Oh crap. I have to take care of this.

Well, hey there. Welcome back.

How Time Dictates Perceived Value

This podcast episode is about 10 minutes long. If it was about 30 minutes long, would you find it to be more valuable or less valuable? And do you ask me then? Well, Mark, it depends what’s inside of it. It depends what the content is. Okay, what if it was an hour and a half? Well, you again, you’d probably say, well, what about the content? Uh, what’s the intent? But you would have your upper limit based on what you would think the value was of what it contained, right?

We do tend to assess value based on time and we do tend to set time based on value. Everything is about that. Your 30-cond elevator speech, uh, giving a talk of a certain length, introductions, if you go to a networking event and they say, “Well, give us your 30-cond or your 1 minute introduction.” And so forth, even your video calls are of a certain length, you have in your brain preset amounts of time that you think have a certain value based on certain activities.

So, knowing that, you may not be surprised by what I’m about to tell you. And what I’m going to tell you is that timing gives something more value.

The Connection Between Time and Energy

And what do I mean by that? I mean, if you say you’re going to, and again, I like to use housework because it’s universal. If you decide you’re going to clean up your kitchen, you have already decided how much time you think it’s going to take, how much time you’re willing to donate to it, right? If you look at your kitchen and go, “Oh my god, this is going to take 2 hours. How did this get destroyed? And and why am I so backlogged on what I need to do in it?” You’re going to say, “I don’t want to do that. Maybe I can do a shortcut. Maybe I can only do a piece of that that will take a certain amount of time.

Which is interesting because as I say, life is made of three things. Time, energy, and resources. And in that case, you’re not even really choosing the amount of energy involved. You’re choosing time. But time and energy are connected. Because the longer you do a thing, the more energy you use. So by assessing the time, you’re kind of assessing the energy. But in this case, you’re focusing more on the time involved because you don’t feel like you’re necessarily going to run out of energy. You feel like, look, I don’t want to do this for that long. I have other things I want to do. And obviously, we do that also in our jobs and our focuses in our life that say, “Hey, I’m going to do this. This, this takes a certain amount of time.” And we juggle time and there’s calendaring things. And that’s an entirely different episode.

So timing obviously plays a part. But what do I mean when I say timing gives it value?

How Constrained Time Increases Your Effort

What I mean is this. If you say you’re going to do a certain kind of cleanup or a chore or what have you and you tell yourself that you only are allowed to do it for 5 minutes, you will find almost invariably that you put a lot more effort into doing it because you’re up against the timing. And now you have tangibly measured the task. You’re not telling yourself you’re going to clean a kitchen. You’re telling yourself you’re going to give yourself 5 minutes of effort.

And what do we know about the way humans handle effort? We do things iteratively. And you can listen to the episode l [https://www.alchemyfor.life/balancecoaching/2024/05/11/live-your-life-iteratively/]

Timing it Makes it Valuable.

If you are interested in working with AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.), in human psychology, or both, you might enjoy this episode.

If you ask yourself, “What is prompting” or “What is a super prompt” you’ll also enjoy this.

Transcript:

The Ubiquity of AI in Business

So, what prompted you to listen to this episode? Uh, get it? Oh, not yet. Well, you will. I’ve done at least two episodes on AI, the dangers of using, and so forth. AI is ubiquitous with business now. Everyone’s using it in some form or another. And why wouldn’t they when it’s pretty much shoved down your throat in every piece of software you use, whether it’s Gmail or even drawing software, scheduling software. New companies are crawling out of the woodwork practically daily saying what they do is AI powered.

I have a unique, very unbalanced way of using it. What I do use it for is sort of a language processing model. I have it take the raw transcript from these podcast episodes and then convert it into something that’s a bit more readable, but with the explicit instructions to never change a word or a syllable, regardless of how wrong it thinks the sentence is, because that’s what a transcript is. If I mess up, then I should mess up in the text as well.

