Confront Failure and Use it to Your Advantage: The After Action Report

If you’re a basketball fan that grew up in the 1980’s you’re familiar with the story that Michael Jordan was cut from the varsity basketball team as a sophomore. Sure, he was only fifteen and hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet, but the overlooked part of the narrative doesn’t really matter. What does matter is how Jordan responded, using his failure as motivation to become even more driven in his quest for greatness, eventually becoming the best basketball player of all time.

We all fail. It’s a part of life. Some failures are big, while tiny little failures happen daily. As I write this I can think of a handful of failures that happened to me just yesterday. A couple were minor while one was very large, the type of experience that ruins your day and sometimes your week.

We all know there are lessons in failure, but how often do we actually deconstruct failure?

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Don't be a Leaning Tower of Pisa: Focus on Your Foundation

China’s Shanghai Tower is the second tallest building in the world, at 2,073 feet, nearly 800 feet taller than the Empire State Building. Because it’s built in an earthquake zone, the building has a massive foundation with 980 foundation piles driven into the ground as deep as 282 feet, with 2.15 million cubic feet of reinforced concrete as part of a 20-foot-thick foundation mat.

It has the highest observation deck in the world on the 119th floor, offering breathtaking views of the sprawling city below. Millions will visit the observation deck annually, taking a high speed elevator that gets them to the top in forty seconds. It is truly an engineering marvel.

I’d venture to guess that the thousands that visit the observation deck daily aren’t worried about whether the foundation is properly built and can handle such a massive structure.

This isn’t 12th century Italy.

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Sculpt your Personal David: Hold Yourself Accountable for What You See in the Mirror

I have a ritual that I follow daily. I’m an early riser. I’ll walk downstairs to the bathroom in the main level to avoid waking anyone up. The first thing I do is look in the mirror.

It’s become a daily ritual because I’ve come to the realization that I can actually see in my face whether or not I’ve been on a healthy path. If it’s a Saturday morning and I overindulged with alcohol I can see that. If I haven’t been getting enough sleep I can see that too. After a few days of less than optimal eating or stressful times at work or at home I can see the stress looking back at me. The same goes with missed workouts.

A few months ago I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw. I saw a face that looked bloated and unhealthy. My skin didn’t look good, my eyes didn’t look good. I wasn’t taking care of myself and you could see it. When I gain weight, I gain it in the face.

I didn’t like the person that was staring back at me.

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Embrace Your Inner Bison and Run Toward the Storm

There are few symbols that represent our our past and the American West quite like the American Bison, better known as the Buffalo. The “Official Mammal” of the United States is often used throughout North America in official seals, flags and logos. In the Native American community, the bison is a revered, especially among the Plains Indians who consider it a sacred animal and religious symbol.

As a history major in college and someone with a specific interest in the historical West, I’ve long been fascinated by the Buffalo. One of the best books I’ve read in years is American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steve Rinella. The well-known podcast host and star of MeatEater on Netflix authored a compelling and comprehensive history of the animal and the incredible impact it has had on our nation’s history.

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What an Ancient Philosopher and a Goliath Frog Taught me about Focus

Professionally I’ve been in the data space for several years, with a focus on data warehousing, advanced analytics and machine learning. Over the past couple of years the buzz has shifted to AI (Artificial Intelligence) with the broader goal to eventually build machines that are as smart as humans, with logical reasoning capabilities, the ability to process language, the ability to navigate and eventually develop advanced skills like emotional intelligence. It’s a fascinating and polarizing field.

It’s hard not to be tuned into tech today and not hear about AI, but this post is not about Artificial Intelligence.

There’s is another form of AI that I suspect a majority of the population doesn’t spend that much time thinking about. This form of knowledge has been around for thousands of years and encompasses all the guiding principles that we need to be successful in life.

I’m talking about Ancient Intelligence.

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Incorporating Failure to Achieve Success via Ray Dalio

We all know the quote. It’s plastered all over sales bullpens in corporate America.

“You miss 100% of the shots you never take.”

Yes, it’s one of those overused quotes, and yes, it’s become commonplace, but It really is a good quote. Leave it to the Great One to come up with an all-timer in the motivation department.

The quote works in every facet of life: Want to close more sales? Pick up the phone and call someone. Have a crush on a girl? Ask her out on a date. Have a great business idea? Start a business. Want to be a writer? Start writing.

We all know it’s not that simple. Let’s start with the writing thing. I’ve wanted to be a writer my entire life. I’ve always admired the great writers. At an early age it started with Ernest Hemingway and Jack London. But I never actually did it.

