My Favorite Habit Stack Is Hot Yoga

I’ve written a couple posts discussing chapters from Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger. This one is about Working Your Ass Off, probably my favorite because I love doing the work for my goals. I love that grind where you are making progress.

I think everyone has heard the saying “work smarter, not harder” and I hate it. I think it should be “work smarter and harder”. The whole smarter not harder concept is about finding better and more efficient ways to get things done. However, these efficiencies don’t mean you don’t have to work as hard. Figuring out a better way to do something means you can operate at a higher level; you can do more and make more progress towards your goals, your vision.

Habit stacking is a way for you to make better use of your time by doing two or more things, that make progress, at the same time. There is only so much time in the day to get things done. Habit stacking is maximizing the use of that time. That’s when you’re really working your ass off. Not wasting time is the easy stuff. We all know what a waste of time looks like and committing to not doing them is how you deal with it. Habit stacking is trickier because you are already doing something productive with your time. Now you are trying to find something else to do at the same time without screwing that up.

That is why I love hot yoga so much. It is by far my favorite habit stack for running.

Heat and mobility

I added hot yoga to my training almost a year ago and have been super happy with it. I tried it before a few times and enjoyed it but it never stuck; it wasn’t something I was considering for running. This time around, I saw it as a habit stack and it immediately snapped into focus.

It’s a no brainer that mobility is important for running.

  • Helps stride efficiency
  • Reduces risk of injury
  • Improves balance and body awareness

Yoga is a great source for mobility exercises.

Heat training is also surprisingly very helpful. Sauna sessions is a way to do it however hot yoga gets me both in a single session; that is a huge time saver. I have always been able to justify the time spent on mobility; I could never fit in regular sauna time though.

Heat gives you runner’s blood

Heat exposure, whether from a sauna or a hot yoga room, drives real adaptations that matter for runners. The biggest win is that it will increase plasma volume by 4-15%. That is the liquid part of your blood. Bumping it up improves cardiovascular efficiency. In other words, your body is more effective at delivering oxygen throughout your system.

So by changing the location of where I do stretching, I get this win for free. That is why I love hot yoga as a running habit stack.

Make more space with habit stacking

The bigger idea here isn’t just hot yoga. It’s where else you can stack two or more habits that align with your vision. Don’t forget that what you do needs to support at least one of your goals otherwise you won’t be stacking; that means watching cartoons while on the treadmill doesn’t count.

I have two main areas where I try to habit stack. The first, of course, is my running. Here my body is engaged but my mind is relatively free. I’ll pretty frequently plug into an audiobook or podcast for professional development. I also love working my way through language phrase books which I have ambitions of helping me have deeper experiences when traveling.

The second is at work. When working on a project, I am always looking to create mentorship moments at the same time. I mean if I am going to get something done, I want others to learn at the same time. That helps engineers grow while at the same time empowers teams to deal with similar projects and challenges in the future. It’s a win win for everyone involved and ultimately helps build a stronger engineering community.

Being successful at working your ass off isn’t just about banging out hours. It’s about maximizing the value of each hour you’re putting in.

Find your habit stack

If you take a look at the things you regularly do, you’ll find lots of opportunities to habit stack. A key to getting started is that it needs to be a thing you enjoy doing. Trying to learn to habit stack with something you hate is hard because you’ll get distracted by hating it and probably won’t end up doing it regularly; it probably doesn’t aligned with your vision either.

Pick a thing you do regularly and think what else can you do at the same time that aligns with your vision. Easy things to pick are ones where your mind is relatively free, like exercise, running in my case. Then it is about picking content that engages your mind that helps you make progress to one of your goals. It is okay if you can’t pay complete attention to that content; I often have to re-listen to audiobook chapters for them to sink in; it’s more for phrasebooks.

We all want more time in the day to get important things done. Habit stacking is a way to make that time. It might not be perfect but you end up making better use of the time you have. Making more progress is still making more progress than you were before.

Why compression matters in how we talk as engineers

A solution is only as good as others understand it.

I say that a lot to younger engineers that I mentor. It comes up because in software engineering, we are taught to think and reason objectively and deeply about the problems we tackle. We build complete mental models around them; track edge cases; and evaluate trade offs before coming to a decision on what to do. That’s our strength. There is another challenge though, how do we explain it to someone else?

The tendency is that we communicate everything instead of what our listeners or readers actually want or need. That forces the audience to do extra work; they have to filter all that extra… noise… and it is pretty common for them to tune out or get distracted in the process. That is a lose / lose because relevant information that an engineer worked hard to get doesn’t effectively get to those that need it.

To turn that around, engineers need to learn compression. That is the ability to take complex ideas, observations, and decisions and condense them into a short, clear message without losing the most important signal for the audience.

Compression focuses on saying what matters to the target audience and nothing more. Sometimes that means condensing a month of work into 90 seconds in order to maximize the understanding of what was accomplished.

What compression looks like

Compression is a structured and personalized method for communicating. The structure is what stays consistent and is there to help you be concise and organized. The content that you apply to it is personalized; focused on what is most important to the target audience.

The structure you pick needs to be something simple as well as appropriate for the work environment you are in. Generally, I stick to the following:

  • Outcome
    • Precisely what has happened or is happening 
  • Impact
    • Exactly why my audience needs to care
  • Context
    • Briefly why this outcome has occurred or is occurring 
  • Principle (optional)
    • The tenet, mutual contract, or cultural principle that is directly relevant

Structure forces you to organize and focus the information you are communicating. I like the above because it leads with the most important information for your audience; it starts with the punchline.

The content you apply must be tailored to the people you are talking to; it needs to be what is most relevant to them. As in, you are flipping the equation and doing all the work of filtering the information to only the bits that they care about. It is pretty common for there to be only one or two things that are truly important out of all the information you have.

