There’s a trend making waves on TikTok - though I’ll admit, I didn’t stumble upon it while scrolling the app. I read about it in the New York Times, which feels far more aligned with my old-soul sensibilities. The phrase is “locking in,” and while it’s been floating around for a few years, it’s recently taken on new life through something creators are calling The Great Lock In.

Earlier this week we drove down to the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee where we've been working from an Airbnb. My makeshift desk has been facing a large wall of windows overlooking a sea of trees. It is also where I have set up my yoga mat, which means every day I've been able to take some intentional time to not only stretch and reset my mind, but to do it with a setting that automatically puts me at peace.

I had the pleasure of meeting someone for coffee this morning; she's about a year into retirement and trying to figure out this next phase of her life. A friend of mine had given her my book and so she reached out asking to pick my brain (which I love, by the way, never hesitate to reach out to me). Her story is similar to mine in that she wants to lead professional development workshops and ideally become a keynote speaker. Also like me, she has a lot of experience from an impressive career and could probably speak on a dozen different topics. Unfortunately, having a versatile skill set is a double-edged sword.

It's 10:30 on Saturday night and I haven't written my Starter yet. I debated on just writing it in the morning - which I have done only once or twice before - but I didn't want to start my week feeling like I was already behind. Do you know that feeling? Like no matter how much you accomplish you just still feel like you're falling short?

I don’t often rant on here, but I think I need a ranting moment right now because I just finished reading an article about how Mariah Carey doesn’t acknowledge the passing of time. It was a headline in the news email I receive every morning, and I was intrigued so I clicked. As I read through the article, which later directed me to watching the full interview, I discovered that as part of her not acknowledging the passing of time, she does not celebrate birthdays. She also claims to not acknowledge days, weeks or months but when asked the question - how do you schedule appointments? - she said, "somebody else handles that." I actually laughed out loud when I read it.

I have a favorite pair of sneakers, a set of Vans, that I wear all the time. They are perfectly worn in and very comfortable. I love these sneakers and yet I almost threw them out. You see they were a gift from the company that laid me off. When this happened to me years ago, I was so overwhelmed with shock and frustration that I wanted to chuck everything they had given me. In fact, when I sent back my laptop…

Recently, while doing some research for a social media post, I read an interview with Vera Wang where she was asked if it was hard to stay innovative. While answering the question, she described one collection she did that was based on a plaid fabric. I realized as I read it that I had never thought about fashion design being centered around a fabric. She described getting this big bolt of fabric and then working with her team to design an entire line around it. It was interesting to me, this idea that you need to work with what you have; the bolt of fabric comes first, then the ideas come later.

I just ran a 5K and finished with one of the best times I’ve ever had. The moment I realized I might come close to a personal best was about a mile from the finish. I glanced at my watch and saw my pace was solid. I could beat my record, I thought, but there’s no way…

Backlog grooming is a term I was introduced to about 6 years ago through the agile project management framework called Scrum. Your backlog refers to the list of things that you don't want to forget to work on; some of the things in your backlog are items that popped into your head during the week or came up because circumstances changed, while other things were a part of the plan all along.

Early on in my career, when I was still teaching Middle School Science, I was working at a private school in Ecuador that was striving to reinvent Ecuadorian education. At the time, all schools in the country lacked critical thinking in their curriculum. Most students were worried more about which pen color I wanted them to use rather than thinking about the material they were learning. As part of a curriculum development team, I worked with a few other teachers to research education in other countries; we wanted to know which countries were the best and why they were the best. Singapore, for example…

As we made our way upriver, I felt myself going slower than I have in the past. Is the current stronger? Am I weaker? If I am weaker, do I care? After some thought I came to the conclusion that I did not care how fast I went, I just wanted to be able to do it. The it I am referring to is something my husband Andrew and I had dubbed the triathlon. It begins with a 2 mile kayak up stream where we pull our kayaks off into the woods and proceed to a 3.5-mile hike. At the end of the hike is a little pub where leg #3 is fried food and beer. It is the triathlon, and it's silly, but it's also not easy and I love that I can do it - even if I do it a little slower this year than the last. 

