I loved this interview with Danny Meyer, who invented Shake Shack (among several other amazing businesses). His six characteristics of a good hire blew me away, mostly because I desire to be strong in all of them. Here they are.

1. Empathetic
2. Hard-working
3. Self-aware
4. Kind optimism
5. Intellectual curiosity
6. Integrity

I don’t know that I could draw up a better list than that, and I think listening to interviews like that one both encourage me and also help give me a vision for what the future could look like. That I don’t have to only think one day ahead at a time (which is sometimes what it feels like).

One verse I’ve really been meditating on and thinking a lot about, especially given how this year has gone and how much suffering has happened around me is Psalm 94:19.

When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.

Psalm 94:19

When the cares of my heart are on what’s going on in and around my life, you cheer my soul. When the cares of my heart are irreconcilable, you cheer my soul. When the cares of my heart are on worldly things, you cheer my soul.

Thankful for a God who does not treat our relationship as quid pro quo but rather enters in with the greatest grace and kindness to give us a consolation we so often need.

I really loved this from Ed Yong on journalism and writing and media in 2020.

The best one might be the last one: Accrue social capital so you can spend it on people. The one I have found to be the most helpful: Park downhill at the end of the day.

I enjoyed this from Paul David Tripp.

Love is being more committed to unity and understanding than you are to winning, accusing, or being right. It’s also being willing, when confronted by another, to examine your heart rather than rising to your defense or shifting the focus.

PDT

How rarely am I quick to either of those things.

This episode of How I Built This with Milk Bar Christina Tosi was tremendous, and I love her quirky but vigilant demeanor. But something she said at the end overwhelmed me.

It’s something I’ve thought about often but never really put the right words to. She was asked — as all HIBT guests are asked — whether her success was due to luck or hard work.

It’s an impossible question that she nailed.

“It’s more opportunity than it was luck,” she said. “I don’t consider myself to have great luck, but I show up and mean it. I’m a big believer in people who show up and mean it winning in the end.”

Show up and mean it. It doesn’t guarantee success — that would be an affront to folks who haven’t made it — but without it, you have nothing.

I loved this from Godin today on the benefits of freelancing. I often forget that in one of my jobs I am both boss and employee of myself, and I think most often when I forget I am led to believe that being the employee of myself is more important than being the boss. It’s not.

You’re your own boss, most of the time, and figuring out a way to become better at being the boss of you is a worthwhile investment of effort.

Seth Godin

I am including this hymn from former Yale president (starting in 1795) Timothy Dwight in my talk on Ephesians next week. In fact I’m ending my talk by praying it because it’s such a sweet picture of how we should view the big-C church.

I love Thy kingdom, Lord.
The house of Thine abode,
The Church our blest Redeemer saved
With His own precious blood.
For her my tears shall fall;
For her my prayers ascend;
To her my cares and toils be giv’n,
Till toils and cares shall end.

-Timothy Dwight (late 1700s)

I’d never heard of this terminology, although I occasionally practice it while covering an event from my shed. With the amount of sitting (or standing) I do while typing into a digital rectangular box, I’d go bonkers without a little movement, a few pushups every now and then. Apparently there’s a term for this and it’s called greasing the groove.

Here’s an explanation.

Greasing the groove, as Tsatsouline explains it, means not working your muscles to the point of failure. A common idea in weightlifting is that you should lift until you can’t do another rep, purposely damaging muscle tissues so they grow back bigger. But muscle failure, Tsatsouline writes in his 1999 book, Power to the People! Russian Strength Training Secrets for Every American, “is more than unnecessary—it is counterproductive!”

Instead, Tsatsouline advocates lifting weights for no more than five repetitions, resting for a bit between sets and reps, and not doing too many sets. For a runner, this would be like going for a four-mile jog, but taking a break to drink water and stretch every mile. Tsatsouline’s book suggests spending 20 minutes at the gym, tops, five days a week. In this way, he claims, you grease the neurological “groove,” or pathway, between your brain and the exercises your body performs. It’s not exactly the brutal routine you’d expect from someone billed as a Soviet weight lifter. But Tsatsouline contends this is the most effective way to build strength.

[The Atlantic]

Pushups are an easy example here, and so is stretching. This is also one reason I want to get a pullup bar in whatever the next iteration of my shed looks like.

h/t Kottke

Eugene Peterson — I believe — coined the phrase “a long obedience in the same direction,” which ended up as the title of one of his many terrific books. I was reminded of that when I read this today.

In all of the Christian life, we need to have confidence in the process and we need to maintain confidence in the process. We need to believe that God really does work and that he really does work over time. Too often we overestimate the growth we can gain in a week, but underestimate the growth we can gain in a year.

[Challies]

I needed to hear that on this day, at this time. I’m not sure why. I feel like I’ve been getting my butt kicked in small ways for the past few days, and it was a good reminder to endure until the end.