That’s right. It is a tough pill for a lot of folks to swallow. There are many reasons why it is natural for engineers to want to unload all the information they have on a project or feature. However, part of the job is also making sure you don’t saturate people with that information when it isn’t important to them. When you do, you add to their information overload problems instead of providing immediate clarity. 

Here’s a quick example:

Uncompressed:
We evaluated three different approaches to handling event deduplication. The first had scaling issues, the second introduced operational complexity, and the third required changes to our ingestion pipeline…


Compressed:

  • We chose a TreeMap-based approach for deduplication
    • Outcome
  • It reduced duplicate event processing and stabilized downstream systems
    • Impact
  • Other options either didn’t scale or added operational risk
    • Context
  • We biased for simplicity over complexity
    • Principle

Compression works because it mirrors how leaders and stakeholders think. They want to understand what happened or is happening; why it matters to them; and how to reason about it going forward. Compressing the information that you have into exactly what is important to a listener or reader is how you stick the landing.

Let your audience choose where to expand

Compression ensures that your communication is efficient. When using it, the person you are talking with can then ask targeted questions on things that they want more information on. They choose where to expand.

Audience lead expansion doesn’t mean you abandon compression and unload on them after they ask questions. Continue to maintain the structure while refocusing on the area that they asked for more details on. Not only does that ensure you are continuing to provide them with only the information that they want, the structure makes your messages predictable and easier to understand.

Efficient communication is about what is efficient for the people that need the information. Different people care about different things which means you frequently need to have multiple threads of communication on the same topic. That will help ensure rapid consumption of the right information by the right people. For example

  • A product manager will ask about impact and risk
  • A principal engineer will dig into design choices and trade offs
  • A junior engineer will want to know what they are suppose to work on and how it applies to the overall project

That might sound like a lot of uninteresting work but remember, this is about sticking the landing. A solution is ONLY as good as others understand it. 

Fortunately compression is really easy for AI agents to adopt with a good prompt. A little trickier is getting the content right for different target audiences. Regardless, when you are using an agent, you must absolutely own the content that you send out. On complex projects and challenges, it doesn’t take much for an AI to get confused and do a terrible job. If you aren’t careful, you just get compressed garbage.

AI is also terrible on tone and the moment that your reader or listener thinks you are just dumping something that AI produced, your creditability drops rapidly; it takes a lot of time to recover from that kind of mistake.

Efficiency with Effectiveness

Compression is really a process for efficient communication. There is the matter of tone and tone matters. If people think you’re being the loudest voice in the room instead of being calm and cool under pressure, that is a huge distraction. That is where methodology is important. Methodology is how you behave which is important for effective communication.

BIFF is a methodology for communicating when in high conflict; its roots are in divorce and co-parenting. I think it is brilliant and can be used in professional settings with a tweak. BIFF stands for the following:

  • Brief
  • Informative
  • Friendly
  • Firm

This methodology is incredibly useful for conversations that are tense, emotional, or high-stakes because it keeps things grounded and professional. However at work, generally speaking, you don’t have that high conflict element. My tweak is to replace Firm with Focused which is intended to mean staying and steering back on topic. Don’t let the conversation wander or drift.

It is important to have both compression and a positive methodology in engineering / professional conversations. Compression helps you determine what to say. Methodology helps you determine how to say it. They create communication that is clear, calm, and effective regardless of the situation. 

How to start compressing

Compression is a skill you build through repetition. The more you practice, the more it shapes how you think about what information is important to the person you are talking to. You aren’t withholding information. Compression is not about hiding complexity. It is about respecting it by creating focus on what is important to your audience. You are filtering the noise so your listener or reader doesn’t have to.

Pick a structure that both works for you and your job. Next, when you put it into practice, pause. Think through how to structure your content. 

There are lots of places where you can start practicing compression:

  • Summarizing a completed task
  • Starting a status report with a short exec summary
  • Answering questions concisely in meetings and allowing attendees to choose where they want more details 

When you compress well, you show that you understand what you are working on well enough to extract what matters the most to your audience. You stop burying the lead. That doesn’t just make your communication more efficient. It also builds trust. It is trust that you both know the system and how to talk about it.

Don’t forget the methodology that you use to regulate your tone. You want that compressed message to be both effective and efficient. Great compression invites conversation. 

My never ending running journey from never think small

Previously, I’ve talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book, Be Useful; it is one of my favorites for guided book studies that I run at work. The second chapter, Never Think Small, is particularly good and I think about it a lot as it applies to all parts of my life. Never think small is a critical mind set that you need to adopt for how you think about things that are truly important to you; things that are central to your vision. It is what drives me from when I accomplish a goal, to going after another bigger one. It is that constant pursuit of that next thing.

There is a very practical skill to develop when you are always chasing that next thing, goal setting. Picking good goals is a must. They have to be aligned with your vision obviously but they also have to be small enough to allow for meaningful iteration. Achieving a goal in my world isn’t actually hit the next big thing. It is what I learn in the process of doing the work, all the small steps. That allows for course correction as well as discovering small serendipitous steps that I might not have otherwise found. When you are thinking big, you have to be realistic about your goals. Decompose them down into smaller practical ones that have a feedback loop. It is these small steps and feedback that help you grow.

That means there is always more to do. MORE!

I honestly love it. Never being done. It is a life long commitment to doing more that has taking me on an amazing roundabout journey with running.

Running has been a constant

It has been one of the few things that has stuck with me since my time in the Army. The reasons I have done it have evolved over time. They have ranged from mental health, discipline, identity, but most importantly joy. Running has given me a great many things and is core to who I am today.