What I don’t use it for is anything creative. I will never ask it for an idea. I will never ask it to give me a quick list of things that have to do with something else because I need to be able to do that or I don’t understand my subject. Do I ask for clarification? Sure. Do I ask for research sometimes, but mostly it’s a lot of mundane, tedious things that would really take a tremendous amount of time and be a complete waste of time.

The Reality of Running Local Language Models

I have learned through online use and local use quite a bit. And when I say local use, I I spun up, as they say, a copy of a local language model directly on my office computer. This was a while back and it took a lot of steps. Recently, I did it in just a few steps with an even larger model. It’s so large and so taxing on my system that when I make requests of it, I have to literally watch the temperature to make sure I don’t go over a certain point. And my computer’s smart enough to know to shut down or to or to spin down the CPU, but I it it’s barely running within the parameters that it it can run within.

That being said, I want to talk to you about prompting, but not just prompting for LLMs, but prompting for humans, because there’s a lot in common here.

When you first heard the word prompting, it probably didn’t mean a lot to you. It didn’t trigger much unless you’re someone who is in writer groups or something where you do writer prompts and things like that. But otherwise, you you probably wondered what prompting was. and it really never stuck in your brain. And because it never stuck in your brain, it’s probably not something you’ve you’ve developed as a skill.

Context Windows, Personas, and Super Prompts

Prompting is just a set of parameters you give the model you’re talking to before you really get into the conversation. And it really is a must. Now, all models have built-in prompts. They’re all basically engineered to be cheerleaders for you, to be very cheerful, to be overly agreeable, and to be overly cautious.

With a beginning prompt, you can get the AI to interact with you in a way that’s a little bit more favorable to what you want to get done. And what you have to do is think of it as a a per session kind of arrangement with it. It’s not going to be your best buddy forever and it only has so much memory. It has something c

Learn to Prompt Both AI and Humans

What is a vision board? What is an anti-vision board?

Transcript

Well, hey there. Welcome back. What’s your vision?

The Traditional Vision Board

So, here’s a question. Have you ever used a vision board? A vision board is typically a physical place, almost like a bulletin board. It’s usually something larger than a sheet of paper that people place pictures, words, and inspiration. It’s something that they create that they can look at and it inspires them. It’s their vision of the future. It’s the house they want to live in. It’s the relationship they want to have. It’s the success that they want to gain. And it evolves. In the olden olden days, people would essentially cut pictures out of magazines, nice glossy pictures that they would then place on this board with with a pin. And people still do that, but they tend to be more digital. For example, Pinterest can be a vision board and is probably used like that for most people who have one. Granted, there are people who use Pinterest specifically to sort of gather ideas when they’re doing renovations or their nails or what have you, but it’s a cool thing and I see absolutely nothing wrong with it and a lot right with it.

The only thing I would say would be wrong is if you just make a big giant square of pretty pictures, but you don’t let it really help you to go where you’re going. Now, how would a big box of pictures help you go where you’re going? Well, let’s talk about what the vision board represents in my book BeCAUSE! [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733662286/] I talk about monsters and unicorns, which are the faces of us seeking pleasure and avoiding pain based on Freud’s pleasure principle. So, when you’re looking at a vision board, you’re essentially looking at a whole bunch of unicorns, saying, “Doesn’t it feel good to imagine yourself in this house? to imagine yourself in this relationship” I mean, they’re all good feelings.

That’s what the vision board is. It’s about you moving towards the pleasure of having, experiencing, knowing, embracing, and all that wonderful stuff.

