<![CDATA[SOCIAL SECTOR TITAN

<![CDATA[SOCIAL SECTOR TITAN - Home]]>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 02:13:48 -0300Weebly<![CDATA[Social Sector Performance Journaling]]>Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:58:38 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/social-sector-performance-journaling

Writing regularly in a journal is for me, the one habit that creates the most out-sized tranquility for the amount of time invested. Developing a consistent journaling practice, releases the thoughts churning around in your mind and places them on a written page. It frees up that part of your mind, and opens up space to enjoy life and take action. Journaling is so transformative that I’ve come to see performance journaling as one of the most important practices that a Social Sector professional can do to create the change that we want to see in the world.

As Social Sector workers we deal with hard things. Let’s take the example from the 2021 pullout of the US from Afghanistan. The rapid fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban hit me and my fellow aid workers with an emotional and physical blow. Although I had not personally served there, many friends and colleagues had lived and worked for many years throughout the country. Their insights and a piece from my friend Eric James are guiding my evolving understanding of that place. My work in Central Asia included Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Although those nations are vastly different, they share geography and history with Afghanistan. As a student of geopolitics, and a practitioner in the modern aid industry, I followed events closely in Afghanistan for years.

The fall of the government following the US pullout represents a failure of military, economic development, and statebuilding strategy. The humanitarian movement that seeks to save lives with essential assistance will continue under any government, but the road has been much more difficult since the US pullout. Societies can only remake themselves; they are not recreated from the outside.

But as an American whose country and colleagues invested so much time, money, and lives in Afghanistan, I was emotionally and strategically shaken by the events. My way to make sense of these events and bounce back emotionally as well as to learn from these strategic errors starts with performance journaling.

Journaling Mindsets
Journaling can appear unnecessary, self serving, and overly introspective to those who have not experienced its transformative power. Why work and write about your own mind and self when the world calls you to work, live, and act as a part of external events? This is false thinking. All correct and strategic action starts from a clear mind. The fastest way to a clear mind is to write in your journal.

Embracing the time spent with a journal as some of the most important moments of the day can open up your mind to the transformative power of letting thoughts escape and move onto paper, out of the echo chamber of your mind.

Journaling Strategy
Journaling strategy differs widely across people and purposes. The Five Minute Journal provides a template for a quick dose of introspection and gratefulness. Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way is a more extensive program of three stream-of-consciousness pages followed by a set of evolving questions. Author Ryan Holiday has a great writeup of his journaling approach, calling it the most important thing you can do everyday. Journaling is a highly personal activity and your strategy should be unique to your own needs.

Journaling Tactics
My personal journaling tactics are a mash up of several sources, I’ll share the outline and process that currently works for me. Though many find that the physical act of writing with pen and paper are an essential part of the process, I’ve struggled my entire life with writing quickly and legibly by hand. I’ve fully transitioned to digital journaling so that I and others can read my words. In an ideal morning routine, I’ll meditate using the Insight Timer app for 7 minutes, then open a new note in a folder in Evernote, and follow the process below:

Free writing - a few paragraphs of whatever is on my mind. This could be something that happened, a feeling that I have, or a description of where I am sitting. This gets my fingers moving and releases any thoughts that are knocking around in my head.

Thankfulness - Writing three things that are immediately around me that make me grateful, such as a hot cup of coffee on a cold day, the shirt I’m wearing, or recalling a breakfast conversation with my young daughter. This rewires the mind towards all that you have, and counteracts the human evolutionary tendency to look for what is wrong.

Yesterday Good - What was good about yesterday? Recall a positive thing that happened and note it down.

Loving Kindness - Pick a few people and groups that matter to you, and send them loving, kind thoughts. My targets are my immediate family, my teams at work, then I think about the people that I’m working to help, the wider universe, and myself. Just a quick moment to send out those vibes to specific targets.

Pain Points & Could Have Been Better- Things that have been going wrong or causing pain that I can work on to improve.

High Level Mission - What am I here to do? I’ve distilled this down to three concepts of Freedom, Tranquility, and Service.

My Principles - As a part of the journaling process, I quickly read a set of principles that I’ve established to guide my choices and actions. These are the core ways of acting that remind me how to best move forward. I’ll share a few here:

Live right now. Do the work, feel the joy.
Pain + Reflection = Progression: keep moving to higher levels of contribution & problem solving.
Move to the outer edge in the disciplines that matter to you.

The 7 Disciplines - These are the things that I’m trying to do every day and week. These areas are the things that matter to me, that I work on and try to practice in blocks of time throughout the day, week, and month.

Serving the world - Doing something that helps other people and the world
Connection, relationship, and network - Creating strong romantic/friend/family/professional relationships.
Wealth & Seamless Administration Systems - Creating wealth through adding value to the world, maintaining administrative, management, and operations systems to support other disciplines.
Body & Athletics - Consistently working on physical health and strength through training, recovery, and outdoor events.
Nature, Expedition & Adventure - Physical outside expeditions, small ones each month, one larger expedition per year.
Mind & Spirit - Facing fear, being tranquil and free in my mind. This includes journaling and meditation.
Art & Expression - Practicing and creating art. Working toward original published music.

Fear Setting - This is a wonderful practice from Tim Ferris that has roots in social work practice. Identifying things that are causing outsized or background stress, and playing them out in your mind to develop a worst case scenario. Playing out the scenarios prepares you for a worst case scenario that usually never happens, and gets the fear cycle out of your head and onto the paper so you can move forward with your life.

Questions - Writing down any relevant questions that come to mind. Not answering them, just posing them.

Affirmations - Reading out a few aspirations. These sayings train your mind toward growth areas, and repetition can lead to learning and rewiring the brain. A few that I’m using:

I am consistent, methodical, and can realign to my vision.
I try, feel pain, reflect and improve
I can learn from my mistakes.

Goal for the week - write out a few high level things that you are working on for the week. Check in each day.

