“It takes inordinate courage to introspect..." ~ Nassim Taleb

Photo Credit: Kevin Jordan, February 2025.

Greetings -

I hope you, your families and friends are well! Spring is starting to bloom in our neck of the woods and the beautiful weather is a balm and a most welcome change.

This edition's featured article below, Leaders Shouldn't Try To Do It All, sparked a host of professional and personal questions and reflections. What must I do? What are my "non-negotiable limitations?" How do I maintain boundaries? 

Conceptually, we understand the importance of and need for self-care for better physical health and mental well-being. And yet, many of us struggle to sufficiently define and follow-through on self-care regimes that rejuvenate and sustain us (especially during these times of ever-increasing and seemingly unending sources of stress). We run the risk of higher levels of anxiety, fatigue and unsupportive self-talk that can manifest as gas lighting from within. All of these lead to, at best, showing up sub-optimally in our lives and, at worst, to burnout and the associated manifestations of physical, psychological and emotional exhaustion.

Focusing on work-life integration, as opposed to work-life balance (and the often unrealistic and painful tradeoffs required to achieve balance), can be an effective way to improve performance and satisfaction across the domains of work, home, community and self. If we adopt a whole person vantage point, we can begin to look for and implement the most effective ways to optimize the totality of our lives. Wouldn't it be a better use of our precious energy to define authentic and re-enforceable approaches to minimize negative fantasies/self-talk, while achieving sustainable well-being grounded in self-compassion?

With respect and deep admiration for you all, happy reading and listening!

Be well, take good care of yourselves, families and community.

-kj

PS - (Missed a newsletter? Past editions can be found here: https://www.kevinjordan.coach/blog. And if you hit paywall on an article(s), feel free to send me a note and let me know what you need. I have subscriptions to many of the sources that I cite.)

Featured: Harvard Business Review: Leaders Shouldn’t Try to Do It All
As the pace of modern work continues to accelerate and workplaces propel forward, the strain on today's leaders is palpable. They are expected to leverage the power of our digitized environments to innovate, transform and strategically execute. They are required to exude agility, inspire discretionary effort and facilitate deliberate and sustained shifts in power, skills and structure. Service oriented, team-centered and coaching-focused, leaders must be empathetic, active listeners who cultivate exceptional team experiences.

And yet, many of the best-intentioned leaders are not meeting, let alone exceeding, these expectations. They continue to struggle with the multiplicity of demands placed on themselves and their teams. Ever-growing to-do lists, unclear, or worse, non-existent priorities, coupled with finite capacity, imperil their ability to lead themselves and their teams effectively.

Absent changing their environments, leaders can assess what and where their skill sets, expertise and experience can best be applied. With little to no comparative advantage to do something themselves, that work might best be delegated to those better suited or looking to expand their abilities. Where a significant comparative advantage is present, leaders can leverage all of their wonderful gifts in support of the work. Adopting a mindset of "must do" vs "could/should do" can bring clarity to how and where the work will most benefit.

We are at a significant inflection point where there is a need to support leaders in cultivating new skills, enhancing support structures and systems and, potentially, recasting the entirety of the role and responsibilities of what constitutes a modern leader. The questions are not what are the issues; rather, they are how best to address them. And, am I (do I want to be?) enough for the varying demands of my profession?

Articles 

Harvard Business Review: How To Give Busy People Time To Innovate. "Most companies are full of really busy people, which makes it hard to slow down and focus on trying new things. At the same time, stopping everything to focus on innovation can leave day-to-day tasks neglected. So, how can leaders make sure workers are able to balance operational necessities with innovation? Four strategies can help: 1) Clearing the “process debt” that’s blocking innovation time; 2) Subtracting something old before you add something new; 3) Putting innovation at the top of the list; and 4) Separate invention and optimization."

Harvard Business Review: Reimagining Work As a Product. "Viewing work as a product and employees as customers is more than just a conceptual shift; it’s a comprehensive call to action. It challenges organizations to elevate work design to the same level as product design, drawing on tools from that discipline to better understand what people desire from their work—and then finding ways to give it to them."