Introducing the Anti-Vision Board

I started thinking about vision boards when I was looking at my CheckMark™ [https://www.alchemyfor.life/balancecoaching/checkmark-productivity-and-success/] app. And if you haven’t checked it out, you should because I built a vision board into it. Uh, you can use your camera on your phone. You can upload photos to it and arrange it on your phone. It’s kind of cool. Mind you, it’s a small screen, but it’s kind of ever-present, which is cool. And you can look at it on your computer when you get back to your office. I broke the boards down into a number of boards like relationships and health and so forth. But that got me thinking. I felt like there was a board that was missing. What if you flipped everything around and you made a board of all the things you didn’t want? Now, if you literally made a board of the things you don’t want, that would you’d run out of board. Obviously, there’s a million things in life we don’t want, then there are probably just a few things that we really do want. But what if the things we don’t want are sometimes the things we have, right? Like if you’re in a job that you really don’t like, well, that’s something you’d put on that special board. And let’s call it an anti- vision board, right? It’s not my vision.

People tend to m

What an Anti-Vision Board Can Teach You

Disclaimer: this episode is based on my proprietary behavior mapping system. This system is used in conjunction with a discovery conversation I have with an individual. In the case of mapping public figures this is purely an independent analysis and opinion based on publicly available research. See citations below article.

Transcript:

You’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. (see below!)

Well, hey there. Welcome back. Let’s talk Elon Musk. But before we do that, let’s talk about behavioral mapping and my book BeCAUSE! [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733662286/].

Freud’s Pleasure Principle: Monsters and Unicorns

Okay, wait. We have to back up from that and we have to talk about Freud’s pleasure principle. If you are an old fan of this show, you’ve probably heard me say this a bunch of times, but let’s sum it up really quickly. Freud’s pleasure principle is based on the fact that we are binary individuals. We seek pleasure, we avoid pain. Everything and anything we do is broken down into those things. I’ve had a number of episodes on this and the book BeCAUSE! [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733662286/] is based on this, but I give the seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain a face. The seeking pleasure is a unicorn and the avoiding pain is a monster. They are neither good nor bad. They are not devils and angels. They simply are.

Visualizing Behavior: My New Mapping Software

After the book BeCAUSE! [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733662286/] came out, I ended up developing patent pending behavioral mapping software. It’s software that allows me to actually map this stuff out. And you’re probably like me in that you’re a very visual person. This episode might be a little bit longer than my self-imposed 10-minute limit, so please bear with me. Paradoxically, when I talk about Elon Musk, I actually want you to not be thinking of him, but to be thinking of you. Every episode of this podcast starts out as an article on Alchemy for Life. This one is no different, and you’ll be able to see the visual mapping on the site if you’d like. You can follow along on there or if you’re listening in your car, you can just visualize based on what I’m telling you.

Deconstructing Elon Musk: The Childhood Trauma

Most people are familiar with Elon Musk. He’s a rather polarizing person. He’s someone who won’t stop talking about going to Mars and now the moon. He’s someone who created an empire. He owns Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, now X, the Boring Company, and X AI. He’s had some romances. He’s currently not married and he has a lot of children. What most people don’t know is what I actually found out in the map showing why all of this is happening. And again, because audio is literally linear, meaning you talk in a straight line, you stop it. You can’t go into branches and things like that. It’s a little harder in audio to tell you what something on a screen can tell you, but I’ll do the best I can.

When he was young, the family dog bit him. It was actually a pretty vicious bite, but he was terrified that the dog was going to be put down. He needed medical attention, but he kept refusing it because he said,

What behavioral mapping reveals about Elon Musk

Well, hey there. Welcome back. Let’s talk about the dark side of things. I don’t mean the dark side of everything, even though that sounds kind of exciting, doesn’t it? Okay, let’s rewind.

The Psychology of Motivation: Monsters and Unicorns

My recent book because talks about fundamental building blocks. In simple terms, it’s built on Freud’s pleasure principle. And in simple terms, Freud’s pleasure principle states that we basically do everything based on two sort of drivers. One is to seek pleasure in all forms and to avoid pain in all forms. These two driving factors are neither good nor bad. They are neutral and sometimes they’re used to great success and sometimes they’re used to your detriment.