Making it work for you
Journaling has become essential for me to clear out the inevitable closed-loop thinking and fear cycles that the human brain develops. It is well worth taking some time to develop a short journaling practice that works for you and your path, and I’m curious to know your approach.

Happy Trails!

]]><![CDATA[Technology and Connection in Jamaica: Hurricane Melissa's Aftermath]]>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 13:59:18 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/technology-and-connection-in-jamaica-hurricane-melissa-aftermath

In November 2025 I had the chance to help the NGO GiveDirectly design a rapid cash assistance program for people hit by Hurricane Mellisa in Jamaica (see my earlier post: High Performance Mindsets for the Storm: 9 Days of Hurricane Response in Jamaica). We used the mobile phone network to establish a unique pathway for quickly connecting with and helping storm affected people. Starlink Mini units provided fast internet connectivity, which enabled on-the-move navigation and real-time updates to targeting data within the disaster zone. This "web of connectivity" included phones, satellite internet, and financial technology like Western Union for the cash transfer. We successfully moved money from donors in the USA to recipients in Jamaica within days, highlighting fast cash as an essential tool for post-crisis recovery.

The head of GiveDirectly's humanitarian products Leith Baker, and I arrived a few days after the storm in Kingston, and soon drove west into the impact zone. Camille Raguin, and Julien Devos soon joined us to augment the response. The 220 mile per hour winds had flattened any building made of wood frame and tin roofing. The storm toppled electric poles and knocked out most cell phone connectivity in the area.

Jamaica is a middle income country. Its proximity to the stable and prosperous markets of the mainland Americas puts it in a good neighborhood compared to the places I’ve worked recently such as Madagascar. Its government is stable and a steady stream of remittances from Jamaicans working abroad combines with a thriving tourism, farming and shipping economy.

This gives the local people who were hit by the storm a unique profile and challenge. Many of the people in the storm’s path had the means to flee the area before the storm made landfall. Some of those who stayed sheltered with no issues in concrete houses and hurricane proof roofs. But as in any society, wealth is not equally distributed and Jamaicans on the poor end of the spectrum didn’t have the money to evacuate, or the means to build a hurricane compatible house. Despite the poverty in some parts of society, in Jamaica, almost everyone has at least a basic mobile phone, and most devices are Android or Apple smartphones. This opened up a unique pathway to connect with people and help them quickly in the hurricane’s aftermath.

The hurricane impact zone clearly needed help, and the government of Jamaica quickly welcomed aid from other countries into the impact zone. Electricity, communications and roads were damaged or destroyed. Thousands of houses were blown over or had their roofs evaporated. The wind was strong enough to blow every green tropical leaf off the trees as the storm passed. This gave an eerie feeling of winter despite the warm tropical temperatures. But not everyone in the zone requires assistance.

This storm, like every disaster, affected people unequally. If you had money in the bank, a working vehicle and a house that survived the storm relatively intact, you could have moved before or after the storm to the unaffected parts of the island. You could have purchased or sparked up your generator to provide power and purchased a new StarLink Mini.

Internet Connectivity: The quiet revolution of Starlink in disaster zones around the world
Our small Mitsubishi pickup truck splashed through deep puddles and bounced over rocks as we entered the primary school compound a few days after Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica. Local families milled about the schoolyard. Many were sleeping and resting and the school as the storm had destroyed their tin roofed homes. A white square Starlink Mini sat propped on a wooden chair in the grass. Its white square pointed hopefully skyward, while its power cord ended in a portable battery linked to a solar panel. A young woman explained that an international health NGO had arrived by chopper a few days ago and given them the system but the battery had “gotten water inside” and was not holding a charge. We plugged their starlink into our pickup truck’s inverter and they were able to use their own starlink to register to receive the $650 one-time cash grant to help fix their homes and get post-storm life restarted.

The Starlink on the ground was the same model that sat on the dashboard of our pickup truck. The small and lightweight self contained unit connects directly with the satellite delivering blazing fast internet speeds anywhere in the world. The unit costs $225 and it takes another $50 per month to access 100GB of streaming data. This makes the cost negligible for the revolutionary functionality it provides.

It was mindblowing for me as an international aidworker to experience these speeds inside the disaster zone, while driving, with such a small unit. Contrast this with the $10,000 VSAT that we flew into our office in Wau, Sudan in 2006. We had to bring in a specialist to set up the massive rig. It was concreted into place and was fragile. This gave us precious web connectivity that was immovable and came at a massive cost.

Cell connectivity was spotty or fully out of service in the storm’s impact zone. Having portable broad band installed in the truck made it possible to navigate and route find with live data on our phones. Our support team was working on collecting data and creating analysis from the data that would help us hone in on areas that the storm had hit hard, but would be safe to access and also be possible for the people to walk or purchase a ride to a functioning Western Union wire transfer office to receive our cash donation. We were able to update notes and feedback on these targeting sheets while on the move in the truck between communities in the impact zone.

The speedy internet was a facilitator both in the impact zone and back at the hotel. When we returned to our lodging in the evenings, we could prop the StarLink in a chair in the courtyard and write up the day’s work, have video calls with team members and keep in touch with family members.

Mobile Phones: Creating the two way flow
Just as the internet connectivity accelerated our work, most of the people that we were trying to register into the cash donation program had smartphones. This is not surprising given Jamaica’s middle income status and proximity to mainland America but it was a good reminder that most of the people that we are trying to help with international aid are using the same phones that we are. This is also happening in the more rural and remote places such as southern Madagascar that I visited last year for a work project.

The people providing funding to the NGO GiveDirectly found out about the storm on their devices, and sent their donation with their phone. We used our phones to target and navigate the storm’s impact zone. Those receiving the money register for our program on their ph ones, and later receive text messages telling them to pick the money up at a local Western Union office just outside the hurricane’s destructive path.

