My Never-Ending Battle to Conquer the Biggest Productivity Killer in My Life 

When I began writing about success and productivity 25 years ago, I was quick to criticize television, urging my readers to watch as little of it as possible.

My reasoning was simple: Most of what I saw on TV was bad – mediocre, at best – and I almost always came away feeling disappointed. Worse, every hour in front of the “boob tube” was an hour I could have spent doing something more meaningful.

But television has changed dramatically. Today, there are perhaps a hundred times more movies and episodic series being produced, and with that explosion has come an equally dramatic increase in quality.

I no longer feel confined to mediocrity when I turn on the TV or open my laptop. Quite the opposite: I’m struck by how much truly good content is available at any moment.

That realization cancels my first objection to watching TV. Yet my second objection – that it eats into “productive time” – has only grown stronger, because the temptation to watch is greater than ever.

With so many worthwhile options across cable and streaming platforms, I could easily spend six or eight hours a day absorbed in documentaries, dramas, films, investigative series, and even the occasional sporting event. At the end of such a day, I could honestly say, “That was time well spent. I learned some things. I was entertained.”

But given the limited amount of spare time we have in a day, should I? Of course not.

This is not the first time I’ve pondered the question of how to make the best use of those precious hours. Today’s main essay is my latest attempt to come up with a definitive answer.

Stop! Don’t tell me! Let me guess!

The year was 1988. K and I were in Paris, walking down some street whose name had several silent vowels in the some-number arrondissement, on our way to some place or event K had undoubtedly decided we should see, when I noticed a familiar figure walking in the opposite direction on the other side of the street.

“I know that person!” I said, excited at the prospect of running into someone I knew in an such an unlikely place.

“No, you don’t,” K said, confidently.

She must have sensed some change in my body language because she grabbed me by the elbow and said, “Stay here.”

It was too late. The grip was too tentative. Thirty seconds later, I was standing in the middle of the sidewalk facing this person, eager to discover in the next few seconds our mutual connection.

When he was a few yards away some part of my brain that is somehow related to my ready-fire-aim history of moving myself through the world took over. I raised my hands in a friendly way, grinned widely, and said, “Stop! Don’t tell me! Let me guess!”

He stopped. His eyes widened just a bit. The smallest smile animated his face. I took that to mean that he remembered exactly what our common kinship was and was amused that I couldn’t put a finger on it. But it was also clear that he was happy to see me again and would therefore be willing to indulge me in a game of “Ten Guesses.”

“Do we know each other from business? Did we meet at a direct marketing convention?”

He shook his head, still smiling, still amused that I couldn’t guess how I knew him.

“Okay, so maybe we’ve never met. Maybe I know you because I’ve seen photographs of you.”

He opened his mouth as if he were going to spill the secret.

“No! Don’t tell me!” I was happily shouting now. “Let me guess!”

He relaxed his posture as if to say, “Go ahead. Give it a try.”

“I’ve seen your photo in magazines. Maybe you are… No, you’re not a politician. I wouldn’t have a good feeling about you if you were.” And then looking him up and down, I said, “And you’re not an athlete.”

His smile widened.

“You’re an actor!” I said. “Is that it?”

He nodded his head and began to speak.

“No! Don’t tell me!”

I hit him with a few more qualifying questions – an actor on the stage or in movies, a dramatic actor or a character actor. (I was quite sure he wasn’t a leading man.)

With each question, his interest in our game was diminishing. I could see him looking over my shoulder and past me as if he was looking at whatever it was he was headed to.

“Can I give you a hint?” he said.

Feeling his impatience, I agreed.

“I won an Academy Award for Places in the Heart.”

I thought about it. I’d seen the movie several years earlier. I remembered that it was sad. And that Sally Field had starred in it. But I couldn’t remember this guy.

“Okay,” I said. “I give up.”

My name is John Malkovich,” he said.

He could see that I didn’t recognize the name.

“So, what are you doing in Paris?” I said.

“I’m making another movie.”

“Oh,” I said. “Interesting. What’s it called.”

Now he was looking over my shoulder more urgently.

“It’s called Dangerous Liaisons – and I’m afraid if I don’t get going, I’ll be late.”

“Oh,” I said, snapping out of whatever it was that had taken over my mind. “Oh, yes. I didn’t mean to…”

“That’s fine,” he said. “It was fun. But I have to go.”

“Right,” I said, coming fully into consciousness and feeling a tidal wave of embarrassment.

That was the moment to let him go. But somehow, I couldn’t do it. My mouth started moving again and a sentence came out.

“Do you know John Savage?” I heard myself saying.

His eyes narrowed. “Yes, I know John.”