In the book, I take those semi-intangible concepts and I give them a face. The avoiding pain takes the form of a monster. The seeking pleasure takes the form of a unicorn. But the book goes farther than that. I then go on to talk about something that really separates all high achievers from everyone else. And that is essentially repetition. And there are many books out there and I cite some of them talking about this repetition and how you become an Olympic athlete by repeating. But the thing that everyone else forgets about or ignores is, well, how do they repeat so much? What drives them to repeat? And of course, it’s the monsters and the unicorns.

The Secret Weapon of High Achievers

And I have always said to myself, or rather recently, whatever you repeat, you enhance, you create, and you achieve. At least that’s what I tell myself. And that’s what because is about. It’s about repeating something over and over and over again. And and it doesn’t have to be a 4 secondond action. It can be something that’s fairly long term, something that takes days or something that requires a lot of nuance, but if you continue at it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and stick at it, you will achieve it. You can do great things this way. You can make amazing changes this way. But like the monsters and the unicorns, repetition is neutral.

Think about that.

The very concept of repetition doesn’t carry with it good or bad. It doesn’t carry with it constructive or destructive. It’s both and neither. So swimming almost constantly will make you a better swimmer. Practicing speaking will make you a better speaker. Studying and practicing repetitively and diligently will get you your realtor license, your pilot license, etc.

The Dark Side of Repetition: How Unconscious Habits Hurt Us

But my friends, let’s talk about the dark side. The dark side of repetition. And you know what’s interesting about that is that from a lot of people’s perspective, the dark side is actually what they know better. And I’m not saying it’s because they live in the dark side of repetition, but it’s because that sort of has been their perception of it. Stop making that face. If you keep making that face, it’s going to stay that way.

Do you remember that? Did your parent ever say that to you? How many of you grind your teeth? It’s also called bxism. That’s a repetitive thing that people do with their teeth where they just clench down or they grind them side to side and it has tremendous negative impact on your health. Ergonomics is based partially on people repeatedly doing something that’s bad for their body. You can sit in a bad chair for a little while and not a lot’s going to happen. But if you spend hours and hours in a chair that’s slightly tilted or lifts your legs off the floor and puts a lot of pressure on your arteries and so forth, it can have really devastating health effects just ju

The Dark Side of Repetition & What’s Really Causing Your Pain

Tell me the problem in three words.

Well, hey there. Welcome back.

The “Favorite Three” Listening Game

Today I want to talk to you about something that was a communication tool and kind of a game. And it all centers around the number three. When my kids were younger, I used to play a game with them in the car. And the game was Favorite Three. And it was such a natural hit that we would use it at parties.. And it really is kind of a not only a cool icebreaker, but it’s sort of a demonstrator of how well people listen. It’s a game you can play with your staff and in meetings, too. If you have a staff meeting and you’re waiting, you can play Favorite Three. It kind of sharpens your mind a little bit in the process, too.

So, here’s how this works. Favorite three basically means you pick your three favorite things. Someone asks you your favorite three things. I mean you can say what’s your favorite dog breed? What’s your favorite Italian food? And what is your favorite state? You go around the room and people answer. They don’t say well my favorite state is… No. In the order that they were asked they need to answer. Usually, there’s a long pause while people’s gears are turning. Seriously, try this. So, the person asking the question names the person who needs to answer and they start and go around in a circle. Many times people actually forget and they’ll say, “Well, wait, what was the second one?” It’s literally three things that you have to remember, but for some reason, for some people, it’s actually quite hard to keep track. So in the example that I just said, the next person would say hopefully husky pizza Colorado and then it would go to the next person and so forth. And those people are devoid of context. They just know the answers of the person in front of them. all the amazing things that we do in life, all the things that we can work through, reading entire novels and keeping track of screenplays and and all the complexities of your job, you may actually have difficulty with that.

So, play it at your next event and tell me how it goes.

Using Three Words for Conflict Resolution

So, here’s the other thing centering around the number three. This helps in conflict resolution. And again, this is something that I used with my kids when there’s a conflict or when they had a conflict and there was a lot of back and forth. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of two people talking over each other and screaming and emotions and things like that. I would pick one to start and I would say, “Tell me the problem in three words.”

