A Complaint Free World

I have the luxury of working remote for my job. I work in an office with a good friend that owns another company. I like to think that one of the huge advantages of not working in a corporate office is that I have the opportunity to avoid the office gossip and chronic complainers that can sometimes occupy our places of work.

This past week was a more stressful than a normal week. Towards the end of last week I caught myself. I was becoming that guy. Every conversation I had involved me complaining about something. It dawned on me that every time I’d talk to my boss or a co-worker I was complaining about something work related. This made me decide to try to be more aware of this and start tracking how often my conversations turned to the negative. This includes even the small and seemingly minor things.

I quickly realized it was every conversation.

Which got me thinking. How often does the average person complain about something in a day? Studies show an incredible amount. In fact virtually every conversation involves some level of complaining, as much as one complaint per minute according to research. Want proof? Next time you have a conversation with a friend see how often the conversation turns to complaints. Better yet, spend a little time scrolling through your Facebook page. Or the NextDoor app. They’re a veritable smorgasbord of complaints.

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Don't Let One Bad Minute Ruin Your Day- Positive Mental Muscle Memory

Stephen Curry is the greatest three-point-shooter in the history of the NBA. His efficiency and ability to shoot from all over the court is a wonder to watch. He has perfect shooting mechanics because years of hard work have given him the ability to hit nearly 44% of his three-point shot attempts. In just ten-years he’s become the most prolific three-point shooter in league history.

Curry’s consistency is based on thousands of hours of practice and the confidence and ability to rise to the occasion in tense situations. Those thousands of hours of practice have honed his muscle memory to always get to the perfect shooting position and release, no matter how much pressure the defense is putting on him. From a technical standpoint, muscle memory is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition and in Curry’s case, thousands of hours of repetition.

Of course Curry’s incredible shooting skills are not just physical, the mind plays a massive role in his success. Great athletes have bad games, Curry included. The key is how quickly they can forget the bad game or situation where they didn’t perform in the clutch and move on to the next possession. There are many incredible athletes that never made it to the NBA not because of their lack of physical abilities, but because of their lack of ability to handle the mental side of the game.

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Cal Newport: On Reclaiming Leisure

Note: This article is the second in a multiple part series that covers Cal Newport’s new book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. The first article can be found here and covers in greater detail the four key areas of focus to achieve Digital Minimalism, as outlined by Newport. The four key areas are: 1) Spend Time Alone, 2) Don’t Click Like, 3) Reclaim Leisure and 4) Join the Attention Resistance. Today I’ll be focusing on the concept of reclaiming leisure.

Newport’s thesis on digital minimalism:

Our current relationship with the technologies of our hyper-connected world is unsustainable and is leading us closer to the quiet desperation that Thoreau observed so many years ago. But as Thoreau reminds us, ‘the sun rose clear’ and we still have the ability to change this state of affairs. To do so, however, we cannot passively allow the wild tangle of tools, entertainments, and distractions provided by the internet age to dictate how we spend our time or how we feel. We must indeed take steps to extract the good from these technologies while sidestepping what’s bad. We require a philosophy that puts our aspirations and values once again in charge of our daily experience, all the while dethroning primal whims and the business models of Silicon Valley from their current dominance of this role; a philosophy that accepts new technologies, but not if the price is the dehumanization Andrew Sullivan warned us about; a philosophy that prioritizes long-term meaning over short-term satisfaction. A philosophy, in other words, like digital minimalism.

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The Hardest Part is Getting to the Starting Line

The 100-meter dash is the signature track and field event of the Olympics with the 100-meter world record holder earning the mythical title of the “World’s Fastest Human.” The current 100-meter world-record is 9.58 seconds set by Usain Bolt on August 16, 2009 in Berlin Germany. The retired Jamaican, considered the greatest sprinter of all-time, holds the world record in both the 100 and 200 meters, winning each event in three consecutive Olympics. It is an incredible accomplishment

In America, track and field is relegated to a niche sport, receiving scant attention unless it’s the every-four-year Olympic cycle. The majority of American sports fans see sprinters like Bolt for that brief ten-seconds of glory every four-years and then turn their attention back to the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball.

What the public sees is Usain Bolt’s athletic dominance over ten second sprint. What they don’t see is the hard work world class athletes like Bolt put in to remain elite. In a competition where fractions of a second can determine the winner, it’s the work the training the athletes put in on a daily basis, outside of the competition, that sets them apart.

The hardest part is getting to the starting line.

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Let Your Guard Down

Heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey was the biggest sports figure of the roaring twenties, arguably Boxing’s first superstar. Dempsey’s two late career losses to the “Fighting Marine” Gene Tunney, the second defeat via the controversial “long count” bout, drew over 100,000 fans in Philadelphia and Chicago respectively, attendance numbers unrivaled in boxing history.

 On July 21, 1927 Dempsey fought the heavily favored Jack Sharkey at Yankee Stadium in front of 82,000 fans. A crowd that size to see two heavyweight contenders battle is indicative of how much of a draw Dempsey was.

Here is the pivotal moment in the fight as described by Roger Kahn in his excellent book A Flame of Pure Fire: Jack Dempsey and the Roaring ‘20s.

As described by Kahn:

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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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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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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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