I used to struggle to stick with things, especially creative projects.

The Internet is littered with my abandoned websites, blogs and profiles. My hard drives are crusted over with books I’ve started writing and various courses that I began developing and never completed.

There are plenty of people out there who will tell me that I didn’t want it badly enough, I allowed myself to fail, I lacked discipline, or I didn’t believe in myself.

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I survived exactly one year of teaching public school. 

I liked the actual job, mostly — the music teacher at two schools. But it was a job for someone about twice as old as I was. 

And I needed to be paid about twice as much to make it work. 

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I believe that puzzles can teach us key problem-solving skills.

After all, what is a problem but a puzzle that just might have some less fun, real-life implications?

I’ve written before about how I honed some of these skills as a sixth grade super nerd, finding strategies to win solitaire games that weren’t even meant to be strategic.

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I’m currently involved in a few reciprocal coaching relationships.

There are certainly moments when my conversation partner and I are giving each other new information or insights. But so often, I’m offering advice that the other person could have given me, and vice versa.

We already know what we should do, but we have a hard time seeing it until it’s reflected back to us.

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Back in the quiet, peaceful days before there was Internet on planes, I used to use flying time for high-level planning.

I loved the opportunity to work on my metaphorical 20,000-foot view while literally at 20,000 feet.

I always faced the same problem with this planning: The closer I got to figuring out something that I wanted to do, the more new ideas I would generate.

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