How to Build Amidst Chaos
I’ve spent too much time on Twitter/X this past week. Just this morning, instead of sitting down to write, I watched footage of the killing of a protester by ICE in Minneapolis.
I have a lot of business conversations this year that start with someone saying: “I’m doing well – all things considered.” Given the state of the world.
So, in the spirit of my new e-book This Might Work I thought I’d write myself a how-to article about how to stay focused and sane amidst chaos.
Pay Attention to Yourself
I went to the gym with my mother this week. She’s in her late 70s, and goes to the gym twice a week to stabilize several old injuries.
As I was coaching her, we had a hilarious conversation where I asked her to show me a knee-strengthening sequence. She proceeded to rush through three sets of twelve reps of these “rehabilitation” movements at breathtaking speed – all while listening to political podcasts.
I try not to judge other people in the gym, and instead just celebrate anyone who’s exercising. But I was also unsurprised to learn that my mother doesn’t break a sweat.
When I showed my mother a speed that allowed her to feel the exercise – about 1/10th her original pace – she exclaimed how tiring it was to do.
As Gloria Mark writes about (and will discuss on stage at Responsive Conference 2026!), attention is a skill to be trained like any other.
The world is built to take our attention. From TikTok to The New York Times, billions – perhaps trillions – of dollars are being spent to capture and maintain our focus on whatever that business wants us to see.
Where we put our focus is our most important commodity.
Know Your Priorities
Amidst this world of constant distraction, it's hard to keep track of your priorities.
Checking email every three minutes might be a better use of my time than mindlessly scrolling TikTok, but it doesn’t result in getting real work done.
(For the record, I've long since deleted TikTok from all my devices.)
My priorities are taking care of myself, family, and community. Professionally, I want to do great work and continue to stretch myself.
I don’t especially judge someone else’s priorities, as long as they aren't malicious. But it is harder to accomplish your goals if you don’t know where you want to go.
It is much easier to stay glued to your phone than it is to continually recommit to your priorities.
Meditate More
In 2023, I spent a month meditating an hour a day. It was a great experiment, and I ultimately decided that the experiment was something of a failure.
Meditation is an incredible tool; one I’ll return to. But the best meditation is the kind you can stick to.
For me, these days, meditation means exercise. It's the required focus that I have to expend in order to write anything of quality.
Meditation is the process of deep and sustained focus – not necessarily sitting cross-legged trying to clear your mind.
In our distracted world, the process of training attention, and doing so daily, is a habit that makes everything else better.
Find a Hobby
I haven't been bored in decades.
As I saw somebody say recently (Yes, on Twitter) AI makes learning incredibly exciting for us autodidacts. There are literally endless learning rabbit holes at our fingertips.
I'm reminded of the years I spent learning to sing. I don't practice singing regularly anymore – other than singing my fiancée her morning “This is Your Coffee Song.” But the practice of singing, discipline in the original root of the word, is something I think of often.
Taking the time out from our regular routines to learn something new is priceless.
Take Care of Your Body
The 4-Hour Workweek was a big part of my very early entrepreneurship journey. One of the most under-appreciated aspects of that book is when Tim described having something else besides work to focus on when work went off the rails.
He described that for him, fitness was an antidote to a bad work day. That even when his business was struggling or he was struggling with business, at least he could hit some new PRs in the gym.
There is plenty to be said for exercise – or what I would call a movement practice – as an important part of taking care of yourself physically. But less addressed – and I would argue even more important – is the utility of physical practice for your mental and emotional health.
I once heard Ido Portal say that he’d never met someone who was depressed who trained movement four hours a day. I’m not sure it’s possible.
When we take care of our bodies, we take care of our minds.
Stay Off Screens
I'm fascinated to follow Australia's experiment banning social media for children under 16 years old.
I don't have children yet, but I hope that by the time my kids are in that age range we will have better societal expectations around screen use.
Regardless, as a simple rule of thumb, I think we should all stay off screens (phone, computer, whatever) for the first and last hour of the day.
I don't do this very often. I would be better if I did.
Read More
The most successful people in the world read a lot. It is almost magical that you can spend a few hours in a book to understand the most nuanced thoughts and learnings from somebody else's life.
As George R.R. Martin writes in A Game of Thrones, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”
If I were to choose a single focus for myself in 2026, it would be to read more. Doing so forces a majority of the things that I've just discussed:
- Paying attention
- Meditating
- Finding a hobby
- Staying off screens
Study History
I've been really fortunate in my life to have very modest hardships. Getting bullied in middle school and a propensity for addiction are probably my biggest.
For someone like me – who has never been abused or had loved ones killed – it can be hard to imagine atrocities of the past being real, not to mention occurring in the present day.
The sentiment of It Can’t Happen Here, which is coincidentally the title of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 dystopian novel about the rise of fascism in the United States, feels true to everyone who hasn’t lived through catastrophe – and many who have.
As I wrote about last year, an “escapism” history book I enjoyed was A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan. I was shocked to learn about the rise of the KKK through the 1920s. The book helped me understand the rise of white nationalism in the U.S. today.
Support the People You Love
Finally, but essentially, none of us can handle hardship alone for long. Humans are pack animals.
We do our best work in working with others, our best ideas in community, and humans who grow up without enough contact don’t survive.
In order to support ourselves we have to support other people, too. That is core to our humanity.
Things Aren’t Slowing Down
Unfortunately, things aren't going to be less chaotic in the coming years. I wish they would! It's much easier to raise children, build businesses, and take care of my family, when things are stable.
But since it appears that rate of change really is only going to continue to escalate – one of the few predictions I’ve made since 2015 – the only thing we can do is hold on and do our best to keep on trying.
3 Things I’ve Loved This Week
Quote I’m Considering
"Bad artists borrow, great ones steal." – often misattributed to Pablo Picasso
Someone said this to me recently, and I got curious about the history of the quote. Seemingly, Steve Jobs misattributed the quote to Picasso.
As best as I’ve been able to tell, the original quote dates to a 19th-century magazine journalist named W. H. Davenport Adams who wrote, “Great poets imitate and improve, whereas small ones steal and spoil.”
A few decades later, T.S. Eliot wrote "Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better".
In present day, Austin Kleon’s done a great job talking about these ideas in his book Steal Like An Artist.
Interview I’m Watching
Lulu Cheng Meservey has led communications for companies including Substack and Activision Blizzard.
Our speaker at the Snafu Conference Niels Hoven turned me on to Lulu’s interview with Gary Tan, which is worth a listen for anyone interested in narrative strategy and messaging.
Series I’m Reading
I’ve been enjoying Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files as escapism fantasy. They’re gritty urban noir that follow Harry Dresden, Chicago’s only professional wizard.
The only downside? There are seventeen books, and none of them are short.
Want more?
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The Snafu Conference is an immersive 1-day experience about authentic selling in a chaotic world. The summit will take place on March 5, 2026 at the Oakland Museum of California. Ticket prices go up soon, so get yours now!
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Responsive Conference is coming back in 2026! With AI and a changing economy, our jobs and careers are changing faster than most of us can adapt. Attend Responsive Conference and learn how to keep up with change. Ticket prices go up soon, so don't wait!
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A few months ago, I began sorting Snafu articles into categories and realized how many were really How-Tos — fasting, buying a used car, raising a puppy, buying a house. This e-book collects those experiments and what I learned along the way. Download it free.
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Until next week,
Robin