My vision over the years has grown and sharpened or zoomed out and zoomed in as Schwarzenegger says in his book. It has also been a lot more than just races and big miles. There have been ups and downs along the way. When I started out, there were times I got hurt; there were a couple races I DNFed; and of course there were long runs I just gave up on and walked home. Successes and failures are all part of the journey but the key is that you never give up. You lean. You learn. You adapt.

Always being race ready

When I reflect on things, I am pretty sure that my starting point was a couple half marathons a year and just being out there for fun. I was enjoying racking up miles for races. Naturally, things got easier and I started to think bigger.

What if I was always half marathon ready?

That basically changed how I thought about running and when I stopped being casual about it. I changed how I trained and ultimately my lifestyle to just always being in a state where I could show up and run a half. That meant half marathons needed to stop being a big distance which meant more mileage. That is how I started loving big miles, the grind. I had non-negotiables though; things core to my vision.

  • Injury free
  • Joy

I focused on carefully adding mileage, always listening to my body, and taking care of it. I got more strict about stretching and disciplined about hitting the gym specifically for injury prevention. I was very intentional about add things that allowed me to build that mileage. Eventually always being half marathon ready became my new normal.

Goal achieved

Big mileage was starting to be interesting to me but it wasn’t fully in focus yet. I did however set my sights on marathons. I was a little nervous about that one because I tried before and got hurt. However, I was crystal clear about one thing.

I will run a marathon injury free

I didn’t care about time. It was all about completing injury free and honestly seeing how much mileage I needed to do that; the grind was now coming into focus. I remember trying to figure this out and rejecting virtually all the training plans I found. They focused on pace and speed. That was and still is counter to my philosophy on running. I listen to my body. If I can comfortably go faster, I go a little faster. If I need to go slower, I go a little slower. If I need to walk, I walk. I did my first marathon and it was injury free. With that, I achieved my goal. 

New vision unlocked: the grind

Accidentally discovering speed

While on this quest for injury free big mileage, something unexpected happened. I was proudly not giving a damn about pace or time. I became an eater of miles. I loved doing volume. Then at one of my local half marathons… I earned my first age group podium.

Surprise achievement: 3rd place

I was completely shocked. I can still remember the last half mile… wow, a lot of folks here are cheering me on. These peeps really dig their local races. I crossed the line and was curious about my time. They handed me a 3rd place medal at the timing tent.

Mind… blown

Speed was literally never in the plan. I actually kind of bucked at it because I thought it required fragile training, weight loss, and reckless intensity; all counter to my run forever lifestyle. I remember taking a selfie and sending it to my parents, thinking, I guess I am fast now.

New goal: see how fast I can get while staying injury free and keeping high volume

I’m not chasing VO2 max or short unsustainable blocks. I still firmly believe in grinding big volume and being highly durable. I am now experimenting with training sessions that push my speed and don’t screw any of that up. That is why I’ve only incorporated continuous tempo blocks. I am focused on how my body feels and letting speed emerge on its own. I’m trying to prove to myself that it is possible to have a running lifestyle that centers around:

  • Joy
  • Injury free
  • The grind

And now

  • Speed

Small steps

You don’t need to be a runner for this to apply. I talk about running a lot because that is apart of who I am. However, never think small is how we should all think about our visions. It is about one goal after another. It is the never ending cycle of achieving and growing. When you achieve a goal, celebrate the win. Then set a new one.

There is something to be said about setting smaller achievable goals. I vastly prefer them as I can nail them off in quick succession instead of big monster ones that take forever. They let me iterate, course correct, and measure progress more easily. I love taking tons of small steps for that reason. Plus they often have me discover things along the way; smelling the roses so to speak.

Struggling with goal setting is common. If you are, then try the following:

  • Check that your goals align with your vision. Good goals aren’t about achievement. They are about growth that aligns with your vision. If you have a goal that you aren’t motivated to achieve, guess what? Chances are it doesn’t support your vision. Toss it out because it is getting in the way of a goal that does.
  • Decompose your goals into smaller ones, small steps. Focus on the steps that come first. If you want to run longer but can’t then take walk breaks. Walking isn’t cheating. Small steps aren’t cheating. They get you to the next step which gets you to the next one and the next.

The size of the step doesn’t matter. Each one is growth.

Using AI to tune your running and avoid hurting yourself with Slop

AI is showing up everywhere these days. Everyone is getting told to use it but there isn’t a real solid understanding of how to use it effectively. I told myself I wouldn’t write about AI because I didn’t want to add to that chaos until I figured something out for myself. 

It is chaos at the moment. AI is incredibly powerful and is changing how the world works. However, it isn’t a hyper intelligent all knowing being. I have been seeing more and more folks using AI in their running to get training plans. When you read what it gives you, it does sound incredibly convincing and it feels like having a little AI powered coach. That’s also incredibly dangerous.

The most important thing that anyone MUST understand upfront when using an AI is that you have to be the one that is in charge. For running, AI does not have your body, your history, or your experience and it certainly isn’t there to see you running or working out. It is entirely limited to the information that you give it. If you hand it vague, shallow, or inaccurate statements about your running, it will still confidently hand you a training plan; that plan is going to be AI Slop.

The Harvard Business Review recently published a solid piece on AI slop. One of the key takeaways is that if you don’t fully control the conversation with AI, then you’ll get something that sounds great but is actually hot garbage.

For running, following the recommendations from AI slop isn’t just trying things that won’t really work for you; it is trying things that could also get you hurt. So before using AI to support your training, you need to follow some ground rules.

Rule 1: You must drive

AI will never know how your legs feel when you wake up; how your posture collapses late in a race; or how stress from your work screws with your sleep and recovery. These are things that you know by listening to your body. The AI doesn’t. Period.

