And that’s what I love the most about the Christian Business Leader Podcast. You have first-person accounts of how Christians practice their faith even in difficult situations, which many Christians find hard to do or don’t bother with at all. The guests he’s had on the podcast have been working out what it means to honor God at work or in business, so they’re examples you and I can learn from if we want to do the same.

As Philippians 4:9 says, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

So, what would you do with over 200 of the most thoughtful Christian business voices of the last decade?

When I began thinking about a personal project I could challenge myself with this year, I wanted to do something that adds an educational value for you, who trust me with your time every week. So, finding a unique answer to this question has been top of mind since February.

I decided to start with transcriptions for three reasons.

First, and this is personal. If I told you I have a BA in Christian Studies, a Professional Diploma in Education, and I’m an MBA student, how would you merge these three domains?

Would you like more context? Okay. I’ve been a preacher’s kid for most of my life. I started teaching in a secondary school in 2011. Then, I started and ran a small business between 2012 and 2014, and a non-profit in 2022. I’ve been working professionally in the youth development and education space over the past five years. Last but not least, I’ve been a fan of The Chosen and other creative Christian productions. What stands out? Three words: Christian. Business. Education. This observation tells me that I am uniquely positioned to build something impactful for other believers.

Second, if you visit the Christian Business Leader Podcast website and click on any episodes, it plays the audio. It would have been nice to have each click open a new page with a podcast summary, useful links, and guest profile information. This is what you get when you click on other legacy podcasts, such as Tim Ferriss’ show. In fact, Tim Ferriss has a page dedicated to his podcast transcripts.

I could have written a fan email to Darren Shearer asking him to do the same. But I once emailed him asking to join his team, and got no response, which only strengthened my resolve to do something that adds value to his podcast instead. I hope starting with transcribing his published episodes is a step in the right direction.

Third, you cannot build a product without a knowledge base to start. In early 2022, I was working with Mrs. Ebele Chukwujama to start The Listening School, our starting point was a pioneer organization in listening intelligence worldwide, because they were leading in research and had created or curated seminal works on the subject matter. This is the very foundation of artificial general intelligence, which now empowers people to do things they otherwise cannot. Once you have gained a strong understanding of a domain, only then can you advance the field with your own contributions.

How I started

To create a knowledge base, you need inputs, basically good documents that contain the knowledge you need.

So, in principle, the plan was to transcribe all the guest episodes first so they would feed the knowledge base. Not all the episodes, but the guest episodes, because that’s what I want the knowledge base to contain. Moreover, Darren’s solo episodes mostly draw on his books and articles, so they’re already available in text format for anyone to read.

The mistake I made, which many people still make today, is assuming that once you tell AI something, you only need to back up and watch it bring everything to life as you imagine or maybe instruct.

But the reality is that even with a detailed prompt (even in Openclaw), you need to guide your AI tool all the way. It starts with a good plan you may have jointly developed, but it doesn’t end there, especially if you’re working with free accounts (the limitations could hurt your drive).

So, I wanted to take every guest interview episode Darren had ever published, all 280+ of them spanning 2015 to March 2026, and convert them into searchable, usable text.

I started by cataloging the entire episode archive. Using the podcast RSS feed, I built a master spreadsheet of all the guest episodes, recording each episode title, guest name, publication date, episode length, and direct MP3 download link.

Then I went through the list carefully to distinguish genuine guest interviews and episodes where Darren sat down with another person from his solo monologue episodes, because I noticed he used the same naming convention throughout, listing his name, Darren Shearer, as a guest on a few episodes.

The naming convention he uses for his episodes helped. The interviews consistently followed patterns such as “w/ Guest Name,” “Interview w/ Guest Name,” or “Interview with Guest Name” in the title.

When I had listed about 280+, I knew I had a reasonable list because he’s published over 300 episodes, and a good number of them up to 2017 were solo episodes. Next, I needed to transcribe them, and that’s when I began meeting some challenging limitations.

The limits of free AI accounts and other challenges

My first attempt at transcription was entirely manual. Basically, there’s no free online transcription service that allows you to feed AI multiple audios and get them as text on the same day. Trust me, I came to this conclusion after serious, extended trials. That said, I eventually found Evernote’s audio-to-text feature, which allowed me to upload audio files and receive text in batches of ten.

Hold up. There’s one step I haven’t told you about: downloading the episodes.

This, too, was a major bottleneck because I found no free online tool that could directly pull each episode from the RSS feed and convert it to text. I downloaded them on Spotify, but it didn’t save them to my local drive, and if it did, I didn’t bother finding out how to get them as MP3s because I could only manually download the podcast episodes. I wanted a method to bulk-download, or at least everything, in batches.

I found PodcasttoMP3 useful, though the bulk feature only allowed 100 episodes (in MPGA format, I think), so I used it to download 100 of the most recent episodes, but without a filter option, which meant I couldn’t select the guest episodes that I wanted.

I continued searching for tools, but eventually found Beamly, which allowed me to bulk-download only the 200 most recent episodes. I used it too. So, it meant I had downloaded 300 audio files in mixed formats, about half of which were duplicates.

Add to that the fact that I hadn’t succeeded in downloading only the guest episodes since 2015. I also found a tutorial detailing how to transcribe audio files in Google Drive with OpenAI’s Whisper. So I uploaded all the nearly 200 guest episodes I had after deleting duplicates and ran the script I got from this video. The problem was that I hit a limit on my free account, but it still gave me 20 transcripts in purely narrative format (without speaker labels or timestamps).

Frustrated, I paused downloading and set out to transcribe the files I had downloaded. This, too, was painstaking. I had to upload 10 at a time to Evernote, wait for the results, download the output, and manually split the combined transcripts into individual documents (because the product assumed all the files in each batch belonged in one document).

The other transcription product I tried was Audio Converter AI. Fortunately, it used the interview transcription format with time-stamping and speaker identification, but it only allowed single-episode uploads. I used it a few times, and that was it. It wasn’t sustainable. I used Evernote to transcribe most of the downloaded episodes.

At that point, there was only one method I had yet to try: coding. So, I turned to Claude, my favorite AI for problem-solving operational issues like this, and after telling it my goal and the struggles I had gone through, it advised me to use a Python Script (which it wrote to run Whisper on my desktop) and guided me through the entire process.

But first, I had to put all the guest episode titles. I downloaded titles in a spreadsheet, indicating which ones I had yet to transcribe, so the script would check my spreadsheet against the episodes in the RSS feed and both download and transcribe each remaining guest episode.

This method worked as planned. It used the Python script to read my master spreadsheet, identified which episodes still needed transcribing, fetched the correct MP3 files directly from the RSS feed, transcribed each one using Whisper, saved the output as individual text files, and automatically updated the spreadsheet to track progress.

It took me a few days to finish transcribing the remaining 80+ guest episodes this way, since I had to shut down my laptop at the end of my workday to let it rest, but it worked. There were only two issues at this point.

First, because the script was based on my spreadsheet, it didn’t automatically download and transcribe guest episode titles published thereafter that weren’t in my list. Second, the transcripts lack time stamps and speaker labels. Other than those, I call the project a success.

What do you stand to gain?

I have compiled the complete transcript library into a master spreadsheet. Every one of the 272 guest interview episodes is listed with its title, guest name, publication date, episode length, original MP3 URL, and a direct link to its transcript. I will continue working on this as I’ve found duplicates in the spreadsheet and a few lacking guest episodes at the time of writing this article.

This is the first public release of this project. I will continue building by God’s grace and share updates with you.

God willing, the goal is simple: anyone who wants to study, research, or do anything useful with this body of Christian business wisdom should be able to do so without starting from scratch. But to make it really immersive, I advise you listen to at least all the guest episodes. And you may do so on Apple Podcasts. I hope that this would ultimately advance Darren Shearer’s legacy.

You can access the full spreadsheet here.

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In late 2015, I discovered Tim Ferriss. His podcast had already been running for over a year at that point, interviewing some of the most interesting people alive: investors, authors, athletes, scientists, and military commanders.

To date, his podcast remains roughly styled the same way. Invite an interesting person over, have a long, detailed conversation (usually about two hours), and publish it for the world to listen, for free.

Darren Shearer started his Theology of Business Podcast (now the Christian Business Leader Podcast) in 2016, publishing bi-monthly one-hour conversations with Christian business leaders. Still, I didn’t learn about it until about 2020.

I was equally excited about both podcasts when I discovered them, yet failed to cultivate an active listening habit. I’m convinced, though, that there are people who’ve been consistently listening to these conversations for over ten years, and their lives are better for it.

I see many of these podcast fans doing interesting things like starting their podcasts, YouTube channels, businesses and so on, and I can’t help but recognise that I had a similar chance as many of them. In fact, I wanted to start a podcast with a friend as far back as 2019.

Then I wanted to do so again in 2020 with another friend, when the Google Podcast Fellowship took off, and I remember recording some episodes for a newsletter titled “Coper Spotlight.” I interviewed other interesting members of the National Youth Service Corps for my podcast. It took off on LinkedIn, then it went down. Somewhere in 2023, I started again (see the podcast section of my website), but when it got tough, I didn’t get going; I just closed shop. In hindsight, I couldn’t sustain my creative commitments because I had never been a consistent podcast listener.

I can’t help but imagine the transformative impact Darren Shearer’s podcast would have had in my life if I had been following him for a decade. Who would I be today if I had listened to his guest episodes every two weeks since 2015? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect it would have changed things.

Since I haven’t been following actively, I wanted to catch up on some of what I had missed. By my latest count, Darren has produced over 250 guest interviews. That is roughly about 200 hours of concentrated thinking from kingdom operators across various business domains available for free.

And to show you just how serious my assumptions about the transformative power of consistent podcast listening are, I looked up some research, and it’s just as I suspected.

An often-cited study on the educational value of transformative podcast listening is Simon Hieleson’s, who concluded that students use podcasts "rationally as a supplement to their study activities." So you have a transformation in education, at least through the way we learn.

You also get improvements in attitudes, as some podcasts can lead listeners to change their behaviour and become more socially aware.

Moreso, especially among female listeners, what scholars call parasocial relationships (cultivating something like a mentoring relationship) with educational content creators (and I would add podcasters) can increase people’s desire to learn.