Financial Technology: Transferring the money
Jamaica is relatively old school in its treatment and use of mobile money. Platforms like Venmo in the USA or MPesa in Kenya are standard ways of doing business. The systems are not trusted or used in Jamaica, so we had to transfer the money by Western Union. This is a financial services company specializing in remittance flows. They charge a fee to send and deliver money anywhere where a franchise office exists. The office must have a working internet connection, a phone connection and power to run a computer. This last link in the technology web allowed the money to flow within a few days from a donor’s phone in the USA, into paper money - cash in hand - that quickly bought roofing materials, tarps, and even helped start small businesses such as drink stands.

Creating a Technology Web for Good
We were able to build a web of connectivity for good that moves money quickly from prosperous parts of the world, using technology (phones - satellite internet connectivity - local assessment & presence - financial transfer tech), into the hands of people hit by a powerful storm.

The GiveDirectly organization is increasing the precisions of its targeting, increasing the number of StarLinks available after a storm, and accelerating the cash delivery time to get money into the hands of folks that most need it within a few days of a new storm. While the traditional humanitarian system that delivers food, shelter material and healthcare will remain essential, fast cash after a storm is an emerging and essential tool to save lives and reduce suffering after new crises hit. Follow this evolving story at GiveDriectly.org.

Happy Trails

]]><![CDATA[High Performance Mindsets for the Storm: 9 Days of Hurricane Response in Jamaica]]>Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:50:55 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/high-performance-mindsets-for-the-storm-9-days-of-hurricane-response-in-jamaica

I recently helped the organization GiveDirectly to establish their aid program to people hit by Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica. This is a smart and new-ish NGO that provides direct cash support to people in poverty settings. They are expanding this low cost and speedy response into disaster zones like the recent mega storm to hit Jamaica.

My long time friend and colleague Leith Baker, who heads GiveDirectly’s humanitarian products, invited me to work together in western Jamaica to assess the situation, design the operation, and start sending money to those who need it most. It was also a great pleasure to work with and get to know GiveDirectly’s Camille Raguin, and Julien Devos who also deployed on the response (check out Camille’s excellent post about the deployment). The cash payments we arranged will help people get emergency supplies like tarps, buy phone credit so they can communicate, and eventually repair their storm damaged homes.

Instead of trying to guess what these people might need most, we find storm-affected people, and give them the opportunity to register themselves for help. They use their own cell phones to apply for the aid, and then after verification, we send them money via Western Union so they can buy things they need immediately. Rather than waiting for slower-moving relief supplies to arrive, people know exactly what they need, and can buy it right away in their local market with the money that we send.

Hurricane Mellisa was one of the largest storms on record with 220 mph winds plowing directly into this small island with rickety infrastructure and low lying coastal geography. The devastation was immense. The storm toppled many trees and blasted off every leaf from every tree in the impact zone. It looked as if a fast moving fire had made the vegetation disappear, or that a giant had meticulously sandblasted the once lush tropical forest leaving only grey and brown sprigs. The prevalent roof structure in this part of western Jamaica was rough cut wooden beams with corrugated tin roofing. The wind inferno tore these roofs away, scattering the twisted metal across the countryside. Most houses made of cement walls were spared, but the gusts flattened any structure with wooden walls. It felt like driving through the footprints and trail of a destructive and fast moving dragon.

The work days were intense. We were entering unknown territory where there were reports of looting, gang activity and other criminality following the storm. We had to understand and accept a certain level of security risk to enter the area to do our jobs.

Simply understanding and experiencing the aftermath of the disaster was physically and emotionally taxing:

On the physical side: We worked 15 hour days for the first week of the operation. Each day we would spend part of the morning pouring over maps of the impacted areas from organizations like MapAction, and crunching storm damage reports and poverty data with satellite imagery. The other part of the day we’d pile into a rented diesel Mitsubishi L200 four wheel drive pickup truck. We would drive into the storm’s impact zone to assess the situation with our own eyes. The long days included about 8 of those hours in the truck moving over rough terrain, dodging downed electric wires and detouring through landslides. During our on-the-ground assessment, we were looking for the level of cell phone coverage, the damage to the houses & infrastructure, and the pre-existing poverty and needs levels of people living in the path of this storm.

The emotional strain on us as helpers in this scenario was heavy. We would stop to talk to survivors to try to understand their needs, and the conversations were difficult. One man talked about his plans to try to rebuild his dwelling. Behind us, his water logged powertools, refrigerators and ruined mattresses lay strewn around the wreckage of his home. The emotion was acute as he talked about the destruction to his house and the area. Power will likely be out for months. The small convenience store that he managed near the roadside was completely flattened with its contents a total loss. We heard dozens of stories like this as we moved through the impact zone. Each interaction required empathy and tact to get the info we needed while displaying compassion and connection to the people we were there to serve.

Here are the most important mindsets, strategies and tactics that we deployed as international aid workers to best help the people of Jamaica with our program. These are high performance techniques drawn from the disciplines military, entrepreneurship and endurance sports training and applied to the discipline of international disaster response.

Mindsets
Our key mindset was to focus on preparation, not planning. There was no way to adequately plan for what the disaster response would look like from a programming perspective (what we would specifically do to help) and from an operational perspective (where we would stay, what we would eat, how we would get around). We answered these questions through taking our best guess and then moving on to the next action. Doing something that seems right, then doing the next thing in line with that direction. The way to manage in a situation like this is to prepare rather than plan. Preparation means three main things to me: Learning in advance, calibration to previous experience and having non-negotiables in place.

Learning in advance - We had to learn quickly about the hurricane and about Jamaica in the 24 hours that we had between the decision to deploy and the plane landing in Kingston. This means AI summaries of the main information sources (World Fact Book, Economist, New York Times, Humanitarian Data Exchange, MapAction and the UN). Learning in advance gives you an understanding of the place, the economy, the politics, the disaster and the people that live there. You’ll never learn everything in advance but you have a broad idea of what is going on. This helps you make better decisions when you arrive about how to move, where to go, and how to help.

