4 posts
I'm listening to the audiobook edition while working, and Phil Knight's voice (through the narrator) feels like sitting with someone who built something extraordinary but hasn't quite processed how extraordinary it was. Shoe Dog isn't a typical business memoir full of manufactured wisdom and cleaned-up origin stories. It's messy, honest, and human; exactly what you need when you're in the grind yourself.
I listen to Admiral McRaven's commencement speech every week. Not every day. Not randomly. Every week. The book expands on that famous University of Texas address, but the speech is what hooks you. Ten lessons from Navy SEAL training distilled into something almost too simple to be wisdom: start your day by making your bed, and you have already won. That simplicity is precisely why it works.
On learning that leadership emerges through crisis not comfort, discovering that service means presence not perfection, and traveling 172 million kilometers while carrying the weight of a crown through the washing machine blur
The photons entering your eyes right now left Alderamin in 1976. In 7,500 years, this star will be the North Star. Leadership isn't about control—it's about being the fixed point others navigate by. December 25 - January 3: bear the weight, build for succession, become the foundation civilizations use to find their way.