Tag: communication

Make Your Own Map

~ David Willis ~ 2 Comments

Day 75 of 280 | The 7-40 Challenge

Nobody is going to hand you the plan.

I’ve only started realizing that this year. I knew if I wanted to be successful, I had to name my own goals — not adopt someone else’s and try to chase them with my own passion. That just doesn’t work. I don’t want somebody else’s dream. I want my dream. I don’t want somebody else’s body. I want my body to look the way it’s supposed to. I don’t want to write somebody else’s book. I want to write the books that are inside of me, about the things I’m interested in.

So I had to make the map.

Not a map someone gave me in a class. Not one I found in a self-help book. Not one my boss outlined for me. Mine. Built from scratch. Designed for the terrain I’m actually walking on.

I’ve been reading Todd Henry’s Die Empty this week, and his principles keep landing on things I’m already living. But the truth is, I didn’t need Henry to tell me these things. I needed him to name what I was already doing — so I could see it clearly and do it better.

I’m seventy-five days into a 280-day transformation experiment that I designed myself. Seven daily habits, forty-day cycles, daily blogging, a published novel, a Bible illustration project, and a philosophical manifesto in progress. Nobody assigned this to me. Nobody approved it. I just decided it was time to stop filling notebooks with “someday” and start building.

That’s what map-making looks like. Not waiting for instructions. Deciding what the terrain requires and drawing the route yourself.

Do your best work even when no one’s watching.

My blog gets ten to twelve views a day. Some days, one or two. I’m seventy-five posts in. Why do I keep writing for an audience that small?

Because I’m not writing it for them.

I’m writing it as my own content library — a record of where I’ve been, what I’ve done, and what I’ve been thinking. I know deep inside me that the questions I’m asking are good ones. The development I’m doing, whether publicly or privately, is still my own personal growth. It’s still interacting with my goals. It’s still getting things done.

And here’s the practical reason: if I don’t do my best now and have my rhythm down, and everybody shows up one day and I screw up — everything blows up. The time to get good is before the audience arrives, not after.

Say yes.

In the last seventy-five days, I said yes to publishing my book. I said yes to throwing myself out there and engaging online with people I don’t know. And from the limited feedback I’ve gotten, it’s all been positive.

What I’m discovering is that the real limitation was put on me by me. The limitations we live inside are self-inflicted most of the time. If we really wanted to get things done — put a plan together, build a system, and just said yes to doing it — we’d be so much further than we thought we’d be.

I’m finding that for myself, seventy-five days in.

But here’s the one that cuts deepest.

Take responsibility for your own progress.

Who was I waiting on for permission? Not my boss. Not a mentor. Not even a sign from God — although a finger is always welcome.

I was waiting on me.

Getting older has had an effect. The man I look at in the mirror these days is a whole lot grayer than he used to be. He’s having to work a whole lot harder to get back in shape. And I’m realizing that if I want to make a contribution to the world like I intend to, I have to do it right now. I cannot wait, in good conscience, for anybody else to give me permission to be the best version of myself.

I think it’s been a sin, in many ways, to limit myself from striving for excellence over the years. I’ve always tried to do my best. But I’ve let the fact that I didn’t know how to do something stop me from even wanting to learn how to do it.

I can’t do that anymore.

I was going through chemotherapy in 2005 for the first time. I would go back to work after my sessions, and I would sit in the office feeling like I’d been burned from the inside. Raw. Just as gross as you can feel. The guy I worked for was smoking cigars in there, and life was still moving at its regular pace. I just wasn’t.

And I remember sitting there thinking: I’m going to choose to take care of the things I’m responsible for, because I chose to. Not because someone’s making me. Because I decided that excellence was my standard, even when I felt like I was on fire inside.

That ability to choose excellence has served me for the rest of my life.

If you can choose it through chemotherapy, you can choose it at any other time.

You’re going to get well. You’re going to get better. And you’re going to come back with a map in your hand that you drew yourself — because nobody else was going to draw it for you.