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Advice on Parenting: Let Your Kids Get Wet in the Rain-- It's Good for Them

As a non-native resident of Orange County, California I’ve enjoyed many a laugh at how a good percentage of the locals respond to any weather that isn’t 75 degrees and sunny. Yesterday drought stricken California finally got some rain, the second rainfall in a week. As what typically happens, the rain brought out the North Face jackets, stocking caps, mittens and umbrellas.

Yesterday, as I was waiting in the longer than usual school drop-off line it struck me that nearly every single elementary school child immediately got out of the car and opened up an umbrella. In some cases mom actually got out of the car (holding up the line) and walked around the car with an open umbrella, seemingly in fear of a single rain drop falling on their child. And this wasn’t a downpour, more of a moderate drizzle.

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How to Avoid Being "Out of Service" While at Work

Picture yourself taking your kids to Disneyland on a beautiful summer day. As you drive down the 5 Freeway towards the entrance to the park your youngest child points out Space Mountain and everyone in the car agrees that it will be the first stop. You find a parking spot, ride the tram over and walk through Downtown Disney. Your family excitedly rushes over to Space Mountain only to find that the ride is “Out of Service”. Your kids are unhappy. You tell them that things break down from time to time and it’s good that they shut the ride down to make sure everyone is safe. “Out of Service” happens. In the software world, where I’ve spent much of my professional career, we have SLA’s to promise a certain percentage of uptime. We do this because things break down and need to be fixed.

Running into the dreaded “Out of Service” sign is inevitable.

Human beings really aren’t that that much different. There are times that we are “Out of Service.” This doesn’t alway mean that we are physically incapacitated or out of work with an illness. These out of service days are self-inflicted, days when we are absolutely disengaged and going through the motions at work or in our personal life. Of course this is human, to a point. We all have these moments. The problem in today’s world is millions of workers are often out of service more than they are in service.

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You're Only In a Race Against Yourself and Other Lessons I Learned from the Marines

I had the honor this past weekend of accompanying my son and his high school rugby team as they took part in a team-building exercise with some members of the 5th Marine Division at Camp Pendleton in California. The experience we had along and the lessons he and his team learned really resonated, reinforcing many of the critical skills I’ve worked hard to instill in my son. It also reminded me why I love the culture and toughness of rugby so much.

In the end all parents really want the same thing: well-adjusted kids of strong character and determination (grit) that are resilient enough to handle what life throws at them. In the case of my son I believe my role is to turn him into someone who will eventually become a great father, partner and provider. This past Saturday, the Marines, through their outlook on the world, helped reinforce some of the key lessons my wife and I have worked so hard to instill in our kids.

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Advice for Dads: The Important Transition from Work Time to Family Time

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Talking and writing about morning routines has become an industry. A quick Amazon search for “morning routine” yields fifteen books on the subject, and that’s just the first two pages of results. It’s a popular subject because the gurus are right. I personally have benefited greatly by building a repetitive system around my morning routine. While morning routines draw all the attention, There’s another routine that I think is equally as important, for different reasons.

A big challenge for many of us is the transition from “work time” to “family time”. With modern tech allowing us 24 x 7 access to our jobs plus more and more people working from home, the division between work time and home time is often blurred, resulting in millions of employees taking their work home with them, or not really finishing work in the first place. It’s a major problem that causes great stress in relationships with studies showing that a marriage to a workaholic can double the chance of divorce. With the number of people working from home continuing to grow the stress the lack of divide causes on families will only get bigger.

All of this stress and the expansion of the work window drives home the importance of not only having a good morning routine, but also focusing on your evening routine.

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Raising Resilient Kids that Understand Perspective + Some Things I Learned from Richard Branson and AJ Jacobs

One of my favorite Richard Branson stories is the anecdote that his mother used to drop him off several miles from home, as a teenager, forcing him to find his way home. In the era before cell phones and GPS on demand it probably was a pretty daunting task and one that definitely got Branson out of his comfort zone. It made me think back to my childhood in rural Wisconsin. My brother and I were always on the move, stomping through the woods in and around our little town. It’s a common refrain you hear from many parents, the standard “back in my day we only came home when it was dark” line. Of course it’s a different world now. My kids are growing up in beautiful, but also densely populated Orange County, California and in these modern times I can’t just let them roam around. In this connected era we want to know where our kids are at at all times and can communicate with them at all times. The access to technology has clearly paid dividends and connected all of us, but it’s also helped create a generation where the ease of technology has created a dependency dynamic. It’s impossible to get lost when you have GPS access at all times. Stuck somewhere? Call Uber.