I wouldn’t say that these benefits apply to all podcasts, though. These benefits are more likely to be acquired through what I call legacy podcasts. Yes, "legacy" because people who commit themselves to becoming masters in a craft eventually get there and find the most effective ways to derive value from that work than beginners in the same field, and their work often paves the way for innovation. I have written previously about why we should make reading seminal works a habit, and it is a corollary of this.

Tim Ferriss started his podcast in 2014. Darren Shearer started the Christian Business Leader podcast in 2015. Both are still active and have published hundreds of guest interviews with people who have the very things that many others, even in their domains, are still dreaming about.

That consistency over time is the key thing. Anyone can produce great content for six months, but very few people show up every two weeks like Darren Shearer for ten years.

By implication, these legacy podcasters create a unique body of work that would have cost a lot more otherwise.

Over the past few weeks, I have been transcribing Darren Shearer’s 280+ guest interview episodes, reading through what guests said about pricing, leadership, failure, faith, integrity in the marketplace, and building companies while raising families. The breadth of personal experience shared is positively overwhelming.

These topics would have taken a university business school years to develop into curriculum materials, but Darren Shearer produced them across simple conversations, at no cost to listeners.

Tim Ferriss has done a similar thing, so his podcast archive is now one of the most comprehensive informal resources on peak performance, entrepreneurship, and education available today.

Watching recent seasons of Shark Tank alone has taught me more about valuation, market sizing, and what investors actually care about, and it’s fun. I enjoy it. I learn new things in each episode because knowledge is embedded in the stories the entrepreneurs share and the conversations they have with the ‘sharks.’

Listening to smart people talk consistently for years will transform your life. So don’t miss out like me.

Find one legacy podcast in a domain that interests you, that interviews practitioners on every episode and tune in at least once every week. Or find one show like Shark Tank and continue following for as long as possible.

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In this matter, many Christians take a binary stance from the outset. They assume that nonprofits exist to serve others and that businesses exist to generate profit, or that a nonprofit is a ministry, while businesses are ordinary.

Here’s a concern posted on Reddit:
“Does anyone else feel a bit of guilt when turning a profit? It sounds odd I know, but I feel like I didn't really "earn" the money. Like any one could call up the factory and buy stuff for cheap. I almost feel like I'm "ripping people off".

These biases have produced under-resourced nonprofits because their managers felt entitled to their donors’ wealth and guilt-laden for-profit founders who doubt their work is acceptable to God. It’s also common to hear about honest Christians abandoning corporate work or entrepreneurship to “serve God in ministry” (that is, the church). I have written previously about how Plato’s dualism influenced the church into preaching that such a move is fine. But it’s not.

That said, in this article, I wouldn’t argue for one structure over the other. Both are as legitimate as they are necessary, and can equally be operated with Kingdom intentionality that serves people and glorifies God.

That said, in what follows, I will discuss four specific operational and theological considerations to help you choose the better structure for your good intentions.

Can you keep the lights on long enough?

The first consideration is sustainability.

Simply, which structure best enables this mission to continue long enough to accomplish something impactful?

According to Peter Drucker, mission-driven organisations face serious financial fragility (funding trap). A nonprofit is typically dependent on donor cycles, grant applications, and fundraising campaigns. So, they are largely consumed by the work of sustaining themselves financially, which consumes the time, energy, and leadership attention at the direct expense of programme delivery and strategic development. That’s why nonprofits with independently verified program impacts are few and rare.

What makes running a nonprofit even more taxing is the administrative skill it requires.

Nonprofit formation often demands significant compliance requirements, from board governance and fiduciary responsibility to restricted fund accounting, annual reporting and public disclosure, and the management of donor relationships with all their attendant expectations. The extent to which you can fulfil these statutory obligations annually (even with a team) will impact how long your nonprofit will last.

Moreso, if your primary gifts are in building, designing, launching, and executing, your first few hires would have to be skilled in governance, compliance, and relationship management. You must be honest about whether the structure of a nonprofit operation is a good stewardship of your particular capacities, and if it isn’t, how quickly can you find someone equally mission-driven and faithful to take up the job? Can you also afford to hire this person or provide a stipend to the committed volunteers you might find during the early days? A few years ago, I started a nonprofit and recruited some volunteers, but a few months in, they all had good reasons to move on and it shut down.

If you prefer using more of your actual strengths to build an organisation faster and more efficiently, a business allows you to do so, and if you do it well, the business could be an inheritance someday. A business produces value and generates its own funds. In fact, your success is largely determined by the value you offer your customers or clients, so to fall short on value is to lose profit.

Does that make businesses better social companions? Not necessarily. The point is that before choosing a nonprofit structure, you must have a clear, honest, tested answer to the question: where will the operating income come from, and is that source stable enough to allow you to focus on your mission rather than primarily on persuading donors?

How will you relate to your beneficiaries?

A close consideration of sustainability is the nature of beneficiary relationships. The recent USAID funding suspension across Africa showed just how much our nonprofits rely on foreign aid rather than on sustainability. When aid was cut, a good number of them had to lay off staff and suspend vital services, exposing a failure to build local resilience.

The problem, though, is that if it were easy for the nonprofits to sustain themselves locally, they wouldn’t have sought or structured themselves to require external aid in the first place. Needless to say, many of the issues African nonprofits address are the responsibilities of corrupt state governments like Nigeria.

If you start a nonprofit, your beneficiary typically receives a service they could not otherwise afford or access, but if you start a business, your customers pay for the value you provide.

These are different relationships, and they require different operational models. Amy Sherman, in her book Kingdom Calling, says that there is a difference between programmes that develop human dignity and programmes that, despite good intentions, inadvertently reinforce dependency.

In a business, your customers’ choices and continued engagement make you accountable for quality, whereas the beneficiaries of a nonprofit have limited ability to withdraw their patronage when the service is poor, leaving donors, who sometimes may not have experienced the issues being addressed, as the primary source of accountability.

Therefore, your donors (likely more than your beneficiaries themselves) will influence your ability to reach and truly serve your target audience. Despite your good intentions, both you and your beneficiaries will be dependent on your donors.

If your desire is to serve a target audience directly and earn based on how well you serve them and how much they can pay you, a for-profit organisation is likely the better option.

Where do you belong?

The third consideration is an often-underrated part of modern Western life: community. Or, according to Os Guinness, the stewardship of influence.

In The Call, Guinness says that a person’s calling is always expressed within and shaped by a particular community. When you choose to build an organisation, the structure you choose determines which communities you and your organisation can access and serve. A nonprofit founder typically operates within donor communities, grant-making foundations, government service delivery systems, and beneficiary populations.

A business owner operates within commercial markets, industry ecosystems, and economic communities. So, for the Christian looking to expand their influence, knowing which community God has placed you in or that you’ve had affinity with for most of your life will help you further decide which organisation to start. If you choose to situate your organisation in your existing community, you could gain the connections you need to sell your minimum viable product or execute an outreach.

A Christian entrepreneur whose mission is to disciple the technology industry will almost certainly need to operate as a business to gain the proximity and credibility the mission requires. A founder whose calling is to serve low-income communities will need to start a nonprofit to pursue that mission.

What kind of success would make you happy?

Everyone wants success. It’s in our nature to think of a later “self” that has done something worthwhile, something big, whether that something is deeply personal or interpersonal, like making your “haterz” eyes roll, is a different question entirely.

To say it simply, what kind of success do you want to achieve, and would you be happy with?

When you think of running a nonprofit, are you comfortable with the idea of courting donors long enough and well enough to pursue sustainable strategic partnerships and replicate successful programmes? The biggest nonprofits in the world pay their staff well enough, but never so well as many global corporations. If you started a nonprofit today, your wealth in 15-20 years would be measured mostly by impact, not assets.

If you’re building a business, for example, your clients paying for genuine value delivered allows for more rapid growth, higher service quality, and more sustainable expansion. The richest men and women in the world all have businesses that made them rich. Then some created nonprofits through which they give back to their communities, but stay rich because otherwise they’d be unable to finance their nonprofits or lead the lives they have.

So you see, this isn’t merely a conversation about which path to follow. It is one about your attitudes toward money and success.

Some Christians choose nonprofit structures only because it “feels spiritually safe’. They feel it saves them from the guilt of building great wealth while people are starving elsewhere, even though their business may have little, if anything, to do with the corrupt forces depriving others of the common wealth.

Moreso, nonprofits are a way for some good people to achieve their ambitions of “making the world a better place”, even though that means getting money from prudent and charitable businessmen and women to execute projects that are often the legitimate use of paid taxes.

Let me emphasise again that the question of whether making a profit is consistent with deep Christian faithfulness is: Yes, it is, especially when done faithfully, generously, and held with open-handed stewardship that acknowledges God.

The operational and organizational structure you choose should follow your mission's requirements, not your need for spiritual comfort.

To wit, you can be creative with the structure of your organisation. Social enterprises, benefit corporations and businesses with explicit Christian missionary commitments and transparency are appropriate ways to do good, profitable work that serves people and glorifies God.

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Why read this book publicly and call it a course instead of designing a course properly, as I do for my clients?

My rationale was simply a desire to read the book and show myself processing my thoughts while I did that. I wanted this to be as original as possible. Moreover, I believe the best way to teach a course is to identify seminal works on the subject matter and read them with your students, with everyone contributing to the discussion.

I simply had a deep personal desire to study this book properly and process it in the way I learn best:

• Read slowly

• Pause

• Explain what I understand

• Connect it back to operations, assistants, and how work actually gets done

Somewhere along the way, I thought, since this is helping me think more clearly about operations and leadership, why not share it?

So, here’s what I did:

I just kept recording with my cheap setup (I wasn’t even consistent about adding a video of myself at first), though I must confess, it became boring at some point. Then I organized the videos into a YouTube Course playlist as I uploaded them.

What this “course” actually is

To be clear: this is not a polished, highly-produced, everything-perfect, curriculum-first course.

This is me:

• Reading The Great CEO Within publicly

• Stopping to explain concepts in my own words

• Translating CEO advice into operations, systems, and assistant-first perspective

• Thinking out loud about what it means for:

  • Executive and virtual assistants

  • Young/entry- to mid-level professionals

  • Founders who are still learning to run their companies like real organizations

If you’ve ever wished someone would take a practical book on leadership/operations and walk through it like a friend, this is exactly that.

