They say "hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard enough".

The "hard work" in that saying is the boring part.

I've known plenty of talented people who didn't work very hard, they enjoyed being able to pass the mark by showing up on the day.

No training. No study.

Little work for a lot of reward.

The thing, these people are from a very long time ago when I was young, a teenager even. And maybe time and maturity gives you a different lens to look through, but it's so obvious now that the "talented" way of life has a very short shelf life.

"Time will make fools of us all" is a saying I just made up, because that's the thing that defeats all notions of the "talented way of life".

Between talent and hard work, the reality is both will be subject to time (as we all are).

And talent over time is a law of diminishing returns. And that's not to say talent doesn't count for anything- of course it doesn't. Between two hard working people, the one with talent has the advantage. Between a lazy talent and a hard worker, time will crown the one who has put in the most work.

Turn up every day, work. The end.

There's a concept in BJJ (and I'm sure it's in a lot of physical, competitive sports) where the state of being "tired", is the place where your real training begins.

I heard this today "how you fight when you're tired, is how you will fight on the day" from a Kickboxing video.

And in my experience, this is true. There's a saying I've known my whole martial career (well, one of many sayings), that "Cardio makes cowards of us all" because your will to essentially "play fight" goes out the window when you get tired enough.

You need something more.

More than the game you're playing in a sport. You need to fight something, an adversary to defeat, a challenge that feels like life or death, something that won't let you off the hook. That won't allow you to accept defeat.

And like all things, especially the ones worth pursuing, there is an associated pain.

Today's pain is "I'm tired", and yet there are things to be done.

Do I find something so extreme that needs to be defeated that I can accept this pain of "tired"?

No. I just accept that things need to be done, and I will do them.

Going against the grain is never easy.

It's easier to go with what everyone else is doing and not upset the status quo, to not stand out.

Eric Hoffer talks about the aggravation that "freedom" gives us in "The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements", placing "...the whole blame of failure on the shoulder of the individual".

When we get to think for ourselves, we are liberated, but we are also subject to what those thoughts bring us. Responsibility? Obligation? It's no wonder then that people will go with the crowd, or keep their unpopular opinions to themselves lest they are challenged on it.

And we repeat this, in our lives, in our families, on and on, for generations.

But the unpopular thing, the "different" thing, is the only thing that will bring about change. You can't keep doing the same thing over and over and expect different results- the definition of insanity.

Unpopular thinking and action is necessary for change. Bert Hellinger's "The Black Sheep" sees these characters in the family tree, "criticized, judged and even rejected" as being the ones that will actually "free the tree from repetitive stories that frustrate entire generations.". Without you going against the grain, the unfulfilled dreams of your ancestors who couldn't go against the grain "would die buried beneath their own roots".

It's a sobering thought, that you carry this opportunity with you, to realise not only a change for yourself, but for your ancestors who wanted so much more for themselves, the family tree, and you.

Be unpopular.

I started my career off on the helpdesk, customer support.

The more I advanced in technical skill and understanding, the further away from the customer I seemed to move.

By the time I was engineering platforms and building multiple environments, I ended up surrounded by tech, standards, languages and infrastructure. And the closest people I would deal with, having "stakes" in my work were other internal teams, who were managing software that was eventually customer facing.

And as you evolved as an engineer, you begin to realise the coordination between components of the infrastructure, between teams and software at the application and platform layer evolved and accelerated the need to understand the operation, challenges and drivers of other teams and their products (encased in technology) is crucial to running an efficient and effective ship.

But a ship to where?

It's a ship to a business outcome. It feels like a bit of a Scooby Do reveal moment, that it was business all along. But after you boil it all down, after the marketing sheen has faded, and the 'all hands' buzz has died down, we sit back down at our desks, and complete the tasks that has the single purpose, of delivering the business outcomes we are here to do.

The final stage of your evolution arrives through ever increasing complexities and variables, drivers both technical, human resource, financial and economic dynamics, to deliver the business outcome...

Who are these business outcomes for?

Who they've always been for. The customer. The consumer. The end "user".

You are now the Architect.

“The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply,” Stephen Covey.

This isn't new ground, we've known this for ages.

