Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing
Prioritizing and committing to what matters most
👋Hello, 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 — “Do you notice that the most successful people in life don’t drink?” “Why would you want to waste your money that way?” “Doesn’t it feel good to set such a great example for your kids?” — And despite all of his (actually very good) points, I still decided to break the streak…. 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 up…). Ugh, you can really see how alcohol is truly a poison that your body works hard to get rid of. Don’t 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 I’m likely to remain a buzzkill!
What’s 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 it’s good to have the “pressure” of the streak behind me, and I’ll have a bit of alcohol here and there moving forward, but I’ve got no plans to do much more than that. Anyhow, on to more interesting things…
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, I’ve been heads-down on a big project recently—something I’ve been working on for a while now, and something that’s finally about to be put out into the world. It’s been interesting “socializing” the work internally. On the one hand, there’s been some really nice recognition from senior leaders—people 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 reactions—the kind where someone points out a tiny detail that’s off without any acknowledgement of the scope or quality of what’s been done.
And I get that. I’ve 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 what’s working and zero in on what’s not. I think especially for someone like me—who can be a bit of a perfectionist—it’s worth remembering to pause and recognize the progress. That’s something I want to be better at—giving more praise, showing more gratitude, not just jumping to “how could this be improved?”
At the same time, I don’t 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 don’t want to overplay that. The point isn’t “look how great this work is.” It’s more about what it means to care about something enough to say “I’m actually not okay with this being just okay.” To have a standard of quality in your head and be willing to keep pushing until it becomes a reality.
That idea—having a standard of quality that you won’t compromise on—showed 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 podcast—How I Built This with the Substack founders—they 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 didn’t keep the main thing the main thing.
That’s been bouncing around in my head. Because I’ve 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. I’ve got other stuff I’ll pick back up later, but for now, I’m locked in on this. And yeah, there were moments where I wondered if I was over-engineering it—over-planning who’s doing what, when, and how. But when you care about something, when you’re trying to put your best work out into the world, it’s okay to get a little obsessive. That’s 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 can’t tell you what’s on his science test two days from now, but ask him about Rafael Devers’ 2021 stats and he’s got it cold.
And I’ve been thinking—should 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 in—maybe it teaches him to write, to edit, to learn tools, to build something. Maybe it’s a gateway to a whole new set of skills. Maybe it’s his main thing?
That’s how it works sometimes. You don’t start with a plan—you start with the obsession. A main thing. And if you follow it far enough, it can lead you somewhere interesting.
And then there’s the house. We’re doing a bunch of home improvement stuff right now—new roof, clearing out shrubs in the front yard, even kicking around the idea of putting in a pool. And that’s 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. It’s 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 can’t do everything. That line’s been in my head this week: you can do anything, but you can’t do everything.
So how do we choose?
I think that’s the thread that ties all this together. Work, family, home—it all comes back to choosing what matters most. Figuring out where to place your bets. And once you’ve chosen, really choosing. Being willing to say, “This is the thing I care about. This is the thing I’m going to focus on.” And then giving it everything you’ve got.
So yeah—that’s the theme for me this week. Keep the main thing the main thing. And when you do, lean in hard.
That’s it for this week, but before you go…
Content Diet
Podcast: Founders – Here’s 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 – the Substack founders on why their earlier business didn’t make it and how they’ve intentionally built the content platform that you’re reading this newsletter on (and they’re battles with Elon Musk along the way!).
Book: Finally… it’s 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!
It’s 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 ‘the real world’ for the first time. I pulled this video from the archives to share with you. Wow, I was enthusiastic! 😂Available on Amazon for the special graduate in your life… 🙂
That’s it for today. Have a great week.
Greg