The Craftsman

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I’m reading Cal Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You, and he makes an argument that I can’t stop thinking about.

Most people are told to follow their passion. Find the thing you love, then figure out how to get paid for it. Newport says that’s backwards. The craftsman doesn’t start with passion. The craftsman starts with skill. They show up, do the work, get better, and somewhere along the way the passion finds them.

The distinction is in the question. The passion seeker asks, “what can the world offer me?” The craftsman asks, “what can I offer the world?” One is focused inward. The other is focused outward. And the one focused outward is the one who ends up building something that lasts.

I’ve lived both sides of this.

In the spring 1998, I was a singer on a full scholarship finishing sophomore year. I had thrown myself into music since the tenth grade with everything I had. Performing at church, writing songs, chasing every stage I could find. It felt like passion, and it was intense. But it wasn’t disciplined. I was taking voice classes, but I wasn’t studying voice. I wasn’t refining my craft with any kind of system. I was winging it and riding the feeling as far as it would carry me.

Then I met my wife. We went from strangers to married in eight months. And suddenly the thing I had been so intense about didn’t burn the same way. The passion got redirected toward something I loved more, and the singing just quietly faded into a hobby.

That’s what happens when intensity is the engine instead of craft. It burns hot until something hotter shows up.

Then I had to find work. Several years into our marriage, I fell into data management sideways, without a plan. I never saw myself as a data person. It was just a job.

And then I showed up for it. Day after day, year after year, learning the systems, understanding the architecture, solving problems. One day I woke up and realized that’s what I really enjoyed doing.

The thing I get most passionate about at work these days is making sure data is right so people can do their jobs better. The kid who wanted to be a rock star grew up to fight about data quality. And somehow, that’s exactly where I’m supposed to be.

The skill came first. The passion followed.

My time in Toastmasters taught me the same thing. I had a natural comfort on stage, but I could stick my foot all the way down my throat and just keep talking. I knew I needed to improve.

The craftsman work was learning to shape that raw ability into something useful — speech after speech, critique after critique, rep after rep. Two years of grinding before it started to click. Nobody handed me a passion for public speaking. I built it through reps.

But the clearest proof came when I tried it both ways back to back.

In 2022, I built a challenge called 100 Days Strong. It was fueled by frustration and raw energy — the feeling that something had to change. I muscled through it, lost almost 40 pounds, and burned out the moment it ended. I had intensity. I had desire. What I didn’t have was a system. The weight came back. The habits didn’t stick. The passion fizzled because there was nothing underneath it holding the structure together.

On January 1, 2026, I built the system first. I told myself there was no halfway option. No excuse. I was going to get in and learn the bones of this thing. I laid out the vision. I set goals behind the habits. I committed to writing every single day — not because I felt like it, but because the system required it.

The energy on Day 1 this year was different than any other time I’ve tried to change my life. It wasn’t passion driving me. It was a decision. And eighty-seven days later, the decision has produced more passion, more creativity, more output, and more clarity than any burst of inspiration I’ve ever chased.

Same person. Two approaches. Different outcomes.

Newport is right. The craftsman standard beats the passion standard. Not because passion doesn’t matter — it does. But because passion is the reward for mastery, not the prerequisite for it.

Show up. Get good. The passion will find you.

Twenty-Two

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I’ve sold twenty-two copies of my first novel.

I’m going to sit with that number for a second, because it means two things at once.

First — I wrote a book. A real book. A story I’m genuinely proud of. It has four five-star reviews on Amazon from people who aren’t just being nice. One of them is a stranger who picked it up because a friend recommended it. He put everything else down to finish it. He’s waiting for book two.

Twenty-two people have read something I created, and the ones who’ve talked to me about it say it’s good. Not polite good. Real good.

That feels like something.

Second — twenty-two is not enough. Not because I need validation, but because I know this book could reach people if they could find it. And right now, they can’t. Because I have no idea how to make that happen.

I spent tonight doing research. Honest, unglamorous research into what it actually takes to get a self-published novel in front of readers on Amazon. And here’s what I learned: I don’t know anything about this part of the process.

I know how to write a book. I don’t know how to sell one. Getting the algorithm to show it to people, building the kind of social proof that makes a stranger willing to take a chance on an author they’ve never heard of — I’m standing at the edge of what I know. And there’s nothing out here but questions I haven’t answered yet.

That’s an uncomfortable place to be. Especially after eighty-five days of building systems and shipping work and feeling like the momentum is real. Because the momentum is real. I know where I’m going. I just don’t have the skill yet to get the book there with me. And the only way to learn it is the same way I’ve learned everything else this year. Read. Ask questions. Build a system. Execute. Adjust.

I didn’t know how to write a novel until I wrote one. I didn’t know how to build a daily habit system until I built one. I don’t know how to market a book yet. But I will.

Twenty-two copies. Four five-star reviews. One stranger who couldn’t put it down.

That’s not a failure. That’s a foundation.

P.S. If you want to check it out: https://a.co/d/06d0FLNf

Fifteen Years Later

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I ran across something I wrote in 2011 about Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. The idea that stuck with me then was simple: a character doesn’t change unless they go through hard times and conflict. Without it, the character stays one-dimensional.