What’s next?

Going forward, I’ll be creating more courses that are designed as courses from day one, go deeper into operations, systems, and the “back office brain” of a business and are more interactive, better structured, and better produced than this first experiment

Think of this Great CEO Within playlist as:

• A warm-up

• A live study group

• A way to get into my head and see how I think about operations, leadership, and the role of great assistants

Who is this for?

Since you’re here, you probably care about operations, supporting leaders, and making work actually work.

This playlist will especially serve you if you are:

• An executive or virtual assistant who wants to understand how great CEOs think, so you can support them better

• A young or mid-level professional trying to build real operational thinking early in their career

• A founder or solo operator who wants the “management operating system” behind a functioning company, not just inspiration

How to watch and follow along?

You can treat this like:

• A background course while you work, commute, or do admin

• A reference library – dip into the chapter that matches the problem you’re facing (meetings, feedback, KPIs, hiring, etc.)

I recommend:

• Picking a chapter that matches a current pain point

• Watching with a notebook or your ops doc open

• Writing down at least one small operational tweak you’ll implement after each video

Links

1. The Great CEO Within (Make a copy of my copy)

2. The Course Link

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We are home to some of the richest prosperity gospel preachers in the world, but we still manage to think that doing business for profit isn’t very “righteous.” I’m writing this from personal experience, so I have no data to back this one up, but take my word for it (at least for now).

You could find among us a Christian considering raising their prices but equally wondering whether doing so is spiritually appropriate. It is a sense of guilt that the profit margin is too much, and even if that profit is legitimate, something says they’ve sinned for aiming at prosperity.

Some of us are so sure that seeking profit, even through work or petty trading, is sinful that you could find a Christian businessman or woman frequenting a church during business hours, praying for a “helper” or for the same prosperity they could gain if they served their customers unforgettably well.

Here’s why I think some Christians are suspicious of doing business for profit.

According to Plato (and this is a simplistic explanation), the material world is a corrupted shadow of a higher, spiritual reality. The body is a prison for the soul. Physical things like commerce, property, and profit belonged to the lower order of existence. In essence, Plato told us that everything in the world falls into two classes: material and spiritual things.

This view of the world is called dualism, and it eventually influenced early Christian teachers, many of them who taught that anything material is bad while spiritual things are good. Today, several known “pastors” teach variations of this understanding as if it’s a new revelation.

One of the biblical references often made to support this assertion is the statement of Apostle Paul to Timothy that ‘the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil’ (1 Timothy 6:10). But, it ought to be obvious that the Pauline emphasis was on love of money and not money itself, so it cannot be profit itself, nor commerce itself.

But the prevalence of monasteries in the medieval period portrayed the highest form of Christian life as one of poverty, prayer, and separation from the world. Monks and nuns who renounced property and commercial life were considered more spiritually advanced than the merchants who travelled the world negotiating transactions and gathering profits to finance them or the workers who toiled for months to build them.

The Catholic church had largely institutionalised a two-tier form of Christianity: the sacred clergy above and secular laity below. In fact, Thomas Aquinas argued that charging interest on a loan was inherently sinful because it meant profiting from time which belonged to God. Never mind that several Christians could have started new ventures with great success had they secured loans from other affluent Christians at the time.

Over two thousand years of church history, the practical theology of many church traditions made a blanket suspicion of financial success that Paul himself would not have recognised (he was a tentmaker, you know).

Nancy Pearcey, in her landmark work Total Truth, says that the sacred-secular divide is not truly Biblical. Still, it would be difficult to dislodge because it is embedded in the institutional structures, the devotional literature, and the unexamined assumptions of the church long before anyone thought to question it systematically.

The marketplace Christian, you and I, must shatter the tiny little variations of this bias towards financial prosperity because it pretends that one’s blessings could not possibly be a gift from God. I’ve been poor and rich, and I know by experience that there’s nothing righteous about depriving yourself of profit.

Martin Luther believed that the cobbler who crafts shoes with skill and honesty is serving God just as faithfully as the monk who prays in his cell. This is the doctrine of vocation, the idea that every legitimate occupation, done faithfully for the common good, is an avenue through which God meets the needs of the world, and you can be certain that those who engage in God’s work shall be richly blessed.

In the beginning, there was no hierarchy of sacred and secular work. There was only faithful work and unfaithful work, work done for God’s glory and work done for self-advancement.

John Calvin taught that prosperity and productivity were not signs of spiritual compromise but of God’s blessing on faithful stewardship. It was Calvin’s theology that Max Weber famously analysed in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, identifying the religious roots of the work ethic and the legitimisation of profit that helped build the modern economy. And we should be grateful for that!

Despite this, I have heard some honest preachers narrow the church’s mission to strictly “saving souls.” Whatever this means, I sincerely hope they can extend this saving interest in the soul to the body first. A family man must demonstrate his salvation by providing food, clothing and shelter for his family because his family’s life will be better if he is profitable at work or in business, so the church must teach him to sustain such legitimate profitability.

It is C. S. Lewis who said in Mere Christianity that the devil is perfectly happy to have us think of God as a spiritual being who is uninterested in the physical world, so long as this keeps us from bringing our whole lives, including our commercial lives, under his lordship.

Anything short of a profitable approach to work or business (including non-profits) means that we don’t consider this area of our lives to be under God’s domain.

David Kinnaman describes a ‘Sunday-Monday gap’ as a profound disconnect between spiritual identity and working life, leaving millions of marketplace Christians navigating their professional decisions without a coherent theological framework.

Into this vacuum, two distorting messages have repeatedly rushed in. The first is the prosperity gospel, which overcorrects dramatically by treating financial success as the primary evidence of divine favour, reducing faith to a technique for wealth accumulation and God to a vending machine.

The second distortion is more common in serious Christian communities: the belief that the really devoted Christians are those who enter vocational ministry or missionary work, while those in business are doing something secondary that requires spiritual justification to be acceptable to God.

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Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

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Yet some problems, even for high-achieving innovators, remain beyond the reach of artificial intelligence, revolutionary scientific discoveries, and mind-bending psychological models.

In a rare setting for an evangelical preacher, Billy Graham’s 1998 TED Talk is one of the most biblically grounded presentations in TED's archives.

Since then, technology continues to advance in ways his audience could scarcely have imagined, but the three fundamental problems Graham identified may remain existential even in the distant future:

1. Human evil

2. Human death

3. Human suffering

   

But on the other hand, you’d find many things awry. Christians are being persecuted in Nigeria. Violence and famine rage on in the Horn of Africa, and Israel is locked in a protracted conflict with various forces in Palestine.

Human evil

Every year, the world loses over $3.6 trillion to corruption, even in the fun and ‘benign’ things that should unite humanity, such as music and sports, but neither is exempt from the dubious and vile.

Since 1844, when horse racing captivated the world, sports corruption has been a concern and has grown in various ways, culminating, we may say, in such high-profile cases as the arrest of former FIFA President Sepp Blatter in 2015.

Music concerts have experienced tragedy of diverse proportions too, ranging from the stabbing of three children at a dance class to death, to the October 7 attack when Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage.

We assume that the stronger our technology systems, the more secure we will be. Yet advances in security technology, such as data-informed occupancy management, cannot eliminate the perpetual manifestations of evil, which stem from moral and spiritual failures.

Jesus said, “For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, acts of adultery, other immoral sexual acts, thefts, false testimonies, and slanderous statements.“

Emmanuel Kant suggested that evil stems from:

• a weakness in doing what is right (frailty),

• a desire for gain (impurity),

• or an actualization of selfish interest (perversity).

This tendency for evil is the reason “we can’t get along with other people, even in our own families. We find ourselves in the paralyzing grip of self-destructive habits we can’t break. Racism and injustice and violence sweep our world, bringing a tragic harvest of heartache and death,” Graham said.

He then issued a provocative challenge: “I would like to see Oracle take up that, or some other technological geniuses work on this.”

Granted, there are scientific and systemic innovations aimed at combating corruption even at its root, but they do not scratch the surface, as the problem isn’t merely social or systemic but intrinsic.

That’s why Graham also asked, “How do we change man, so that he doesn’t lie and cheat?”

The ultimate, all-benevolent innovation to human evil, therefore, would need to be invented by a completely neutral force, the only one of which in human and extra-terrestrial history is none other than God.

Human suffering

The second dilemma Graham addressed was suffering, the universal human experience that transcends socioeconomic status and technological advancements.

“I have never met a person in the world who didn’t have a problem,” said Graham.

At nearly 80 years old when delivering the talk, Graham said he was grateful that medical advances had helped preserve his health. Today, we have vaccines, antibiotics, surgical interventions, and pain management. Yet he knew all too well the limits of such progress.

Graham quoted from the Book of Job, one of the oldest texts in existence, which says that we are “born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.” This observation remains as relevant in the age of computers and biotechnology as it was thousands of years ago.

Today, more than 1 billion people worldwide are living with mental health disorders, with anxiety and depressive disorders being the most common. Depression alone costs the global economy an estimated $1 trillion annually.

According to Our World in Data, it’s estimated that 1 in 3 women and 1 in 5 men will experience major depression in their lives. Yet 91% of people living with depression around the world are unable to access care.

Graham noted that technology cannot touch the deeper sources of human pain: the loneliness of isolation, the grief of loss, the anxiety of uncertainty, the despair of meaninglessness.

Even in wealthy nations with advanced healthcare systems, suffering persists. So suffering isn’t just the result of poverty or a lack of socio-economic development. Taiwan and Singapore are the healthiest countries in the world, according to the Global Health Index 2025.

Yet, they spend roughly 13%-18% of the healthcare budget managing issues of mental health and socio-economic pressures.

Viktor Frankl, one of the few to have survived the Nazi concentration camps, wrote, “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.”

That may not sound palatable to the ear, but it’s coming from someone who witnessed the horrors of hatred and wickedness, human-inflicted pain, meaningless suffering, and death. So it is true, meaningful suffering informs a meaningful life.

