maintain an attitude of loving-kindness, you’re likely to be well-remembered.
  ​
• Emotional connection – Everything in authentic sales is predicated on establishing a connection between you and your prospect. People buy from people.
  ​
• Enthusiasm is a competitive advantage – As Kevin Kelly says, “Optimism is worth 25 IQ points.” When you’re showing up enthusiastic, you’re more believable, more likely to close the sale, and you’ll have more fun.
  ​
• Integrity – It’s useful to define “integrity” for yourself and what you mean when you think of integrity in sales. For me, that means selling and persuading without using force and while keeping my commitments.
  ​
• Two beliefs that are helpful:
  • There is abundance – You don’t need – or want – a sale that isn’t a good fit.
    ​
  • They know best – Your prospective customer always knows what’s best for themselves.
• What’s your founder/origin story – One of the essential ingredients in connecting with a customer is telling your founder’s story. Why are you talking about this topic, and why should someone else care?
  ​
• The four elements of story – There are a million ways to tell a compelling story. But one of the simplest is a four-part structure: setup, change, turning, and resolution.
  ​
• Help them, no matter what – One of the best ways to cultivate a long-term relationship is to help the person achieve their goal, even if that means recommending something outside your offering. Be like Santa in Miracle on 34th Street.
  ​
• Flexible goals – If you’re using pressure, you’re not maintaining flexible goals. If your goal is to help somebody, even over closing a sale, you’re not going to be disappointed if they say no.
  ​
• Asking questions – Ask enough questions to learn about your customer’s pain points. They’ll tell you what you need.
  ​
• How fast you can get to “no.” – Get to know your prospect and their needs as quickly as possible. There are 8 billion people in the world. If the person you are talking to is not a good fit, somebody else will be!
  ​
• The ask – Asking for what you want is usually the hardest part of a sale. But it doesn’t have to be hard with clear boundaries. The pressure most of us feel when we prepare to ask comes from a fear of rejection and being told no.
  ​
• Boundaries – Boundaries can be as simple as time-boxing meetings, arriving on time, or discussing what you say you are going to discuss. They can also be as nuanced – doing what you say you’ll do, not negotiating past your comfort, or saying “no” to a sale that isn’t a good fit.
  ​
• Be respectful of their time – At the start of a sales conversation, be clear about the purpose of the meeting. Clarifying your intentions at the beginning of a conversation makes a huge difference in the other person’s experience and your own comfort.
  ​
• Start on time – Always start a sales meeting on time. Arrive early and be ready to begin when scheduled.
  ​
• Check in at the beginning – At the start of the conversation, make sure now is still a good time. If it’s not, offer to reschedule.
  ​
• Keep your commitments – If you told your prospective buyer that the meeting would last 15 minutes, keep it under 15 minutes. Ideally, end 2 minutes early to demonstrate respect for their time.

The following is an expert from my 2017 book Responsive: What It Takes To Create a Thriving Organization​

Doug Kirkpatrick was one of the earliest employees at The Morning Star Company. Founded in 1990, Morning Star would go on to trailblaze self- management in business. But as might be expected of any start-up, let alone one committed to innovative management, the company’s early days were intense times.

Morning Star is a tomato-ingredients manufacturer based out of Sacramento, California. The agribusiness and food-processing industries are notoriously old-school, known for strict command and control structures and rigid bureaucracies. The small group of employees who initiated the Morning Star project had a six-month window to start up the first factory and had committed to beginning operations on a specified day and even at a specific hour. They were a high-performance group, and Doug describes those initial weeks as a high state of flow, with each person striving cooperatively to bring the new company into existence. The company consisted of seasoned employees, and Doug, at thirty-four, was considered quite young.

Several months before the factory opened, the owner of The Morning Star Company, Chris Rufer, called a leadership meeting. The Morning Star founder and twenty-four members of the team met on the job site. They pulled steel folding chairs into a circle, and Chris passed around a page titled “Morning Star Colleague Principles.”

The sheet included just two points:

• Don’t use force.
• Keep your commitments.

The group spent several hours discussing what these principles meant. Questions cropped up. What happens if you have to fire somebody? What if someone quits? In the end, no one found a reason to reject these ideas, and every person there had reasons to embrace them.

Together, the group concluded that these two points were necessary and sufficient, and they would make up the core of all human interactions at the company. Adopting these principles wouldn’t change the day-to-day operations of the nascent company, but they’d have clear guideposts by which they’d proceed.

