During a run today, my wife made an observation that stuck with me. When we walk, we don’t notice the tiny rises and dips in the path. When we run, the slightest upward piece becomes a struggle.

I realized I experience the complete opposite when building products. Speed makes me lose sight of the minutiae that actually matter. Those edge cases that seem trivial in the moment. The quiet concerns someone has after the meeting ends and the decision is already made.

When we’re moving fast, we barrel through what feels like flat ground. We miss the small friction points that will trip us up later. The user who doesn’t fit our happy path. The integration that works perfectly until it doesn’t. The team member who nods in the room but has doubts they never voice.

Speed doesn’t just change how fast we ship. It changes what we perceive as obstacles. Running teaches you that every slight incline matters. Building products fast teaches you to ignore the inclines entirely.

Your focus is only as good as your inputs. Curate what reaches you: meetings, reading, data. Everything else is noise.

People don’t read local news for the news.

They read it to feel like they belong somewhere.

When you know your favourite restaurant is expanding, that the division 4 football team won last Friday, that there’s construction on the bridge that cuts your travel by 30 minutes. You’re not just informed.

When you run into your neighbor at the grocery store and mention the restaurant expansion, you’re not making small talk.

You’re connecting over what matters here.

Local news isn’t about information.

It’s about community.

Skip the productivity systems and note-taking frameworks. When something makes you lean forward, when your pulse quickens, when you get that sudden “wait, what?” feeling. Capture what actually hits you. The idea that stops your scrolling. The sentence that you read twice. The moment when you think “I need to remember this.”

You’ve probably seen the meme: “How to draw an owl.” Step 1: Draw some basic shapes. Step 2: Draw the rest of the owl.

We want the shortcut to the final result. Skip the messy middle steps and jump straight to a polished business plan, product spec or marketing strategy.

The problem is that if you don’t know what a good owl looks like, you can’t tell whether AI has drawn one successfully.

If you’ve never written a business plan yourself, you won’t recognize when a generated one lacks crucial financial assumptions, market analysis or risk assessments.

AI makes domain expertise more valuable, not less. The people getting the best results from AI aren’t beginners trying to skip the learning curve. They’re experts who understand the intent behind every section.

We can’t just learn to prompt better. We need to understand what good looks like in the first place.

In an age of instant everything, the most valuable thing we can offer is our time, our attention, our humanity.

This spring, we had a patch of bare dirt where we used to keep rabbits. Instead of planting grass seeds for a quick fix, we chose wildflower seeds.

I watch bees and butterflies move deliberately from bloom to bloom.

The bees don’t hurry. The butterflies don’t multitask.

This attention and presence might be all we can compete with.

When AI scales, it happens instantly. But while robots perfect the craft, humans can give focused attention to other humans.

If your change depends on having enough willpower or feeling motivated, it’s probably doomed since both run out when you need them most.

Make your change part of a system to make it stick. A great system is attaching something to an already formed habit.

I listen to podcasts in an app where I can save a snippet of the conversation with ease. But that snippet alone might not trigger the same idea when I read it back. So I’ve attached the habit of adding a small note that starts with “This is interesting to me because…” That way I can get back to the state I was in when listening.

Another example: whenever I want to exercise in the morning, I need to put my workout clothes out the evening before. It’s a small mental shift that makes it easier. I’m not relying on morning motivation to overcome the small barrier of finding workout clothes. I’m eliminating that decision point entirely.

When looking to create a new habit, find the micro habit to attach it to. Instead of fighting your human nature, you’re designing around it.

Technology changes and people adapt. Maybe not for version one, but possibly by version two when they see the value.

When testing products, don’t just test the feature. Test the timing. What shifted that makes people more open to this idea today?

Stop saying ”we tried that already.”

Starting a new role creates this weird pressure to prove yourself quickly.

As a new engineer you want to commit something. As a project manager you want to ship a feature. As a manager you want to make decisions. The instinct is to move fast and show progress.

But the way to actually learn and succeed is different. You need to understand the problem well enough that you can explain it to others. Then make a plan on how to solve it. Then get feedback on that idea.

This feels counterintuitive when you’re new. It feels like you’re not doing anything. But it’s what actually works.

If you manage or coach people, this is something you have to make explicit. You can’t assume they know this.

Tell them: you’re new here. Your focus right now is to understand this role and these challenges. I want you to be able to explain them back to me.

Then depending on their level, you’ll need different amounts of handholding. Junior people need you to walk them through what understanding actually looks like. Senior people need permission to slow down and think. Experienced people in new domains need help knowing what questions to ask.

The pressure to ship something fast is real. But the people who succeed long-term are the ones who understand deeply first.

For some people any mobile-phone will be the right one. For those people you will never need to build a brand.

But if you want a following or people to get exited, you need something that makes some people not exited.