I nodded my head as if I’d finally figured it out and could finally make my new friend John Malkovich feel he had not wasted his time.

“Yeah, I was hanging out with him last month at the China Club in Manhattan.”

He nodded. “Oh, great. Well, say hello to him for me next time you see him,” he said. And he rushed off.

Had he stayed he could have heard about how it happened that I ended up hanging out with John Savage.

What Golfers Talk About When We Aren’t Talking About Golf 

I was in Myrtle Beach last week for a get-together with nine of my high-school friends. We’ve been meeting there every October for about the last 30 years. The ostensible purpose is to play golf. The true purpose is conversation. And the purpose of our conversations is to maintain those ties that bind.

Apart from reminiscing about bygone days, the topics have been mostly about our families and our careers.

In the first decade, when we were in our 30s, we talked a good deal about how we fell into our careers, what they required of us, and whether we believed we had made the right choices. We also talked about the challenges of being good husbands and good dads.

In our 40s, the career conversations were about the extra hours, the effort to be recognized, the doubts, disappointments, and triumphs that were teaching us lessons we wished we’d learned earlier. Family conversations were mostly about the disappointments and triumphs of our teenage children.

In our 50s, well along in our careers, we talked less about the work we did and more about what we did when we weren’t working – vacations, hobbies, books and movies, etc. Our children were now in their late teens or early 20s, Occasionally, we talked about the future of our relationships with our wives.

During our 60s, we talked about our prospects for retirement and what those of us who had retired were doing with their non-working hours. I was especially interested in these conversations because, by that time, I had retired and then had gone back to work three times. I was sure there were retirement lifestyles that would be right for me, but I’d never found one.

Now we are in our mid-70s and, statistically speaking, likely to be in the final 10 years of our lives. We continue to talk about our kids (and grandkids), but an increasingly large percentage of our time is taken up with recounting stories of the good ol’ days.

We also talk about our bodies…

All of us were athletes during our high school years. Some of us played sports in college. For the first 20 years, I remember a lot of talk about the sprained ankles, knee and shoulder surgeries, and occasional broken ribs we had incurred.

That changed as we moved into our 50s. Golf trip after golf trip, we were admitting to health “issues” we had never even imagined earlier on. Admissions about getting up at night to pee (benign prostate enlargement), pain in almost every joint (arthritis), and even, occasionally, the diminishment of our formerly impressive performances in the bedroom. Less embarrassing topics included gaining weight, losing strength, and the increasing difficulty of just about every physical activity.

In our early Myrtle Beach days, it wasn’t unusual for some of us to golf twice a day. For most of us, that part of our get-togethers tailed off fairly quickly. And sometime around my 69th birthday, I retired from the game (almost) entirely.

I enjoyed golf when I played it. No, that’s not true. I liked golf in theory but I hated playing it because 90% of the time when I was playing, I hated myself. (If you golf, you understand this. If not, I recommend watching the bit by Robin Williams in today’s “Postscript,” below.)

I’m often asked by active golfers what I miss about it. The range of proper answers includes statements about the beauty of nature and the healthful benefits of spending a half-day outdoors.

I can’t claim to miss those things, and it’s not because I don’t value them. But for me, golf offered very little in terms of being in the great outdoors because most of the time I was looking at the golf ball beneath my feet or trying to avoid the hazards that were put in place to thwart me – the streams and lakes and tall grasses and clusters of trees. (The conventional wisdom for how to avoid them is “Don’t even look at them,” which I heeded.)

I do, however, enjoy the camaraderie of male bonding, and that is the reason I come to Myrtle Beach every year. But I find that the best of that is had in conversations at dinner or in the evenings, sitting on the porch, drinking tequila, and smoking cigars.

Antisemitism Is Spreading Everywhere… and It’s Getting Deadly 

I’m writing this on Friday, October 3. Two days earlier, I wrote the following in my Journal, in anticipation of writing a longish essay about the state of antisemitism today:

I’m very concerned about what is undeniably a new strain of antisemitism that seems to have broken out. It is a virulent and contagious strain of Jew-Hate that has been growing steadily since the subhuman attack and slaughter of peaceful and defenseless Israeli Jews by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023.

It is deeply infested in the US, Canada, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and in virtually every Liberal and Leftist political party in the Free World. It is deeply infested in universities, trade unions, teachers’ unions, and even environmental and civil-rights groups. It’s spread throughout Hollywood and the Arts. It’s the default interpretation for the mainstream media for any and all news about Israel. And it is expressing itself in violent protests and what seems to be murder.

While the blood of the slaughtered was still warm on Oct. 8, we witnessed a shocking, worldwide expression of support for the inhuman butchers who engineered and carried out that massacre. Back then, the rhetoric was about open-air prisons and freedom fighters, proportionality and Islamophobia. Now it’s about the objectification and demonization not just of Israel, but of Jews. All Jews.

