Best of 2023

Welcome to 2024. The past week was primarily time off for me, and when I did work, I was struck by how much more enjoyable the work was with space between work sessions to breathe—a powerful reminder to me to create more space in my life.

January’s Journal of Awareness

Before we dive into the top ten posts from the past year, I want to offer a Journal of Awareness topic for January. In December, I suggested enlisting your Default Mode Network to help you plan your goals for the coming month/quarter/year. In one study, individuals who wrote their goals down were 42% more successful in achieving them than those who did not.

I invite you to pick one goal for January, write it down, and devote five minutes daily to record observations and progress in your Journal of Awareness. If you’re considering an ambitious goal for 2024, consider setting a less ambitious, experimental goal for January, then building upon those results at the end of the month to refine your goal for the year.

2023’s Top Ten

10. Promote Yourself

From early 2023, when many of us were still learning how to spell ChatGPT, I put it to work and let it write a LinkedIn recommendation for me based on my testimonials. If you’d like the version it generated in Socratic dialogue form, DM me or make a note in the comments.

9. My Second Year

A celebration of two years as a full-time coach, wrapped in a neuroscience lesson on the power of meta-metaphor.

8. Brain Energy

I don’t do a lot of posts about a specific book, but this one caught my attention – and clearly caught yours as well. If the assertion that “Mental disorders – all of them – are metabolic disorders of the brain” grabs your attention, it’s worth a read.

7. You're Not The Leader You Think You Are

An examination of 360 feedback results for a leader who rates themselves much harder than their colleagues, and guidance on how to shift your perspective if you are this type of leader.

6. Coaching Ontologically

My definitive post on ontological coaching is to help people demystify the term and better understand my coaching style.

5. Magical Meetings

Who doesn’t want magical meetings? Unsurprisingly, this post got a lot of attention in today's meeting-heavy culture.

4. Teliodosis

If you haven’t read this one yet, it’s worth a read. I guarantee you it will continue to surface regularly in 2024. I recently decided to swap arete out of the center spot on my values diagram and replace it with teliodosis. That’s not to take anything away from arete. Teliodosis transcends and includes arete.

3. Prince Kohaku

Did you love this one because of the cat picture? Or did you love the message? We may never know. Either way, seeing this one in the top three warms my heart.

2. Clearing the Fog

The phenomenon of brain fog, and my personal experience with it, clearly resonates with many of my readers. Not only did this post get read a lot, but it also got mentioned to me regularly in live conversations as one people connected with.

1. Productivity Anthology

I’ve written often about productivity over the past two years. So much so that I compiled an anthology of my key productivity posts. Several leaders sent this to their teams as required reading, so seeing this one in the top spot is no surprise. Start here if you want to build new habits to improve your productivity.

Gratitude

Since the initial launch of this blog on LinkedIn, its number of subscribers has nearly tripled. I am still slightly surprised whenever someone says they look forward to my weekly posts and how much they enjoy reading them, but I’m beginning to get used to it. ?Thank you for sharing this journey with me.

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I am an executive coach and life coach with software executive roots in higher education and EdTech. I coach because I love to help others accelerate their growth as leaders and humans. I frequently write about #management, #leadership, #coaching, #neuroscience, and #arete.

If you would like to learn more, schedule time with me.