It is precisely why Graham turned to the Bible. He referenced David’s Psalm 23, which doesn’t promise the elimination of valleys but God’s presence within them: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”

In his speech, Graham observed that no amount of scientific advancement can eliminate suffering because suffering’s resolution is not merely relief, but redemption.

Human death

The final problem Graham identified was death.

“This is the forbidden subject of our generation. Most people live as though they are never going to die,” he observed. Yet death remains perhaps the only certainty that unites all humanity. “There is one thing that we all have in common: we are all going to die.”

Approximately 173,000 people die each day worldwide. Despite our remarkable medical advances, which extend average lifespans, postpone death, and improve quality of life in its final stages, we have not conquered death itself.

Martin Heidegger introduced the concept of “Being-toward-death,” arguing that death is not merely an event at the end of life but an omnipresent possibility that shapes every moment of existence. To say it simply, we are dying from the moment we are born.

What makes death unique, according to Heidegger’s analysis, is its individuality. It cannot be delegated or shared, for “no one can take the Other’s dying away from him.” This fundamental aloneness of death means that no technological intervention, no matter how sophisticated, can eliminate the singular, unrepeatable nature of each person’s mortality.

The problem is, modern society, as Heidegger noted, seeks to sanitize the reality of death through anti-ageing industries, youth culture, and playful language. Yet this avoidance only increases death’s power over us. Authentic existence, according to Heidegger, requires us to confront our mortality.

Graham sat at the deathbeds of several famous people. He noted that many who were “scared to death” in their final moments had lived as if mortality would never touch them.

Their wealth, achievements, and access to the best medical care could not shield them from death’s inevitability.

Some scientists want to delay death, to extend the boundary, to prevent it, or push back the inevitable. The Bible offers a resurrection and eternal life through a relationship with God. To solve death, therefore, we must rise from it.

If we could hypothetically achieve technological immortality, uploading consciousness, reversing ageing at the cellular level, and replacing organs indefinitely, we would only be addressing death’s biological mechanism without touching its existential meaning.

If we were immortal, our choices would lack the urgency that makes them significant. But with death setting a boundary on existence, we must prioritize and invest in what truly matters.

Why science cannot solve these problems

The reason science can’t solve these problems is that some issues traverse more elements of human nature than the scientific method can investigate.

As philosophers of technology have noted, science and technology are tools that amplify human choices. Still, they cannot determine which options are right because, as tools, they are morally neutral. Moreso, moral and existential problems require fundamentally different solutions than technological ones.

The real challenge, according to scholars, has little to do with the tools science provides us but with the attitudes every innovation fosters.

On the surface, the use of technology is as good as it is bad, but more importantly, we have fundamentally lost the art, or better, reduced the necessity of telling the difference between bad and good use of tech.

What has become certain with the advent of new technologies (including AI) is that they introduce new ethical problems and raise new value issues that they cannot resolve.

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At one end are passivists. Believers who think that God calls people through a dramatic personal encounter so clear and unmistakably divine that it sufficiently casts out all doubt and breaks through every hesitation. And until that occurs, we wait.

On the other end is a pragmatic dismissal. A sense that calling is simply a spiritualised word for career preference, and that you identify it by trying various things and observing what produces the most satisfaction or earns you the most socio-economic advantage, then you commit to it as the one God wants for you.

Neither extreme is particularly helpful, and both have produced Christians of a paralysed faith (the waiters), and the suspicious who approach their jobs without a zeal for excellence until they find the successful one. Both senses equally lack a genuine spiritual significance.

Calling means two things

Os Guinness, whose book The Call is arguably the most thorough treatment of vocation among modern Christian books, makes a helpful distinction.

There is a primary calling, that is the universal call of every human being to know, love, and follow God, and there are secondary callings, the specific contexts and roles we play at home or at work, through which our primary calling is expressed. Simply, our primary calling gives us direction while our secondary calling gives us form.

It is natural for the primary things to lead the way and for secondary things to follow, so our vocation only needs to follow God.

Another lesson to take away from the book is that our primary calling can be secular (happening in ordinary ways), and the secondary work can be spiritual (done for God). The form only needs to follow God’s direction.

To be even more practical, if you’re wondering whether God has given you a specific directive in business, you need not wait for a spiritual encounter to convince you before taking action, because that is procrastination.

That’s not to say that God never gives us a specific move to make, especially in rare dilemmas, but not all matters in business require such a spiritual experience of specificity. Moreso, having the wisdom of God is itself directional, as He guides us unto all things.

The more productive question about our secondary calling is: given who I am, what I carry (the Holy Spirit), how I was made, and what I have already observed about where my presence in the world produces the most fruit, where is my investment of life most aligned with what God is doing?

Having said that, we must also note that there is no reason to believe that any living person is without a calling, as both our primary and secondary callings indicate that we are purposeful beings.

In the rest of this article, I will use the word vocation instead of “secondary calling” because it is more fitting for business and work.

Factors that determine our vocation

Frederick Buechner’s suggestion is that the place God calls you to is the intersection of your joy and the world’s need. Joy because God cares about the feeling of satisfaction and enduring happiness we get from long periods of creative work. Afterall, He also observed His creations and called them “good.” Only after He had done a succession of good works did He rest. So God cares that we do excellent work and find satisfaction in it. So, which work gives you this feeling of joy, not just happiness, which is short-lived, but joy?

And when you think of that work, how does it meet the needs of other people? Not your need but theirs. For which activity do people appreciate you, even when they pay for your service? You may also answer this question about what needs your meeting before answering the question about joy; the order doesn’t matter. What matters most is whether you derive joy from the value you give other people.

The mistake many people make is starting with money. People often chase businesses they think will yield the highest returns, but forget that before that sector or line of work became profitable, some pioneers made sacrifices to establish the field, and sometimes those pioneers earn the bulk of the money. Secondly, profitability is never guaranteed in any area of business throughout human history. Just think of all the established businesses, like travel and tourism, that took a hit during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Having said that, I must add to Buechner’s two ideas other non-negotiable factors that should determine your vocation.

The first is the presence of genuine competence that consistently creates value for other people. God cannot call you to incompetence, especially persistent incompetence. So your calling cannot be in an area of business or work where you may be considered a sluggard, because that will spoil any witness to the gospel you make.

I don’t mean that whatever God calls us to will be easy. From Scripture, we can count many key characters whom God used to accomplish things they didn’t think were possible.

So whatever area of work God wants to use you in, He will require growth, a willingness and ability to face real discomfort, and if God is calling us to do something significant at work or in business, we will typically undergo the longest seasons of development before the full fruitfulness of the gift is visible.

But there is a difference between the discomfort of growth and the frustration of operating in a domain that is just outside your field of competence. The marketplace Christian who consistently produces work that others find valuable, solves real problems, and creates valuable outcomes is almost certainly operating within their domain of vocation.

The second necessary factor is conviction. John Calvin taught that the gifts God distributes in creation are the fingerprints of a purposeful God on the lives he has made. Think of the millennial or Gen Z who would not work for a tobacco company or refuse to invest in a company involved in fossil fuels because of their convictions about global warming.

The third factor is the evidence of fruit over time. Jesus told his disciples that a tree is known by what it produces. The marketplace Christian who is genuinely operating in their calling will find, over time, that their work produces outcomes that exceed what their talent alone would predict.

When pursued faithfully over time, vocation tends to produce a particular kind of compounding return that is recognisable to those who are paying careful attention.

The fourth factor is confirmation, which is either direct or indirect. The fact that someone pays you for what you help them achieve, or that you even grow through your work and have joy, is an indirect form of confirmation.

But the most trusted direct confirmation usually comes from the community of other believers, marketplace Christians who can tell that God wants to work through you in a certain vocation.

Because just as Paul’s calling was confirmed by the church at Antioch, and Timothy’s gifts were recognised and named by a community of elders, the marketplace Christian who senses a calling to a particular arena should be testing that sense against the observations of people who know them well.

Therefore, if you feel God is calling you to a certain vocation, test yourself against these conditions:

1. Do I derive joy from that activity?

2. Am I meeting the needs of my clients/customers?

3. Am I competent in that line of work?

4. Does the business conflict with core aspects of my faith?

5. Have I consistently produced good fruit over time in that field?

6. Have other marketplace Christians confirmed my calling in that business?

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Some people think transformation will come, while others think it is within their power (harnessing tangible and intangible resources) to build it. In either case, personal beliefs are consequential because everything in the universe is a manifestation of some belief.

The beliefs we hold about ourselves, others, what matters, and what’s beyond us form the frame behind everything we are or become. That’s why your worldview matters (a topic for another day).

For now, let’s address some questions about the future, and no, it’s not about AI. The whole world is concerned about it and rightly so, but just like money, AI isn’t everything.

What do you believe about your potential, risk, failure, or destiny, because the beliefs you negotiate today will determine the story you tell tomorrow.

1. Should I only pursue what I’m passionate about?

What you believe about the relationship between your passion and your ability to provide will determine whether you build a business, career or just collect expensive hobbies.

Steve Jobs is a pioneer for those who believe in following their passions. Watch his famous speech again, and you’ll see just how unique his life was.

It’s fair to say that only passionate people change the world. Except that not everyone will be an inventor or lead the movement for new cultures, as Steve Jobs did.

I will not bore you with statistics about startup failure rates or Hollywood dreamers who never made it. But believe me, if you’re inclined towards a stable life, passion is a terrible counsellor. If you follow it and are unsuccessful later, someday your rent will be due, and you’ll hate that you’ve been thinking about some lofty idea and not your survival or convenience.

Chris Rock grew up watching his parents work gruelling jobs to keep the lights on. His father was a truck driver and a newspaper deliveryman who worked two jobs, but today he’s one of the most accomplished comedians in the world. Comedy isn’t even a stable business, but one of those ‘passion careers’ with its share of danger (yeah, that Oscars slap), so despite experiencing hardship in childhood, he chose the field anyway.

It makes sense to think twice about following your passion, especially since Chris Rock, who’s asking you to do so, has seen both sides of the career coin. It also makes sense because the marketplace doesn't care about your passion, but about the problem you solve (more about this in a bit).

Just know that if there’s no demand for what you love doing, you’re left with a hobby with serious overhead.