Calibration to previous experience - Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman writes that “intuition is nothing more and nothing less than recognition.” When we experience something either directly or read about it, our brains file the experience away. Later when we encounter something that looks like this experience, we jump to subconscious conclusions called intuition. Your intuition can be either wrong or right in this new disaster situation, so being aware of that process and examining with “slow thinking” can help you make the right call. Have you been to a Caribbean island before? Have you lived through a disaster like the pandemic, a flood or a hurricane? How does that previous experience compare to what is happening now in Jamaica? What lessons can you draw from that experience to help read your mindset to quickly understand what is happening and take the correct action to help? How might your intuition be wrong?

Non-negotiables in place - Preparing a list of things that you will not do under any circumstance helps prepare you for on the fly decision making. For Jamaica, my non-negotiable was to never knowingly drive or walk into an area that was defined as insecure or unsafe by our driver, other aid workers or the government, and to never drive at night. This meant that the area of Black River near the epicenter of the hurricane’s landfall was off limits. When we were deciding where to drive and who to talk to, we were able to rule out that area. This allowed us to quickly hone in on areas that were within our ‘go’ areas. The storm had hit these areas equally hard, and they needed our help. The drive at night redline meant that we had to plan our day and ensure a turnaround time that got us back to our safe accommodation before nightfall.

Strategies
Sprint and recover - We do our best work when we avoid the gray zone where we are not really productive, but also not recovering our energy and focus. Working hard and intensely, followed by a recovery period is the best way to get anything done. In the disaster zone, this means sprints of several days. While we did attempt to sleep 8 hours each night, the first week of work was in full focus mode for 15 hours per day. After this big push we took a design day back at the hotel to digest what we had learned, plan, write and diagram how we would give the cash assistance. The longer recovery period happened after I finished my 9 day deployment with a period of rest and less work when back at home after the response.

Tactics
Dialing in the gear - This is a potentially endless topic. Perhaps this will be a deeper dive at a later time. However, here are the functions of gear that made in on the trip:

Mobile office (laptop, battery, notebooks, iPhone, chargers, all fitting in a backpack)
Clothes (tropical and rainy clothes, boots and a setup for running and working out)
Tropic Kit (first aid kit, tape, super glue, electrolytes, water purification)
Camp setup (tent, sleeping bag, pad in case accommodation was not available)
Food (Cans of tuna and sardines, nuts and bars to supplement what we found there)

Prioritizing sleep - Sleep is a powerful and magic recovery tool. It is a performance accelerator. It is seductive to cut this out in favor of more work hours. This always backfires and sets up a whiplash effect that will eventually win out over all your best intentions. In this response we slept 8 hours per night and it made a massively positive difference in our ability to understand what was going on, think clearly, and work quickly to set up registration and move the money to people who needed it most.

Starlink is a game changer - We used Leith’s Starlink Mini portable satellite device almost constantly while awake. We set up the device on the windshield of our Mitsubishi pickup truck. This allowed us to do video calls, navigate with online maps, create documents and spreadsheets in real time and adjust targeting information. We did all this while moving through the disaster zone where cell coverage and electric services were intermittent or completely out of service. We would prop up the Starlink in the hotel’s outdoor courtyard and finish the work day with a planning session and set of calls. Having lived and worked in low or no cell coverage areas across the world, this was a complete game changer. The broadband access at all times accelerated our productivity, security and response velocity. This is now a crucial part of my daily work kit.

Making it work for you
To my aid worker friends, what does it take for you to respond in a disaster zone? Drop a line and let me know.

The Jamaica program has concluded but there are many other worthy GiveDirectly programs for your donations. You can directly participate in this relief effort and have money flow directly to storm impacted people by donating at this link on the GiveDirectly website. After learning and carrying out their approach on the ground, I’m a big believer in the speed and effectiveness of this type of cash aid.

Happy Trails

]]><![CDATA[Getting out of the Gray Zone]]>Wed, 29 Oct 2025 19:43:38 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/getting-out-of-the-gray-zone

The ‘gray zone’ in a sport like running or biking is a level of effort that feels slightly difficult. Think of running up a slight hill at an average pace. This type of ‘gray zone’ effort is causing fatigue while bringing few athletic benefits. Over time, endurance sport coaches figured out that the most endurance benefits come from 80% or more of training time being spent in super slow, easy feeling training. The other 20% or less should usually be super hard efforts that take us to the edge of our speed and intensity limits.

The best endurance training is never in the ‘gray zone’. It is mostly on the easy, consistent, long duration end of the spectrum, with occasional hard sprints layered into the mix a few times per week. We escape the gray zone by keeping your easy days truly easy and pushing yourself to your maximum ability on the hard days.

Have you ever experienced the ‘gray zone’ in a Social Sector work setting? This is when you keep trying to focus and get distracted, and shift attention away to another area. The gray zone happens when you are working on something but not fully focusing on that task. When you are working on a document and your phone keeps buzzing and you lift it up and check X. The gray zone happens in endurance athletics when you are neither going at your full effort nor going slowly enough to be building up a training base.

The gray zone means working at an average output with little differentiation in effort or attention. The gray zone feels alright at first, and may even bring some good results at first. But then the ability to continue degrades over time and leads to decreasing performance. This shows itself with distraction and loss of focus on things that matter both at work and in the rest of life. The gray zone means you are not giving full effort or taking time to relax.

I lived and worked in the gray zone for many years, without understanding how to escape.

In grey zone work scenarios I would sit down at the computer and either take in information or try to create things like documents, notes or research without a break. I would also be taking in other information (like talk radio or podcast) at the same time. This work approach would lead to average work at first and then less ability to focus. Eventually it would lead to bouts of burn out since I had not let myself mentally recover from focus oriented tasks.

Athletically, my gray zone training would mean going out for a run and running at the same moderate intensity for the entire run. This means that I remained constant or got slower over months of running a few times a week instead of increasing my fitness. My body has not pushed to a higher level of exertion, nor given time to recover and gain additional strength after effort. This translated into lethargy and loss of fitness.

Interestingly, I can feel myself slipping into gray zone behaviors when I am low on sleep or have skipped my recharge times (breaks during the work day or time away from the screens over the weekend).