That was it.

And then the other person would go and tell me the problem in three words. And it’s really easy to figure out which person is stuck in their emotions and which person is just trying to convey a point. And it’s all because of the three words that they choose. And this is something you can do in your relationship. I mean, if you’ve been married 20 years, you can still do this and say, you know, tell me in three words.

Now, people don’t like to have their communication filtered, adjusted, or controlled. So, it may be difficult for some personality types, especially in the heat of the moment, if you tell them, “No, you’re not allowed to communicate to me in sentences. You need to tell me that in three words.” So, use carefully and wisely.

But even in your job, if you need to do conflict resolution, this may be really eye opening and you think, “Mark, they’re just going to take three verbs.” No, they’re really not. You’ll be shocked at which words they choose, especi

Conflict resolution in just three words

If your resolutions failed this is why, and this is how you can have success in 2026.

The New Year’s Resolution Check-In

It’s February 1st. How did you do on your New Year’s resolutions? I know. I know. Here we go. But it’s not something I’m ever going to stop talking about. and we’ve had at least one, if not two or more episodes on New Year’s resolutions and how I feel about them. So, let’s just jump into it, shall we? If you’re a longtime listener, you know that I try to compress a lot of conversation. And I say conversation because I feel like you get to say something and think something. I compress a lot of that into 10 minutes. And one of the ways I do that is by using pause. And I think it’s an amazing tool to be able to use. So, I say something and then I ask you to pause and then you have infinite amount of time to think about or work through what I just said and then you restart it again. So, we’re going to do this a lot this time and it’s going to be based on this sound.

If you recognize that sound, it’s the sound you get when you check off an item in check mark. So, how did you do on your New Year’s resolutions so far considering that the entire month of January has passed?

If your answer was not great, then why do you think that is? Give that some thought.

So, do you think it was because you didn’t try hard enough or because of something else? Well, let me tell you this. If you decided to stop doing a thing, like I’m not going to be late anymore or doing a thing a lot more, then you’re only considering the action itself.

The Limits of Free Will and Willpower

And the action is always motivated by seeking pleasure or avoiding pain. And now you’re going to say, “But Mark, we’re not just some tiny binary combination of fervently seeking pleasure and running away from pain.” Well, that’s not what Freud found. That’s not what I found. And that’s not what the monsters and unicorns told me. But Mark, we have free will, don’t we? Um, yeah, kind of. Kind of, sort of. Um, but it depends on your definition because our free will is modified by those constantly running programs. If you’re late all the time, there’s a reason behind the action. And that’s literally what the word because means, the reason for the action, which is why I called the book BeCAUSE! [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1733662286/]. And you can say, well, Mark, I can just do it. I just have to do it. So then you’re describing using your strength of will. And strength of will is very powerful. Well, it’s sort of powerful by itself. What happens if you say, “Look, I have this thing that really annoys me. Um, I’m I’m not going to do that anymore. Period.” and you go, I’m exerting my free will right now and my strength of will. Well, what your strength of will is going to then do is it’s going to panic and be going, “Okay, we’re doing this, but man, this is tiring and oh my god, I can’t do this constantly. There’s got to be some reason why. What? There’s got to be some reason to allow me to do this. There’s got to be some motivation.” And then the monsters and unicorns kick in. The seeking pleasure and the avoiding pain.

That’s how you get it done. That’s it in a nutshell. That’s how these things happen. So if you say, “I don’t want to be late anymore. You can try to use your strength of will, but your strength of will will search around for something or someone to help it.” And both the monsters and the unicorns, the seeking pleasure, the avoiding pains, can help together. You can actually have multiple unicorns and multi

Why your resolutions failed and how to fix that.

