Why You’re Not Smarter Than a Bear (And What to Do About It) With over10,000 years of civilization behind us, we’re still losing to wildlife. Here’s why—and how to fix it. A park ranger was explaining to a group of tourists why it was so hard to design a better bear-proof trash can. Why building a bear-proof trashcan is so hard. “The problem,” he said, “is that there’s a serious overlap between the smartest bear and the dumbest person.” I laughed out loud when I heard that. And then I stopped...
1 day ago • 8 min read
You’re Not Burned Out. You’re Undisciplined. Exhaustion is often misdiagnosed. Drift feels like fatigue. I’ve been on the BJJ mat for almost 30 months. For the first two years, I went home after every class feeling destroyed. Exhausted. Battered. Sucking wind like I’d just run a marathon through a furnace. I told myself it was normal. That jiu-jitsu was supposed to feel this way. That getting crushed was part of the learning process. And in a way, it was. But I was wrong about why. I thought...
3 days ago • 10 min read
The Puking Point: Why You Don’t Know What You’re Capable Of Most people never push hard enough to find out what their best actually is. I recently watched a video of teenagers training for ice hockey. Elite-level young men (and I think I saw a woman player also). The technology they were using was insane. Specialized drills. High-tech tracking. Precision coaching. But what really got me wasn’t the equipment. It was the skill. The speed. The hand-eye coordination. One kid in particular —...
4 days ago • 10 min read
Why Good Leaders Think, But Great Leaders Think About How They Think Metacognition is the skill nobody teaches you. And it’s the one that separates good leaders from great ones. There’s a difference between a good leader and a great one. And it’s not what most people think. It’s not intelligence. It’s not charisma. It’s not experience. It’s metacognition. Read deeply from good books and reflect on what you read The ability to think about how you think. To observe your own mental processes. To...
5 days ago • 9 min read
The Skills That Multiply Everything Else Why the best leaders don't just collect skills—they master the skills that make every other skill better. I was watching Alex Hormozi the other day talking about something that stopped me cold. Meta-skills. Not skills like carpentry, coding, sales, or marketing. Not even leadership skills like delegation or decision-making. Meta-skills—the skills that make acquiring and using every other skill easier, faster, and better. He mentioned things like:...
6 days ago • 9 min read
The Stupid Warrior vs. The Smart Warrior: Why the Best Fight Is the One You Never Have The most dangerous person in the room isn't the one looking for a fight—it's the one who knows exactly what a fight costs Modern Battles by SPI In the 70s, I grew up playing games most kids didn't understand. Dungeons & Dragons. Hex wargames. Tabletop strategy games with names like Ogre, G.E.V., and Modern Battles. While other kids were surfing or playing sports, I was hunched over cardboard maps covered in...
7 days ago • 9 min read
You're Already the Black Belt Stop waiting for permission to become who you already are GM Han and some of his black belt instructors in 1995 It was February of 1998, about six months out from my first black belt test. Training harder than I ever had. Drilling techniques until I was exhausted. Running scenarios in my head at night instead of sleeping. After each training session, my gi would be so drenched with sweat that the red ink from my belt would bleed on to my gi. Terrified I wasn't...
8 days ago • 11 min read
The 5 Sentences That Rewired My Brain: Bruce Lee’s Daily Affirmations Sometimes the biggest obstacle isn’t the work—it’s what you tell yourself about the work I used to think my work should speak for itself. That if I just kept my head down, did quality work, delivered results, eventually someone would notice. Someone would promote me. Someone would give me the opportunity. Someone would recognize my value. That’s what I was taught growing up. “Be humble. Don’t brag. Let your work do the...
9 days ago • 9 min read
The Lost Skill That Makes Great Leaders: Why Most People Don’t Know How to Learn (Let Alone Think or Teach) If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it deeply. Long before I was a foreman on construction sites, I was on the mat teaching hapkido classes. First to kids. Then to bigger kids—adults. And here’s what I learned from the mat that I was able to apply to work and life: You don’t have to be some “credentialed” expert to teach. You can teach what you know. And you can be very...
10 days ago • 7 min read