Why do you make your life complicated?

Good morning. Okay. It's a much, much sunnier day today here in Celebration, Florida. I had a nice. It was interesting as I'm reading through these journals we are in now, November of 1997. And this was a very interesting page. I love that in this phase of journaling, I was kind of focused on asking questions as journal prompts. So one of the, like the other day yesterday was, how can I set up my life to be prolific? And today's is that what. Why do you make your life complicated? And that's a really interesting thing because as I look now from my view here in 2026, you know, 30 years back, I look and I see that I already had a predilection, you know, an attraction to ideas that were multi.

Sort of step. I had this ability to see how things could fit together and see them at scale. But I was starting to realize that I don't have. Didn't have the capability to manage to. To make things reach the potential that they could. And I had a real desire for. For new. I loved to see new things. I love to see how they could be. And so as I've evolved here, instead of really looking at these things as shortcomings or kind of trying to figure out, like, why can't I be more focused on execution, on. On seeing things through? To me, I was starting to see that once I solved the puzzle, that it sort of lost novelty for me.

And that's a word that I've learned now as adhd, that the. That's what drives me is novelty. And so I've come to embrace it as a superpower. I don't have to take one idea and take it all the way through and, you know, disciplined execution on the same thing. I was admiring that in people, and I was seeing that that was kind of the. The measure of a successful entrepreneur, the ability to take something and go all the way with it, but it never really fit for me. I really love the idea of cracking the code and, you know, seeing how something could work out.

And I've learned, like, over these 30 years, the evolution of the. The metaphors that you set up for yourself or the. The kind of lens that you're looking at things through. So if we're thinking about, you know, a construction situation, I would be the. An architect. And I like to see the vision of what something could be. I like to draw the conceptual drawings and get all the way to the renderings of, you know, what this could look like in its finished form. But the disciplined execution of creating the line item blueprints for something to actually make it that you could build from or wielding the hammer and doing it.

That's a, you know, that's a different skill set. And I've learned that we're all, you know, we're all, we all have our own skill sets. And I love just the. I've come now, 29 years later. I've kind of learned that this is my thing is figuring out what I've called the scale ready algorithm. I like to crack the code, see how it could all work out, what needs to happen to prove that this works and, and then have somebody else do the scaling of something. There's a very different skill set between making something scale ready and making it scale actually scaling it. And so there's, you know, society kind of rewards the, you know, the rolled up sleeves, the work, the discipline and dedication to see something all the way.

And it's great. I applaud that myself. It's just not me. And there's some elegance in this that at this point in time, an analog like it's kind of, it's fun for me to look back at these things and see how, see how the evolution of it because now my understanding of this is completely different and the more that I embrace it, the more successful I become. Right. Realizing this is what I do is I create these scale ready algorithms. I can't be, you know, I don't want to say bogged down, but to me that's what it would feel like in my ADHD brain to be focused on one thing every single day.

And the elegance of this is, you know, here we are in fall 1997 and the, the perfect parallel to what I have come to see now is writing a hit song. And I've come to see that a hit song is really a scale ready algorithm. That there's a gentleman, Max Martin, who I've mentioned before, he's kind of like a great hero of mine because it's kind of a life analog. And so Max, if you know, Max is the person who has written basically all the songs on the radio in the last 30 years. If you take the list of people who've written the most number one songs in Billboard history, that list goes Paul McCartney, Max Martin, John Lennon, and you know, you.

The, the very elegant thing of this is that in fall of 1997 was Max Martin's first sort of, you know, big modern day hit with Backstreet Boys, Stop Playing Games with My Heart, which got to number two and then his first number in 1998. But every year since then, it's been, you know, this amazing thing. And I realized that what Max does is he has a knack for writing songs that are going to be hits, and that means scaled and, you know, in mass there. So he will work with Britney Spears or Katy Perry or whatever it is and create all the songs with them.

And then they will take the next two years to scale those songs by taking them out on tour, playing them every night, doing all of the things that it takes to break a record, to maximize. To scale the value of a hit song. And meanwhile, he's back in the studio with Justin Timberlake or with Pink or whoever he's in the studio with making all the songs. And as a matter of fact, Taylor Swift's last album that came out, they did all 12 of the songs on. With Taylor Swift on her latest album. And for the first time ever in the history of the Billboard charts, when the album launched, they had the top 12 spots on the Billboard chart all at one time.

So that is my observation here, is why do I complicate my life? Is really just why. My answer to it was, how can I just simplify by focusing on the thing that only I can do, the thing that I love to do, and build all of the. Build a support system around all of the things that I find complicated. So if you're in a situation where you're thinking that you might be complicating your life is go through it and observe and say, why? Why does this feel complicated? And you might realize that your special gift or your. Your purpose, the thing that would simplify your life is allowing yourself to do the thing that only you could do.

Do that. Just that little part. We're at a point right now where it is seamless to integrate with all of the. With other people. And every one of those. Every one of those roles can be filled by a collaborative teamwork. So I enjoyed this one. This was a fun thing. So if it feels like you're complicating things, then maybe it's just allow yourself, give yourself permission to do the thing that is simple for you and find the right people to pair up with to take away all the complication.