The battle is in the start.

Once you start moving, it gets easier. Write the draft, copy-paste, steal, use AI — do whatever it takes to get away from the blank page as fast as possible.

Your first sentence does not need to be unique. Your last edit needs to be.

To spark creativity, sometimes you need to pitch the crappiest idea.

But be prepared to back off if your team starts taking it seriously.

We’re living in a world obsessed with output, heck even this page is a proof-of-it.

Our economic systems reward quantity, and now AI tools let us create more content than ever before.

As business publishing evolved from 500-page bricks to concentrated 30 minute reads, we might see a similar shift in digital content.

People don’t want more, they want better. They want signal, not noise.

The real question for the future will not be “How much can we produce?” it will be “How can we deliver value with less?”.

We often jump straight to solutions before really understanding the problem. It’s backwards, right?

When our ideas are too polished from the start, we leave no room for others to contribute.

That’s why rough ideas work better for team innovation.

Share them early and watch your team create something awesome.

Behind every quote is an anecdote. Behind every anecdote is a story.

It is tempting to stop at the quote, to grab the summary and run.

The real wisdom is what is behind that quote. What messy context gave birth to this clean and polished insight.

Summaries are like photos from interesting places on a friends social media. They should spark the need to go deeper to get to those “hmm”-moments that makes us pause where something resonates with or challenges us.

Bullet points might be efficient, but the real nuggets of gold is in the margins of the stories.

Scope creep is often a consequence of discovery.

We don’t know what we don’t know.

You can plan all that you want, but you’ll only find the true complexity once you dig in.

We uncover all sorts of edge cases when we start working, and that is equal to developers, project managers and customers.

I have a confession: I’ve never been a fan of SMART goals. There, I said it.

They first came into my life through personal development programs and they felt more like a forced exercise than a useful tool.

SMART goals were created for managing companies and projects back in 1981 and somehow they became the go-to framework for personal development. Leadership experts everywhere pushed them as the solution. But just because something works for corporate planning doesn’t mean it translates well to individual growth.

As a team leader, I struggle when setting SMART goals with my team members. This is especially true for creative or thinking-intensive work. These goals often become binary checkboxes. They’re either done or not done. This misses the nuance of real progress.

Recently I discovered Ali Abdaal’s NICE goals framework. It resonates much better with how people actually develop and grow.

Let’s break it down:

Near term: Focus on what you can do today, tomorrow, or next week. It’s about the immediate future, not some distant target.

Input Based: Instead of focusing on outcomes we can’t control, concentrate on actions we can take right now. What specific steps can you take to move forward?

Controllable: Choose goals within your sphere of influence. Running ten miles daily might be unrealistic, but how about 10 minutes? You might not control what work lands on your desk, but you can control how you approach it.

Energizing: Make your goals exciting. Ask yourself: “How could this project be fun?” or “What could I teach others about this?” Find ways to inject energy into your goals.

The beauty of NICE goals is that they work with human nature. They acknowledge that personal development is more complex than a checkbox system from the 80s.

Core values written on walls mean nothing if they don’t match what happens beneath the surface. Your real values show up in daily choices: which behavior gets rewarded who gets promoted and how conflicts are solved. What you tolerate becomes your culture regardless of what your handbook states. The gap between stated and lived values is where most company cultures fall apart.

Like an iceberg, your company culture runs far deeper than what’s visible on the surface.

Processes and structures are just the tip, showing only a fraction of what matters.

The real force lies beneath in how people think, act, and influence others daily.

This invisible part isn’t written down in handbooks. It’s lived and shared through the decisions being made.

The thing about judgment and “gut feeling” is that it’s probably one of the most underrated factors in decision-making. Even when we’re swimming in data and have gathered every possible opinion, it usually comes down to a leap of judgment at some point.

Think about it. It starts with gut feeling right from the beginning: deciding which data we should even bother collecting, which customers we should talk to, and what questions are worth asking. Then later, when we’re stuck choosing between two solutions or strategies that both look equally good on paper, it’s often that same gut feeling, backed by experience, that helps us make the final call.

That’s why senior leaders are so valuable. They’ve been through countless situations and have honed their instincts. Is it perfect? No way. But it’s often the best tool we have for navigating those tricky gaps between the data, the opinions, and all the things we just don’t know.

Decisions that really drive results need both data and opinions along with wisdom. Sometimes you simply need to trust your judgment. It’s that straightforward.