2. What actually determines whether I’ll finish what I start?

Everybody grapples with this one, and far too many of us do that naturally by trying to escape it.

I propose you answer this question instead: Do you believe you can handle the pain long enough until you succeed?

One might think that, since Hormozi has built his fortune owning gyms, he’s referring to physical pain. No. This means there’s a predictable pattern in achievement: everyone starts excited, most people quit when competence plateaus, and only those who can endure boredom and discomfort cross the finish line.

Sometimes, things don’t go as planned, so expanding our capacity to stay in the game when every impulse wants to quit is equally as important as any other skill necessary for success.

3. What’s the real cost of playing it safe?

Every moment we spend protecting ourselves from failure is a moment we’re trading away from possibility. Risk and regret are both forms of pain, but only risk carries possibility. Risk is futuristic; if it turns out well, you win, if not, you lose or learn, but at least you face a future possibility head-on. Regret, on the other hand, is centred on the past; you look back on your life and see things you wished you had done differently.

If that sounds a little too serious, know that we don’t necessarily face life-altering risks or regret every day, but at transitional moments in our lives, entering adulthood, birthing a child, going to college, getting married and so on. The choice is almost always ours to make, albeit there may be pressures and influences.

Ultimately, what you believe about risk will determine what opportunities you even allow yourself to see.

4. When have I actually failed beyond recovery?

Willink spent decades in the SEALs learning that the only unrecoverable failure is the one you accept as permanent. To be fair, men like Willink spent years training to be both mentally and physically strong, while most of us dread ever having to endure anything like such training.

That said, the fact remains that everything else, bankruptcy, rejection, humiliation, defeat, is just data if you choose to use it that way. They are all impermanent unless we make them otherwise. In fact, all things, including fortune and success, are impermanent. There once was a Vanderbilt, Tesla, Jobs, Newton, Maradona, Einstein, name them all. We live, and we die; we just do both differently, and these two are the only certainties in the human experience.

I am learning that the story I tell myself about my past matters infinitely more than what actually happened. What we believe about our failures is a hallmark of our lives.

5. How do I actually grow when I’m already overwhelmed?

Here’s something practical from Tony Robbins: “Take 15 minutes out of your day and decide you’re going to go for microlearning. Decide you’re going to learn what matters, something pragmatic, something valuable.”

It’s easy to think that transformation means assuming a new life and getting rid of the old one, like burning down a pile of utterly useless rubbish. But if we’re being practical, it has a lot to do with the things we’re learning every day. And you don’t acquire a massive amount of impactful information in one day; if our brains were wired that way, everyone would have IQ scores above 200, and college degrees would take months, not years.

It could be 15 minutes or 1 hour in an online class, do it!

6. What does it take to build something that actually matters?

According to Sam Corcos, “If you want to build an average company, you can just do average things. But if you want to build an extraordinary company, you have to try new things.”

Corcos co-founded Levels, a health tech company challenging how we think about metabolic health, by doing what many people thought unnecessary, making continuous glucose monitoring accessible to everyday people, not just people with diabetes. How’s that for thinking outside the box?

Average results come from average beliefs about what’s possible. If you want your work to matter, you have to believe that the rules everyone else follows aren’t laws of nature. They’re all negotiable.

7. Where does true influence come from?

Take it from the greatest quarterback of all time. He proved his beliefs about excellence through two decades of relentless consistency and seven Super Bowl rings.

Our beliefs are constantly on trial, and our daily choices are easily the evidence that counts. We can claim to have discipline while hitting snooze, claim we believe in integrity while cutting corners, in excellence while doing just enough.

Today’s influencer culture has many people taking pictures in gyms without breaking a sweat. If that’s who you are, you have no business with integrity.

8. How do I position myself for the future I want?

Ken Coleman shares an obvious secret: “To do what you want to do, you’ve got to be around people that are doing it and in places where it is happening.”

Academics have argued for decades about whether nature is stronger than nurture. That’s because there are merits on both sides of the argument. The point Coleman is making here is that our environments are determinative

You can read every book, watch every video, attend every webinar, but if you’re surrounded by people who think small, you’ll think small. Your beliefs about what’s achievable are constantly being negotiated by the people you spend the most time with and the spaces you occupy.

9. What builds genuine confidence?

Shawn Meaike gets to the core: “The greatest thing for your self-image by far is work.”

Affirmations and visualisations are good, but working something out is just better because more than saying or imagining things, you have results to prove you’re capable. That’s what work gives you, proof and if done well, irrefutable proof.

And yes, it sounds like a transactional view of humanity, but the human experience is itself filled with all forms of exchanges.

10. Are we truly equal if we have different outcomes?

One problem with considering work as a means of identity formation is reconciling worth with results. This quote is a favourite of mine on this matter. Simply put, our intrinsic value has little, if anything, to do with our market value, because we all have equal worth or dignity.

But the economics of building wealth are subject to different considerations, the primary one being that the marketplace doesn’t pay for worth; it pays for value delivered. And in this, there’s no injustice except that which is perceived.

You can believe you deserve success, but if you don’t deliver value to the next person, you get nothing. On the other hand, you can believe that your worth as a human being is secure regardless of your socioeconomic outcomes, while still pursuing excellence.

Since the beginning, the marketplace has always rewarded us for our contributions, not for who we are, but we can all be contributors.

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Now thirteen seasons in and with several awards, one of my favourite episodes remains Hallelujah (episode 7, season 1).

The host, Malcolm Gladwell, uses Cézanne as a prime example of what economist David Galenson calls “experimental innovation,” the opposite of conceptual genius (represented by Picasso).

Cézanne would spend months on a single painting. He’d arrive at his studio before dawn, prepare his canvas, and study the same mountain, the Mont Sainte-Victoire, which he’d painted dozens of times before. He’d apply a few strokes, step back, observe the hill again, and sometimes scrape away what he’d just painted. He was that intent on bringing most of his inner paintings to material life.

He did version after version, “iteration after iteration, trying to stumble on something that seized his imagination,” says Gladwell. For example, the fourth portrait of his wife, Gladwell says, is actually less finished than his second and third versions because he’s not marching toward completion in the conventional sense.

By the time he died in 1906, he had abandoned more works than he finished because he never stopped trying to grasp what his mind saw and told him was possible.

The other genius featured in the episode is Leonard Cohen. He wrote more than eighty verses for “Hallelujah” and performed various versions in concerts, testing them against his mental image of what the song could be.

I’m narrating these stories because they’re interesting enough to compel me to theorize a lesson or two on their applications for talent development. But I’ll admit that there’s some obsession in both of them. I mean, Cézanne once made 100 sittings with his art dealer (instead of five) and didn’t sign many of his paintings because he didn’t want to admit he’d finished them.

Many of us cannot afford the luxury of countless iterations like Cézanne.

We have deadlines. Bosses, clients, projects, and other demands are cataloged with imminent delivery dates in our heads. We usually complete the work as soon as possible.

For some people, that’s okay, but for a good number of others, that’s not what we want from our work. We want our outputs to bring us pride in the present and the future.

If you often feel a nagging sense that something you did could have been better, that if you’d had one more day, one more revision, you would have done it differently. Or, more like, the work you submitted isn’t quite what you wanted to submit. It only means one thing: you did not realize your creative ambitions, even if the job met the brief.

Why?

How the mind iterates

First, let’s talk about how the mind makes us productive.

The mind typically engages in a back-and-forth with the hand or whatever instruments serve its creative desires. It generally forms an initial image of a thing, which it updates as the object is created.

I think that when Cézanne finally walked away from a painting, it was likely because his mind had stopped arguing with his canvas. The image in his head that had been evolving with each brushstroke had settled.

Let me explain.

There’s something called a “taste gap,” the distance between what you can recognize as excellent work and what you can actually produce. “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners,” Ira Glass says. “All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple [of] years you make stuff, it’s just not that good... Your taste is why your work disappoints you.”

The taste gap theory helps explain part of your dissatisfaction: you can envision better work than you can execute. Our internal standards exceed our current capabilities, particularly when we’re relatively inexperienced in our fields.

But that’s not all.

With every creative project, a presentation, an essay, a design, or a strategy, your brain begins forming a prediction, an evolving image of what the output could be. Neuroscientists call this “predictive processing.”

Your brain is constantly generating predictions about what should happen next, then comparing those predictions to what you’re actually building. When there’s a mismatch, your brain either updates the prediction or tries to change reality.

It’s really just iteration!

You have an initial idea of what you want to make. You start making it. As you work, your brain gets feedback, which refines your mental image of what the work should be. The duty of your hand or feet, as the case may be, is to catch up with your mind’s eye.

Cézanne was fond of doing this. In fact, he enjoyed it! Each brushstroke told his brain what to do next, though he sometimes destroyed what he didn’t like in his work. The entire process gave his mind clearer information about what his painting should be in reality. And he kept painting until his prediction stopped and the image in his head aligned with the one on the canvas.

The same with Cohen and “Hallelujah.” Each performance, each revision, each new verse gave him feedback until the gap between what he heard in his head and the song he wrote and played (prediction error) was small enough that he could stop.

We can think of this kind of satisfaction as resonance, the moment when what we hear, read, see, or feel matches what’s in our mind.

Taste gaps and prediction errors result in cognitive tension

Some deadlines will be too tight for you to make multiple drafts or revisions, but when you have to submit something before your prediction has stabilized, your brain doesn’t stop forming that image.

Your execution didn’t match your mind’s ambition for the job (the taste gap) because your internal standard was still forming, but you stopped before it could finish.

Some psychologists have identified stages that may help us better understand the mind-reality gap. They are:

• preparation

• incubation

• illumination, and

• verification.

If you compress or skip incubation, the period during which your mind processes several possibilities for your work, even if you hit illumination (your “aha” moment), chances are that your mind won’t have adequate verification (testing, refining, and aligning your execution with your vision).

By the time you’ve submitted that rushed work and are free from anxiety, you’ll likely have a prediction error, a mismatch between what your brain predicted the work would be and what you actually produced. Add prediction errors to your taste gap, and you’ll be dealing with cognitive tension.

Why?

Because your brain doesn’t like unresolved gaps, it will bother you with all sorts of: This isn’t quite right. You could have done it differently. There’s a better version you didn’t have time to find.