What they perhaps didn’t fully process at that moment (and what Doug has spent his career implementing, first at Morning Star and now with companies all over the world) was the far-reaching ramifications of adopting those simple principles. Consider, for example, that “Don’t Use Force” effectively implies:

• No one can require anyone to do anything.
• No one can unilaterally make anyone do anything.
• No one can fire anyone unilaterally.
• Each person has a voice within the company and each voice is protected; no democracy or majority rules.
• Checks and balances will be inherent.

At the time, it didn’t register how profoundly that meeting, and its eventual outcomes, would impact the team, and its members individually. As Doug said, “What we did would end up being very radical—but we were so busy we didn’t necessarily see it since it didn’t seem immediately to impact our day-to-day lives.” More than two decades later, those principles—don’t use force and keep your commitments—continue to serve as the bedrock of a successful, self-managed company.

Shortly before opening, Doug and his colleagues celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday outside the same farmhouse where Chris Rufer had called that fateful leadership meeting. The company has gone on to become a model of self-management and the world’s largest tomato processor, handling between 25% and 30% of U.S. tomato crops.

I don’t run a self-managed business, but those two principles have stuck with me ever since first meeting Doug in 2016. Whether in management, sales, or personal relationships, these two simple statements are deceptively profound.

Management – It is possible to run incredibly efficient and effective companies without force. When you set clear boundaries, and stick to them, business works better for everyone involved.

Sales – One of the biggest reasons most of us avoid selling is a lack of clear boundaries. When you don’t use force in sales and are clear from the beginning that any answer is okay, selling becomes easy.

Personal relationships – The only difference between this and any other kind of selling is that the stakes are higher and it’s even more important to not alienate your “customer.” The best personal relationships are also predicated on these two principles.

Inspired by Ryan Holiday, I’ve made a practice of listing a few things I’ve learned over last year on my birthday. Here’s 37 and 38. And here are a few things I’ve learned in the last year.

Chaos

We’re living amidst more turmoil than any time in several generations. And, despite being relentlessly optimistic, I think things are going to get worse before they get better. I wish that weren’t true – I’d love to build my business and raise my family in peace. But the next decade, and likely the rest of our lives, are going to be chaotic. Assuming that, the question becomes: how do we stay resilient?

AI is here

To paraphrase William Gibson, “It’s just not evenly distributed yet.” I’ve known AI is important for years now. At Responsive Conference, we’ve curated about AI since 2019! But I hit an inflection point this spring and now I’ll talk about the coming AI storm to anyone who will listen. Among my peers, it is trite to say that AI won’t replace people but instead people using AI will replace people. That phrase is true – as far as it goes. But it doesn’t do justice to the amount of change and disruption that I believe is coming.

Adaptability

Fellow entrepreneurs have been asking me how I feel that my business of the last six years, Zander Media, may be replaced by AI. As someone who’s reinvented himself and his career more than a dozen times in the last fifteen years, I’m more prepared than most to adapt to change. That’s what it means to be an entrepreneur – and also a prepper.

Adaptability is among the most important skills in this century.

Optimism is a competitive advantage

If these first two items sound bleak – they are. I don’t think we’re headed into a gentle time in human history. Thus, optimism is even more important than ever. As Kevin Kelly wrote in Excellent Advice for Living: optimism is worth 25 IQ points. When we show up with optimism and enthusiasm, people are more likely to listen, to follow our advice, and to change. (Optimism is actually a secret to selling.)

Durable skills

During my first few months in San Francisco in 2008, a woman asked me what my “hard skills” were – and then had to define the term for me to mean technical skills like software engineering or graphic design. I responded that all of my marketable skills were soft skills – persuasion, storytelling, talking to people, and selling.

Recently, someone introduced me to the term “durable skills” and I like that one better. All my skills are still soft – or durable skills – and I’m good with that.

Sales

There’s a story my dad tells about driving with my grandfather through the Central Valley of California long after my grandfather had retired. My grandpa asked that they stop through a small town and stop by a specific depot. The adult children of the proprietor came out crying, “It’s the candy man! It’s the candy man!” Apparently my grandfather used to bring those kids candy in their youth, as a part of his route as a door-to-door salesman selling tractor hitches..

The ability to sell – not to manipulate, but to persuade – is a superpower. As BJ Fogg says: “Help people do things they already want to do.” Sales and persuasion are going to be important in the years ahead.

The Trades

A friend of mine recently left his senior position at a name-brand technology company, borrowed money, and bought an established plumbing company. An old colleague makes more as an appliance repair man than he ever did as a personal trainer. The Trades, and being able to work, quite practically with your hands, is going to become more important – and more lucrative – in the coming years.

Get into real estate

This one is personal. I don’t think most people should treat real estate as business, even if they want to own property. But I went down a real estate rabbit hole this spring. I’m going to dabble in buying and selling real property for the rest of my life.