Genocide is a word that these groups have selected to mischaracterize Israel’s war with Hamas – although nothing could be farther from the truth. But the current environment feels like a petri dish for some form of semi-passive global genocide against the Jews.

I know that this sounds extreme. And I know that many who read this will dismiss it as a hysterical delusion. But based on what I’ve experienced personally, in conversations with economists, authors, college professors, business leaders, and even Libertarian thinkers, I am losing hope that all this hatred and resentment will soon go away.

My leftist and liberal friends (including leftist and liberal Jews) will object to my worries. They will assure me that this is all Netanyahu’s fault, and that once the Palestinians have their own state, the trouble will go away. (They forget – or maybe they don’t know – that in 2005, in an effort to appease its Arab enemies, Israel ceded the Gaza Strip to the Muslims that lived there and forced the Jews living there to clear out.)

The One Time I Made Dinner 

My once-a-year-in-Myrtle Beach golf buddies were chatting (by email) about those of us that can (and/or do) cook at home. There was a range, as you might expect, from guys that seldom do to guys that love to cook and cook frequently.

I don’t cook at all, I confessed. Not because I refuse to. I think I might enjoy cooking dinners once or twice a week. But K won’t have it.

Here’s why…

I’ve cooked only one meal in my life for others. And it was a barbecue… a dinner for K and the kids. I had it presented in platters… salad, grilled veggies, beans, potato salad, and crispy golden chicken. K looked impressed.

She tasted the veggies and looked up at me.

“How did you season these?”

“They’re pretty good,” I said proudly. “It’s a secret.”

She took another small bite and asked me again. “Seriously, answer the question.”

“Well, I wanted everything to be natural and for the tastes to sort of blend, so I marinated the vegetables in the juices from the chicken.”

Her eyes widened. “You marinated the veggies in the raw chicken juices?”

My heart stopped. My lungs froze. My brain was sending me a single-word message: salmonella!

“The juices from the uncooked chicken?!” she was shouting now.

I glanced out through the screened door to the porch and the sidewalk beyond that, within audio range of unwitting passersby.

“You don’t have to shout,” I said meekly.

But she wasn’t listening to me. She was staring at our boys, who had begun to eat.

“Spit out your food!” she screamed at them. Upon which they immediately, whether out of fear or playfulness, spit out their half-masticated food balls directly onto the table.

What seemed like a full minute of silence followed, as K stared at me incredulously and the boys stared at each of us in search of an explanation.

They got one. But since then, my only role in assisting with family dinners has been in setting the table beforehand and cleaning the dishes afterwards. Anything comprised of biological materials, including wine and beer, is now the responsibility of the boys. And they are not complaining.

The Good and Bad of My RFA Mentality 

On a Zoom call recently, a colleague was telling me about a problem he was having with his inbound telemarking division. In the past three months, he said, call lengths doubled while conversions halved. I asked him a few questions about the scripts he was using and then announced that I thought I knew exactly how to solve his problem. “Send me the scripts,” I said.

I felt confident that I was right because I’d experienced the same problem many times in my career. But when I read the scripts that evening, I realized that I had spoken too soon. I didn’t understand the problem. And my solution would not have worked.

I called him the following morning, asked more questions, and was eventually able to figure out what the problem really was and then offer several ways he could deal with it.

My rush to get to an answer was a part of a baked-in personality trait that I was already aware of. In a test I took several years ago on “leadership,” I was rated at the extreme end of what the test defined as the “director” style of getting group work done – quick to make decisions, impatient to get things moving, and willing to push others to accomplish goals.

Ready, Fire, Aim, the book I wrote about how to start and grow businesses, was based on this approach. The thesis was that most entrepreneurial businesses fail not because of poor planning, but because of overplanning: trying to perfect the business model. Starting a business that way will almost guarantee failure, because until you get your idea/product into the marketplace, you will not know how to present it, set the price, and sell it.

The strategy I recommended in the book was to get the idea/product out there and start testing it as soon as you can reliably do so (“Ready… Fire”!). It’s the only way to learn how to bring in new customers at an allowable acquisition rate before you have run out of money, patience, and/or time. Based on what you learn from your tests, you can then fine-tune (“Aim”) your efforts to maximize your long-term chances for success.

I have no doubt that the Ready-Fire-Aim approach is the best way to start a business or get almost any sort of major project off the ground. It is an equally good strategy for mature businesses that are launching a new product and/or product line.

But it is not necessarily the best strategy for solving problems once the business is up and running.