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The Importance of Tradition

This past weekend we held our annual “Turkey Bowl” where a group of us, ages ranging from 7 to 45, played a game of touch football at a local park. As each year passes I lose a step while my kids seem to gain a step (especially my football playing 15-year-old son and his friends). Age is still undefeated after all. As I glance at the smiling faces from the group picture on my phone I get a warm feeling when I think of how the fond memories I’ll have of this year’s game. As we age (I am 44) we maintain little snippets of memorable moments from different times in our lives, many rooted to the holidays. One of the highlights of the Turkey Bowl this year was the seven-year-old son of one of my close friends scoring his first touchdown, something he and his dad will always remember.

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Classic Inspiration: "If" by Rudyard Kipling

Inspiration comes in many forms. While we are often caught up in what we perceive as modern day problems, we tend to forget that men have dealt with the same obstacles all along and great wisdom can be found in classic literature. One such example is If by the great late Victorian era poet Rudyard Kipling. The classic dispenses timeless on honor, character, strength and humility that is accessible to all ages on the journey to becoming a better and more attentive man, from teenagers all the way to men far into adulthood.

Here is the classic poem followed by some analysis of my favorite passages and how they are as timeless and relevant as ever:

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The Need for Better Habit Forming: the Origin of Attentive Man

Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday, tomorrow is victory over a lesser foe

- Miyamoto Mushashi

There’s a reason I named my website Attentive Man. The name is very personal and stems from the fact that I was extremely inconsistent and often a downright failure when it came to being attentive. This lack of attentiveness was often in all areas, from my interpersonal relationships, to my relationship with my wife and even periods of inconsistency in the areas of engagement with my clients.

The idea of engagement was key. For all the times I was engaged with my family and professional life I would go through periods where I was completely disengaged. It was based on often not having my priorities straight, but it was also based on the fact I had really bad habits when it came to organization and focus. Things that come so naturally to people like my wife (thoughtfulness, organization) just don’t come natural to me. As a result, my wife and I weren’t flying in formation as a couple or as a family. The sad part was this pattern had gone on for years. I would have periods of improvement and then revert back to inconsistency. We men have to be engaged partners. We have to be engaged fathers. We have to be engaged employees and business partners. You can’t be partially engaged. So what was the answer?

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Advice for Men: Avoid the Lone Wolf Mindset

The idea of the lone wolf has a mystique. The Western genre of movies is a prime example. Clint Eastwood launched a career out of playing the Man With No Name in films like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. The Eastwood films, directed by Sergio Leone, found inspiration in real life Samurai like Miyamoto Musashi, who left his village at the age of fifteen, leaving is family and possessions behind, to travel and engage in battle. The epic novel Mushashi, based on the real life exploits of Japan’s most famous swordsman, is a classic example of Japanese storytelling.

The Eastwood or Mushashi character is an incredibly popular narrative, capturing the archetype of the mysterious man who is seemingly alone in the world. These characters are strong, courageous and show honor in the face of adversity, but what makes them particularly attractive to many men is the fact that they are essentially fighting a private battle, often outside of “civilized” society. Through their actions these characters depict something that so many men are looking for: strength, honor and virtue.

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Free Your Mind...And the Rest will Follow?


I remember when I got my first Blackberry. I was mesmerized by it. You could surf the Internet and and receive emails? The future productivity would be amazing? Little did I know how it would not only impact my life, but also society.

I was living a smartphone driven life of constant distraction. The constant text messages from family and friends, social media apps and the need to obsessively know every detail about sports and politics created a life of non-focus and distraction. These distractions created a scattered mind and a non-engaged employee, father and partner. When my wife and I would inevitably get into an argument about my lack of engagement I would deny it and tell her that I had a ‘thirst for knowledge’. It was more a thirst for distraction and escapism.

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You Need a System: The Best Thing I Learned from Scott Adams

As someone who’s worked in tech for years, I’ve long been a fan of the Dilbert Comics by Scott Adams. So many of the absurdities of office life that I’ve experienced in my sales career are captured so perfectly. In the past few years Adams has emerged as a major figure in the political space due to his prediction that Donald Trump would win the 2016 Presidential Election. In addition to his comics I’m a huge fan of his book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. In the book Adams tells his life story with great emphasis on the tools he’s used to become a successful cartoonist and entrepreneur. Like you would expect from the guy who gave us Dilbert, it’s a pretty funny book, but also very inspiring as he details his determination to overcome some serious health obstacles while starting several companies.

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