I feel this way as well, and it is instructive for both how I pursue leadership and also develop as a leader.

When I was younger, I was often drawn to leaders who seemed like they had all the answers. People with specific principles or steps to follow.

Now I look more for leaders who are asking really good questions, people who encounter the world with awe and wonder more than mastery

— Paul Putz (@p_emory) July 14, 2021

This is staggering. Both the table and the commentary on it.

An inhuman society makes close friendships a liability and very difficult to maintain. Consider how transient we are, changing careers, houses, cities, and states multiple times during our lifetime. Because we are our own, nothing ties us down. So we are alone. #youarenotyourown https://t.co/KMpHrEP2gB

— 𝐎. 𝐀𝐥𝐚𝐧 𝐍𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞 (@TheAlanNoble) July 10, 2021

Gonna be thinking about this one for a while. That last sentence is spectacular.

“The puzzle is why so many people live so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly. There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture. We have celebrities but not saints. Famous entertainers amuse a nation of bored insomniacs. Infamous criminals act out the aggressions of timid conformists. Petulant and spoiled athletes play games vicariously for lazy and apathetic spectators. People, aimless and bored, amuse themselves with trivia and trash. Neither the adventure of goodness nor the pursuit of righteousness gets headlines.”

Eugene H. Peterson, Run with the Horses

I loved this from Alistair Begg on preparing a sermon. I think it applies elsewhere, as well. Maybe to the written word or a teaching or even counsel and care of those in the body. Here’s a money quote from the video: “It is the work of the holy spirit to illumine the printed page to us, to enable us to both understand and believe and obey and apply.“

Alistair Begg’s framework for preparing sermons:

1. Think yourself empty.
2. Read yourself full.
3. Write yourself clear.
4. Pray yourself hot.
5. Be yourself.
6. Forget yourself.pic.twitter.com/apJmOFFcpq

— Matt Smethurst (@MattSmethurst) February 28, 2021

One thing that has been on my mind a lot over the last year amid the pandemic is the perceived importance of books. How meaningful, instructive and helpful a book is or is not has not changed, but my perception of how meaningful, instructive and helpful a book is has changed. Maybe I have more awareness of how much information is produced online on a daily basis, but I feel the gap between how I view books and articles growing.

Again, the articles I read could be 10x better than the books I read, but that doesn’t affect the ways in which that gap has grown for me. This has myriad effects on how I both consume and produce, and I’m convinced it’s 100 percent tied to the pandemic for reasons I’m not entirely sure I can explain.

I’m not sure if this is the reason for alternative schooling (whether in grade school or beyond), but it is most certainly a reason.

Economic utility almost always occurs when we’re good at things that aren’t easy to measure. And when the things we’re good at are additive, infinite and generous it can be something we embrace for the long haul. Because in those areas, it’s possible to be useful and skilled and make a contribution, every single time.

Seth Godin

I’ve been on a run of books recently and rolled through this one in a few days. Like most books about the early days of massive companies, it’s hard for it to be a bad read, and there were some good takeaways as I think about the future. It wasn’t a life-changer, but it was a great way to spend several hours.

Big Takeaway

Focus — insanely specific, concentrate focus — is monumental to success, whether institutionally or individually. It’s going to be difficult and emotional and you’re definitely going to pay a high cost. It’s worth it.

Favorite Quotes

• When you start a company, what you’re really doing is getting other people to latch on to an idea.

• Almost everything I ever learned about being a leader, I learned with a backpack on.

• Real innovation comes not from top-down pronouncements and narrowly definted tasks. It comes from hiring innovators focused on th ebig picture who can orient themselves within a problem and solve it without having their hand held the whole time. Loosely coupled but tightly aligned.

• I love negotiation, and I’m pretty good at it. In large part this is because it’s easy for me to identify with other people’s needs.

• The truth is that for every good idea, there are a thousand bad ones. And sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference.

• Culture is a reflection of who you are and what you do — it doesn’t come from carefully worded mission statements. Culture isn’t what you say. It’s what you do.

• A culture of freedom and responsibility, coupled with radical honesty, worked like a charm.

• Radical honesty is great until it’s aimed at you.

• When your dream becomes a reality, it doesn’t just belong to you. It belongs to the people who helped you — your family, your friends, and your co-workers. It belongs to the world.

• If people want what you have, they will break down your door, leap over broken links and beg you for more. If they don’t want what you’ve got, changing the color palette won’t make a damn bit of difference.

• Nobody knows anything.

• As you get older, if you’re at all self-aware, you learn two important things about yourself: what you like, and what you’re good at. Anyone who gets to spend his day doing both of those things is a lucky man.

• Canada Principle — We could expand into Canada, but doing so would require resources that could better and more efficiently be used elsewhere.

• When it comes to making your dream a reality, one of the most powerful weapons at your disposal is dogged, bullheaded insistence.

• My dream was building things. My dream was the process of making Netflix (not Netflix itself).

• The only real way to find out if your idea is a good one is to do it. You’ll learn more in one hour of doing something than in a lifetime of thinking about it.

• Everyone is aligned when the wind is blowing the right way. It’s when a storm comes up that all of a sudden it becomes apparent that people have different goals and objectives.

• You have to learn to love the problem, not the solution. That’s how you stay engaged when things take longer than you expected.

Been thinking about this one all day. It should (hopefully will!) affect everything.

Remember, we have the tools for intellectual construction whereas the world is only equipped for deconstruction. We should foster environments where the smart kids, the curious artists, the scientists, and the “freethinkers” feel welcome and—perhaps more than anywhere else in the world—inspired. Let the world be in the business of de-platforming, disinviting, and shutting down debate. Christianity should invite it. What are we afraid of? God’s truth is infinitely solid and can stand up to all the scrutiny we measly humans can muster. The more good faith, God-fearing questions (Prov. 9:10), the more opportunity we all have to excavate more layers—and unearth more treasures—of God’s truth.

Brett McCracken

I found this by Tish Harrison Warren to be true, convicting and yet another reason to sabbath and rest regularly.

With this newfound ability, we’re all at risk of collective altar burn. The transcendent and utterly overwhelming triune God becomes flattened to a sociological or theological abstraction. Many of us spend far more time on social media than in gathered worship, and that digital space often hinders true repentance, contemplation, or prayer.

We have to take up practices of solitude, fasting, gathered worship, and the sacraments—those embodied habits that resist being subsumed by technology. And we need whole topologies of spiritual terrain in our life that we never discuss online—parts of ourselves that we keep for God and our embodied communities alone.

Tish Harrison Warren