That’s why the first step is being brutally clear to the AI about your goals behind running both on and off the road. For me, that has been consistently

  • Have an injury free lifestyle where I can run every day
  • Distance is always more important than speed or time
  • Consistency and sustainability are king

When… not if… the AI suggests changes to my training that puts my ability to run daily at risk, it’s a bad suggestion no matter how good the AI tries to make it sound. It isn’t aligned with my goals. I regularly push back and argue with ChatGPT, my AI of choice. AI doesn’t retain the information you give it the way you think a computer brain should. It regularly forgets my goals and the rules I set even when I create very specific project ones, a feature of ChatGPT when you have a subscription.

You need to watch for AI misbehaving like that. That is what I mean by you having to drive. When it starts to suggest things that are off or not aligning with your goals, you need to question why it did that; quite literally ask the AI why it said something you didn’t think was right. Then you can clearly identify when it has forgotten or incorrectly remembered a goal or rule and got itself confused. That’s where people get into trouble. You have to always be using your best judgment and be questioning the AI. 

Rule 2: Start with a real training plan made by experts for you

AI works best when it’s anchored to something real. A great way to do that is to bring your own training plan that supports your goals. Don’t make the mistake of asking AI to just create a plan from scratch.

If you’re newer to running or have only been running casually, it’s worthwhile working with a coach, a real expert, for a few months. Everyone’s body is different so training plans are naturally personalized. Coaches are great for helping you get started.

  • Finding routines and exercises that work for your body and your schedule
  • Learning how to listen to your body on how effort, fatigue, and recovery feels
  • Understanding what too much actually feels like and identifying when to stop

That information and your understanding is the context you give AI. Explaining your training plan and goals is pretty straightforward

  • Weekly mileage and long run structure
  • Strength and mobility exercises
  • Routines and schedules
  • Non-negotiables

How your body is feeling and how you do on your runs and at the gym is what you have to be pretty consistent with AI on. I can’t stress enough that running is deeply personal. A human coach picks up a lot on how your body reacts when they are working with you. They teach you how to listen to your body to understand those reactions. After that, they help you figure out training that is specific to you. AI can help you reason and reflect on your training but it should NEVER replace your judgment that you develop and hone from coaching.

How I use AI in my running

I’ve been using ChatGPT to help me refine my training for about six months now. I have a paid subscription and a dedicated project for it. I use it in three primary ways:

  • A daily running diary where I log mileage, effort, and how my body feels 
  • Weekly reflections based on those diary entries
  • Targeted questions about small tweaks and supplemental exercises for my training plan

The real value isn’t the answers the AI coughs up. It’s the reflection that it triggers. The weekly reviews are especially powerful. They help me spot things, both progress and challenges. I use those to decide what NOT to change. I’m intentionally very slow with adjustments.

  • Only one or two changes at most every few months
    • Enough time to see how my body adapts
  • No wholesale plan rewrites

I stay critical of ChatGPT and I swear it forgets periodically that I love running because I like to grind out a ton of miles. AI loves the wholesale rewrites; optimize everything all at once! That’s almost never what your body wants but more importantly, it isn’t what you want either. You MUST drive. Resist the urge to do big changes even if they sound good.

Adding AI to your running

For AI to help, it’s an absolute that you be in control. It is more than just chatting back and forth with it. You set the goals and the rules. You stick to those goals and rules even when the AI isn’t. You know your body better than the AI ever will. I recommend the following:

  • Before working with the AI, get some coaching for a few months
    • Coaching isn’t about training. It is about bootstrapping your knowledge and understanding
  • Start things off with the AI by giving it your non-negotiables
    • These are your goals and rules
      • In my opinion, injury prevention needs to be one
    • Be prepared to repeat them to the AI
  • Give the AI your training plan
    • It is important to start from something that is already working
  • Daily
    • Use AI as a diary to record simple entries that are focused on effort and feeling
  • Weekly
    • Review your progress with AI
      • Here is where I have found real value 
      • Ask it questions and tell it how you and your body feel
    • Remember the answers it gives are suppose to trigger self reflection
    • Be critical of it
      • It doesn’t actually have feelings

AI can be a powerful mirror but only if you’re willing to drive; be the human in the loop. Don’t be tempted by really cool ideas and suggestions that don’t align with your goals. Be firm with it and be prepared to remind it when it is ignoring your non-negotiables.

Why I leave Washington for the winter holidays

There are a lot of reasons I like to travel, especially during the winter holidays. The mental break from work when you know everyone else is off is a big one. During the winter however, I make a point of going somewhere warm that has plenty of sunshine. I usually make cracks about not liking to be cold but the reality is that I really do hate running when I am cold; that is a problem as I still need to rack up miles in the winter.

I’ve tried to deal with it with all sorts of cold weather gear but once it gets icy, I abandon the roads and trails and head to the gym for my daily grind. Anyone that tries to put in serious miles on a treadmill though knows that your sneakers will get soaked in sweat which really limits how long you can run unless you are willing to swap your kicks mid workout. 

This is where heading off somewhere warm where I can detach from work and get back onto trails has become an annual routine for me. These self designed running retreats also have surprised me in that they are great for a reset or a deload. I’m still running but just not with the same volume and most definitely without tempo paces. These retreats let me focus on the primary reasons I love running which is to be out there, appreciating my surroundings, and lost in my thoughts; kind of a contrast from life in the pain cave.

A welcome break from tempo days

I love my long runs. I love that infinite grind. Long runs give me space to think; they’re still my favorite place to spend time. To be clear, these are easy pace zone 2 runs where I can listen to my audible books or music and just run forever. However, my weekly training block doesn’t just have these kinds of runs. I have a couple “quality” tempo ones which are hell; I have no idea why people call them “quality runs”. I also have weekly weight training that usually levels me.

