January 12, 2026
Good morning! The National Weather Service (this still exists?!) reports we have had 95% clouds (no sun) in this part of the world during daylight hours for the last THREE WEEKS. If you don’t already have your Seasonal Affective Disorder lamps turned on… get them turned on before you’re not able to move. “There is a humility to January. It does not demand brilliance or achievement. It simply asks us to begin again.” (Fecht)
- Wish/ Want/ Need du jour: Someone delivers a delicious low-calorie/ zero-sugar pastry or breakfast sandwich to my door each morning.
- During the year just ended — 2025 — it was smart to have been long on silver (up 142%) and short on orange juice (down 50%), but…
- … it’s impossible to invest looking backwards, as you might know.
- Unless you have a time machine.
- It gives you shivers just to preliminarily skim through the pages in advance of having time to read it more in depth.
- The latest edition of The Smithsonian is SO good… find some time to read it cover-to-cover.
- I’ve long used this as a measuring stick: The quality of a movie is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend thinking about it the next morning.
- Will you go to Davos?
- How about Aspen?
- Good news!
- There are two countries globally getting fatter faster than those of us here in the United States.
- Both Kuwait and Qatar (any surprise?!) are adding poundage at a rate greater than those of us who live here.
- For the curious, our rate of weight increase is 43%… we are tied with Saudi Arabia.
- Japan, South Korea, and France are all gaining weight, but at a rate only 1/4 or 1/5 that of the U.S. (Rutkowski)
- Just sayin’…
- There is an outdoor tennis court immediately adjacent to our home; it’s not ours, but property of the City. It’s brand new.
- There are dozens of relatively new outdoor pickle ball courts near our home — and you COULD play that game on a tennis court, but…
- Anecdotally, all of the courts — both tennis and pickle ball — are empty and vacant 99% of the time.
- As organizations push for greater productivity, an uncomfortable truth is emerging:
- Many employees no longer have the capacity to keep up.
- Leaders describe the same pattern everywhere —
- — too many meetings, too little time to think, constant digital interruption, and a pace that leaves no room for recovery.
- Beneath these symptoms lies a tension… the pull between productivity and nurture.
- Productivity without nurture leads to burnout; nurture without productivity leads to fragility.
- This tension isn’t something we solve once;
- it’s something we continually navigate. (Gratton)
- Calm is partly inherited and partly innate, but the cam minority shows us that this trait can be built, strengthened, and deliberately practiced.
- The capacity to learn is the factor that is by far the most important…
- … the ability to know how to take a pause becomes a strategic advantage.
- It shapes not only how we perform under pressure, but how long we can sustain meaningful work without burning out or losing clarity. (Ibid.)