I used Braveheart as my example. I’ve always loved that story. Scotland wouldn’t have won their freedom if William Wallace hadn’t gone through the pain of losing his wife. Her death changed the direction of his life.

Some things don’t change. I still reach for Braveheart every time I need to make a point about story.

But here’s what hit me rereading my own words from fifteen years ago.

My wife said something in that post that I quoted at the time: “Life never does quite work out the way we have planned, does it? So why do we wait for it to? We expect to live a neat and tidy life, but we both know it isn’t going to happen.”

That was 2011. She was right then. She’s still right now. Our lives have been anything but neat and tidy. Cancer — twice. Over five years of trying to have our son. Losing people we love. Career changes. Cross-country moves. None of it followed the timeline we set.

In 2011, I ended that post by saying we were “in pursuit of life.” That we were choosing to write a better story. That we didn’t have everything figured out but we didn’t have to.

Here’s what’s different fifteen years later: I actually did it.

Not right away. I spent another decade filling notebooks and making plans I didn’t follow through on. I had the knowledge. I had the books on the shelf. What I didn’t have was a system to turn intention into execution.

On January 1, 2026, I built the system first. A daily blog that forces me to process what I’m learning. A published novel that proved the dreams in those notebooks were real. Eighty-five days in a row of showing up.

The 2011 version of me knew the right words. The 2026 version of me is living them.

Donald Miller wrote that you have to go pursue life — that it won’t come to you. He hiked the Inca Trail. He biked across America. He started a mentoring project. He couldn’t sit and wait.

I didn’t hike a trail or bike across the country. I sat down at a desk with a cup of coffee and started asking better questions. And that turned out to be enough.

My bride said it best fifteen years ago and she’s still right: life isn’t going to be neat and tidy. The story wouldn’t be worth reading if it were.

The Coffee Shop

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I sat down at a coffee shop this morning with a hot cup of coffee and no agenda other than space.

No meetings. No interruptions. No one asking me for anything. Just a table, a cup, and whatever my brain wanted to work on.

By the time I left, I had completed a final edit pass on a manifesto I’ve been writing for weeks. I answered five strategic questions about projects I’m building. I made decisions about three different creative works that had been sitting open. I mapped out next steps I’d been circling for days.

I didn’t plan any of that. The space did it.

There’s something about a coffee shop early in the morning when I’m fresh. The background noise is just enough to keep me from getting too inside my own head. The coffee is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do — fresh, legal, addictive stimulants and atmosphere. Hard to beat.

I think most people underestimate what happens when you give yourself uninterrupted space to think. We fill every minute with input — podcasts, scrolling, notifications, conversations. And then we wonder why we can’t figure out what we want or where we’re going.

The man at the desk doesn’t need more input. He needs a coffee shop and an empty morning.

I don’t get to do this every Saturday. But when I do, more gets done before noon than in most full days of grinding. Not because I work harder. Because I think clearer.

Give yourself the space. See what shows up.

Tell Good Stories

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

I saw the new Super Mario Galaxy movie today with my family. It was really well made. The animation was gorgeous, the 3D was good, and the story was well told.

But here’s what got me. Nintendo layered thirty years of Easter eggs into a movie that works perfectly for a seven-year-old who’s never picked up a GameCube. Robot Rob. Star Fox. Mr. Game and Watch. Crosses from Mario Galaxy, Mario Odyssey, Super Smash Bros. A cornucopia of references that made me grin in a theater full of kids who had no idea why I was smiling.

Two audiences. One story. Both satisfied.

They didn’t have to screen-adapt the thing. They just took stories that everybody loved from the games and seamlessly wove them in and out.

Later tonight I was scrolling Facebook and stopped on a Gabriel Iglesias clip. The man literally stands on a stage and talks about his life. No props. No gimmicks. Just stories about his mom, his son, his friends. He’s old school funny — from the generation that made fun of each other and it made them friends. He doesn’t get easily offended. He just holds the audience through his delivery and brings the laughs.

A $200 million animated movie and a guy alone with a microphone. Both doing the exact same thing: telling good stories.

I know this because I’ve lived it. I spent years in Toastmasters giving speeches, and the ones that landed hardest were never the clever ones. They were the personal ones. When I talked about my wife — how we met, how she walked with me through cancer, the ways she shows up that nobody else sees — the room would lock in. Not because the story was dramatic. Because it was real.

One of the best speeches I ever gave was about the butterfly effect. In the tenth grade I threw myself into singing. Gave it everything I had. That led to a full scholarship at my hometown college. My frustration with that college led me to apply somewhere else. Another full scholarship. And that’s where I met my bride. As soon as we met, I didn’t need to sing anymore.

One decision rippled forward and changed everything. The point of the speech wasn’t the love story — it was that sometimes we have to be excellent at something and give it everything we have for that season, even if later that’s not who we are anymore. Today leads us to tomorrow. But telling it through the real story is what made the room feel it.

Whether you’re Nintendo layering thirty years of games into a kids’ movie, Gabriel Iglesias talking about his mom, or me standing at a podium talking about the awesome girl I met in college — the job is the same.

Tell a good story. Don’t deviate from your source material to impress anybody. Know your audience well enough to layer in the things that make them feel seen. And make it real enough that they come back for more.

The tools change. The platforms change. The story is always the thing.