It is really the tempo days that get me. I know I have to do them if I want to grow but there is no getting past that they are tough as hell. They are uncomfortable and mentally demanding so when I go on holiday, I am on holiday from those too. I spend my whole vacation doing my favorite easy pace runs. I also make sure to take advantage of the places I visit by getting miles from things that aren’t part of my regular routine at home.

Swapping in swimming and hiking

Outdoor lap swimming and hiking are my top choices. Swimming and hiking are also really easy to pack for so it keeps things simple. I do like cycling and mountain biking but things get more complicated on the planning side. Plus I am still awful at fixing flats.

Lap swimming is almost an exact drop in replacement for running in terms of routine. What I love about it is that I can grind out laps just as I would with my daily runs but without any of the impact.

Hiking lets me feed that explorer side. I can confidently say that my best hikes have all come from my travels to National Parks like Zion and Volcano. Grinding uneven terrain through those trails is also great stability work.

Keeping things at that do it forever pace lets me get really amazing decompressing workouts in once or twice a day. The key is being consistent at doing the grind while not pushing the pace. That setups the deload. 

Why resets are valuable

For me, they aren’t about recovery because something is wrong or I am injured. It is actually the opposite. These resets are about keeping me running injury free.

By the end of a week long trip, my legs feel rested and I am mentally charged up to tackle my tempo and weight training blocks again. That’s the reset I love. Not a full stop; just a different routine for a short period of time so I can comeback fresh physically and mentally.

Habit stacking your vacations with training resets

Holidays and travel don’t need to be more of the same when it comes to your running and frankly some travel makes it pretty hard. Take advantage of what a location has to offer and take on a new vacation training routine. You will get all the grind while leaning into that place and letting your body reset.

Accept when your environment makes your normal impractical. Don’t force running where it doesn’t make sense. Your running isn’t going anywhere. Avoid frustrations and create win wins by experiencing different kinds of grinds that are readily available to you. Focus on getting that reset that keeps you injury free.

Improving Team Collaboration Using A Structured Session

An effective team doesn’t just get along with each other. They work together on solving problems and figuring things out. Getting along and being friendly tends to be easy while actually coming together and tackling big messy problems is hard.

At a recent leadership offsite for my pillar, we decided to take this one head on; how can we work better together. Collectively, we agreed that while our teams worked well on their own, they often operated in silos when it came to pillar wide initiatives. There wasn’t any conflict or friction between them. These silos formed from habits where everyone was just trying their best to get their work done. The pillar’s teams are strong but when multiple of them have needed to collaborate or coordinate on a larger or more complex problem, that is when things have gotten confusing around ownership, priorities, and communication.

We set aside a two and a half hour block to work through this topic as we all felt it was pretty important. At first, it was pegged to be an open conversation without any structure. The intentions were good and open conversations have their place in relationship building but from my experience, they aren’t great for fixing or improving processes. Usually they end up with few tangibles or action items and with nothing written down leading to them being easily forgotten; that would waste the session. So I put together and lead a structure session specifically designed for us to start doing things differently.

Structure without slides

Good structured sessions have activities that involve everyone. They need everyone to participate and contribute. That results in everyone being understood and shared ownership in resulting changes and improvements. It is possible to do that with open conversations but structure ensures it and is generally faster.

Don’t confuse structure with a slide deck or a lecture though. Those tend to skew participation with only a few getting involved and more multitasking. Structure has activities that have everyone participate and focused.

These activities matter. People respond well to the clarity and purpose they provide. For our session, I selected two that naturally dovetail:

  1. Start Stop Continue: A simple, familiar framework where each person reflects on what we should start doing, stop doing, and continue doing to improve how we collaborate. It’s direct and creates space for everyone to be heard while surfacing patterns
  2. Mutual Contracts: A second less common one that takes those patterns and turns them into explicit agreements on how we are going to work together in different situations. These contracts embody what we collectively define as “good collaboration” in our workplace with all of its processes and practices

Step 1: Framing at the start

We opened by being clear about the goal of improving collaboration and the two activities we were going to use to achieve it. We all wanted to have this session but it was worth stating it. Explaining the activities that we would use and how they would work sets expectations for everyone on how they will participate.

Step 2: Start Stop Continue

Everyone took 15 minutes to reflect on three questions for improving pillar collaboration:

  • What should we start doing 
  • What should we stop doing
  • What should we continue doing 

Miro, a digital white boarding tool, provides a slick template for Start Stop Continue with a built in timer. That made it easy for everyone to write their ideas on digital sticky notes and put them in the appropriate column. Only one idea was permitted per note which allowed us to quickly group together similar ones to form clusters; the patterns we were after. 

These patterns made it clear to everyone where our pillar collaborations had been working and where they had not. The next step was to formalize what we would do about it.

Step 3: Mutual contracts

Creating these contracts can be difficult because this is where we started committing collectively to doing things differently. Here we bootstrapped ourselves with an AI, MS Copilot. We fed the AI all of the sticky notes for a cluster and asked for a mutual contract. 

To use AI effectively, it’s important to give it prompts so it will process the sticky notes for each cluster in a consistent way. For example:

  • What does good collaboration look like here?
  • What do we each expect from ourselves and from others?

I am a big fan of using AI to get things going as it is very effective at making initial contracts that are short, concrete, and have shared ownership. That then enabled the team to quickly adjust them to be exactly what we wanted.

With these contracts, it was easy for us to make explicit commitments for each one on how we would fulfill them.

