If you’re a square peg in a round hole, you have two options: Find a different hole, or become a different peg. It might be easier to find a square hole than it is to make the round hole square by wiggling around.
Author Archives: Mitch
Timebox it
My wife asked me how long I spend writing each blog post. “Five minutes?” she asked. I laughed because I have spent a lot longer than five minutes on many of them so far, but it got me thinking. What if I did limit it to just five minutes? They might be worse but they …
Clarity in Japanese
I came across this Japanese website and, not being able to read Japanese, I wasn’t really sure what it was all about. What if you made things so clear that anyone who glanced at your website would know immediately exactly what it was all about?
Imagine the music
Imagine you spend 30 minutes a day commuting to work and listen to classical music during this time. Now imagine you listen to heavy metal on full blast for 30 minutes instead. Now imagine it’s not music, but thoughts. 30 minutes of positive thoughts like, “I’m glad they’re rebuilding the road so that it can …
You have to advocate for yourself
No one cares more about you than you do. You have to take care of yourself. You have to go to the doctor. You have to tell her where it hurts. You have to do the physical therapy exercises to get better. You have to take your vitamins. You have to speak up when your …
Live as you want to die
Sometimes I eat too much. I feel too full and I ask myself, “Ooooh, why did I eat so much?” One day I thought to myself, “What if I died right now, feeling just like this, too full of food?” That would be an uncomfortable way to die. Uncomfortable ways of living are uncomfortable ways …
100 years, 6 months, and todays
Both of my grandmothers turned 100 last year. One of them has long said that the number didn’t matter if you weren’t in good health. You don’t want to be 100 just to be 100 if you’re in bad health. She was recently told by a doctor that she probably had less than 6 months …
Break things up
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” —Chinese proverb I have committed to writing a blog post everyday for a year. Without months, I would be 31/365 of the way done. This sounds daunting to me and makes me feel far from the finish line. But since there are months, I …
It’s a long game.
In volleyball, you’re allowed a maximum of three touches before hitting it back over the net. Sometimes, to be sneaky, setters will dump the ball over on the second touch instead of setting up a hitter. It can be an easy point if it catches the other team off guard. I was playing against a …
You say tomato
Americans peel bananas from the opposite end that Chinese people peel them from. Australians scrape butter horizontally off the top of a stick of butter rather than slice downward to make pats. In Ecuador, I rode a bus that didn’t have set stops, just a route, and it picked up people wherever they were along …