Intent

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 32

Before you say anything — to your spouse, your team, your AI — there’s a question worth answering first: why are you opening your mouth?

Are you trying to understand something? Are you trying to be understood? Are you trying to win? Are you trying to find the truth? The answer changes everything that comes after it.

I’ve watched the same conversation go two completely different directions depending on intent. When I walk into a discussion at work trying to prove I’m right, I stop listening the moment someone pushes back. The conversation becomes a contest. The outcome is whoever talks louder or gives up first.

When I walk in trying to find the right answer — even if it means I was wrong — something different happens. I ask better questions. I actually hear the responses. The pushback becomes useful instead of threatening. And the outcome is usually better than what either side walked in with.

Same people. Same room. Same topic. Different intent.

This is just as true when I sit down with AI. If my intent is to get the machine to confirm what I already believe, I’ll frame my questions to lead it there — and it’ll oblige, because that’s what it does. I’ll walk away feeling validated and potentially dead wrong.

If my intent is to find the truth, I ask differently. I challenge what comes back. I say “push back on this” and mean it. I hand over my assumptions and ask the AI to break them. The conversation is harder. The results are better.

Intent is the cornerstone. Not the last thing you think about — the first. If the intent is wrong, every communication skill you have just becomes a sharper tool for manipulation. If the intent is right, even clumsy communication has a chance of getting somewhere real.

Get Them Out

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 32

I went for a walk this afternoon with a small headache and vague tension in my chest — the kind that comes from knowing you have something to get out but not being able to see it clearly yet. By the time I got done, I had a complete framework for the communication course I’ve been circling for months. Ten principles. A product structure. A content engine. None of it existed in any organized form before I started walking.

The ideas were already in my head. They just needed out.

That’s the part most people skip. They sit with ideas swirling, waiting for the moment when it all clicks into place internally before they start. But it doesn’t click inside. It clicks when you get it outside — onto a page, into a voice recording, onto a whiteboard, into a conversation. The act of externalizing is what organizes the thinking, not the other way around.

I’ve written a blog post every day this year. The best ones didn’t come from sitting down with a clear idea. They came from starting with a half-formed thought and watching it take shape as the words came out. The writing did the thinking for me.

I left on the walk this afternoon with tension. I came back with details fleshed out. The only difference was getting it out of my head and into the air.

Grateful

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 31

Some days the most productive thing I do is sit still long enough to realize how much I have.

A wife who believes in me. A son I get to watch turn into a fantastic godly man. Work that challenges me. Projects that excite me. A faith that holds me together when I can’t hold myself.

Not every post needs to be a breakthrough. Some days you just say thank you and mean it.

The Short Letter

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 30

There’s a quote attributed to Blaise Pascal: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

Most people read that as a joke about editing. It’s not. It’s one of the truest things ever said about how real clarity works.

The simple version of anything is never where you start. You start with the mess — every idea you have, every angle you can think of, every framework and connection and tangent your brain wants to chase. That’s the long letter. It’s necessary. You have to write it.

But the long letter is not the product. The long letter is the process.

The product is what’s left after you cut everything that doesn’t make Monday morning better for the person holding it. That takes longer than the mess did. It takes focus, honesty, and the willingness to throw away things you’re proud of because they don’t serve the person you’re building for.

I’ve watched this play out in my own work this year. I cut nearly half my first novel in editing — not because the writing was bad, but because I was explaining things the story had already shown. Yesterday I wrote a closing line I loved — a declaration about what I was going to do next. The editorial pass cut it because the essay had already made the point. The line served me. It didn’t serve the reader.

I’ve been developing an AI education product for weeks. It kept growing — more frameworks, more depth, more layers. Then I asked myself what the simplest useful version looked like. The answer fit in one sentence. That is where I am headed.

Simplicity isn’t where you start. It’s where you arrive after doing the hard work of going through everything else first. The short letter takes longer than the long one. But it’s the only one worth sending.

Undiscovered Territory

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

7-40 Challenge | Round 4, Day 29

I’ve been calling promoting my creative work a foreign country. A place I don’t speak the language, don’t know the customs, don’t belong. I’ve been treating it like something that requires a translator or a guide just to survive.

That’s the wrong metaphor. And the wrong metaphor was keeping me stuck.

A foreign country means I don’t belong there. The terrain is hostile, the language is incomprehensible, and I need someone else to navigate for me. That framing makes me a tourist — passive, dependent, out of my depth.

Undiscovered territory means the map hasn’t been drawn yet. I have skills that transfer. I’ve navigated unmapped ground before. The terrain isn’t hostile — it’s just unfamiliar. And the only way to map it is to walk it.

Lewis and Clark had a mission before they had a map. They knew the destination — the Pacific. They didn’t know the terrain between here and there. They walked it anyway, and the map got drawn behind them.

I know my Pacific. It’s not a revenue number. It’s freedom. It’s influence. It’s the ability to create things that matter to people, that uplift and inspire them, and also provide me the means to accomplish the goals that I have.

Everything between here and there is not a foreign country — it’s just unmapped territory. And no one else is going to map it for me, because no one else has my combination of skills, products, and goals.

The good news is I believe I’m right where God has me, and that I’m walking with Him through this uncharted territory. It’s exciting. It’s scary. But it’s time to find that Pacific shore.