Another psychological explanation for this is the Zeigarnik Effect, which states that unfinished tasks occupy more mental space than completed ones. Your brain registers every rushed work, even though it’s technically “done,” as incomplete because it hadn’t closed the prediction loop when you submitted your work. In other words, you finished the task, but not the mind’s creative process.

Despite that, when it comes to mental things, there’s hardly ever one or two sufficient explanations, so while I was ruminating on this article, I asked myself, what else might be involved?

You see, there’s a choice dimension here, too, that explains why we could be dissatisfied with a job we completed.

According to Barry Schwartz, people who constantly imagine alternative possibilities experience greater regret. When you rush through a task for which you didn’t explore alternatives, your brain is unhappy because it thinks that the other options you could have tried but didn’t would have been better.

Perfectionism is the fear of judgment or the need for everything to be flawless. This is instead about creative ambition, our innate desire to realize our best work when we give our minds the time and resources it requires.

Again, why isn’t this perfectionism?

It isn’t because the problem I’ve discussed here isn’t merely a matter of high standards, but failure to allow our minds enough time to settle on what the standards should be, and our hands, feet, or whatever else we use enough time to meet them.

Whenever possible, never rush your work

People like Cézanne and Cohen iterate so much that it becomes second nature.

They don’t rush the prediction loop but allow their vision to evolve. They iterate not out of indecision but out of respect for the process their brain is running, and they know that the first version of an idea is rarely the clearest, that mental image needs time to refine, and that execution requires revision to catch up.

Though many of us make presentations, write reports, design, pitch, and develop strategies, the same process applies. Your brain predicts an output that evolves as you work. If you iterate, your execution will eventually align with your vision. And your satisfaction increases only as the prediction error shrinks.

If you have an ambitious mind, your prediction won’t stop evolving because a deadline is looming over you.

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I’ve been learning about him and consuming much of his content lately. This article is based on lessons he shared in a short clip.

It was Jim Rohn, his mentor, who said it so clearly that it reset his mind, and it doesn’t matter what aggrieved Marxist armchair philosophers say in response; it’s absolutely true:

Tony Robbins eventually became a millionaire at 24 and a billionaire at 63.

In the 39 years in between, he’s been mastering a simple three-process system essential to wealth creation:

1. Pattern recognition: seeing what many people miss.

2. Pattern utilization: using the patterns you’ve recognised optimally.

3. Pattern creation: creating new patterns and categories that other people will copy.

That’s it!

Patterns!

This doesn’t mean watching out for new trends or new ways to make money.

The point Tony Robbins makes is that, to build wealth, your sole focus must be on becoming more valuable and doing more for others than anyone else in your field.

Someone else put it this way: the person offering the most value in a niche wins.

The mindset to take here is that wealth is a mathematical certainty for those who increase their marketplace value, because that’s the fundamental difference between us all. Other than that, as creatures of God, we’re all equal.

Here's precisely how Tony Robbins used those three patterns to build an empire.

Pattern recognition

One thing he noticed while working with Jim Rohn was a lack of access to Rohn’s speeches.

Tony learned early on that there’s much information in the world, but not much wisdom. He was convinced more people needed to hear Jim Rohn, but couldn’t afford the seminars.

The pattern was: transformational content limited to seminars alone leaves a massive gap of interested, low-budget customers.

While other students took notes and went home inspired, Tony saw an opportunity. He started promoting Rohn’s seminars and learning the personal development business from practice.

By the late 1980s, infomercials were considered low-rent advertising for domestic gadgets. Tony recognized that millions of people wanted transformation but couldn’t afford Rohn’s seminars. They were price-sensitive but hungry for transition. So, late-night TV was an untapped direct-to-consumer channel for premium personal development.

This way, transformation could be democratized without diluting value. The infomercials generated millions of customers who never would have attended a live event. It provided the same content, in a different format, to an exponentially larger market.

When that proved its success, he recognised another pattern: high-ticket sessions.

While other coaches charged $500 to $5,000 per session, Tony thought that at certain wealth levels, people stop being price-sensitive and become obsessed with results. A CEO making $50 million a year doesn’t care if intervention costs $1 million. They cared about the outcome.

Tony positioned himself accordingly, selling private interventions, million-dollar engagements to presidents, athletes, and Fortune 500 CEOs. He didn’t create this pattern, but just recognized it and positioned himself to serve it.

But perhaps the most essential pattern recognition came later: the compound business model.

Most speakers build one business. They speak, they get paid, and they go home, or if they could, write a book. Tony Robbins has applied his methodology (frameworks, psychology, and transformation systems) across multiple industries, from nutrition and resorts to financial services and technology.

It’s the same personal brand, but with multiple revenue streams that reinforce one another.

According to one account, Tony is involved in over 100 companies, totalling over $7 billion in annual revenue.

The fundamental secret to Tony Robbins’ success is that he recognizes patterns and capitalizes on them earlier and more effectively than other motivational speakers.

“You’re rewarded in public for what you constantly practice intensely in private,” Tony says. By this statement alone, we may say that he practices pattern recognition obsessively.

Pattern utilization

Noticed how he acts on the patterns he sees?

Tony Robbins is also very good at content multiplication.

Before YouTube, a weekend seminar became an audio tape series. The tape series became a book. The book became a TV special. The TV special became streaming content. Now with YouTube, you can easily watch his recorded or live sessions online, and the platform pays him. Same as Mr Beast or other influential YouTubers.

Except that his content becomes a certification program in which his trainers deliver his methodology. And that’s not all: the certification program becomes a licensing model in which partners use Tony’s frameworks.

One weekend event but ten revenue streams. I’ve seen this content revenue ladder applied by many coaches and consultants today. It’s efficient.

It’s systematic pattern utilization. Every piece of content serves multiple purposes simultaneously. It’s similar to how a talk/article doesn’t generate book sales, coaching inquiries, partnership opportunities, and media appearances.

Take one of his programs, named after his book, “Unleash the Power Within.”

Tony creates a transformational weekend for participants who practice his signature habit, Firewalk, which, in turn, drives viral word-of-mouth/influencer marketing. The program’s venue selection ensures a broad reach. His trained crew means events can run several times per year without him being present at every session.

One of the things I found really interesting about this is that he generates revenue through strategic partnerships, which is his most effective strategy.

He knows that his brand has value (pattern recognition). Instead of building companies for each interest from scratch, he utilizes his brand value by partnering with the founders of existing companies he’s interested in.

Resort companies provide infrastructure for the immersive events he hosts. Nutritional companies provided products aligned with his health methodology, and financial service firms offer wealth management systems.

Each partner brings existing assets.

The lesson?

When you find a pattern, think about how many times or in what ways you can use it. If each variation creates value, you will earn a decent income from each one.

Best of all?
You do not need to own all the resources you need.
If I have a valuable brand, you can partner with resource owners.

Brands like Tony Robbins are highly credible, which means they deliver what they promise. They depend on their credibility to be sustainable, because “What you need is to get results. There’s no better marketing tool than results. Then you’ll not just have attention, you’ll have raving fans,” he said.

Someone who’s earned good results working with a president has proof for the next CEO client, just as A coach whose athlete wins a championship has a case study for other athletes.

Each result becomes evidence for the next engagement because, again, “credibility kills all bad attitudes,” Tony says.

Ultimately, the goal is to create a system that multiplies your success.

Pattern creation

“The third skill,” Tony says, “the one you want to get to, is pattern creation. That’s when you become the greatest of all time in your particular category.”

Decades ago, “coaching” meant sports. Coaches trained athletes. That was the category.

Tony Robbins popularised a new industry entirely: the life coach through the RMT Center (Robbins-Madanes Training). Now thousands of coaches operate in a market that didn’t exist before 1990.

That’s pattern creation or, as others would call it, category creation. When you create or popularise a category, you own or lead it.

Perhaps the most effective way Tony Robbins achieved this was by launching the weekend format.

Motivational speakers and coaches often offered two options: therapy (long-term, weekly sessions) or seminars (informational, one-time events). But Tony Robbins introduced a package model, a 50-hour immersive transformation experience at a priced location.

The people who really wanted it and could afford it paid a premium rate.

Tony Robbins also created “Date With Destiny,” a seven-day deep psychological experience in which participants revisit childhood trauma, rebuild their belief systems, and redesign their entire life trajectory.

The brand Tony Robbins has built is so valuable that there’s little to no competition to it. Various coaches like Daniel Priestly, Alex Hormozi, Steven Bartlett, and Rich Litvin have built successful businesses and sold bestsellers, but it’s rare to see direct competition to Tony’s events.

I watch Tony Robbins on YouTube, and that’s it. The total experience from his events remains unexperienced. That’s to say, how much has been put into building the brand and the experience.

That’s the power of pattern creation.

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But on the other hand, there’s you who might think because you have a mountain of constraints and mockers, that it’s on you to save yourself.

Well, take this in good stride.

The Roman arena where the metaphor ‘Man in the Arena’ originates wasn’t just a place for lone warriors.

Gladiators actually formed support groups called “collegia,” with leaders and guardian deities. These brotherhoods made sure fallen fighters received proper funerals and their families were cared for.

So you see, even in the harshest of settings, soldiers understood you’re never truly fighting alone.

The point Roosevelt made in his famous speech, which ancient gladiators demonstrated, is that the ‘arena’ calls for courage but is not opposed to support.

The famous passage from Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly;
who errs, who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;

but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst, if he fails,
at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls
who neither know victory nor defeat.

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Every question tackles a common challenge, and each answer offers the wisdom you need to move past it.

Some of these statements are not universally applicable, so feel free to take what applies to you, but the chances that they all apply to you in equal measure are high.

1. When should I share my new business idea with others?

Sara Blakely says, “Ideas are the most vulnerable in the moment you have them. And it’s also people’s instincts to share the idea in the most vulnerable stage.”

Here’s what she did long before she started the women’s clothing line that made her a billionaire.

“I waited a year before I told any friends or family what I was working on because I didn’t want ego to get involved too early. When ego gets involved, you end up spending your time defending it or explaining it instead of pursuing it.”