This past Thursday, I was at In-Law Brewery in upstate New York, a small batch brewery that started as a pop-up and recently transitioned into their own building. Every summer when we come up to Hanawa Falls, New York we make the 35-minute drive to Chase Mills to grab a few beers and enjoy the live music. With beer names like East Coast Dad, Grandpa's New Girlfriend, and Brother from Another Mother, I enjoy seeing the witty family-themed names they come up with almost as much as I enjoy the beer. Only open on Thursdays from 6 to 8, driving to In-Law is always a great event and it's been fun to witness their growth year after year.

I spent last night in a hotel room watching garbage television and loving every minute of it. We started off with Storage Wars and then switched to Ancient Aliens. We only watched for about an hour but in that hour, we saw dozens of ads for a variety of products; it was basically a long list of side effects for different drugs and then the occasional movie ad.

This is the type of ad-watching I grew up on. Of course, the shows were longer, and the ads were shorter back in the 90s, but it was all connected to whatever station you were watching. On the flip side, when I woke up this morning I had a very different ad experience on Instagram. As I sipped my coffee and scrolled through, I wanted to have just a few minutes of mindless chuckles - in the same way the garbage television provided last night - but instead I was bombarded with ad after ad targeting my deepest insecurities.

Today I had a very unusual gift: the gift of time. I recently started implementing a 4-day* work week for myself and it has been the best decision I ever made. Of course, I must put an asterisk next to 4-day because I own my own business and I’m a writer, which means I work every day because there are certain parts of my work that don’t feel like work at all. So, what I did was I started limiting my project and client work to Monday through Thursday which leaves Friday Saturday and Sunday open for resting, writing, volunteering, and/or catching up on all my favorite parts of my work. This particular Friday…

This past week I was delivering a custom leadership workshop at the same corporate offsite where UCLA basketball coach Cori Close was delivering the keynote. I was fortunate enough to be able to sit in the audience, soaking up all the great advice she had for achieving great things. She sprinkled in many memorable nuggets that you will probably see surface in some future Sunday Starters, but the one I want to talk about today is what she told us about talent.

I was just scrolling through the news when a headline caught my eye and immediately made me smile.

Target Warns of Lower Sales in 2025 - Blaming Tariffs And DEI Rollback Backlash.

I happen to come across this article right after I spent 2 hours on Etsy trying to find small businesses to order my workshop supplies from. A year ago, this would have been a target run, but ever since they rolled back their DEI initiatives, I have been trying not to shop there.

Most of your day consists of set routines. When you wake up in the morning, you don't have to think about what is coming next. You get up and brush your teeth, or grab your cup of coffee, or whatever it is you do every day. Our work is the same way. The employee who has been sending emails for their weekly updates, doesn't have to think about it. They know where to go, they have their distribution list to send it to, and they know how to attach the PDF. The entire process is on autopilot which means it requires very little mental energy. That is, until the technology changes.

The Tipping Point is a term that's been around since the 1800s but gained popularity in the 1960s as the precursor to the racist white flight, bringing it into the general vocabulary. Later, in the 2000s, it had a resurgence with the publishing of Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point. Now, the term is commonly used to indicate the point of no return. We talk about our own tipping points with our patience - the moment we just can't take it anymore - and we talk about it in organizational change as the moment when enough people are supporting an idea that the desired change is inevitable.

Recently, I found myself chatting with a friend about the more frustrating parts of our jobs. We both agreed that in any job, there are going to be tasks that we look forward to and tasks that we just need to get through. Those of you that are early on in your career, you may not have yet figured out these things because while some are obvious - you try it once and absolutely detest it - there are other tasks that can at first disguise themselves as enjoyable. Over time, though, when you start to get to know yourself better, this is when you can differentiate between the things that give you life, and the things that drain you.

For a while now I've known that I wanted to write a second book, but I had trouble deciding what to focus on. I had several ideas but until earlier this week I had been lacking some inspiration. Then one unexpected morning I had a 45-minute meeting with a prospective client and then got in the car to drive to an engagement in Boston. During that 4-hour car ride I left myself voice memo after voice memo after voice memo; so many ideas came pouring out of me, I could hardly keep up. Not only did I outline the entire book, but I also "wrote" three different Sunday Starters. Writing is in quotes because I wasn't actually writing, with the hands-free voice memos and all that, but I got the ideas down. It’s hard to say what it was about the person I met with that morning, but there was something about our conversation that left me feeling the most inspired I've felt in a long time.