Why does it seem so hard to “eat right”?

We have great intentions in the morning but feel deprived and unsatisfied all day, until we break and run through a drive-thru for the greasy satisfaction of a burger and fries. 

When we do, that satisfaction is short-lived, replaced by guilt—even shame. It’s your fault for not trying hard enough, right? For not having the willpower to stick to healthy stuff.

That’s how most people go about it, but it’s really not a sustainable way to approach nutrition habits.

There's a concept in behavioral research called decision fatigue: the idea that the quality of your decisions degrades as the number of decisions you make in a day accumulates.

After years in your role, you start to learn the rhythm of things. That’s never a bad thing—your experience makes certain things second nature. Maybe you get to the point where you think, “man, I could do that with both hands tied behind my back!”

That kind of expertise is invaluable because it is built only through hands-on experience. You have to be in it. And these days, fewer and fewer people stick with their careers long enough to reach that level of know-how.

That’s not knocking the younger generation—work culture has changed—but I think being a “rare breed” of particularly seasoned professionals carries risks with its exclusivity.

Summer for working parents is in a category all its own. The kids are home, the heat is relentless, and the wheels start coming off around 2 p.m. on Tuesday.

I don’t just mean the distractions, though those are definitely part of it. I’m talking when your morning momentum evaporates and the rest of the day turns into an impossible slog. 

And you know, it’s easy to think that’s a discipline issue. But if that were the case, why don’t we struggle this way in October?

Turns out, it has everything to do with biology—plus the unique challenges of summertime.

Some leadership moments look great on the highlight reels. The big speech with roaring applause, the bold call that rescues the deal from the edge of disaster.

But you know, those magazine moments are few and far between—and in my experience running businesses and building teams for over twenty years, I see that they don’t do the heavy lifting for your credibility that people think.

The greatest strides are made in the mundane and the routine.

Not sexy, but true.