That’s agency. That’s the yes that changes everything.

Day 75 of 280. Five days left in Round 2.

740Challenge #MakeYourOwnMap #DieEmpty #ToddHenry #Agency #Transformation #LivingProof #DayByDay #LifeOnPurpose

There Is No Map

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 52 — The 7-40 Challenge

February 26, 2026

I’m still working through Seth Godin’s Linchpin, and I either wasn’t paying attention the first time I read this book, or I just wasn’t ready for it.

Godin shares what he calls his favorite bad review — someone critiquing his book Tribes. The reviewer said Godin spent all this time talking about people with good ideas and how they could spread those ideas and made it sound so easy. But then the reviewer complained that Godin never provides a how-to. No step-by-step guide. No blueprint for becoming this kind of leader.

Godin’s response? That’s the point. There is no map.

When I heard that, I felt something click that I’ve been circling for years. Because I have been that reviewer. I’ve read Godin’s work and felt simultaneously inspired and annoyed. I could feel the grind between wanting to be what he described and having absolutely no idea how to get there.

But here’s what I’m realizing at Day 52 that I couldn’t see before: it’s not completely true that I didn’t know how. I just didn’t realize that the principles I was applying at work — the ones I was crushing with — were the same principles I should have been applying to my own life and my own projects.

Let me explain.

Back in the DFW area, I was working as a data governance specialist. I was doing good work. Gaining customer trust. Improving data flow. Making initiatives succeed. But the people around me were getting promoted, and I wasn’t. So I asked my manager the question: how do I get promoted?

His answer was ambiguous at best. Something about being involved in a larger project. Contributing at a higher level. And in my mind, I was contributing. But not on anything high-profile enough to get noticed.

I had two options. Whine about it and stay put, or lift my gaze and figure out how to get to that bigger project. There was no map for that. Nobody handed me a flowchart that said “do these six things and you’ll be promoted in eighteen months.” But when the opportunity for a bigger project came, I recognized it. I grabbed it with both hands. And by the time I was done, I’d gone from data governance specialist to data management advisor for the company.

Looking back, that’s the whole lesson. There was no map. But there was a framework — a set of principles I was already living by at work. Solve the problem. Own the outcome. Show up consistently. Build trust through character, not credentials. I just hadn’t translated those principles to the rest of my life yet.

That’s where the frustration lives for most of us. We want a map. We want someone to hand us a set of directions and promise that if we follow them, everything works out. But that’s not how any of this works. It’s not cartography. It’s a series of decisions made over time in response to things nobody else has encountered in exactly the way you have.

So it’s not that we want a map. It’s that we want a framework — a way to process the information that gets thrown at us. We want a set of habits. We want to name the things that matter and start pursuing them.

That’s what the 7-40 Challenge is. It’s not a map. It’s a compass. Seven habits aren’t directions to a destination. They’re tools for navigating whatever wilderness you’re in.

And I think this is why the Bible says to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. It’s not that you haven’t accepted what God has offered. It’s that your journey with Him is different from anyone else’s. Your response to Him will be different. The principles are universal, but the path is individual. That’s true in faith. It’s true in business. It’s true in transformation.

I’ve had mentors who wandered through similar wilderness. Dave Ramsey taught me to handle money. Dan Miller — who wrote 48 Days to the Work You Love before he passed away — helped me see that passion and entrepreneurship could coexist. Godin has been pushing me to think differently for over a decade. But none of them walked through my wilderness. They gave me enough to start cutting my own trail.

Twenty years ago, the teacher was there. The student wasn’t ready. Now, having been through two cancer battles, corporate environments that tested every skill I had, a marriage that’s lasted 27 years, and a productivity explosion over the last 52 days — I can’t imagine going back to where I was. I see the man I’ve come from. I see where I’m going. And I realize that what felt like delay was actually foundation. Character. Work ethic. Know-how built across a lot of different areas.

The foundation is firm now. And because of that, I can finally hear what Godin’s been saying all along.

