Ask an expert, “How fast can you do it?” and you might get the response, “It depends on the conditions.”

Because the conditions matter.

When I’m well-rested.
When the water is between 25° to 28° Celsius.
When it’s quiet.
When there’s no traffic.
When I have a team of at least six.
When I’m feeling loose.

Our performance in any situation depends on many factors. Mostly, “our best” means “the best we could do given the circumstances.”

And sometimes, those conditions — paired with our skill and preparation — are a recipe for pure magic.

You’ve prepared. You’re ready.

As soon as the starter signals, you’re off and running.

But with the first step, you stumble. A win is now impossible.

The question at present is, “What do you do, knowing you can’t win?”

The answer is not, “Lay down and quit.”

The goal has shifted. Where the initial goal was winning, the new goal is getting back up. Or running a good rest-of-the-race. Or just finishing. Or preparing for a different race.

Life happens and our goals necessarily change.

The only thing to do is to decide what to do next.

And then to do it.

Here’s a useful way to consider various habits, activities, and protocols that you might be considering, but hesitant to adopt:

“As long as it doesn’t …”

When you understand your values and goals, you’re able to assess what can help and what might hinder.

Some examples:

As long as it doesn’t interfere with my ability to …
As long as it doesn’t take away from my effort to …
As long as it doesn’t conflict with …
As long as it doesn’t distract from …

When new things fit without sacrificing what you’ve already established as a priority, you can engage without hesitation. And where there’s a disagreement, you can feel confident in walking away.

Some atypical course titles:

Solving Interesting Problems
Contending with Fear and Uncertainty
Finding Purpose and Meaning
Budgeting Time, Money, and Attention
Navigating Conflict and Disagreement
Advanced Empathy
Leading and Coordinating Humans
How to Trust Yourself
Managing Distractions

Young people are indoctrinated with reading, writing, and arithmetic. Those skills are vital. But there’s a host of other skills — skills that are harder to measure, formalize, and standardize — that are too important to overlook.

We often leave these lessons on the sidelines, relegated to occasional conversations or one-off workshops.

What might happen if teaching human skills were brought front-and-center? Can we be bold enough to make such a shift?

Part of learning to master our mind is recognizing and accepting what’s outside our influence.

Remember that the helm controls the vessel, not the sea.

* * *

To new readers who have found my work through The Quotable Coach, I’m so glad you’re here. Welcome! Thank you, Barry, for your generous work, and for shining such a warm spotlight on this blog.

Your side-gig is something someone else does full-time. Your occasional hobby? That’s someone else’s profession — for which they’ve spent years developing skills and expertise.

The point is, give yourself some grace.

To see your passionate work in the context of your peers and others who are on a similar path — that makes a lot of sense.

To compare your hobbies and interests to the work of professionals who have built their lives around that same thing — it’s neither fair nor worthwhile.

Find pleasure in your avocation. Be serious and rigorous if it brings you satisfaction. Be inspired by the masters. But remember, too, that comparison can be the thief of joy.

Run your creative race; it’s a worthwhile journey no matter where it begins or ends.

Don’t pat yourself on the back for having done something important that’s also easy and fun. Even the laziest of us will manage to accomplish those tasks.

Congratulate yourself when you’ve shown grit and perseverance — when you’ve done what’s necessary despite not wanting to do it. When you’ve done what’s challenging and undesirable … but worthy of doing.

Whether you’ve taken a big step or a small step, if it was into the headwinds, then give yourself some credit.

And do it again.

When the repair technician answered the phone, his annoyance was only thinly veiled. It was Sunday, and, despite earning overtime, he was probably looking forward to an afternoon at home.

But when he arrived at the house thirty minutes later, he was completely professional. Friendly even.

Between the call and his arrival on site, something had changed. A shift in attitude. An adjustment of posture. A shedding of frustration.

Perhaps it was donning the uniform, or gathering the tools, or starting the truck. Whatever it was, his mental reset was effective.

How we show up doesn’t have to reflect the reluctance we might feel when we hear the call to action. We can show up as a professional regardless of the prelude.

Instead of ego, what if we built from humility?

Instead of certainty, what if we built from curiosity?

Instead of control, what if we built from connection?

How we build sets the stage for what’s possible.

We sometimes need to run into the darkness in order to see through the darkness.

Other times, we merely need to open our eyes, and to patiently let the light in.

One friend catches trout using a specific rig, a carefully chosen hand-tied fly, and a technique based on how the water flows that particular day and a dozen other variables.