Step 4: Contractual commitments

This step we did after the offsite.  Consensus on the contracts gave us direction on how to make the right commitments for fulfilling them. We wrote out what we would actually do which included behaviors, practices, and processes. We reviewed it as a team and agreed to those commitments.

The typical way of conducting Mutual Contracts is going round robin and having each team member make personal commits. In my opinion, that can lead to shallow ones due to folks not having enough time to really think about what things they want done for themselves and their teams. That is why I like doing it as a post session action item. What you lose in decisiveness you gain in depth.

Step 5: Making it durable

The final step was to post the Mutual Contracts and their commitments so we could share them with all teams in the pillar. This post wasn’t another policy or best practices doc; it was a clear communication for how the pillar was going to be more effective at working together.

We decided that we would revisit these contracts every few months during our pillar leads sync to see how we’re doing and make adjustments as needed.

Positive fallout

We are still working through some of the commitments that we agreed to. Some of those commitments have required us to work through changes in our practices. Occasionally I hear people reference our contracts or tenets. Both are great because our pillar is committed to making positive changes and improving things. Organizational and cultural changes are slow but I am seeing progress. 

I cannot stress enough just how important it is in a team environment to have structures that empower everyone to participate. On top of that, it is an absolute that things that the team agrees to must be written down and shared broadly. That reminds everyone of those agreements and helps people that weren’t there to understand those contracts and commitments until they become culture.

2025 Running Year In Review: Committing To Boundaries

This was a breakout year for me however, it didn’t start in 2025. It was 2024, a year where I plateaued. I didn’t stick to my boundary between work and personal life. I was still running consistently and racing often. On the outside, it looked like things were normal but for me, I knew I was struggling. My running had stalled out. I wasn’t making meaningful gains whether it was distance or speed, even though I was grinding out miles. I still enjoyed races, but I wasn’t unlocking anything for myself. I wasn’t growing how I wanted to grow.

2025 worked not because I tried harder. It worked because I made a commit to that work / life boundary.

Boundaries allow for growth

The most important change I made in 2025 was committing to this firm boundary around my personal life. This boundary is hard for a lot of folks but it is probably the most valuable commitment a person can make to doing important not urgent things. There are lots of urgent things in life that can it breakdown. For me, it was work. My career has always been demanding and it always will be; I like it that way. In 2024 though, it was difficult for me to keep my work from interfering with my running and it showed. I refused to let that happen again. Running became a daily non-negotiable for me. Every day I ran. Every week I did my weight training. No bargaining with work. No shortcuts in my training.

That commitment came with tradeoffs.

I love playing piano. I’m still working on violin. Music matters to me deeply but this year, it took a backseat. When work was intense and personal time was limited, running came first. Music came after that only if I had any time left over. That often left me wanting more. I also enjoy crafting, especially paint by numbers, but that came third. As proof, my paints dried out on me.

Falling short in my other aspirations weren’t failures. They were the inevitable result of my running commitment. Holding firm to it is what made my work / life boundary worthwhile.

Learning to run on tired legs

The most profound change in my running this year that unlocked everything else were back to back long runs. A run club friend of mine, Corey, gave me simple advice. It wasn’t about speed. It was about sustainable volume; have high mileage weeks every week and to do that I needed to accept and learn to run when you’re already tired; not fast; just getting it done; all mental.

Those runs weren’t impressive. Pace didn’t matter. It was just showing up and putting in the work on that second day. I spent most of the summer doing that. The first few times were terrible. However, I toughed it out and got myself to that next level. Speed wasn’t what I was after. It was durability. Back to back long runs made fatigue my normal, which made 60-70 mile weeks my new normal.

My body adapted naturally. I stopped dreading the second long run and instead started looking forward to it. The second long run was my day and mine alone.

When the work finally showed up

That high volume foundation changed everything.

At the Larrabee Lakes 50k, I ran a 7:01, dropping an hour and a half from the 50k I ran in 2024. That wasn’t just grit. It was high volume weeks paying dividends. I was able to keep moving on tired legs. Mentally I learned how to deal with it.

That high volume base carried over to the road with new PBs:

  • 1:28 half marathon
  • 3:35 marathon

I ended the year with 4 marathons and 2 ultras under my belt along with 5 top 3 half marathon age group finishes which is really what I was after; speed on my half. Building a high mileage base slowly with patience and consistency let me run faster and stay injury free.

Habit stacking my running

Another change I made in 2025, and I’m doubling down on in 2026, is habit stacking during my runs. 

I’ve been using a lot more of my running time to listen to audiobooks focused on personal development. They range from leadership to personal growth to learning new languages like Spanish. It’s hard and surprisingly mentally taxing. Some days my brain can’t take it and needs its own rest day. Progress is slower than I want but progress is progress; it’s working. I now partially understanding Spanish TV and have had basic conversations while traveling in Mexico which is really exciting for me. I can listen to those audiobooks while crafting too; more habit stacking.

The 2026 plan

The biggest takeaway from 2025 wasn’t mileage or PBs. Those were the results from a firm commitment to a personal boundary.

No one at work is going to get angry because you take time to take care of yourself or your family. No one will stop you from prioritizing one thing that matters to you whether that is running, music, art, education, or something else completely.

There is only one person who can actually erode that boundary and that is you.

For 2026, I got new running goals:

  • 1:25 half
    • This one feels doable to me. I can see it from 1:28. I know I can grind towards it.
  • 3:15 marathon
    • This one feels just out of reach, and that’s the point. Holding that pace for the full requires trimming almost a minute off of my pace. For that, I have already modified my training and I am being a lot more disciplined about having 2 tempo runs a week. Those are tough as hell but I’m committing to them like I committed to my boundaries in 2025. 