The Discomfort of the Sales Funnel

Have I said how funnels feel icky to me? Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you like funnels? I don’t mean like for refilling your oil or delicious funnel cakes. I mean, well, let’s let’s talk about this. So, as many of you know, there’s a concept called the sales funnel. It’s a process where you get someone into a process and kind of help them along the way to purchase your product. Now, you don’t see this that often with physical products. There’s a whole different way of dealing with that, but you do see it for services, especially certain kinds of services. And sure enough, if it’s a service that kind of gives you pause, it’s probably one that has a funnel associated with it. Funnels don’t feel good, no matter how well they’re built. And if you’re like me, you know right away when you’re in one. Are you in one now? Are you thinking that right now that by listening to my podcast, you’re in my funnel? Because if you’re listening to the podcast, doesn’t it mean that you’re starting to kind of buy into how uh I approach things, which means you might actually buy one of my books and then you might actually hire me to speak or to coach you. So, Mark, isn’t this a funnel? Well, not intentionally. I mean, there’s nothing making you move forward. Nothing in this podcast builds momentum. There is a bumper at the end right when you normally turn it off that says, “Hey, if you like this, you know, you can buy my books or do this or do that or whatever, but it’s not really a funnel. My books tell you a little bit about the other stuff that I do, but mostly they just say, “Hey, here’s the other stuff I do.” And uh if you want to rate this, that’d be great. I don’t go out of my way when it comes to coaching people to shove them into a funnel either to get them to pay, to get them to buy. I want them to make an informed decision. So, does that make me definitely not an expert on funnels? It definitely makes me someone who doesn’t construct them very well because I’m too focused on the product.

Funnels vs. Professional Processes

Attorneys don’t really need a sales funnel because they have sort of a a process in place. You go talk to \ the receptionist or their secretary and then make a plan to have a consult and then go from there. There are engagement letters and so forth. The same is true for real estate. If if you’re looking at a home, then typically the site you’ve looked at the home on is already tracking you, your IP address, everything. It’s very detailed and it’s kind of cool and it’ll keep reaching out to you and touching you and saying, “Hey, uh, you know, you looked at this 3 days ago, blah blah blah.” So, that’s a a funnel.

A Personal Encounter with a Pushy Funnel

Having said all of that, let me tell you about the experience I just had which is prompted me to do this for you. As you know, if you’re an avid listener that some of these recordings are 10 minutes long about things like this that we can learn together with and some of these recordings are about an hour long and there are people that I find super interesting that I hope you find as interesting. Sometimes I have to pursue someone for a while and it’s just because they’re very popular. They’re public figures. They’re busy. they have a certain kind of schedule or, you know, they may need a little bit more vetting of me to finally get back to me. But all in all, it it works pretty well. And again, as I said in the CEO mindset [https://www.alchemyfor.life/balancecoaching/2025/08/10/decision-makers/]

Taking the “fun” out of “funnel.”

Transcript of episode:

Well, hey there. Welcome back.

Why We Remember Firsts But Miss the Lasts

There’s a lot of talk about the first time you do something. You remember your first time at something. But the reverse isn’t exactly true because it takes a bit of time to realize it truly was the last time because in some cases there’s a chance you might do it again. But thinking back on the last time can be rather jarring, emotionally draining, but sometimes can make you smile.

Sometimes it can make you sad. There was a last time that you rode your bike as a 12-year-old. You put in the garage or or just put it down against the fence or what have you and that was it. You never rode it again. There was the last time you played with your Legos and then they got packed up and that was it. And yes, I know there are tons of adults now that do Lego stuff, so maybe not the best example. There was a last time that you did an art project as a kid. A last time that you wrote in a old paper journal with your favorite pen. A last time that you had a certain treat that your grandmother used to make. There was a last time you slept alone or a last time you slept with a partner. A last time you heard the laughter of your children when they were little. Even the last time you flipped a burger before you hung up your hat and went on to bigger and better things.

Thinking about first times is easy because you can only have first time at something once. Your first kiss, your first love, your first time trying something. When you’re a beginner learning something, it’s your first time setting foot in a new area or even a new piece of software. If you do it again, you know it’s not your first time because you’ve already done it. But the last time is a little more difficult to record because as I said, you you don’t think about it at the time because at the time you think you’re going to do it again at some point because you’re used to doing it over and over again. But it truly becomes the last time until you look back on it 10, 15, 20, 50 years later.