What is the gray zone
In a strategic sense, the gray zone happens when you are not pushing yourself to your limit, and not giving yourself time to rejuvenate and recover after your full intensity. This leads to average and later to diminishing results that may spiral toward burnout.

Caveat: The gray zone concept is quite different from the idea of consistency and showing up and doing the work even when you don’t feel motivated. Consistency of practice is essential, but we get a much better outcome if we work in bursts of intensity, followed by periods of rest.

How to avoid the gray zone
The time tested way to beat the gray zone is to understand the performance formula: stress + rest = growth.

An athletic concept that avoids the gray zone is the concept of interval training where short bursts of high intensity followed by periods of less intense movement build fitness at a higher rate than other types of work.

The pomodoro technique is one of the high performance habits for aid workers that we’ve talked about in the past mirrors this approach. Setting a 22 minute timer for deep focus work, then taking a short break, and longer break after several rotations mimics this energy burst and recovery.

Another way to avoid the gray zone is to make a clear list of the types of things you do each day, week and month and separate them into urgent, important and delegatable/outsourceable categories. You cannot outsource your physical exercise but you might be able to outsource something like cleaning your house. The more you outsource, the more free time you will have to do full focus deep work on your area of highest contribution.

You can also get into the gray zone if you say yes to too many activities and tasks for an extended period of time without the recovery process.

How to apply this practice to the Social Sectors
The feeling of what I and others call ‘the resistance’ is that feeling of blockage when you know what you need to do that day but can’t seem to start. This is another symptom of the gray zone, where you probably have been working with average intensity and have burned out.

Don’t pretend to work if you hit a block. Stop, refresh, and then go back. I’ve done this and continue to do this even when I’m working alone: pretending that time staring at a screen is producing something or moving the needle. Remember how easy it is to fool yourself. Notice when you are successfully fooling yourself and pretending to work. Notice. Stop, and go into a recharge cycle.

When you are in the grey zone it is difficult to see your way out. Have a recharge list ready when you have downtime. When you do decide to go into recharge mode, be clear and prepared about what that is. This becomes a to do, and not to do list. It is easy when you need a recharge to fall into negative activities that are bringing you down rather than recharging your body and mind. Avoid this trap by having a list ready and reading the list before you decide to recharge.

My ‘to do’ and ‘not to do’ lists for recharge:

Everyone’s list is different. You need to develop your own.

Making it work for your life
Choose how you share this concept with your colleagues. If you are working for a Social Sector organization, you might be one of the only people in your office who works along these lines. Many of your colleagues will be living and working in a gray zone and not understand that there is another path, and suggesting another way can be counterproductive. Being a living example and making the smart performance choices ourselves is usually the best approach. Then letting the results speak for themselves in our actions, thoughts and consistent high performance.

Happy Trails!

]]><![CDATA[Coming Home to Wildfire]]>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 15:36:14 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/coming-home-to-wildfire

Mark, a homeowner in the wildfire preparedness program, and the contractor celebrating the completion of the work on this site.

As an international humanitarian response professional, my work has taken me from Accra to Antananarivo, and from Bishkek to Zanzibar. As part of the international system of governments and organizations that helps people survive disasters and wars around the world, I’ve had the privilege of bringing life saving supplies, medical care and safe transportation to people across the globe.

My last month working in Los Angeles with an NGO called Global Emergency Relief Recovery and Reconstruction (GER3) was my first professional experience in this field helping my fellow Americans. In some ways it was a professional homecoming to work on wildfire recovery. Here are a few observations about my work on the aftermath of the 2025 Eaton Fire in Pasadena, California:

The climate crisis is real, but we can do a lot to prepare
The climate crisis is real and is accelerating. Wildfires have always been a part of life in California. But the total area burned each year is increasing, with increasingly large wildfires across the state.

Walking around the burned area in Altadena, it is easy to see the fragility of the small, well-crafted wooden bungalows that once stood on these streets in such close proximity to the steep, arid mountains looming just beyond the edge of the burned lots.

It's also easy to see the allure of this area. The dry air is cooler up near the mountains than the smog-drenched metropolis of LA down below. Ready access to hiking trails and a slower paced life where mountain lions and bears wander into yards with regularity makes this place special.

Folks that rebuild their houses after the fire have to make them stronger and better to withstand future fires. The NGO is there helping homeowners with intact houses to prepare their structures to resist and survive the next burn. This means covering all vents and other openings with a specialized mesh that prevents wind blown embers from getting into the house and igniting the structure. It also means thinning and removing brush, trees and fences near each house to create “defensible space” of dirt and gravel around the home.

These measures will never completely protect a house during a megafire, but they do buy time and space for fire fighters to arrive and control the blaze. These ‘home hardening’ measures offer a way for people who live in the area to think about and prepare for the reality of living with wildfire. It is one of many things that people can do to deal with the trauma of the last fire and prepare for future disasters.

Displacement happens in America but we don’t call it that
Many people who lost their homes in the Eaton fire were forced to leave the Altadena area. Some dispersed to other states to stay with relatives. Others were forced to drive one or more hours away to be able to afford rental accommodations in Los Angeles’ high priced housing market.

Some estimates put the total number of displaced Americans at 11 million, about 1% of the overall population. In Sudan, these folks would be classified as ‘Internally Displaced People’. In America, we don’t think of the challenge in terms of displacement. We categorize them as total loss fire survivors, but don’t take into account the post fire displacement as a part of the solution. The family I heard of who moved to Oregon to stay with relatives is not able to access the local information, support and aid processes directly. They must rely on friends still in the area, so there is a disconnect.

This physical location consideration as a part of the solution will be essential. Thinking of these fellow citizens as displaced and helping them where they are will be a crucial part of developing America’s ability to meet the accelerating climate crisis. Tracking and quantifying the American displacement issue is a necessary first step.