If you want a 2026 breakout year on something that you’ve gone flat on then you got to make a commitment to your own personal boundary:

  • Pick that one thing to protect
  • Accept that other things may take a backseat
  • Hold the line long enough for adaptation to happen – when growth and gains become your new normal
  • Celebrate that growth – it is progress for putting in the time
  • Repeat

Growth doesn’t happen on its own. It needs protection; a boundary to allow for regular commitment. It comes from choosing and focusing on one thing and refusing to be distracted from it. 

Being an Injury Free Daily Runner: My Step 1 – Building Volume

When I started to become a daily runner, it wasn’t about performance or speed. It was about creating personal space. During the pandemic, I just needed more time to think, to process. Running gave me that time I needed and because of that it ended up becoming a daily routine. Running has always been apart of my life ever since my time in the army. It was simple and grounding and gave me time away from life’s chaoses. I wasn’t training for anything specific; I was just finding peace.

Grinding the miles

In the beginning, I was logging 5 or 6 mile runs a few times a week and trained for 1-2 half marathons a year, usually completing in about two hours. Not bad, not great but enough to be in shape. When I started grinding more, it was just to have the personal space. Without realizing it though, I was building volume. 30 miles a week became 40, then 50, then 60.

Remarkably, because I was so focused on just having space for myself and not on speed or time, I gradually built a huge running base that my body adopted to naturally. I wasn’t pushing on pace; just focused on putting time on the road.

Adopting running into my lifestyle

When I ran my first marathon, I was doing between 50 and 60 miles a week. Still not worried about time, just grinding. At some point, it occurred to me that I could do a marathon instead of a half. While unintentional, this consistent grind was forming the foundation for everything that I am doing today with my running and it has kept me injury free.

By gradually having a larger volume of miles become my normal, it allowed my body to naturally adjust. Core to that was having a comfortable pace for an uncomfortable length of time that simply grew. That is how I made distance running apart of my lifestyle and identity. 

It was after my third marathon that I found speed on my halfs; I got my first 3rd place age group finish. I was surprised by it really. I never set out to be fast but finding speed caused me to change my approach. I had built up a massive weekly running volume. After that finish, it was more than just a grind.

Running injury free

Today, I am still doing 60-70 miles a week as long as I am not tampering. I’m not trying to prove anything; the miles are just part of who I am now. For me, running daily sustainable isn’t about chasing PRs. It’s about having a routine you can maintain forever. You don’t need to go far or fast. What matters is putting in the time, the daily miles on the road, and letting your body adapt little by little.

If you’re just getting started, ignore pace. Ignore races. Just show up, put in the time, rack up the miles, and let the grind do its work. Focus on running to create space for yourself and building a routine that you can commit to. Your running volume will build gradually with your body adjusting and staying injury free. Then see what happens next. I found speed and ultras; I love both. A running lifestyle is about having routines that let you be injury free.

Helping Mentees Find A Personal Vision

It’s pretty common for mentors to assume that their mentees have a vision for themselves. In fact, there are many that start off mentoring where they think that their mentees have one that is similar to their own. That assumption, however, is frequently false. It isn’t just that there are differences. Most mentees haven’t spent much time simply thinking about what’s important to them nor how they see themselves in the future. Instead, most are focused on what their peers or manager think of them. That shared vision that mentors thought they had is actually their mentees mimicking them. 

One of the reasons I use Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book “Be Useful” in book studies is that its first chapter is all about having a vision for yourself. The simplest and hardest truth is that before your mentee, frankly anyone, can have meaningful growth, they first must see the person that they want to be. That chapter, “Have a Clear Vision”, is a fantastic way to start a mentorship. It’s about creating and maintaining that personal vision. Once your mentee begins forming one, you can then start figuring out what to do about it.

Why having a vision matters

I like to start my mentorships focused first on helping create that personal vision. The focus and clarity from a mentee’s vision, even an early stage one, is the foundation for every meaningful mentor / mentee relationship. Without it, mentees are likely to not really understand mentorship advice and will instead end up paying more attention to the WHATs on recommendations as opposed to the WHYs behind them. 

Without a personal vision, mentees will unconsciously start copying their mentor’s because they don’t yet know what theirs look like. A lot of energy can be burnt up if not enough time is spent upfront finding their vision; discovering the core things that matter to them. Whether they need a lot of prodding or a little nudging, you also need to deeply understand their vision for your advice to land correctly. The lessons that shaped you made sense to you because they aligned with your vision. If your mentee tries to adopt those outright, they won’t have the same meaning. That can lead to confusion, frustration, and even rejection because of having differing visions.

The most effective mentors don’t just talk about what worked for them. Great mentors seek first to understand their mentees and what truly drives them even when they don’t know themselves. It is that understanding that allows them to focus their mentorship around those passions. It is that focus that leads to effective growth.

How much time do you spend on vision

The short answer is that it never ends. A person’s vision evolves over time. What is important is that you spend enough time where you can be completely confident that you have identified one or more things that your mentee deeply values. That is done by seeing how your mentee cares about different things both at work and at home; not by what advice you think is resonating. This process is what people sometimes think of as getting to know your mentee however it is a lot deeper than that.

Taking a shortcut here and giving advice too soon, regardless of what framework, strategy, or methodology you are following, will always get you into a situation where some of your advice won’t stick. That is because you have not shaped your mentorship around the things that matter to your mentee.

Remember, you can only be effective with people, not efficient. That is precisely why mentorship does not scale and you must spend as much time as it takes to help them form that personal vision. Some mentees you encounter will already have a strong vision for themselves, likely already established by a previous mentor or coach. They might not have all the details fleshed out but they know where they want to going. A lot, however, do not, especially new or recent grads; perhaps reflective of one of the great failings of our current academic environment which is more centered on completing assignments versus thinking intellectual. It shouldn’t be surprising that many new grads even from top universities have not actually stopped and reflected deeply on themselves to discover things that they truly care about. 

