The 3 Things I’m Thinking About — May 16th, 2026 Edition

Happy Saturday.

I do not know what kind of week you had, but mine had a thread running through it that I did not see until late Thursday. The thread had to do with idols, in the older sense of the word. Not the obvious ones. The quiet ones. The things that have taken up real estate in my life under the disguise of being useful, or productive, or simply who I am.

Three things have been turning over in my head all week. I want to walk through them out loud, because Saturday is the day I get to do that, and because I suspect that at least one of these will land for someone reading.

Pour your coffee. Let’s go.

ONE: I HAVE BEEN CONFUSING ACTIVITY WITH ANSWERS

There is a pattern I have caught myself running this week, and it is the kind of pattern that hides in plain sight because it looks so much like the right behavior.

The pattern is this. I feel uncertain about something. A direction. A decision. A relationship. A piece of the business that does not have a clear answer yet. The uncertainty is uncomfortable, in the way uncertainty always is. And instead of sitting with the uncertainty long enough to let an actual answer surface, I do something. I send an email. I take a meeting. I write a…