In Nigeria, we say, “Resist the urge to shalaye [explain] because you go explain taya [exhausted].”

Give your idea a chance to succeed before you kill it with feedback.

2. How do I deal with people who don’t believe in me?

Take it from Amira Sajwani:

“I don’t listen to [doubters] because I have a father who believes in me, a husband who’s supportive, and brothers that are amazing.”

3. What should I do when I’m uncertain about my next move?

This is the first quote from Alex Hormozi in this edition.

When it comes to literal practical advice on what decisions to make during those long periods of waiting on your expectations, Hormozi nails it: “Build capacity... only people with capacity can both recognize and capitalise on [opportunities].”

4. How can I turn change into an advantage?

The entertainment industry is likely the most dynamic industry. James Keyes has made many fortunes from the film industry, and he knows how to deal with change.

He says:

The “CEO is all about change equals opportunity. If I respond to this change, and others don’t, I’m going to turn that into shareholder value. So, change can be positive if you manage it in a positive way.”

5. Do I need to stay consistent with who I’ve always been?

Sometimes, the person who started a business may not be the same person who can scale it. As Kayla Itsines says, “You are under no obligation to be the same person that you were yesterday.”

6. Why shouldn’t I put off today’s work until tomorrow?

Thomas Kehinde warns:

You need to know that action also compounds. It’s called momentum. For instance, the entrepreneur who does something good today has 24 more hours of progress than the one who waits until tomorrow.

7. What’s the ultimate goal for building wealth?

You’ve likely heard quotes like this about making passive income. The idea is solid, though I think many people get it wrong: passive income is generated by active assets. More on that another time.

For now, the fundamental difference between a job and a business is between trading time for money and building systems that generate value independently.

8. Should I trust others or trust myself?

Billy Ray Tailor shares this perspective:

“Believe in you. If a bird lands on a branch, does the bird trust the branch or does it trust its wings? I’ve seen many birds land on branches, but what I’ve never seen is a branch break, and the bird fall and die.”

9. Should mental health always come first in the pursuit of success?

This one is controversial, but then it’s Mr Beast: “If my mental health were a priority, I wouldn’t be as successful as I am today.”

In short, every path requires sacrifice, so choose what matters most in your present.

10. Why isn’t my business getting the attention it deserves?

Todd Johnson says, “Everybody needs you. They don’t just know who you are. So your job is to identify who those people are, get to the highest mountaintop that you can, and tell them who you are.”

11. How do I handle competition in my market?

Dean Graziosi shares a secret:

12. How should I respond to critics and naysayers?

If you can, dismiss them like Codie Sanchez because “only empty hands point fingers.”

13. How should I approach each day of my life?

Tony Stephens will be the first to tell you:

14. What’s the point of hiring intelligent people?

Steve Jobs is legendary, so listen:

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

15. When do market leaders become vulnerable?

Mike Repole says, “When the big guy on top gets a little too comfortable, the starving entrepreneurs are gonna eat their launch.”

16. Do I need to be the smartest person in the room?

You may not.

17. What’s the timeframe for building lasting wealth?

James Dumoulin has interviewed hundreds of millionaires and billionaires. He says, “The richest people in the world? They think in generations, not days.

18. How do I choose which goals to pursue?

Alex Hormozi will challenge you:

“No matter what your goal is, you will suffer to achieve it. So pick a goal big enough [that] it’s worth suffering for.”

19. How do I handle rejection in sales?

Muhammad Binghatti is a billionaire realtor.

20. What’s the difference between being an employee and being the boss?

Ralph Waldo Emerson made the distinction many years ago.

“The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who knows why will always be his boss.”

21. Is having a dream enough?

Not according to Thomas Kehinde.

22. How do I know when I’m truly ready to take action?

Take it from Thomas Kehinde again, “When you’re ready, you don’t delay. You don’t procrastinate anymore.”

23. Should inexperience hold me back from starting?

Adryan, a 13 Year Old Barber, says:

“A lot of people see my age and get scared, saying they don’t want a cut. I tell them, if I mess you up, I’ll fix it. Trust the process. Just take the risk, it’s always worth it.

24. Why don’t I see immediate results from my efforts?

Reid Hoffman created LinkedIn. He says, “Most people don’t think about how you compound in ten years... and that’s how you create something that’s epic. It changes industries.”

25. Does wealth have a specific look or background?

Ashley Fox affirms it doesn’t. She says:

26. What’s the most important investment I can make in my company?

Vinod Khosla states simply: “The team you build is the company you build.

27. What are the three essentials for entrepreneurial success?

Sara Blakely breaks it down: “Solve a problem, bet on yourself, and have fun.”

28. How can I ensure my business survives long enough to thrive?

De’el Woods says, “Stay [spend] small enough, long enough, you’ll be big enough, soon enough.”

29. How do I attract more success to my business?

You’ve seen Muhammad Binghatti in this list earlier, but here’s another nugget for you:

30. What weakens my resolve and commitment?

Hear it from another billionaire, Tony Robbins, “Negotiation with yourself makes you weak.

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To walk this earth
This way, and to say
That took you what’s yours
As your victims wailed away
And you bore no hope
Of death snatching over you

To walk this earth
That way, you - by way of evil.

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It’s a play about a wealthy Ghanaian family. The father has compelled his children into careers they don’t want. Aaron wants to be a graphic artist. Maanan dreams of dancing. Their father wants an engineer and a lawyer instead.

The entire play unfolded in one location: the family house. The drama was resolved within a single day, and a single central conflict drove the resolution (ending).

I didn’t like the play because I thought, why would someone write a play that ends like that?

We didn’t see the characters going to bed or travelling to another city, but the play was compelling enough for a complete reading in less than an hour.

I recall my teacher explaining that De Graft employed Aristotle’s three unities: action, time and place. One main plot in one location over one day. The play was included in the national curriculum, so it was worth our learning we had been told.

As for the structure of the play, these were the classical rules of drama, the framework that made Greek tragedies so intense and engaging.

Fast forward to this day. I’m considering increasing my daily output so I can improve outcomes for my clients.

What if, I thought, there’s some productive insight to learn from that structure of Greek drama?

Unity of action, time, and place

Aristotle’s three unities, which Sons and Daughters reminds me of, were one of the strongest impressions of a 24-hour conceptual force I could recall.

What does this have to do with productivity?

But first, let me clarify a misconception.

What Aristotle actually said about a Greek tragedy is that a play should focus on one main storyline (unity of action) without meandering subplots, and casually added that tragedies tend to occur within “one revolution of the sun.”

It was not until the 16th and 17th centuries that Renaissance Italian and French critics began attributing a rigid “three unities” framework to Aristotle.

French dramatists like Racine and Corneille picked up these rules with utmost devotion, creating tight, intense dramas in which everything happened now, here, with these stakes.

It adopts the notion that tragedy befalls people suddenly and is concluded quickly.

And though Aristotle never said tragedies needed to occur in one place, they took his hints and turned them into a tradition that De Graft followed.

In contrast, Shakespeare wrote his plays however he wanted. His plays span years and continents, juggle multiple storylines. That’s why it takes several subplots, characters, divine interventions, or deus ex machina (using a machine to lower an actor portraying a god onto the stage), and so on to pull off a Shakespearean piece.

What makes the unity of time, place, and action effective, especially for smaller plays, is that the constraints it imposes intensify the story.

That is, if you can’t escape to another location or delay until tomorrow, you must confront everything immediately.

As with other things in life, some deadlines are inevitable.

You must finish certain bits of work at the office or at an exhibition, the market, or wherever else your job takes you within a day to claim success.

Some people approach their jobs like soap operas, as if they have the entire season to achieve one thing and go on pushing tasks forward.

They act as if all their work is inextricably tied to that of others, to the point that they permit others to enter and exit their schedules at random.

In one day, you’re at the office, at a client’s, and later, at home. Endless subplots. Shifting locations. Day after day without resolution.

No matter how organised you are, this kind of structure isn’t optimal because you’re trying to create focused work in a format designed for perpetual distraction.

All of that comes at a measurable cognitive cost. Research shows that the average knowledge worker switches between apps nearly 1,200 times per day, losing about four hours each week just reorienting themselves.

When you switch contexts, it takes an average of 23 minutes to fully regain focus. This “context switching” reduces productivity by up to 40% and costs the global economy an estimated $450 billion annually.

Making a workday as intense as a Greek tragedy

Cal Newport calls it “Deep Work.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it “Flow.” But the core insight is similar.

You accomplish meaningful work every day when you impose dramatic constraints.

So instead of treating your day like a soap opera, structure one part of it like a Greek tragedy.

If you do not have ample control over your workday, planning to control every aspect would be unrealistic.

Create a 4-hour “act” with its own unities.

Research on focus and productivity suggests starting with smaller blocks (90 minutes to 4 hours) and gradually building up your capacity for sustained concentration.

Who knows? If making the most of your day through this practice increases your productivity, you might gain a promotion, which could give you greater control over your workdays.

Unity of Action

Choose to start your day with one key or primary task (the protagonist). This one gets the dramatic priority.

This one must be urgent and important.

This is the task that, if achieved, will make your day successful and determine the weight of the secondary functions for that day.

Everything else is either:

• Small tasks that directly advance the main task

• Background or admin work

• Different play entirely (defer it)

If you have a project for which you must commit 20 work hours, divide it into acts of no more than 4 hours each work day. You can complete secondary tasks using the time remaining after your primary task is completed.

Once you achieve this core action (plot) within your allocated time, the curtain closes.

Unity of Time

Greek tragedies resolved by sunset.

Your morning act needs a hard deadline.

Set a specific time window: “This drama runs from 9 AM to 1 PM.” Not “I’ll work on this today.” Not “whenever I finish.”

It should be a time block of 90 minutes (minimum) to 4 hours (maximum).

When the timer ends, the curtain falls. This compels you to complete the task you choose within this period.

Whatever state you’re in becomes the resolution, complete, incomplete, or somewhere between.

The play will end when you’re out of time, so you’d better make each scene count.

Unity of Place

In Greek tragedy, the stage doesn’t change. You can’t escape to a different location when things get hard. This constraint should compel you to finish your protagonist task in that location before you leave.