The time spent on forming a vision will be well worth it, even if it is weeks or months. By doing it at the beginning, your mentees will fully understand that your mentorship isn’t about your approval but about their growth.

Fostering their vision

While it is likely that you will find common interests with your mentees, especially in the early stages, avoid the temptation of talking about your vision and what worked for you. Instead, use those interests as well as the ones that aren’t in common to create space for reflection. Ask probing questions and test observations to deepen their thinking; it must be more than just an accounting of how your mentees like to spend their time. The passions that you are looking for are central to their identity. 

This process means you must be accepting when parts of their vision don’t resemble yours. That is ok and to be expected. Remember that your ultimate purpose as a mentor isn’t to create copies of yourself. It’s to help others build a life that is true to them.

I often use ChatGPT these days to help new mentees create a mission statement. You’ll be surprised at just how many haven’t ever made one before. ChatGPT is excellent at quickly taking a bunch of raw unorganized ideas and thoughts and putting structure around them:

  • Ask your mentee for the things that they value the most
    • 3 things at work
    • 2 things at home
    • 1 big personal goal
  • Feed that into ChatGPT as a prompt
    • State that these are the things at work and at home that are important to your mentee along with one of their big personal goals
    • End the prompt with the following
      • Create a mission statement for my mentee
  • Read it out loud to your mentee
    • Talk about what ChatGPT created
    • See what is important and meaningful
    • Encourage them to reflect and to try creating their own mission statements
  • Revisit this mission statement every few months
    • Remind them that visions are suppose to evolve as people grow
      • They are living documents

Forming and maintaining a clear vision is a critical first step in mentorship. Starting with one and coming back to it will help your mentees focus on personal growth that has a direct line to how they define themselves.

Using Audiobooks to Learn a New Language While Running

For the past two months, I’ve been learning Spanish during my training runs.

It started as an experiment to see if I could do something with the gobs of hands free time I have while running. I already run almost every day and generally it is for more than an hour. I basically spend what amounts to a part time job on the road grinding miles. Like a normal person, I enjoy listening to music and audiobooks. However, I have always wanted to learn to speak different languages. So I made time for it here.

I have started with Spanish and chatGPT recommended the audiobook “Paul Noble’s Learn Spanish for Beginners Complete Course”. While swapping my music for it was simple enough, I wasn’t prepared for how mentally demanding it would be. Unlike music or novels that let my mind drift and relax, learning a new language requires a lot more attention. On my first few runs, I definitely felt hugely distracted; I almost side wiped a mailbox once. I got used to it but then found that I could only effectively listen for about 40 minutes. Then I would hit my mental limit and need to switch back to music. Also every third or fourth day, I would need to take a Spanish rest day to give my brain a break.

With that routine, I feel I’ve made some real progress. Repetition is essential; I often have to re-listen to chapters to make sure I absorbed the material. I’m nearly through this audiobook and I plan to start Paul’s second right after it. I’ve also been able to work my way up to listening for entire runs now. I still need my mental rest days though.

Why Spanish matters to me

This isn’t just about checking off a goal. I’ve always wanted to become conversational in several languages because I like to travel to countries where English isn’t the first language. I love travel but I also want to be respectful of the people who live in the places I visit. I want to connect to these places and I have always felt that language was core to that.

What I like most about having language as apart of my running is that I’ve reclaimed time. For a while, I have known that I was taking giant mental breaks during my runs. I was honestly loving that about my long runs. I looked forward to zoning out to a novel or music while grinding miles. I still enjoy those things and there is real value in having those mental breaks. However, I also knew that time was prime to be used for something that better aligned with my personal vision. It was a sacrifice and tough but now I’m using it for something that matters to me.

What comes next

My first big milestone will be watching shows and movies in Spanish while I’m grinding on the treadmill this winter or crafting in the evenings. If I can follow along, even loosely, I’ll know it is working.

After that I’ll look for someone to practice with online. I already know that my pronunciation needs some serious work; I’ve tried some of my Spanish out on one of my friends and she bursted out laughing but hey, it’s a start. I’m not waiting until everything is perfect. I’m just committing to a new process, a new grind, and making space for something that aligns with my vision.

Turn mental drift into growth

If you want to build something new into your life, like learning a language, you need to make time for it. The best way to do that is by finding the time you’re just giving away. Here’s generally what I do:

Step 1: Identify activities where your mind zones out

So for me that was running. When I started grinding miles, I would just zone out to music or an audiobook. I also did that while doing chores, yard work, or driving. These were spaces that I was using to give myself mental breaks and that’s not wrong. However, that is the time that is up for grabs.

Step 2: Choose something to learn that aligns with your vision

That is key. It can’t just be something that sounds cool or interesting. It must be part of how you see your future self, your personal vision. For me, it is being able to connect more deeply with people when I travel and that means speaking in their language. By working towards your personally vision, it’s easier to stay committed and be okay with sacrificing things that don’t align.

Step 3: Commit and be patient

You’re retraining your brain. That doesn’t happen overnight. You’ll get distracted. Trust me that my shoulder demon was screaming at me and I wanted to default back to zoning out to music. That’s normal however you got to push through it and keep going. Show up for yourself multiple times a week. It is okay if a chapter does not stick, just listen to it again. Repeat it until it finally sticks and then move on. Results are not immediate but if you stay with it, you will see them.

Growth doesn’t always have to come from big changes. It can come from the time where you already are doing something productive but are also mentally drifting. You just have to choose to use it differently and grind on top of the grind.