The Sudden Finality of Loss: Reflections on Recent Goodbyes

What made me really think of this is in the last couple days, two people I knew have passed away. And for both of them, I thought I was going to be able to speak to them again. I didn’t realize the last time I talked to them was literally the last time.

One of them was Scott Adams, someone uh that I had interviewed. And though I knew of his declining health, I was hopeful that we were going to talk again and sort of catch up on things. The other was a longtime client of mine, someone I’d got to know. I’d got to know both he and his wife, and I very much appreciated seeing them interact in front of me as I was interacting with them for business purposes. I always got a kick out of him and them and it was almost sitcom-esque in the way the environment felt with always being a happy ending in which I was waiting for the studio audience to start clapping and laughing. The sense of loss that we feel at a funeral is not just missing the person, but it’s the realization that you cannot interact again. that everything was a last time.

Any and every interaction you’ve ever had with that person is the last final time you’ve had it.

Living in a Culture of “Do-Overs” and Reboots

That finality is something that we don’t experience that often in life. In fact, one could say a lot of our current culture, especially powered by social media, is one that really doesn’t allow for finality because there’s always a doover. You can always go back and rewatch something. There’s always a revival, a reboot, an

The Last Episode

You do less, but you get more.

Well, hey there. Welcome back. Do you have any limitations? Oh, yes, of course you do. Let’s talk about them. And I think your first reaction is, “Well, here we go. We’re going to explore how I’m not good enough at something or how I don’t even do a thing.” Nope, we’re not doing that at all. In fact, we are going to look at why limitations are so important and how they actually make a product, a business, and a person better. What is this? Real life? Yes, I’m here to tell you yes, it is.

The Danger of Trying to be Good at Everything in 2026

I read a book a while back called The Myth of Excellence. And one of the things it says in the book, and I’m paraphrasing, is the best way to sort of destroy your business and go out of business is to try to be good at everything. Years ago, I worked at a firm that had that same motto. And they tried to be good at everything and tell all of their clients that they could do anything and everything that their clients were asking. And they couldn’t. In their quest to be good at everything, they were essentially good at nothing.

The Success of the 10-Minute Podcast Constraint

When I started this podcast—and we are approaching 300 [https://www.alchemyfor.life/balancecoaching/all-posts/] episodes in 2026—when I started it, the very first episode, I set a rule for myself. I set a limitation and the limitation was I would keep the episode if it was just me to about 10 minutes. I have adhered to that and every so often I go over to maybe 11 or 12 minutes and then I apologize profusely. That limitation has helped me to have a better show. It has helped me to have a show that’s better because it forces me to be more concise, but it also makes my show very different.

When people find out that my show is only 10 minutes long, they’re shocked. And they’re shocked in a very pleasant way. They’re like, “Oh, I can digest that. Oh, I’ll just go empty the dishwasher and listen to your show.” “Oh, okay. Wow, that’s it.” I’ve had multiple people come to me and say, “Oh, yeah. I listen to like seven of your episodes.” Wow. Like so that’s really a cool thing that limitation has been very advantageous.

Defining Strategic vs. Self-Improvement Limitations

At the time of year that this podcast episode is coming out is we’re we’re we’re ending the year and it’s when everyone is making New Year’s resolutions and saying they’re going to be better and this and that. They’re probably looking at limitations as something they’re going to overcome. And yes, there are certain things that you want to improve. You want to be better at weight loss. You want to be better at at consistency at this that the other thing. Yes. So, you’re sort of overcoming your scale and you’re saying, “I want this to be a seven when it’s only a three right now.” That’s fine.

What I’m talking about are limitations that are typically self-imposed for a reason

Limitations

Recover time energy and resources in your life. Have fun. Understand.

Alchemy For Life