But it's magnified to the n-th degree with the acceleration of technology, that the masses understand and know more in terms of broadcasting more than listening.

We even have the term "reply guy" to describe people (men, obvs) that have the super power of replying anything and everything they feel like, with any take, as long as its a reply to something. There is literally no other qualifier than the "right to reply" to be this person.

And "...listen to understand." implies reflection, in order to come to understanding.

"...to reply" requires no reflection- and I use "reflection" and not "thinking" because I mean a multi-dimensional activity (like speed vs acceleration), I know thinking happens- you're thinking about what you're going to reply with- reflection, I'm arguing, means "applying my brain processing abilities on both the incoming information and my own information, to reach an understanding".

And that understanding can be expressed in a response (again, I'm thinking of response here as a more sophisticated form, but analogous to a "reply"), or not.

You can just take the understanding, that's the valuable part of the whole exchange.

But it's no wonder our communication is terrible when we're all shown and taught 50 million different ways to podcast, youtube, tweet, insta, viber, blog and broadcast with the goal of getting our thoughts and feelings out to the world, and less about how to read, research, discuss and debate with topics, ideas and opinions.

Listening to understand is it's own reward. We can do more of that.

I asked ChatGPT what the difference between the term AI (Artificial Intelligence) we're commonly used to, and AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) that we hear more now when talking about AI, and it gave me a really good analogy about a hammer and a toolbox.

AI is like a hammer, great at one type of thing. AGI is a toolbox, has many tools for many different jobs.

And tools are how we progressed as a species, tools have been used to build things that made our lives better, easier. But we've also been used to build things that harmed us and made life worse.

It's ironic that ChatGPT uses the term "thing" and "jobs" when explaining what AI and AGI should be looked at.

Because ChatGPT is right, it's a tool. It's neutral. The onus is on us to decide if the "thing" and "job" we're using it for, is for humanity's good, or demise.

"Choose your pain"

If we have established there is no escaping pain in our lives. That the destination, fraught with pain, is the part we need to fall in love with in order to continue, to stick with something to our desired end.

Then all there is left to do, is to choose the pain we would be okay experiencing- not necessarily in and of itself like a masochist- but we weigh the desired outcome as worthy of accepting the pain.

I used to hear this sample all the time by Cutty Ranks’ “A Who Seh Meh Done” (1992) and it would say

"6 million ways to die, choose one"

I thought it was about being reckless, but I can see now it's about accepting the inevitable end which is out of you control.

But taking ownership of the one thing you do have control over.

You're going to die anyway, choose your pain.

"Trust the Process"

Often times it feels like you've been on the road, on the journey towards your destination, and you're wondering if anything is happening. You're wondering if you're making progress, if you're getting anywhere.

And this is normal to feel after a short time, because you haven't built up the stamina, the conditioning, for the work you're doing.

Just like physical fitness, you run 1km and feel like that's the longest distance in the world. But (and this is the hard part) if you show up, every day, and put add 100m to that 1km, you'll be running at least 36km by the end of the year.

Just a little reminder, keep turning up, doing the work, and one of two things will happen- you'll reach your destination or at the very least you'll learn a lot about yourself and the world around you.

Keep going.

I've got a lot of knowledge, its helped me get where I want to go. It's helped companies, and my proteges get where they want to go too.

But I still have more and it's accumulating, because I am a naturally curious person.

What can I do with this "useless" knowledge if it just sits in my head?

Offer it to people around me, for free. I didn't exactly pay money for this knowledge, and it's not regurgitating and repeating what's already written (for the most part), this knowledge comes from the intersection and interplay of unique experiences, thought on, and processed through my own unique lens.

Anyone who sits and thinks their thoughts critically, and honestly will have a unique set of "useless" knowledge they have to share with the world. And they should share it. Not because they get something from the world for it in exchange, or that the world has to take it. They get to let that knowledge not be so useless anymore.

Time is an illusion.

Containers of activity or inactivity, demarcated by linear units of measurement.

We judge the quality of these containers, by the activities we fill them with, and then decide if we are happy about it or not.

We only have so many containers, and we can only do so many activities. Non activities are infinite, but the number of containers remain finite.

Time is going to pass us anyway so you may as well fill your containers with the activities that make you happy & fulfilled.