There is no map. There never was. But there’s a compass, a set of habits, and a God who’s been with me the whole time.

Day 52. Still cutting trail.

Respond, Don’t React

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Day 51 — The 7-40 Challenge

February 25, 2026

Zig Ziglar once made a distinction that I think about more than I probably should. He said there’s a difference between responding and reacting. If you go to the doctor and they give you a medicine and ask you to come back in a few days, you want to hear them say, “Your body is responding to the treatment.” That means it’s working. If they say your body is reacting to the treatment, that means something’s gone wrong and they need to try something else.

Responding means something thoughtful is happening. Reacting means something unplanned is happening. A response flows from something pre-programmed inside of you. A reaction is something that happens in a moment.

I’ve been on both sides of this more times than I’d like to admit.

Over 27 years of marriage, there have been plenty of moments where my wife has said something, and I heard it wrong. Not because she said it wrong, but because I skipped the step where I consider context, intention, and the fact that this is a person who loves me and has been proving it for nearly three decades. Instead of processing what she actually meant, I jumped to how it made me feel. And then we had to spend the next thirty minutes untangling a reaction that never needed to happen in the first place.

Even with the people we love most, we sometimes forget to use who they are as a filter. We forget to give them the benefit of the doubt — that maybe they’re having a bad day, or maybe they just said something in a way that hit us sideways. A response gives them that grace. A reaction doesn’t.

On the other end, I had a moment at work not long ago where someone from a different department walked into my office and essentially started unloading on me. They were upset. Really upset. But I knew they weren’t mad at me. I knew I wasn’t even the reason they were venting. So I smiled. I kept asking questions. I let the storm blow over. And when it was done, I offered to help fix the problem going forward.

Had I matched energy for energy, nothing productive would have come out of that conversation. Just two frustrated people making each other worse. But something was pre-programmed in me that kicked in before the reaction could: I’m not going to let other people dictate how I act. I choose to show kindness. I choose reserve.

Now, a moment of honesty. I owe my bride the same. For the times I haven’t my darling, I ask for your forgiveness.

That’s what responding looks like. It’s not weakness. It’s not letting people walk on you. It is not assuming the worst and starting from that place. It’s having something already built inside you that catches the moment before it spirals.

Which brings me to something I’ve noticed 51 days into this challenge. The daily habit structure hasn’t necessarily made me better at handling unexpected problems. But it has made me better at keeping focus when problems show up. Good days or bad days, there’s a certain set of things I’ve committed to getting done. And I just do them. If something throws me off, I adjust the plan — but it’s because I planned the adjustment, not because I panicked.

Yesterday was a good example. I sat down, read some current events, and felt the weight of the world land on me. The kind of weight that makes your own goals feel small. My agency felt like it was shrinking. And the resistance — the part of your brain that’s always looking for a reason to stop — grabbed onto that feeling and tried to run with it.

But instead of spiraling, I was able to name it. I could identify what I was feeling and why. I could remind myself that aside from being the person I’m supposed to be, there’s not a ton I can do to affect the greater world. I have to control what I can control, be an inspiration to the people around me, and leave the rest to God.

That’s a response. A reaction would have been closing the laptop, skipping the creative hour, and telling myself none of this matters anyway.

So if you’re someone who feels stuck in reactive mode — where everything feels urgent, every problem is a crisis, every headline sends you spinning — here’s what I’d ask you: What can you actually do today to make your situation better? Not the world’s situation. Yours. What to-do list can you write right now that moves you toward something that matters to you?

I think what a lot of people forget in our current crisis culture is that we’re human. We have basic needs. And one of them is a sense of accomplishment — the feeling that we can do something and do it well. When we lean into excellence, when we focus on working through the things we can actually control, we give ourselves less room to react and more room to respond.

And yes, my faith is all over this. My belief in God, my relationship with Jesus, my daily Bible reading — they ground me in something bigger than the world around me. Bigger than current events. In my view, there’s nothing bigger than my God. And when I take that perspective and look at the problems around me, I don’t see political sides or cultural battles. I see people who are hurting. People who need help. People to serve.

