10 Hobbies That Will Change Your Life (Pick One and Commit for 6 Months) Six months from now, you’ll either be the same person with better excuses—or someone you barely recognize. Here’s what I’ve learned after decades on the mat, the jobsite, and in the arena of building a life worth living: The right hobby isn’t just a way to pass time. It’s a training ground for everything else. It builds discipline when you don’t feel like showing up. It builds confidence when you prove to yourself you...
1 day ago • 6 min read
The Engineer and The Artist: Why You Need Both to Master Anything That Matters Precision without creativity is robotic. Creativity without precision is chaos. Mastery requires both. Monday and Wednesday mornings before noon class, I meet up with a brown belt buddy. We’re not rolling. We’re not drilling in the traditional sense. We’re engineering. Half-guard retention and passing We’re working guard passing and guard retention. Slowly. Methodically. Breaking down every movement, every angle,...
2 days ago • 8 min read
The Day I Forgot That Good Intentions Don’t Excuse Bad Judgment Sometimes the mistake isn’t what you did—it’s forgetting that not everyone sees the world the way you do. I fucked up the other day. Not in a small way. Not in a “whoops, my bad” kind of way. In a way that made someone I respect genuinely angry with me. And he had every right to be. I’m sitting here feeling like a bonehead, replaying the whole thing in my head, wondering what the hell I was thinking. The worst part? I knew...
3 days ago • 9 min read
The One Thing Nobody Can Take From You (Even When You’re Getting Your Ass Kicked) When skill fails and strength runs out, there’s still one weapon left. Noon class the other day was brutal. Wednesday noon classes can be a mixed bag, not just mixed level. It can have as many as 20 guys on the mat, on other days, it can be really small. This was one of those days... I walked in and saw the lineup: Jason Hunt teaching, Oscar—five-foot-eight, 220 pounds of compact black-belt power assisting....
4 days ago • 9 min read
The Simple Rules That Are Keeping You Stuck: Why Complex Problems Need Complex Thinking In a world of infinite variables, your black-and-white rulebook is making you blind. The roller-coaster of The Dunning-Kruger Effect In 1983, I left high school after twelve years of private schooling thinking I had all the answers. The world was simple. Black and white. Right and wrong. Them and us. I had my rules. My boxes. My systems. And I was absolutely certain that if everyone would just follow my...
5 days ago • 8 min read
The Blueprint You’re Not Building: Why Most People Work Hard and End Up Nowhere Without a clear destination, every road feels like the wrong one. 1000 Wilshire, one of my first big jobs I was twenty-one, working on a rooftop in the utility rooms, pulling wire and setting fire alarm devices. It was 1986. Maybe ‘87. The details blur, but the lesson never did. There was this guy on the job. Late sixties, maybe early seventies. Full toolbelt. Up on a ladder installing conduit like he’d been doing...
6 days ago • 9 min read
You’re Working Hard on the Wrong Things—And You Know It The Productivity Trap: Busy, Exhausted, and Going Nowhere You know that moment when you look up from your desk at 9pm, exhausted, and realize you’ve been productive all day but can’t name a single thing that actually mattered? You crushed your to-do list. Answered 47 emails Attended three meetings Posted on social media Checked off tasks But you’re not closer to anything that matters. You’re busy. You’re tired. You’re stalled. And the...
7 days ago • 9 min read
Your Superpower Is Holding You Back The thing that got you here won't take you where you want to go The other day I was rolling with one of the newly promoted black belts at Meraki. A guy I've always respected. Strong, flexible, technical. When he attacks you he has that slow methodical game that feels like a python wrapping around you—the kind you love to watch and hate to experience. He's always late to class, which drives my old-school martial arts brain crazy, but I like him anyway. Funny...
8 days ago • 10 min read
Know Yourself, But Adapt to Others: Why Good Leaders Must Play Different Games Nosce Te Ipsum at the Temple of Apollo The other day during Sunday open mat, I was working drills with one of the brown belts, Romain. He's a 50-something French guy who works in the healthcare industry, and he's really strong and tough on the mat. We've been partnering up for a couple months now—30 minutes before the noon class on Mondays and Wednesdays and sometimes on Sundays when he can make it in. We've been...
9 days ago • 14 min read