This week, I consumed less content than usual because it’s a holiday week. None of it is worth sharing. Next week I’ll get back to my normal content consumption level. I hope to find a few nuggets worth sharing.

Happy July 4th!

I hope everyone had a great holiday!

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I like to relax and enjoy holidays, but over the last year or two, I’ve established a habit of setting a challenge for myself for each holiday. I missed doing so for Memorial Day, and I want to get back on track for the 4th. The challenges are fun ways to push myself or make progress on a current project. I try to complete the challenge, and usually I do, but sometimes I overestimate what I can do during a holiday. Regardless, it’s fun, I learn something from the process, and I feel like I made progress on something I’m interested in.

Over the last few months, I’ve collected several research reports and articles written by notable people that I want to read. I never get around to reading them, though. They pile up in my office.

My goal for this holiday is to read two of these reports by Tuesday.

That’s it; that’s the challenge. Very simple. Wish me luck.

The book I’m reading this week is great. It’s a biographical anthology about nine people who achieved outsized success. I won’t spoil it (check the post on Monday for the title), but one of the authors said something that’s stuck with me. After reading tons of books in his field and interviewing the nine people in the book, he realized something:

[T]here is almost always someone achieving enormous success in doing something that you think is impossible.

I agree. If most people think something is impossible, it may be more the case that it’s really hard and tons of people have failed at it. If you’re one of the diligent people who figure it out, the reward could be massive. This is a classic power-law outcome. Only a small fraction of people succeed, but the ones who do receive rewards so large they’re hard to comprehend. Think Steph Curry’s salary of $62 million for the next NBA season (per spotrac) or Jeff Bezos’s $256 billion net worth (per Bloomberg as of this writing).

Hard things are . . . well . . . hard. That doesn’t make them impossible. Many hard things seem impossible but are actually quite possible if effort is applied to solving or mastering them over a long period of time. Bezos and Curry spent decades working at and perfecting their crafts. In the early years, they weren’t sure they’d succeed, but they knew their chances of success would continue to go up as they worked at it consistently. Each has achieved what, 20 years ago, many would have said is impossible. In reality, it wasn’t impossible; it was just really hard and required a ton of energy and commitment over a long period of time to make it happen.

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Today is the last day of June. That means Q2 is officially over and we’re halfway through the year. The first half of 2026 went by fast, but for whatever reason, I don’t feel like I made the most of it. I want to make the most of the year as a whole, so I’ll be experimenting with some changes and new habits. Here’s hoping they work!