Daily habits

I haven’t had my cold plunge available for most of 2025. (The horror!) For a few months, I exercised 45 minutes a day, instead of my more typical two hours. I’ve fallen out of keeping a journal. But my daily habits are so strong, historically, that I’ve been able to build them back with ease. When things are going a bit off the rails, I can easily get back to the basics because they’re well known habits.

Discipline doesn’t have to be punitive

Growing up, I was criticized for not being disciplined. As an adult, people tell me how disciplined I am. No surprise, then, that I’ve always struggled with the idea of discipline.

The word “discipline” originates from the Latin word disciplina, which means “instruction, teaching, knowledge, and learning.” It is derived from the Latin root discere, which means “to learn”. Over time, discipline has come to mean punishment and correction, but the core meaning remains rooted in learning and self-control.

Exercise every day

This isn’t new to me. I’ve been exercising every day since I was 19 years old. I was reminded again this spring – amidst a couple of very challenging weeks – that when I get enough exercise every day, life is better. In particular, I like finding a specific routine (currently: a 5 mile loop through the Oakland hills) and doing that on autopilot. My girlfriend was surprised to hear that I “work” during those runs – mentally processing a lot of loose ends.

Do hard things

I really like doing difficult things. When I’m feeling stuck at work, running a really hard hill makes everything better. When I have a difficult day ahead of me, a few minutes in my cold plunge makes the day easier.

Maybe it’s a study in contrast, but doing hard things really does seem like a secret to success.

Limit social media

I deleted TikTok a few years ago. I haven’t been posting on Instagram almost at all in 2025. For sure, this is to my professional detriment. But my mental health is so much better! Social media is a mixed bag – there are good and bad things about it, for sure – but I’m healthier without it.

Limit screens, generally

I’ve watched two movies so far this year and no television shows. I have a time limit on all of my most-used apps on my phone. When I’m not working or researching real estate, I’m doing my best to avoid screens. And life is better!

Community is strength

When I brought back Responsive Conference after a pandemic-hiatus in 2024, the deciding factor was because I appreciated the value of people gathering in person. For the same reason, I’ve been hosting a monthly potluck to gather people together socially. Humans are meant to operate within a community. Community is strength.

Get a dog (they’ll teach you about presence)

My dog Riley is eight years old. I’m traveling this week, and thinking about her. She’s my best teacher on one important topic: presence.

I’ve done a lot of meditation, and dabbled in a variety of “presence” practices. But nothing has been more useful for practicing presence than having a dog as my daily companion.

I was listening to this Conversation with Tyler with Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark. Tyler asked Jack when we’ll be able to communicate with dogs, and what they’ll have to say. Jack said we probably already know what dogs will say: “Walk!” “Food!” and “I love you!”

Find your rabbit holes

I’ve always been someone who dives deep down rabbit holes. This spring, I spent about a thousand hours on real estate.

As my friend Marie is fond of explaining, the word amateur comes from the Latin “amare” meaning to love. It used to refer to someone who does something purely for the love of it. I think it is really healthy for humans to specialize and to practice out of love.

History > News

Twice over the last year, I’ve developed the bad habit of listening to several political podcasts as I’m waking up in the morning. I’d wake up and immediately start listening to The Daily, followed by other political podcasts. Predictably, I felt depressed for the rest of the day.

I’m learning to limit my consumption. No podcasts or news before 10am or after 6pm. Instead, when I want to think about what’s going on in the world, I turn to history. There’s some comfort in recognizing how much chaos and violence the human race has been through.

Write to think

Writing is hard. Even after writing more than 200,000 words over the last two years, it doesn’t seem to be much easier. But I am a better writer. And my thinking is quite a bit more clear.

Writing isn’t the only way to train critical thinking (BrainHQ is also great), but it is one of the best ways I know.

You know more than you think you do

I’ve been writing Snafu for two years and am always surprised that I have more ideas to write about. Over the last six weeks, I’ve been leading a weekly workshop about a more authentic approach to selling. As I prepare for the workshop each week, I’m consistently surprised by how much I have to say – way more than I can teach in an hour a week! We all know more than we think!

Avoid “Grass is greener on the other side”

I’ve noticed a habit among entrepreneurs to chase a new idea, project, or business when the better course of action is to double down on the current business. I’ve done this a lot across a dozen industries in the last decade!

It is important to avoid sunk cost fallacy! Don’t keep going if you’re just digging the hole deeper. But also don’t jump to something new just because it looks more appealing than the hard work in front of you.

Keep going

Luck accumulates to the persistent. Just keep showing up.