Americans at the local level are tasked with responding and preparing
Federal and state level resources to put out the fire and remove the debris of charred houses and cars were fast and effective. The cleanup was over in a few weeks. Local government and nonprofit organizations quickly became responsible for the rest of the significant recovery and reconstruction process. These organizations and systems have never encountered such a massive task. They are ill equipped and funded to coordinate, manage and rebuild from a megafire’s 250 billion dollar price tag.

While it is positive that the control and responsibility falls to locals most affected by the fire, there are surprisingly few resources, coordination structures and best practices from other fires that are evident in the reconstruction process. Local governments and non-profits appear to be on their own to reinvent the wheel and figure out the approach. Local people who lost their houses or suffered massive smoke contamination but did not burn have entered a labyrinth of insurance claims, testing schemes and contractors with few clear pathways or support.

Takeaway for all Americans: What people I talked to in Pasadena said they wish they had done before the disaster
The Video - “I wish I had a freaking video on my phone of all my stuff, just a 5 minute walk-through of my house. The insurance people keep asking for photos, I’m trying to get my friends to send me pictures of the last time they came over to my place, and the photos are just not there”, said one fire survivor who lost her house and all of her possessions. Insurance claims require documentation. Receipts get lost over the years. Photos and videos of your possessions can make a positive difference in the claims process.

The Go Bag - People in the Pasadena area also now understand the need to have a bag or suitcase packed with essential items, documents, and irreplaceable mementos. This list from the American Red Cross is a good starting point.

The Insurance Check-in - Even with insurance as a big challenge for many in America’s west, some were caught with insufficient coverage. Checking your insurance policy before a disaster hits is one of the best things you can do to prepare for climate disasters. Read the fine print. What does it cover? What would you have to pay yourself if a crisis hit your house?

Making it work for you

What are you doing to prepare for climate disasters in your area? I’d love to hear comments or drop me a line.

]]><![CDATA[Taking Notes on the Quest for Good]]>Tue, 06 May 2025 20:34:33 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/taking-notes-on-the-quest-for-good

I’ve always envied people who can quickly remember things. Fast recollection of names, dates, addresses, schedules, and meeting outcomes is an impressive accelerator. Remembering the details is a constant struggle for me. Lacking a total recall ability, taking physical notes is the only way that my brain can keep track and process the things happening in my world.

Early in my career I remember colleagues commenting and poking fun at my compulsive note taking, writing everything down from work instructions to how to configure an early version of a local area network that we used to process refugee interviews in Abidjan, West Africa back in 2003. I have a few of these humanitarian response notebooks in the archives. They contain gear lists, travel planning, and notes from too many coordination meetings that happen between humanitarian responders in a disaster response setting.

Notes can help us process and document the details of what we need to create our best work in the Social Sectors. The notes and journals of Social Sector Titan Samantha Power, who now leads the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), serve as the foundation for her powerful personal story, The Education of an Idealist.

Text vs visual notes
Drawing is also part of the note taking process. In his book Draw to Win, Dan Roam shows the creative and cognitive benefits of drawing with others to understand complex things and solve problems. Drawing, alone and with others, was likely an early type of human communication that still works in our 21st century digitally connected world.

Many of my notebooks still look like long streams of text:

Mapping out the week looks like this:

But I’m increasingly experimenting with integrated drawing and text support:

Hardware for taking notes
My journal of choice is the hard bound 8X12’ unlined sketchbook from Strathmore. This gives the ultimate freedom to write or draw at any size. It also doubles as a kid drawing pad for emergency (and fun) diversions:

This is my ‘commonplace book’. Many thinkers throughout the ages have used a similar system to document and remember things that helped them do good in the world.

Unlike some loyal pen geeks out there, I have a rotating stash of pens and pencils that are used, lost, and found on a regular basis. A few of my recent favorites are the Pilot erasable pens and a regular No. 2 pencil with a fat eraser. Each one makes it possible to correct frequent mistakes without crossing out.

My work requires a lot of time on a computer. Drawing graphics about process, connections, networks, and strategy can augment the power of written words. My preferred drawing program there is Google Slides, connecting shapes and arrows. The new platform Miro, allows you to easily turn your notes into professional looking drawings like this:

Software for taking notes
There are an endless number of online note taking programs on the market today. I have settled on the free version of Evernote. This is an online notebook with sub-notes. I can tag and upload photos like receipts and whiteboard drawings easily.

Old School Note Cards
After a lifetime of reading both good and useless books and not remembering or retaining much of either category, I recently stumbled upon a way to categorize what you learn and read. Ryan Holiday describes his note card system from his mentor Robert Greene that he uses to organize information and write books.

He describes a system of reading each book or document, and highlighting and writing in the margins as you proceed. A week after finishing the book, return and transfer the most useful notes and highlights onto individual 4’X 6’ notecards. Tag the cards and keep them in a photo box organized by topic. My slowly filling storage system looks like this:

This box then makes it possible to refer back and reorganize the cards into themes that can support your writing or design process.

The danger of an overly organized system
Whatever your system of notating the world, make sure that you are also doing the hard work of producing your craft. It is easy to go down the rabbit hole of a well-organized Evernote system as a way to look busy and not produce that creative thing that actually moves the needle on your Social Sector mission.

The end result of our project, document, or other work output is all that matters. The process of getting to that point matters, but should not distract from the ultimate end of doing good in the world.

Finding, assembling, and understanding information creates the raw material that is the first step toward doing meaningful work for the common good. Give yourself that edge with a note taking system that works for you.

What systems do you use? Hit me up on email or leave a post on the blog.

Happy trails.

]]><![CDATA[Why we need American Aid]]>Tue, 29 Apr 2025 17:04:05 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/why-we-need-american-aid

The Trump administration has effectively ended America’s help to people across the world hit by disasters. As the leading economy and preeminent power in the world, America leads. Part of that leadership is helping people in a crisis who don’t get help from any other source.

We lead militarily with the most advanced and lethal armed forces ever assembled. We lead politically by demonstrating how democracy works. We lead economically by creating the most innovative and wealthy economy in the world. We lead morally by extending a helping hand to people around the world who have been failed by their governments and need extra help to survive. Countries and people that accumulate great wealth have an obligation to help those less fortunate both inside and outside the USA. But beyond that moral call, aid to other countries makes Americans stronger, more prosperous and safer.