KelloggInsight: It Literally Pays to Love Your Work. "When products or services are also a labor of love, customers perceive them as more valuable—and are willing to pay more."

The Wall Street Journal: Where Have All the Managers Gone? "Companies’ quest to purge bosses is seizing up job and promotion opportunities. Workers have had to adjust."

The Cut: 7 Stories of Dramatic Career Pivots. "At some point, everybody dreams of quitting their job to do something completely different. Sometimes, those dreams fall under pure fantasy. At other times, they’re grounded in reality and hope. In the spirit of such hope, we found seven people whose major career changes worked out astoundingly well — both financially and emotionally."

Book

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts, by Oliver Burkeman.  "Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, ["Meditations for Mortals"] offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism’. How can we embrace our non-negotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? What if purposeful productivity were often about letting things happen, not making them happen?

Reflecting on ideas drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores practical tools and shifts in perspective. The result is a bracing challenge to much familiar advice, and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully." [KJ note: If books are not your jam, please see below for a link to Ezra Klein's podcast episode with Burkeman re: his book and so much more. And a shout out and big thanks to my wife's mother for giving us this book!] 

Blog Posts & Opinions

Behavioral Scientist: A New Philosophy of Productivity. "The problem is not with productivity in a general sense, but instead with a specific faulty definition that has taken hold in recent decades. Here’s what should replace it."

Psychology Today: How to Say No and Mean It: A No must be true No, and a Yes must be a Hell, Yes. "The world demands our compliance every day, in ways both large and small. But we owe obedience to no one, and when our values would be compromised by consent, defiance must be our response. Research shows us why saying no can be so important for our mental health and points to the best ways to stick to our principles."

Marshall Goldsmith and Mike Mackie: The Responsibility Trap. "Real responsibility requires clarity. It’s knowing what’s within your sphere of influence, taking ownership of it, and letting go of the rest. It’s about acting where action makes sense—and stepping back where it doesn’t."

Podcasts + TED Talks

The Ezra Klein Show: Burned Out? Start Here. "...Burkeman’s big idea, which he also explores in his best seller “Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals,” is that the desire to be more productive, to squeeze out the most from each day, to try to feel on top of our lives, is ultimately insatiable. He argues that addressing burnout requires a shift in outlook — accepting that our time and energy are finite, and that there will always be something more to do. In other words: What if you began with a deeper appreciation of your own limits? How, then, would you live?"

People I (Mostly) Admire: Pay Attention! (Your Body Will Thank You). "Ellen Langer is a psychologist at Harvard who studies the mind-body connection. She’s published some of the most remarkable scientific findings [on the interaction of our minds and bodies]. Can we really improve our physical health by changing our mind?"

TED Radio Hour: The Hidden Role of Friction in Our Lives. "We encounter friction every day — in all its forms — as we brush our teeth, go for a jog, argue with a friend. This hour, TED speakers explore how this force can be dialed up or down to improve our lives."

Arts, Music, Culture, Literature & Humor Corner

The New York Times: The Search for van Gogh’s Lost Masterpiece. "Cast off by the Nazis, but heralded by curators, the artist’s painting of his doctor, made just before van Gogh’s suicide, has not been seen in 34 years."

Pitchfork: Beth Orton on the Music That Made Her. "The Slits, Karen Dalton, Alice Coltrane, and others pointed the English singer-songwriter toward her most liberated record yet."

The Atlantic: A 'Radical' Approach To Reclaiming Your Attention. "It’s not just about putting your phone away."

The New Yorker: Fiction: Five Bridges. "Being undocumented at a time when no one bothered much about illegal Irish people had almost suited him."

The New Yorker: Shouts & Murmurs: Parent-Teacher Conference. "There’s been a noticeable decline in Billy’s homework, which leads me to believe there’s some trouble at home."

Reflections

“It takes inordinate courage to introspect, to confront oneself, to accept one’s limitations—scientists are seeing more and more evidence that we are specifically designed by mother nature to fool ourselves.” ~ Nassim Taleb

“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.” ~ Warren Buffett

Today
By Billy Collins
If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.