This is a primary location, not necessarily a spot. If you’re spending the day at the office, it doesn’t mean you can’t use the toilet or heat your food in the kitchen.

What’s important here is the effect that leaving this space has on your primary task. If you change location, would the drama pause or, worse, end abruptly?

The essence of this constraint is to prevent you from exercising negative freedom, doing anything you want or feel like that isn’t your core task.

Designate a physical or digital stage for your key task of the day.

This might be:

• A specific room, chair, or workstation

• A full-screen application with all other tabs closed

• Noise-canceling headphones that block out all noise

Make your success inevitable

The three unities create what the Greeks called inevitability.

When characters can’t escape their location or expand time, and when the plot can’t be broken into subplots, everything becomes essential. Every action matters. Every moment counts.

This is exactly what happens in deep work or flow states.

Csikszentmihalyi defined flow as a state where people are “so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.” You’re characterized by intense concentration, integrated action and awareness, and a distorted sense of time (not 8 or 24 hours, but 4 hours at most).

You wake up every day and enter a bounded space and time with a clear focus, so that the only thing you can do is to accomplish something, not to procrastinate or move about like you own the place, but to get one thing done.

One scene (smaller action) leads to the next, and your work builds momentum, tension, and narrative arc.

The narrative arc is a straightforward statement that would satisfy the curiosity of someone who asked, “What did you achieve today?”

Why?

Greek tragedies often ended in ambiguity, but were resolved. You confronted the task. You moved it forward in a meaningful way. So, there’s closure, even if the larger project continues tomorrow.

Aristotle never intended the three unities to be universal rules, but was describing what he observed in the best tragedies of his time. The best plays in his day.

In those days, speaking, acting, and dancing were all they had, so they best plays really nailed it with these unities.

As for the Renaissance critics who turned his observations into a rigid doctrine? They were accidentally right about focus. I don’t think, as some say, that Shakespeare beat them. I think Shakespeare proved that plays of his day needed to change and that his writing was better suited to his time.

In this age, we face numerous distractions and have unstructured processes that hinder our success, even at work.

The three unities may be wrongly attributed to Aristotle, but they’re at least a model for addressing the lack of structure that prevents some people from getting meaningful work done.

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How do you want to think of yourself by December 2026?

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?
Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?

Oh, a trouble’s a ton, or a trouble’s an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it,
And it isn’t the fact that you’re hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?

You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what’s that?
Come up with a smiling face.
It’s nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there -- that’s disgrace.

The harder you’re thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!
It isn’t the fact that you’re licked that counts,
It’s how did you fight -- and why?

And though you be done to the death, what then?
If you battled the best you could,
If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the Critic will call it good.

Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he’s slow or spry,
It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,
But only how did you die?

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Want a quick guide to aligning your goals with the right timing? Read this:

Justice Ellis Eyo

To win next year, double-down on what worked in the past two years

In the early days of the company, Airbnb's founders struggled to secure bookings and nearly ran out of money. They realized that the main problem was the poor quality of photos on their listings, which discouraged potential guests…

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4 months ago · 1 like · Justice Ellis Eyo

• dance (rhythm);

• sound (words);

• travel (using written work to transport us to different worlds);

• metaphoric connections (surprise and new perspectives);

• companionship (memorization); and others.

This poem, at least for me, has all except the pleasure of travel.

It’s a musical poem far older than many people today. Still, it captures a human element some people might think time has rid us of: a reverent reference to God as the creator of astonishing beauty.

Take a look at the first and last stanzas and notice the pleasure of metaphorical connections. Other pleasures you can get from every word and line.

Something so scary carries such indescribable beauty:

It is a concession that God, has made something of a mystery, giving an awe-inspiring beauty to something that would make us wet our pants at first sight.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

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I genuinely hope 2026 becomes the year things finally click for you, spiritually, professionally, all of it!

I suspect you’d like to hit the ground running this year, so here are a few quick lessons to keep at the top of mind.

The difference between those who actually transform and those who restart the same cycle isn’t about working harder or attending more church services.

I propose that changing your mindset on a couple of things by internalizing these three paradigm shifts will help a great deal:

1. Focus on one thing. You can’t fix your prayer life, career, relationships, and side hustle all in one year. Research shows that willpower is finite. So, pick ONE primary area to transform this year. Let God work there first.

You could find your calling this year if you haven’t already. Pick a problem to solve. It doesn’t have to be a new problem. It can be the one that flashes through your eyes in your current job. So, pick which problems you want to solve and trust in God.

2. Everything is learnable. If your spiritual relationship with God is low, it can improve. If it’s a problem, the correct information can solve it, find the right mentor, community, or resource, and you’ll be shocked at how quickly you can close it.

3. Take progressive action. Whether it’s prayer consistency or job applications, the person who shows up 100 times will consistently outperform the person waiting for the “perfect” moment 10 times. Note that action creates clarity, not the other way around, because it gives you feedback, breaks through analysis paralysis, and builds momentum. But it’s not just any action; take progressive action because, as Ndubuisi Ekekwe says,

As you know, the Biblical heroes weren’t the most talented; they were the most willing to exercise their faith.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers,
Justice

We’ve reached the end of another year. What “role” did you play, and which one are you ready for next year?

Don’t worry, your costumes will not matter as much as your character. Only think about the role you’re about to play.

Here’s Shakespeare:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.

Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow.

Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth.

And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part.

The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

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Around 2009, they noticed that listings in New York with professional, high-quality images received far more attention than those with blurry, low-light photos.

Chesky and Gebbia personally traveled to New York City, visited their early users’ apartments, and took high-quality photographs of the listings. They worked as photographers, customer service staff, and quality inspectors to improve the pictures.

The intensive work they did that year led to increased bookings and profitability.

Bill Gates once shared a tip that’s worth keeping in mind for all of us: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

This is a pattern that researchers have spent years quantifying, and the numbers are precise.

A 2021 study tracked 271 participants as they pursued ambitious goals. Only 10% succeeded. The other 90% not only failed but also experienced emotional distress.

There’s a particular type of delusion that infects goal-setters, especially entrepreneurs. Research shows that 81% of entrepreneurs believe their chances of success are at least 70%. What about the other 30%? They believe their chances reach 100%. However, only about 25% of businesses survive the first five years.

So just what is going on?

I’ll tell you.

Compared to employees, entrepreneurs and managers tend to overestimate their abilities, and they’re equally bad at predicting realistic timeframes for their goals.

Yes, your junior colleague might have a better instinct for timing than you. But that’s not the point.

Research has consistently shown that our brains are poor at long-term thinking. We can imagine what we’ll accomplish next week or next month with reasonable accuracy. But to predict what we can achieve in one year? As Gates said, we systematically overestimate.

“We tend to be overly optimistic about our own abilities,” says Ebuka Akara. “We think we’re smarter, stronger, and more motivated than we actually are. This leads us to set unrealistic goals for ourselves, which we fail to achieve.”

As I said in an earlier article, failing at an ambitious goal doesn’t just mean you didn’t hit your target. It also means you’re statistically likely to aim lower next time, creating a downward spiral of diminishing ambition.

So why not set a steady 2X goal that’s aligned with a realistic timeline?

After all, it’s not the slow and steady who win the race, but those who take steady steps and are consistent enough to see it through.

But first, what’s wrong with ambitious 10x annual goals?

Set a 10X goal at your own risk

Nicolas Cole recently stated in a goal-setting mastery session that when you set a 10X goal in a year, you’re not making a single leap forward. You’re making five different deviations of difference, each requiring fundamentally different skills, systems, and capabilities.

Of course, it makes sense for motivational speakers to hype you. You don’t believe in yourself, that’s why you tuned in to hear someone tell you what’s possible.

Let’s say this year you couldn’t take a gym membership, and it makes you feel bad. You tell yourself you have to do so next year. You’ve seen your friends doing it, training often and staying in shape as they pose on their WhatsApp status and Instagram reels, and you think, why not you?

So, you set a goal to go to the gym every day for 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening. You’ll adjust your calendar to make it happen. You write it down and listen to beast-mode music to keep yourself motivated.

Well…

Someone else in a similar position who decides to use the gym only once or twice per week would need different habits to make it work. They could choose to exercise at the gym only on weekends. That person needs discipline.

But if you are going from 0 to 10 times per week, you need discipline, recovery protocols, nutrition optimization, and injury-prevention strategies.

Can you get it all together in one year?

Your situation fundamentally changes with each double goal, not to mention with each 10x goal. If you set a 10X goal from your current position, you’re asking yourself to navigate five separate transformations simultaneously, without knowing what changes you’ll need to make at each level.

You can’t skip the middle by thinking bigger.

The power of doubling

What’s the alternative to 10X thinking?

Think in doubles. It sounds less ambitious, but it actually works.

Doubling five times results in 32X growth, but setting a 32X goal initially is overwhelming. Each double you achieve teaches you what’s needed for the next level and boosts your skills, systems, and confidence.

One researcher described it as compound interest for personal development: “The progress made within a single double may seem relatively modest. But the collective impact of consistent doubles over time is transformative.”

Matt Mochary has spent over 10,000 hours coaching CEOs at companies such as OpenAI, Coinbase, and Reddit. His Mochary Method recommends breaking down ambitious visions into actionable weekly commitments.

So align your timeline with the goal size. Small doubles get short timelines, typically weeks to months. Medium doubles get medium timelines: months to a quarter. Large doubles get long timelines: quarters to years.

Consider the attempts you need to make

• Have you had 10 clients in the last 2 years?

• How many attempts are needed to achieve your goals?

• How much effort would success require of you?

If you completed ten projects this year, how many proposals did you or your team submit to get those projects? How many times did you pitch your business ideas to people, and how many of them said yes?

What about the effort it will cost you to achieve your goals? Multiply your estimate by 3. Whatever you think it’ll take, just triple it.

Why?

Because you’ve never done it before, that’s literally why you’re setting it as your goal. You’ve likely got the experience and skills, but you’ve never accomplished this exact thing you’re about to attempt.

The beauty of this framework is that it accounts for what researchers call the planning fallacy, our tendency to underestimate how long tasks will take and how many attempts it will take to succeed.

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Want to ensure your goals stick? Read our companion piece on why behaviour change is the only goal worth setting.