Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing
Prioritizing and committing to what matters most
đHello, my friend. Good news⌠I survived re-entry into the world of adult beverages after breaking my nearly 3-year no-drinking streak on Friday evening. My barber (5 years sober) almost talked me out of it earlier that day â âDo you notice that the most successful people in life donât drink?â âWhy would you want to waste your money that way?â âDoesnât it feel good to set such a great example for your kids?â â And despite all of his (actually very good) points, I still decided to break the streakâŚ. and yeah, it was⌠fine, I guess? I enjoyed spending time with my family and taking a minute to be grateful for everything in my life on my 47th birthday much more than the alcohol though.
And.. I have to say, even though I only had two drinks, I did NOT like that all my Whoop metrics looked terrible the next morning (HRV down, resting heart rate way up, respiratory rate way upâŚ). Ugh, you can really see how alcohol is truly a poison that your body works hard to get rid of. Donât love adding that extra stress on my body unnecessarily and making my sleep worse⌠and I also felt a little more irritable / less patient with my kids as well⌠pretty much all bad stuff! So Iâm likely to remain a buzzkill!
Whatâs next? Probably not a lot of drinking to be honest! Actually, going through this exercise has reminded me of all the reasons why I stopped drinking. So yeah, I guess itâs good to have the âpressureâ of the streak behind me, and Iâll have a bit of alcohol here and there moving forward, but Iâve got no plans to do much more than that. Anyhow, on to more interesting thingsâŚ
Focus
This week has had me thinking a lot about focus. About priorities. About what it really means to keep the main thing the main thing.
At work, Iâve been heads-down on a big project recentlyâsomething Iâve been working on for a while now, and something thatâs finally about to be put out into the world. Itâs been interesting âsocializingâ the work internally. On the one hand, thereâs been some really nice recognition from senior leadersâpeople who are incredibly busy, but who took a moment to say the work exceeded expectations. That felt good. On the other hand, I also got some of the more transactional reactionsâthe kind where someone points out a tiny detail thatâs off without any acknowledgement of the scope or quality of whatâs been done.
And I get that. Iâve certainly done that myself. Maybe I even do it often. But it did leave me thinking about how easy it is to skip right over whatâs working and zero in on whatâs not. I think especially for someone like meâwho can be a bit of a perfectionistâitâs worth remembering to pause and recognize the progress. Thatâs something I want to be better atâgiving more praise, showing more gratitude, not just jumping to âhow could this be improved?â
At the same time, I donât regret pushing as hard as I did to get this project where I felt it needed to go. There were definitely some uncomfortable conversations along the way, but I think the final product is better for it. Still, I donât want to overplay that. The point isnât âlook how great this work is.â Itâs more about what it means to care about something enough to say âIâm actually not okay with this being just okay.â To have a standard of quality in your head and be willing to keep pushing until it becomes a reality.
That ideaâhaving a standard of quality that you wonât compromise onâshowed up in a couple other places this week, too.
One was that Founders podcast episode on Jeff Bezos that I shared last week. The thing that really stuck with me was this idea of being obsessive about customer experience. Amazon wanted to make things insanely easy and pleasurable for the customer. That was the mission. That was the main thing. The thing they refused to compromise on. And optimizing everything around that one thing is how they became great.
Then in a different podcastâHow I Built This with the Substack foundersâthey talked about a previous venture they started, a messaging platform called Kik. It was actually pretty successful for a while, but they admitted that one of the reasons it ultimately failed was that they got distracted. They chased too many shiny objects. They lost focus. They didnât keep the main thing the main thing.
Thatâs been bouncing around in my head. Because Iâve done the opposite recently. For this one big project, I cleared the decks. I told myself: this is the thing. This is the one that matters right now. Iâve got other stuff Iâll pick back up later, but for now, Iâm locked in on this. And yeah, there were moments where I wondered if I was over-engineering itâover-planning whoâs doing what, when, and how. But when you care about something, when youâre trying to put your best work out into the world, itâs okay to get a little obsessive. Thatâs kind of the cost of doing something that matters.
This idea is popping up at home, too. My oldest son has been completely obsessed with the Boston Red Sox since 2018, when he was seven years old. The kid canât tell you whatâs on his science test two days from now, but ask him about Rafael Deversâ 2021 stats and heâs got it cold.
And Iâve been thinkingâshould I be encouraging that? Like, instead of telling him to spend less time on the Sox, maybe I should help him lean into it. Help him make videos. Start a blog. Write a newsletter. That kind of thing. Maybe his passion for the Red Sox is a way inâmaybe it teaches him to write, to edit, to learn tools, to build something. Maybe itâs a gateway to a whole new set of skills. Maybe itâs his main thing?
Thatâs how it works sometimes. You donât start with a planâyou start with the obsession. A main thing. And if you follow it far enough, it can lead you somewhere interesting.
And then thereâs the house. Weâre doing a bunch of home improvement stuff right nowânew roof, clearing out shrubs in the front yard, even kicking around the idea of putting in a pool. And thatâs turned into a whole thing. If we do a pool, we might need to move some plumbing, do a whole bunch of demo, do an outdoor kitchen, etc. etc. The numbers add up fast. Itâs a big investment.
So my wife and I are kind of overdue for one of those conversations about priorities. Where do we actually want to spend? What will we look back on in 10 or 20 years and be glad we invested in? Because we canât do everything. That lineâs been in my head this week: you can do anything, but you canât do everything.
So how do we choose?
I think thatâs the thread that ties all this together. Work, family, homeâit all comes back to choosing what matters most. Figuring out where to place your bets. And once youâve chosen, really choosing. Being willing to say, âThis is the thing I care about. This is the thing Iâm going to focus on.â And then giving it everything youâve got.
So yeahâthatâs the theme for me this week. Keep the main thing the main thing. And when you do, lean in hard.
Thatâs it for this week, but before you goâŚ
Content Diet
Podcast: Founders â Hereâs that Jeff Bezos episode again. And, I just listened to a great on one Ken Griffin, founder of the hedge fund, Citadel. Recommend this especially for anyone in finance.
Podcast: How I Built This â the Substack founders on why their earlier business didnât make it and how theyâve intentionally built the content platform that youâre reading this newsletter on (and theyâre battles with Elon Musk along the way!).
Book: Finally⌠itâs graduation season. Did you know I wrote a book for new college graduates? Yep, Say Good Morning, Like a Human is a few years old now but (I think) still pretty relevant!
Itâs got all the mistakes I made in my first ~20 years in the corporate workplace⌠basically what I wish I knew all those years ago when I stepped into âthe real worldâ for the first time. I pulled this video from the archives to share with you. Wow, I was enthusiastic! đAvailable on Amazon for the special graduate in your life⌠đ
Thatâs it for today. Have a great week.
Greg