Today, Friday, July 8th, I’m commencing a four-week experiment centered on the need to make progress on an important project. In what I’m hoping isn’t a too egregious case of cultural appropriation, I’m calling it Monk Mode. This article, and this experiment more broadly, are part of the project that…

My hockey career died several small deaths before finally dying for good at the end of 2019. The first death was when I decided to stop playing AAA and go play for my high school instead. The second death was when I played my last college club hockey game at…

The Problems With Habits Developing good habits is not the best path to happiness, productivity, success or any of the other things self-help books seem to think you want or need. Don’t get me wrong, having “good” habits is certainly a nice-to-have. All else being equal, I’d rather have “good” habits than “bad” habits…

DAOs are complex and frequently chaotic environments. As a new organizational technology, there are very few best practices that have permeated across the ecosystem. Everyone is rapidly experimenting and learning on their own. …

A year has always felt impossibly long. Something that happens in January and something that happens in December have always felt like they were on opposite ends of an infinite divide. This was even more true when I was a child and the endless expanse of a summer vacation felt…

Thoughts on starting fresh in a new domain, keeping a beginner’s mind, and looking to make an impact — The Ready exists to change how the world works — to realize a more adaptive, equitable, meaningful, and human way of working. This has meant partnering with some of the world’s largest and most well-known organizations as they strive to remove decades of organizational debt to become better versions of…

Most years (2017, 2018, 2019) I like to take a look back at the tools I found myself using and reflect on the extent to which I’m satisfied with them. While it’s certainly a good practice to be deliberate with the tools I choose to learn and use, this is…

One of my favorite ways to practice minimalism is in the way I prepare for, pack, and approach travel. There’s a phrase that’s thrown around in this domain that I think captures it well; “traveling lightly.” …

The Final Review — This article originally appeared on SamSpurlin.com. At the end of May 2021, my colleagues at The Ready consented to a proposal I brought to our monthly Governance Meeting called Sabbatical Policy. Roughly five weeks later, I shared on Slack the output of a writing exercise I used to get clear…