Friday Field Notes: 8/22/2025

Aug 22, 2025

Happy Friday, folks.

It’s been a while.

I just got back from 2 weeks of chaos with the Army and while sleep was minimal, I found that I enjoyed the change in my normal pace.

There was a period, when I was still on active duty, where I had to write everything down. I couldn’t remember details for the life of me.

The pace of operations during that time was unbelievably slow, and made me complacent.

Compare that to when we were full-tilt into operations.

Off the top of my head, I knew what units were where, at what time, and with what equipment.

The information just flowed from me like I’d achieved singularity and AI was built into my consciousness.

These past two weeks were like the latter. And while mentally draining, I’d forgotten how well I can work when I have 100+ things to be tracking.

This begs the question, what can we do in our normal routine to stimulate the same level of brain activity?

It’s not by taking on random projects. But rather, finding important work, and compressing our deadlines to get them done.

Give it a shot. You may find you’re able to get better results in a fraction of the time.

Regardless, ask yourself the question, “If today’s workload was only reflective of 50% of what I’m capable of doing, what would 100% look like?”

Fun little thought exercise for you.

Have a great weekend!

Lessons of the Week:

1. CTFAR Model

I’ve shared this one with a lot of clients. It’s a tool a coach once gave to me.

It’s a model for how the world works.

Circumstances, Thoughts, Feelings, Actions, Results.

Our circumstances guide our thoughts, which create feelings, which drive actions, which lead to results.

When we understand this is the pattern, we can interrupt it. While we may not be able to change our circumstances, we can change the questions we ask ourselves that lead to those thoughts.

And in changing the thoughts, we shift the cascade that makes its way to results.

You can also start in reverse.

If you know what results you’re after, what actions need to be taken? What feelings would you need to make those actions guaranteed? And then what thinking would be required?

Now, regardless of your circumstances, you change your possible results.

2. Choosing Your Lessons Learned

Something that’s been helpful for me is deciding what I want to gain from certain interactions.

So rather than just waiting for something to happen to trying to figure out what lesson was learned from it, I’m being more proactive.

For example, if I’m joining a sales call, what do I want to learn within this specific call? Separate from whether someone will buy from me, maybe it’s, “does this type of messaging land,” or “what happens if I only speak after 5 seconds of silence?”

The simple act of thinking through what I want to learn has led to more insights and growth than any single tactic lately.

I made a little Notion board for planning out what I want to learn during certain events across my week, then capturing the insights there.

It’s an exercise I’d strongly recommend.

3. There’s no easy business.

Everyone gets excited with a new business idea, but they forget that if it truly was easy, someone else would have likely done it by now.

This stuff is hard.

There’s no easy button on running an agency or any other business.

When you can acknowledge that every new campaign or endeavor is going to require effort, that’s when it truly feels easier, because you’re not battling some unmet expectation.