That’s the filter. That’s the pre-programming. And it changes what you see when the storm walks through your door.

Day 43: The Factory Worker Inside You

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 3
Tuesday, 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 wrote this back in 2010 — that the industrial revolution didn’t just build factories. It built an education system designed to feed them. Sit down. Follow instructions. Get good grades. Go to college. Get a job. Do what you’re told. Collect a paycheck.

The highest value of that system wasn’t innovation. It wasn’t creativity. It was compliance. The goal was to produce people who could do a job for a day’s wage and not have to think.

And for a long time, that system worked. For the factories, anyway.

But here’s the thing Godin saw coming sixteen years ago: that era is over. And if it was over in 2010, it is buried in 2026. The rise of AI, the speed of change in the marketplace, the sheer volume of information and tools available — all of it demands something the factory model never taught us.

Applied creativity.

The Moment You Start Phoning It In

I know the factory worker mindset from the inside. During my days working in an insurance office, I felt it pulling at me constantly. When your contribution doesn’t seem to matter, when you’re not making progress, when the environment is draining — it is incredibly easy to just phone it in. Go through the motions. Clock in, clock out, repeat.

I think we all have moments like that. Seasons where the path of least resistance is to stop caring and just do the minimum.

I started breaking out of it when I realized something simple but powerful: my level of effort actually moved the needle. When I brought energy and intention to my work, things changed. When I phoned it in, they didn’t. The results were directly connected to the investment.

That’s not a complicated idea. But it’s one most people ignore.

The Rogue in the Cubicle

Here’s what I’ve learned about myself over the years. I am a creative free spirit living in a corporate, data-ordered world. Those two things don’t always get along.

I have to turn on music to keep my brain engaged. I have to move. I have to conceptualize problems in different ways just to stay satisfied — not because I’m difficult, but because that’s how I’m wired. And honestly, that creative wiring is exactly what makes me good at what I do.

Because if we look at things the same way every time, we never solve problems. We just keep describing them. New solutions require new ideas, and new ideas come from people who refuse to think inside the factory lines.

That rebellious streak? It’s not a flaw. It’s the linchpin quality Godin is talking about.

AI and the New Frontier

This is even more real for me right now as I learn to work with AI tools. The way I see it, AI is the ultimate amplifier of applied creativity — but only if you know how to use it.

I’ve been learning how to iterate: ask questions, get feedback, supply my critiques, apply my business knowledge, layer in my creativity, get more feedback, and iterate again. The process works. But it only works if you bring something to the table.

And here’s what I’ve noticed: the quality of the answer depends entirely on the quality of the question. If you’re not clear about what you need, the tool won’t save you. You have to understand what you’re working with — the sophistication of the model, the way you communicate and express yourself — so that the response fits the context of what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

In other words, AI doesn’t replace thinking. It rewards it.

The factory workers of 2026 are the people who will ask a machine to do their thinking for them and accept whatever comes back. The linchpins are the ones who will use these tools to multiply what they already bring — their creativity, their experience, their judgment.

Which One Are You?

So tonight I’ll leave you with this.

Are you a factory worker or a linchpin? Are you phoning it in — going through the motions at work, at home, in your health, in your relationships? Are you following the old model: sit down, follow instructions, don’t make waves, collect your check?

Or is there a rogue inside you that knows you were built for more?

Because here’s the truth: in today’s world, nobody is coming to hand you a better life. The era of doing what you’re told and being rewarded for it is over. If you are not taking the initiative to drive your own success forward — to learn new tools, to think creatively, to bring something to the table that nobody else can — then you are falling behind. Right now. Today.

Not tomorrow. Not next quarter. Now.

The people who thrive in 2026 and beyond won’t be the ones who followed orders the best. They’ll be the ones who refused to stop thinking, refused to stop growing, and took ownership of where they’re headed.

So if you haven’t started, start now. Not when you’re ready. Not when conditions are perfect. Now.

