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It’s a go-go world of busy, busy, busy.

With days scheduled from start to finish, what time is left for random acts of conspicuous kindness, a bit of serendipity, or just saying yes to more adventure?

Coordination often requires thoughtful preparation. There is value in staying organized, but over-planning is a trap. The thirst for productivity has made busy feel likened to being successful. How often do we hear pride disguised as disgust when someone complains about the constrictions of their frantic calendar? Yes, prerequisites include hard work, a healthy obsession, and endless sequencing, but unique opportunities emerge when we’re not captive to a calendar.

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Planning is based on fear.
Doing is based on success.

Renting time can be lucrative, but there are ways to efficiently get things done without falling victim to a stacked routine of back-to-back everything.

Meetings led by talking heads, fracturing lunch affairs, and youth sports are all common versions of this trap. Each activity is cool, but when combined, your days become booked and you have something to do every night. To keep fluidity flowing, schedule fewer meetings next week but retain an eagerness to meet anytime. Instead of lunch, sip brews on either side of the day. Along with standard stuff, consider adventurous ways to share time. Audibles include parlaying a first meeting with an event, going for a stroll, and nature is always nice. This breaks routine. Conversations can be more provocative, as a shared encounter adds depth to any relationship. Lastly, appreciate limitless play, but organized sports will not define a child’s future. In fact, it more commonly limits the experiences a family enjoys together. The game resets at puberty, and at a societal level, playing sports as a career is a fantastic dream, but more often an accepted fallacy. Organized sports deliver camaraderie, fitness, teamwork, loyalty, problem-solving, business opportunities, and a competitive rush, but camps provide these benefits with less time and cost required.

Comfort without a plan leaves space for the unexpected. Things will not always work out, but if calendars remain a tool to keep our promises while staying quietly organized, complacency can be replaced with serendipity. If you feel oversubscribed, fly with fewer plans to let the voids of no agenda unravel a freedom to be your best.

Brewed From Within
#120 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

Training Wheels

As a child, riding a bike was not as easy as it looked. Fortunately, early excitement was bolstered by the comfort of training wheels. These stabilizers provided balance but eventually became self-limiting. Removing training wheels took only a minute, but then fear set in. Staying upright, maintaining speed, avoiding obstacles, and falling without getting hurt felt overwhelming. Even with support from others, success seemed out of reach, until it clicked. Like magic, trepidation transformed into gliding independence.

Training wheels remind us that contentment can lead to complacency. Being content without complacency is a constant battle. One day you’re grateful for all that is, the next you’re feeling oddly stuck. Perhaps this is because the more complacent we become, the more rigid we get. This rigidity then devolves into a stronger fear of change. When the movement of change becomes associated with risk, it’s common to feel stuck, stagnant, or even irrelevant. When training wheels are holding you back, initiative sets you free and persistence keeps us moving. As movement separates from risk, we’re free to shift gears and ride toward next.

Brewed From Within
#100 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

Feng Shui

Peace awaits those who appreciate all that is without worrying about all that is not. That said, things will not just fall into place. It takes initiative, consistency, awareness, and sacrifice to find your own equanimity.

Similar to how we decorate our environment to harmonize with nature, we can connect elements of our career portfolio to feel the benefits of feng shui.

The world is loud, and endless distractions make us feel frantic when there’s so much to do. Being present along with a quiet appreciation of understated beauty keeps us centered. As mindfulness becomes part of our practice, it’s easier to slow down just enough to ensure we don’t miss life along the way.

The places we visit, the people we’re with, and the art we ship all connect through us. Over a lifetime, we become a destination for others, and this becomes our gift.

When there’s passion, humor, diversity, intellectual humility, and harmony within our own environment, the impact of our gifts are lasting and the way we invest time with others will add up in the end.

Brewed From Within
#114 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

Winding Whys

Asking “why” seems to be innate.

As soon as kids learn to speak, the inquisitions begin. The first few whys may emerge from innocent curiosity, but it’s easy to tell when the game is underway.

Endless whys may lead to frustration (especially when it’s bedtime, eh), but why not find joy in making these winding whys into a fun challenge. Instead of shutting things down, try to quickly answer every why. Can we mindfully outlast a youngster’s attention span?

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“Mom… Dad… why do you love me?”
After countless rounds of winding whys, what a fun chance to coalesce endless reasons into one run-on sentence.

As we zoom out, it feels trite to reflect on how humans have so many whys we cannot answer. Instead of the paradoxical path or trying to understand all of our own whys, the five whys from Toyota is an interesting tactic.

Developed by system thinkers inside Toyota back in the 1980s, this iterative technique was used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem. When following 14 specific rules after exactly five whys, the last answer often points to a process that is not working well or does not exist. This technique has critics and can lead to rigid, even shortsighted interpretations. That may be the case, but more often than not, our own willingness to go deeper helps move past easy answers.

The five whys may not solve all our winding whys, but the idea behind this historic tactic can be fun to use at home. We also know playing with why is helpful for decision making and culture building in business.

As winding whys carve through your mind, appreciate the difference between complex, complicated, and simple ideas. Socratic questioning, active listening, real-time doodles, media-supported storytelling, inverse charisma, laughing, and of course, child-like wanderlust all add a twist. Why not?

Brewed From Within
#119 📖 Life & Happiness

By Ben McDougal, ago

Ideaworks

Our daily lives gobble up mental bandwidth. If you’re interested in building a business, compelling ideas may hit but lasting intention is needed to build momentum.

It’s unlikely that lightning will strike in a single brainstorm. Instead, combine detail-oriented initiative with pure wonder and open-mindedness to attract earned luck, thanks to serendipity. As ideas fueled by action create chemistry over time, different combinations will map more opportunities.

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We get what we repeat.

How might combining ideas be like a colorful fireworks show? Let’s begin with the anticipation a crowd feels before the show. Then a bright light flashes, and the sound of that first colorful explosion is celebrated.

To get color popping in the night sky, a fuse was required to spark early progress. Fuses such as linking slowness with urgency, actively listening, allowing new experiences to shift your perspective, and always staying curious give the idea machine more ways to continuously flip the switch.

As each fuse is lit, we hear that thump of a distant firework being shot into the sky. This sound of propulsion is like ideas darting into the limitless atmosphere of our mind.

With each idea sparked, there’s a thrilling hope that what’s about to pop is exactly what we’ve always wanted. Even if it’s not an absolute showstopper, each ideawork sparkles with different colors, shapes, and sounds that inspire the sky and connect into the broader experience.

Looking up into the stars, we appreciate each blast in different ways, based on the vantage point. This awakens the fact that every idea has value. Bad ideas lead to better ideas. This can spark great ideas that reverberate, and when given the space to merge, combine into a fantastic reality.

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Don’t wait for next year.

As ideas pop to create a tune, it’s like the grand finale a crowd waits for. The audience may scurry in different directions after the show, but they’ll keep talking about the experience long after that floating smoke clears.

When songs rhyme with a melody, the idea machine sparkles. When execution is a habit, even duds can’t stop a remarkable show from lighting up the sky.

Brewed From Within
#5 📖 Entrepreneurship

By Ben McDougal, ago