Another friend uses a hook and a kernel from a can of corn.

It’s not useful to compare the two. They both call it fishing, but they’re not playing the same game.

Still, it’s our nature to compare. We like to think of things in categories, like painting, singing, cooking, writing, coaching …

But within each area of focus, there are countless games to play. It’s useful to recall this from time to time, and to remember that there’s room for every type of player.

It’s not always the case, but many times, the way to get better at a thing … is to do the thing. And to do it again, and again, and again.

Direct engagement. Not talking about it, thinking about it, and immersing yourself in theory.

But achieving a minimal threshold of preparedness and competency — and then doing the thing as often as you can.

Focus on doing; learning and progress will follow.

The classroom is not the same as the field.
Rehearsal is not the same as show time.
Practice is not the same as game time.
Food prep is not the same as service.
Garrison is not the same as combat.

In one mode, risk is low, time is abundant, and the supply line works as designed.

In the other, things break down, plans change, and chaos seeks to prevail.

But we’re prepared for that. We anticipate being pushed off balance. We know how to recover. We know how to improvise. We lean on our training, creativity, and intuition.

And we remember that challenges and adversity are clear signs that we’re human and we’re alive.

A metric bolt and an imperial nut won’t work together.

It doesn’t matter if they’re each perfectly milled and they’re made from the finest materials. The two things won’t pair.

With enough slop, you might be able to thread the pieces together, but even so, they won’t tighten as they should.

Indeed, there are instances where two things simply aren’t compatible. Whether they’re physical tools or mental ideologies, sometimes a mismatch is just that: a mismatch.

Does this mean game-over? Of course not. When we discover what doesn’t work, it can help point us in the direction of what does work. When we learn where we don’t operate at our best, it can give us clues to find where we’re a better match.

And with the hardware above? A metric bolt and nut could serve as one anchor point while an imperial pair takes another.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of finding the right ways to work together while understanding the incompatibilities.

Which kind of uncomfortable do you want?

The discomfort of doing the thing?

Or the internal discomfort of not doing the thing?

We straddle this all the time.

Advice: If you’re going to be uncomfortable anyway, lean toward the kind of discomfort that yields forward progress.

It’s a good question to chew on from time to time: “What if I’m wrong?”

For many, the default assumption is, “I’m right.”

That generally serves us well; we wouldn’t be able to navigate the world if we constantly second-guessed ourselves.

But pausing to consider our fallibility is a good thing.

Every so often, we might discover that where we thought we were right … we might not be one hundred percent. Or we might even be totally wrong.

With healthy introspection, we give ourselves an opportunity to consider alternatives. And when we can recommit to what we do believe, those beliefs become even more meaningful.

While the speaker might judge himself regarding eloquence and range, others might judge him on efficiency and brevity.

Or the equation could be flipped.

For those you seek to serve — in whatever way you serve them — understand their expectations. Honor those expectations.

Act accordingly.

There’s a rhythm to life.

It’s easy to forget this when the tide has been out for a long time or the fields are dry from lack of rain. Or when business is slow, or friends are silent, or the days are laden with stress.

But there’s a rhythm to all of it.

Embrace the good. Be resilient through the inevitable storms.

And remember that whether sunshine or rain, these are natural rhythms, tides, and seasons.

Even when we are still — to the point of holding our breath — change happens. At the subatomic level and on the scale of galaxies too large for us to fathom, change is constant.

The idea that we can hold anything static is an illusion.

Instead, we have moments of intersection and connection. Windows of time when there’s a certain kind of alignment. It might last a second or it might last a lifetime. But within and without, abrupt and glacial, change is happening.

We move, we change, we grow, we decay.

We even try to resist.

But change is persistent.

When we can be at peace with this, we can stop trying to fight it … and instead we can dance with it.

For a few weeks, the handle on the back door of my house had been squeaking. It began to get worse.

Yesterday, I took a screwdriver, disassembled the knob, lubricated the mechanical components, and put everything back together.

The entire task took less than five minutes.

As a result, the handle now works smoothly and quietly — better than I can ever remember.

I wondered: why did I wait so long to attend to this?

So it is with many things in life. Small issues grow over time. Little things become big things. Then, they get to a point where we can ignore them no longer.

But often, the fixes are simple. We just need to give them attention.

And then we wonder: why did we wait so long?

* * *

Is there something in your life that could use fixing? Could the solution — or at least the beginning of it — be within reach … if only it had your focused attention?