Day 76 | The 7-40 Challenge I started reading Seth Godin's Tribes this morning. Early in the book, he draws a line between managers and leaders that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. Managers make widgets. Leaders make change. Managers manipulate resources to get a known job done. Leaders create change they believe in. I've … Continue reading Nobody’s Going to Tell You to Go
Category: Work & Data
A Tomb or a Library
Day 71 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge I’ve spent nearly twenty years working in data management. It’s my day job. I think about how data flows through systems, how it gets organized, how it turns into something useful. I think about the architecture behind it — the tables, the databases, the business processes, the … Continue reading A Tomb or a Library
SELECT * FROM imagination WHERE creativity IS NOT NULL
Day 50 — The 7-40 Challenge February 24, 2026 I spend my days writing SQL, talking with people about their data, and making sure systems talk to each other the way they’re supposed to. It’s not glamorous. Nobody’s making a movie about the guy who finds the duplicate data records. But here’s the thing nobody … Continue reading SELECT * FROM imagination WHERE creativity IS NOT NULL
Day 43: The Factory Worker Inside You
Round 2, Day 3Tuesday, February 17, 2026 I’m still working through Seth Godin’s Linchpin, and tonight I want to talk about something that might make you uncomfortable. There’s a factory worker living inside you. And if you’re not careful, he’ll run the show. The System That Built Us Godin makes the case — and he … Continue reading Day 43: The Factory Worker Inside You
The Factory vs. The Linchpin: Assessment Week Day 1
Assessment Week - Day 1Tuesday, February 10, 2026 I started reading Linchpin by Seth Godin today. Like many good books, it says more to me on the second read than the first. The Factory Godin talks about how the Industrial Revolution created what he calls "the factory"—the 9-to-5 job where somebody tells you what to do, you … Continue reading The Factory vs. The Linchpin: Assessment Week Day 1
David Willis 