What is the American aid system and why the system matters
Our country has a proud tradition of helping other countries less fortunate and powerful than ourselves. The Marshall Plan saved lives and restored Europe and Japan following World War II. The foreign assistance act of 1962 made that help a legal part of what it is to be an American. In the beginning, we helped people primarily hit by natural disasters like floods, hurricanes and earthquakes. But during the post 911 Iraq and Afghanistan, and with instability wars spreading in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo and West Africa, our help went to people trying to survive these wars.

The argument: but we have our own problems, so we can’t help others
It is easy to look inward at America and see our problems. Our country is divided politically. The economy leaves out some people, putting some families in a cycle of debt and crisis that is unacceptable. When faced with these issues it is easy to claim that we should look inward and focus only on solving the problems for these Americans who are hurting.

Don’t fall for this way of thinking. This is an ‘either / or’ choice that doesn’t stack up in the real world. We have more than enough attention, money and smarts to take care of both of these issues. These challenges persist in America because they are hard and there is not an easy solution to poverty, substance abuse, healthcare, economic disruption or any other challenge we face.

The moral case for aid
As the leading democracy in the world, we have developed a moral code that drives our society. Our constitution, bill of rights and economy is the envy of the world. At the basis of these concepts is our way of living and acting. As Americans, we believe that all people have rights, and deserve to pursue happiness. Helping people in other countries by freely giving aid where it is needed shows that we have the moral authority and power to act on these ideas across the world.

As a nation founded on Christian values we demonstrate with our international aid the golden rule of treating others as we would want to be treated. The inherent power of human life demands that as moral and religious people we help others. We have also built up great wealth and prosperity. That creates a moral requirement to help others less fortunate than ourselves.

Aid makes America more prosperous
It is easy to take the conditions of our daily lives for granted. The peace that we enjoy as Americans, the access to good food, low cost electronics and amazing vehicles. All this is delivered by the world’s smarts, free flow of ideas, people, money and trade. Aid operations directly contribute to making America stronger by creating the conditions that we need to have a peaceful and stable world.

When we help people in other countries whose governments have failed them, they survive. They remember the help that came with the American flag on the label, and they eventually become our friends. They recover from disasters and participate in the world’s economy, both making things that we buy, and buying the things we make. This virtuous cycle benefits everyone but it especially helps Amerians.

Aid makes America stronger
Aid is one part of what keeps America strong. When a war or a climate related disaster hits a country, we respond with our military, our diplomats, and our aid operation. These are all parts of the same system. The military can defeat our enemies, our embassies create alliances, and our aid operators save lives and stabilize economies that improve our status as the preeminent power in the world. While other countries like China are increasing in education, economy and military status, America is still the undisputed leader in these areas and aid helps keep us at the top. It demonstrates our authority and ability to intervene. It shows that we care about other places and want to lend a hand. It gives us experience and connection to a place that increases our knowledge and ability to know the people, the economies and the land to make choices, trade deals and cultural connections that keep America stronger.

Aid makes America safer
When we help other countries with aid, we make Americans safer. We are connected by a global economy and personal travel like no other time in human history. Dangerous diseases don’t respect our borders. Our aid operations fight things like ebola and polio wherever they crop up around the world before they hit us here at home. We send people and money to countries fighting authoritarian governments so that democracy and commerce can thrive. We help people recovering from war and climate disasters so that their country does not tip into anarchy that requires more money and attention from the USA later.

What can you and I do about it?
Americans can call and write to your representative explaining how America’s aid is morally correct while also making us stronger, safer and more prosperous.

Here is a link to the Friends of USAID channel on Instagram that links to scripts that you can use, with a strong dose of humor.

Talk to your friends and family about why aid matters. There is a sentiment within the MAGA movement that if problems exist in America it is wrong to help people in other countries. While I understand that argument, things are never that simple. We have to help people here at home and people abroad who need our help. We are one human race and we clearly have the means and ability to help everyone who needs this support.

]]><![CDATA[Ways to use Artificial Intelligence to accelerate life and work in the Social Sectors]]>Thu, 23 Jan 2025 20:16:04 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/ways-to-use-artificial-intelligence-to-accelerate-life-and-work-in-the-social-sectors

OpenArt photo created with promt: "picture of humanitarians in the USA using AI to assess a disaster."

Artificial Intelligence is the talk of the town in my humanitarian response world. The discussion comes across as polarized to the far ends of the spectrum. The optimist camp looks at the potential societal benefits and touts an upcoming productivity and positive revolution. The pessimists talk about the machines taking over our lives, amplifying bias and ruining the world that we know.

I’m still working my way up the learning curve on these fascinating issues, but I wanted to share a few AI use cases that I’ve developed for myself and my work that may be helpful to my fellow Social Sector workers. I use Google Gemini as my primary AI tool, and have experimented with OpenAI’s ChatGTP.

Rough drafts of documents & project plans: A detailed team planning process yielded a project plan for a new information technology system. I asked AI to design its own project plan and was able to compare our version to the AI version. We had forgotten a compliance and feasibility survey that we were able to add to the final version. I’ll also use AI to write generic background information that I can insert into documents.

Language Translation: Translating my English emails into French. I can communicate tolerably well in spoken French but the written word is more challenging for me. The Google Translate function is not perfect, but is effective for simple sentences and helps get a solid first draft with all the special characters and close to correct syntax & spelling that I can adjust and send.

Brainstorming: Asking AI a question about how to solve a problem like humanitarian data interoperability will not solve the problem, but will give you a set of ideas to react to and accelerate your process.

Background research: Basic and general research on a new country that you are visiting. I have a list of favorite sources for learning about a new country. I can use AI as a new aggregated source alongside the traditional ways of learning about a new place ahead of the trip.

Writing the first draft of a professional reference or evaluation: AI can speed up this task with a generic output that makes it possible to add personal touches. This reduces the mental and time cost of this task. Everyone wins.

