INSIGHTS FOR GROWTH

Even if you have zero intention of leaving your career, brainstorm five businesses you could start or buy. Not as a plan — as a perspective shift. The exercise does three things: it reminds you that your skills are valuable in contexts you haven’t considered, it reveals what’s missing in your current work, and it makes your current path feel like a choice rather than a sentence.

Burnout is almost never caused by one thing. It’s caused by a system of patterns you built — usually with good intentions — that is now consuming you. The Monster Audit names the four most common ones. You don’t have to fight all of them at once. Just know which one is costing you the most.

The pressure to think short-term has never been greater. Quarterly targets. Monthly metrics. Weekly reviews. Daily fires. Everything pushes you toward the immediate. And the immediate is almost never where the most important work happens. Here's what I've noticed about the best leaders I work with: they think in years, not quarters. They ask: What am I building? Who am I becoming? What will this look like in three years if I stay the course?

January is full of goal-setting. Vision boards. Strategic plans. Long lists of everything we want to accomplish. But here is what I have learned from working with hundreds of leaders: the ones who achieve the most do not have longer lists. They have shorter ones.