As a “director,” when I’m confronted with the problems that inevitably arise in any business – new or established – my instinct is to push for an immediate solution so I can get back to the challenge of growing revenues and profits. Ready. Fire. Aim. And sometimes, that works.

But some problems are gnarly and difficult even to understand. And that’s why nowadays, when I’m presented with a complicated problem, I force myself to override my instincts – to slow down, take a deep breath, listen closely to both sides of the argument, ask questions, and then push for a solution that will work well and last. (Friday, September 26, 2025)

“Earning, Learning, Sharing, and Caring” 

I’m still working 12+ hours a day, but I’m also napping for about a half-hour at least twice and sometimes three times. 

I don’t mind the napping per se. I quite enjoy it. But I don’t like the reason: I’m finding that every three or four hours I am besieged with a serious bout of brain fog, which makes it impossible for me to work, thus forcing me to lie down and rest. This is not a symptom of age. In every other metric of aging, I’m at least 10 years younger than my age would otherwise suggest. I’m convinced that my brain fog bouts are the result of protein spikes from COVID-19 shots. I was hoping they would go away, but they are increasing. I’m going to investigate the various vaccine “cleanses” that have been advertised to see if that can help. (Friday, September 19, 2025)

Trying Something New… Again

BW, a BJJ friend and colleague who tells me he looks forward to reading what I have to say about this or that, told me last weekend that he dreads opening my blog posts because he fears they will be 40 pages long. He’s not the first to lodge this complaint. I not only recognize its fairness, I sympathize with it 100%. As I said to him, “You dread reading them? How do you think I feel about writing them?!

I have been trying various strategies to reduce the load on my readers (and myself) – and I have reduced the average length from about 20,000 words at peak garrulousness to about 4,000.

Today, I’m taking an even more drastic step. I’m going to…

Wait! Did I just repeat myself? 

Was that an editorial screw-up? No. I purposely re-used my “Inside This Issue” comments as content for “Notes From My Journal” because, while I was writing the former, I realized it could equally well serve as content for the latter – and thus save you an extra 200 words of unnecessary reading time.

Okay, that takes care of the Journal excerpt – the first thing that I said I was going to include in this issue.  Now let’s get to the other two…

Last week was a busy one for me. Busier than usual. I had six two-hour business meetings, two blog interviews, a half-dozen coaching sessions with copywriters, and three business dinners. Not to mention all the follow-up research I was doing on the Epstein scandal and the Charlie Kirk assassination.

I have fewer appointments scheduled for this week, which is good. But unless I can meditate my way down to some reasonable semblance of calm and acceptance about these two events that I have no control over, it’s going to be just as stressful as last week.

In any case, what follows is less than half of what I prepared to put in this issue. I figured that my readers may feel less disturbed by these two stories than I am, and I didn’t want to subject them to more than they could take.

Our Brave New Digital World 

There is no doubt that, thanks to the digital information revolution (which in my view really began at the turn of the century), the world of information – from the daily news to education and to personal communication – has completely changed.

When I’m with my grandkids, I sometimes wonder how the world seems to them as children that live in a world in which access to virtually everything you might want to read about or watch is not just available, but available from hundreds of content providers in dozens of different formats – and all in a matter of seconds.

There have been hundreds of essays and books written about this topic, most of them exploring the most obvious opportunities and problems. There is no doubt that digital media can be enormously useful in facilitating the amount of information easily available to us. But in recent years, we’ve also become acutely aware of problems with the quality and dependability of that information, the algorithms that control what users are “fed,” and, with the onset of AI, how easy it is to create and generate fake news and forgeries, including avatars – dead-ringer images of real people that can be made to do and say anything the programmer wants.

These big problems, I believe, will soon put us into an entirely new world where nothing generated by digital media will be trusted. Our knowledge systems have already been compromised by the algorithms in a pleasing but addictive way. Before long, our belief systems will change entirely, too, with trust becoming a very rare resource that few people or social media outlets will have.

But there are also all sorts of smaller problems, which might, in one’s personal life, be disturbing or disrupting in a large way. Take attention span, for instance. One of the most-documented effects of social media is a shortened attention span among those that use it for more than, say, an hour a day.

I can relate to that. Ever since I stopped watching network TV – which must be at least 10 years ago – I’ve been getting all my news from digital sources. And what I’ve noticed is that my attention span for acquiring information has shortened from about an hour to about 11 minutes – which is about my limit when it comes to clicking on a YouTube link.

What’s worse, I don’t have the patience for full-length movies or long books anymore. I still watch movies and read books, but I do it almost out of obligation these days. My instinct is always to get on YouTube or some other streaming service and click away.

I wonder how my new habits are affecting my brain. I wonder if I’m getting more or less informed, smarter or dumber, more or less socially responsible and empathetic.