I have used systems thinking for most of my adult life. It was at the heart of the infrastructure, services, and human organizations I built. Systems thinking has been a key tool to understand the world around me and to identify the most leveraged way for me to make a positive impact on the world.…
TL;DR – Read the title 🙂 The HBR Your Company Is Not a Family written by Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha, and Chris Yeh has better prose than what follows here. If I had found it earlier I wouldn’t have bothered writing this post. In the last few months I have chatted with a number of…
A common misconception held by first time managers and many employees is that Human Resources, AKA HR, People Team, or whatever is the in-vogue term is these days, exists to support the employees. Well informed optimists would say HR is called on to look after the interests of both the employees and the organization as…
One of the dangers of any activity that involves “gear” is that people can get hyper focused on “gear” rather than the activity / goal. Ironically, there is a similar danger for people pursuing minimalism: a temptation to chase after the “perfect” rather than being content with a functional system already in use. I recommend…
Snipped from The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Jack Kornfield (#684). BoldItalic added by me for emphasis Jack Kornfield: In all these years, my understanding really is that it comes down to love. I’ve met [inaudible 01:05:26]. And lamas, and gurus, and lamas and everybody else in between in my industry. And some of them are fabulous.…
This post has been extracted from my camino page because the most common question we have gotten from friends was about what we carried. They already knew something about the Camino itself and most wanted to understand how we managed to “go so light” for a trip in May (temps were 37-72F). If you want to…
The story of the prodigal son is well know, even among people who haven’t read the Bible. The parable is found in the 15th chapter in the book of Luke. The conventional telling of the parable is about a young man who leaves home and squanders his inheritance. When he hits rock bottom, he returns…
The following is a list of the lessons I learned, beliefs that were strengthen, and/or topics which frequently came up in discussions with other while walking the Camino. Walking the Camino provided a wonderful opportunity to consider what makes a meaningful life. The book Walk in a Relaxed Manner by Joyce Rupp is far more…
I have carried the Gossamer Gear Vagabond Trail more than 2500 miles over last few years for EDC, done in a day outdoor activities, and onebag travel which included walking 500 miles of the Camino Santiago Frances route from SJPP. Between Jan 2023 and March 2025 I lived out of a Vagabond Trail as we explored…
I have had a love hate relationship with ponchos. Theoretically they make great sense, but I have tried rain ponchos five times for six month or longer. After each poncho experiment I switched back to a rain jacket. For example I used one of Brawney’s ponchos for both rain gear and as my shelter for…