When deciding if your work is good enough, ask what truly matters for this – what absolutely needs to be done?
If it’s a lower-stakes project, remember that perfectionism often causes more stress than it’s worth.
Be realistic about what level of polish is actually needed.
Reality rarely matches our initial plans or assumptions.
As it is today, where new information, challenges, and opportunities emerge constantly, staying agile is about maintaining momentum while being ready to pivot when circumstances demand it.
It acknowledges uncertainty as a fundamental part of complex work, rather than treating it as an unwelcome deviation from the plan.
To be a disruptor is viewed almost mythically in business, and with curiosity most everywhere else.
A true disruptor fundamentally changes how value is created and captured.
But disruption isn’t always about radical new technology or destroying existing markets. Often, it’s about making something more accessible or efficient in a way those before us have overlooked or dismissed.
A single right answer typically exists in domains with clear rules and boundaries, like mathematics where 2+2=4.
However, many of life’s most important questions deal with human experience, ethics, and meaning, where the variables are numerous and interconnected in ways that resist reduction to a single correct solution.
Trying to uncover the right answer is often a matter of perspective and the best possible outcomes, though it can be difficult to determine which is which.
The work that you can do needs to be specific.
The goals that you say, must be specific.
If you can’t be specific, you’re probably not going to get very far.
I think that my intent to emerge this year requires me to replace some concerns about the scary situations with a need to experience.
Expansion. Trying things that scare us creates expansion.
The more expansive our life, the more we could to experience things that we might actually enjoy.
To avoid danger is oftentimes the avoidance of life itself.
When we do something that scares us, that we perceive as “dangerous”, it could open up entirely new possibilities to us.
Try and do something that scares you.
This is the challenge we’re wrestling with. All of us.
How much can we really handle?
And, while it’s different for everyone, make sure you’re not biting off more than you can chew.
When we fill our schedules with constant activity and “productive” tasks, we might actually be ducking the harder work of introspection, meaningful relationships, or tackling our most challenging and important goals.
In this way, staying busy can become a comfortable hiding place – avoiding what we should be focusing on.
Mono no aware (物の哀れ) is a Japanese aesthetic concept that captures the gentle sadness or wistfulness felt when encountering the ephemeral nature of life and beauty.
The term, which literally translates to “the pathos of things,” is particularly evident in Japanese art and literature, such as in the falling of cherry blossoms or the changing of seasons, where the awareness of impermanence heightens rather than diminishes the appreciation of beauty.
Being mindful of the impermanent opens us up to the beauty around us.
Michael's Musings 