Day 43 of 280. Be the linchpin.

Day 42: Everything Is Connected

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 2
Monday, February 16, 2026

I’ve been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin again, and it’s stirring things up. But tonight’s post isn’t about Linchpin. It’s about something that book keeps pointing me back to — a thought I’ve been carrying for years.

Everything is connected.

A Hospital Bed and a Fish Bone Diagram

In 2018, I was lying in a hospital bed going through chemotherapy for the second time. A 13-centimeter tumor. Four one-week hospital stays. I didn’t know how much damage the cancer had done. I didn’t know how long I had.

A few friends from work would come visit and keep me up on the projects we had going. And because I didn’t have a whole lot else to think about, I started processing — really processing — how our business workflows actually worked. Where data originated. How it matured through systems and the activities of people. How something that started at the beginning of a process was eventually consumed by somebody at the end who had no idea where it came from. It just magically appeared.

Lying there, I could see it like a fish bone diagram. One thread of data with dozens of offshoots — different teams, different efforts, different parts of the business process. And I could see how the busted processes, the workarounds, the bull crap people had to do just to keep things straight — it all became very apparent.

That clarity has stayed with me. As a data professional, I try to share it with anyone who will listen: if we understand the overall business workflow, we can pass out the pieces, identify the problem areas, and start making things better. That’s true in any business, any organization, anywhere people work together.

But here’s the thing. That principle doesn’t stop at the office door.

The Insurance Company

I actually made the connection about life being connected even before the hospital bed.

In the mid-2000s, I worked at an insurance company where I was miserable every day. The owner smoked four to six cigars a day ten feet from my desk. Profanity filled the air. Morale was rock bottom.

And I realized something that changed my trajectory: I couldn’t be angry at work and healthy at home. It invariably carried over. My frustration at the office became tension with my family, and that was not a sustainable position.

I had to start working on myself personally — not because I loved the job, but because I knew that everything was connected. If one part of my life was poisoned, the rest would suffer.

Fast-forward a few years. I was working on my master’s degree, thriving in an academic setting where I had previously been a mediocre student. And I realized the difference wasn’t intelligence. It was devotion to the process of getting better — and being the same engaged, enthusiastic person in my whole life, not just pieces of it.

When I stopped compartmentalizing, everything changed.

The Kobe Bryant Principle

I heard a story about Kobe Bryant that stuck with me. Kobe deliberately studied the referee’s handbook — every rule, every call, every technicality. Not because he wanted to argue calls. Because he wanted to master the environment he was operating in.

If he wanted a specific foul called, he knew what action to take. He knew how to get timeouts. He knew how to stop the clock. He used the rules of the game to his advantage — not by breaking them, but by understanding them so deeply that he could stretch them.

That’s what excellence looks like. It’s not just knowing the rules. It’s knowing how to apply them so you can accomplish what you need to accomplish while still taking care of the people around you.

Kobe demanded that kind of mastery from himself. And he rose above almost every player who’s ever played the game because of it.

The Real Question

Seth Godin wrote Linchpin in 2010, and he was already pointing out that the industrial age — where the highest value of the education system was producing factory workers who would do a job for a day’s wage and not have to think — was over. That we had entered an era of applied creativity.

That is even more true today. The market is changing. AI is reshaping everything. The people who will thrive are the ones who see the connections, who understand the whole system, who refuse to compartmentalize their lives into disconnected pieces.

So here’s what I’d say to you tonight.

If you feel like two separate people between work and home. If you feel like two separate people between groups of friends. If how you feel in your mind doesn’t match how you act on the outside — you need to have a frank conversation with yourself.

The way God created us is to be whole. Engaged and excellent in all the areas of our lives — not fragmented, not compartmentalized, not running different versions of ourselves depending on who’s watching.

Everything is connected. Your health affects your work. Your work affects your family. Your family affects your purpose. Your purpose affects everything.

The data taught me that in a hospital bed. Life has been confirming it ever since.

Day 42 of 280. Everything is connected.