Nobody puts “number of good friends” on a balance sheet, but maybe they should. Over a career and a lifetime, the relationships you build and protect turn out to matter most in life. I have seen people reach extraordinary professional heights only to look around and realize they did it largely alone and that the summit wasn’t nearly as satisfying as they imag...
Think of yourself as the patient. Your chief complaints include the same routine, the same vacations, the same everything. Your symptoms include days that are the same, vacations that are technically different locations but functionally the same trip, year after year, a vague sense that “someday” you’ll do something different, maybe right after this next busy...
Warren Zevon was dying when he sat down with David Letterman for the last time in 2002. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer just months before. Letterman, visibly moved, asked him if facing death had given him any special wisdom to share. What Zevon said was simple. He said he had always enjoyed himself, but that the enjoyment was more valuable now. He said ...
AI is not the threat to your career. The threat is the attorney down the street, the consultant across town, or the professional sitting two floors below you who has already figured out how to make AI work for them. That person is not smarter than you. They may or may not have more experience. What they have is a willingness to adapt, and in competitive professions...
Nobody escapes the curriculum. Life keeps teaching, and it does not care whether you’re ready for the lesson. That is especially true in business, where the stakes are high, the pace is relentless, and the temptation to believe you have figured it out is both understandable and dangerous. The moment you stop staying curious and open, you stop growing. In a compet...
Nobody wakes up and decides to be mediocre. But most people in business, whether they’re fresh out of school or twenty years into their career, settle into a comfortable groove and stop pushing. They meet the minimum. They do what’s asked. They clock in and clock out. And that’s fine, until it isn’t — until someone else who does just a little bit more sta...
AI is extraordinary. As I wrote not long ago, professionals who refuse to integrate these tools are already falling behind. AI compresses hours of research into minutes, drafts documents that used to take half a day, and surfaces insights that would otherwise stay buried. For lawyers, business owners, and entrepreneurs alike, the efficiency gains are transformation...
Never assume the person you’re speaking with already understands what you want from the conversation or relationship. Dropping a hint or sending a vague email is indirect and unlikely to help you get what you’re looking for. You need to understand that nobody is inside your head. The colleague you casually mentioned a referral opportunity to is not sitting at h...
Many professionals wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. They are always available, always grinding, always the last one to leave albeit figuratively. In an era when the office follows you everywhere on your phone and laptop, you can grind. Anyone who has been that person can tell you that it is not something to be proud of. It is something to fix. To sustain a ...
There is a moment all professionals know, even though we never talk about it. You are working. You could cut the corner on the project in front of you. You could let the small thing slide. You could tell yourself it doesn’t really matter, because who would ever know? That moment is, in many ways, the most important moment of your professional life because your ch...