I stopped chasing work-life balance and started using something simpler: the Fun-to-Misery Ratio. The premise—it's only work if you'd rather be doing something else. Take the time to notice.

It's a mindset that shatters the illusion of work-life balance—because it was one life all along, yours.

New post on why balance is the wrong goal, and what to measure instead.

Why do some beliefs only deepen, no matter the evidence to the contrary?

The answer lives in how our brains construct and maintain the roads our thoughts travel.

This essay is a guide to the Cerebral Department of Transportation, and learning to direct the road crew so we arrive at the destination of our intent.

When was the last time you were truly curious? I'm not referring to a headline that grabbed you.

Not a rabbit hole that confirmed what you already believed. I mean the wide-eyed kind of curiosity you had as a kid. If you can't remember, there's a reason and a cost.

Back in the 1990s, a keynote speaker warned a room full of us: "Be someone, not something." I was in my 20s. I understood the words. It took me decades to understand what they cost.

I finally wrote down what I've learned since — about the quiet difference between the two, and the work of choosing one.

A month after I told my wife — and no one else — that I wanted to write a book, I sat down next to a stranger on a flight to Anchorage. What she said when I asked about her work changed everything.

In 2023, I sold one company and closed down another along with its magazine, and walked into a silence I hadn't planned for.

After twenty-five years of running businesses, the seven-day-a-week hum of responsibility was suddenly gone. What replaced it was a question I'd been too busy to ask for a quarter century: What comes next?

The answer surfaced in the quiet. This is how Seeker's Mindset began.