I’m not good at home repair. I don’t enjoy it. When something breaks, my first instinct is dread.

For a long time I thought the solution was willpower — grit my teeth, get through it, reward myself after. The task was something to endure.

But that framing made the problem worse. On top of my broken toilet, I had to deal with my resistance to fixing it.

Here’s what shifted things: realizing that the toilet doesn’t care how I feel about it. It needs fixing whether I’m frustrated or not. The frustration isn’t doing any useful work — it’s just a second unpleasant thing running alongside the first.

The solution wasn’t learning to love DIY. It wasn’t steeling myself more firmly against discomfort. It was recognizing that my frustration was optional, and setting it aside.

Not suppressing it. Not muscling through it. Just noticing it wasn’t helping and moving on.

Step out for a one-hour meeting and you come back to dozens of project notifications.

Status updates. Comments. @mentions. Automated alerts telling you a due date changed on a project you’re barely involved in.

You weren’t gone long. But the tools kept churning out noise without you — and now they want your attention.

This is the hidden cost of systems built for transparency. They show everyone everything. All the time.

In theory, that makes coordination easier.

In practice, it means you’re always a little bit behind.

Worse, none of it tells you what to actually do next.

An inbox full of updates tells you what’s happening — not what matters, not what’s required of you, not what should happen today. Figuring that out is its own work, layered on top of the actual work.

The fix I’ve landed on: one list, maintained separately from the project tools my team uses. Not a replacement for those tools, but a filter.

I treat the notifications as inputs. When something actually requires action, I pull it out and add it to the list, alongside everything else competing for my time. Then I decide what to work on next.

The project management tools tell me what’s happening. My list tells me what to do.

Only one of them should be in charge.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

When you’re in marketing or fundraising, it’s tempting to treat feedback on your creative as a checklist.

A series of fixes to reconcile everyone’s conflicting edits so you can hit your deadline.

This is almost always the wrong approach.

Apply every comment and you risk creating a Frankenstein’s monster. Split the difference and you get something dry and forgettable — nobody objects, nobody’s moved.

Here’s why: the notes you get aren’t really about the words on the page.

They’re diagnostic signals. When someone says “this isn’t working,” they’re telling you they felt something — confusion, skepticism, a disconnect — before they knew why. Your job is to find the why.

Consider a common scenario: you share a draft proposal with two executives. One wants you to list key programs. The other wants more emphasis on mission and history.

Both are telling you what they care about. Neither is asking what might actually move the customer to act.

Your job isn’t to negotiate between them. It’s to diagnose what’s underneath: they both sense the piece isn’t compelling — they’re just reaching for familiar answers. The real question is what a prospective customer needs to feel before they’ll say yes.

That’s the difference between taking a note and reading a note.

Sometimes the right move is to accept an edit verbatim. More often it means applying the spirit of it. Occasionally it means rejecting it entirely — and being able to say why, in terms of what the reviewer actually felt and what the piece needs to do.

That’s what it means to own the work. Not protecting your original draft, but using others’ reactions as data to get closer to something that will actually land.

Stop trying to satisfy the room. Start asking what the customer needs.

Inside the box is everything my friend needs to build his new 3D printer:

• the disassembled housing
• electrical components
• screws, bolts, and other hardware

Oh, and a small bag of gummy bears.

The instruction manual leans into it:

After years of thorough scientific research, we came to a solution => At the end of each chapter, you will be told a specific amount of bears to consume.

Eating an incorrect amount than prescribed in the manual might lead to a sudden boost of energy. Please consult a professional in the closest candy store.

Hide the Haribo for now! From our experience, an unattended bag with sweets will suddenly disappear. Confirmed by multiple cases all around the World.

The gummy bears don’t solve anything. They don’t optimize assembly or reduce friction. They simply reflect care—about the product and the customer.

The experience is, in a word, delightful.

The sort of delight that’s worth cultivating.

Progress isn’t always fast or flashy.

Often it shows up as small but meaningful changes in our quality of life.

Consider the humble single-serve coffee maker.

About ten years ago, I bought my first Keurig Mini. It worked. It made coffee.

But it was never subtle. It was loud. There were long pauses as it brewed.

A couple of weeks ago, it finally broke. So I replaced it with one that is, on paper, the same model.

But the new one is different.

It begins dispensing almost immediately. And it’s eerily quiet.

I don’t know what changed inside. What matters is that the experience is better.

The new machine cost about the same as the old one: roughly $70. Adjusted for inflation, the newer and better machine is significantly cheaper.

That’s a real gain. One that’s easy to miss.

Small improvements like this accumulate. Together, they’re quietly improving our lives.