Virtual personal assistant: Apple’s Siri helps with tasks like scheduling appointments, sending emails, and setting reminders / timers. This takes out a small part of the friction of administrative clicks and tasks that helps me focus on bigger picture items.

Food Macro tracking: I’m trying to understand how many calories I consume per day and what percentage of those calories are carbs, protein and fat. There are many available apps, but it's hard to tell which one is worthwhile and many charge a monthly fee with more features then I need. I’m asking AI to tell me the calories and macro breakdown of each meal I eat, and then entering it into a spreadsheet

Packing lists: Ask AI to write out a packing list to go camping at the beach with surf and biking equipment. The packing list will not be comprehensive but it is an outline you can react to and build out.

Writing practice tests for the kid’s studying: AI can generate study questions and practice test questions with the answers. This is a fun way to spice up the study session with the kids.

What I would like AI to be able to help me do:

Plan a complete end-to-end family trip that includes airfare, activities, meals and costs.
Plan all parts of a birthday and anniversary party for 200 people.
Have more detailed and specific immediate responses rather than going through lengthy refining questions.
Analyze and optimize my schedule automatically.
Move the schedule around throughout the week to compensate for my energy levels and ability to produce good work at various points in the day.
Shine some light on my blind spots to bring up things that I might be missing in work and life.

Making it work for you
What are you using AI for and how can I experiment with other relevant way to use this technology? Hit me up and let me know your learnings.

]]><![CDATA[Techniques for the year in review and setting up for 2025]]>Wed, 15 Jan 2025 14:56:23 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/techniques-for-the-year-in-review-and-setting-up-for-2025

Hey folks, happy new year, how is everyone?

We had a great period of unplugging around the holidays with a road trip to a frozen lake with some snow and a lot of rain. Either way it is 2025 now and I wanted to share a simplified way that I’ve been looking at 2024 and setting up for 2025.

After going through several years of more detailed and time consuming methods of summing up the last year, I’ve settled on this more pragmatic and faster method that can fit on one page of handwritten or typed text. It surfaces the big things that happened, and the things that you want to change for the coming year.

+Locations - Where were you this year, countries, states, counties? This helps me remember what happened and to think about which places I want to live and work in the next year.

+Good - This section holds the wins, accomplishments and good luck items. This is part gratitude exercise and part identification of things that are on track and went well. NPR’s life kit had a good exercise of adding things that you remember feeling, tasting and experiencing in the last year.

+Hard - These are the potentially bad, negative and difficult things that happened in the last year. This is called hard because they are not necessarily all bad if there are ways to flip them to positive post traumatic growth and learning.

+Fails - Things that didn’t happen this year that you had wanted to take place. Can you change your systems to make them happen next year or do you need to change the direction and goals?

+More - What do you want to scale up in the coming year? What would make life and work better in the coming 12 months?

+Less - What do you want to reduce, delete or delegate in life and work in the next year? How can we reduce tasks, responsibilities and events to focus more on things that matter in life and work?

+Techniques - What techniques do you intend to use to put the ideas above into action? Calendar blocks are one thing I’m refreshing and updating for 2025. These are consecutive day blocks such as the one week spring break trip with the family. They are also useful in blocks during the day, for example there is one new weekday recurring block on my calendar each morning to work on the Social Sector Titan blog and create posts like this

Wishing you all a wonderful year with joyful pursuit of whatever lights you up.

Happy Trails.

]]><![CDATA[Abundance vs. Scarcity Mindset in the Social Sector]]>Thu, 22 Aug 2024 17:36:11 GMThttps://www.socialsectortitan.com/home/abundance-vs-scarcity-mindset-in-the-social-sector

Wonderful graphics at www.instagram.com/milanicreative/

In a recent team meeting at a Social Sector organization, I saw a wide gap between colleagues who view the world via an abundance mindset, and those who operate with a scarcity outlook.

Scarcity Mindset
The scarcity mindset says that resources are limited and there is a zero sum competition between resources of time, money, attention, notoriety, or network. This mindset taps into the ancient human brain construct of survival competition over scarce resources like food or water. It connects our actions to a pre-modern part of evolution that required a physical fight to the death to control, dominate or carve up limited food and territory to the strongest and meanest human. It associates specific resources with the ultimate goal of survival and reproduction. An example of a scarcity mindset is the hoarding of toilet paper and surgical masks in the United States at the onset of the Covid19 pandemic. In the Social Sector, examples of scarcity mindsets are usually present during the organization's budget allocation process, or around the selection of people for management or executive positions. If they get more, I’ll get less. If they get that position, I won’t and my life and influence will be diminished. The binary win/lose moment sets in and triggers a cascade of negative emotions and starts to weaken the group through artificial conflict.

Mindsets for Abundance
The alternative polarity to scarcity is the concept of abundance. The abundance mindset knows that there are plenty of resources to go around if we use creativity and cooperation to build something more than would have been possible on our own. The ultimate modern example of abundance is the wealth that the global economy creates every day. The combined productivity of people, companies, and the Social Sector structures that underpin a strong economy have generated massive wealth and increasing living standards for humanity.

Likewise, the formation and evolution of strong Social Sector entities across the United States and the world has exponentially increased the ability of individuals to make a strong difference. Organizations like Charity Water, Doctors Without Borders, Building Goodness Foundation and so many others make it possible to scale your donations, combined with others to help the world every day.

Weeds exist in the garden, and evil thrives in the world. Abundance mindsets don’t try to deny this reality, but they can help us see ways around, through, and over the very real challenges that exist.

Abundance Strategies
Think win / win - As we negotiate in any scenario, it is easy to sink quickly into zero sum, or win-lose thinking, where one person loses and the other person wins. The idea is that there is a limited gain in any situation, and if one person gets more, the other person has to get less. Whoever tricks, convinces, or threatens the best will win the argument. The win-win approach recognizes that there is usually a way to have both people benefit from any negotiation. Moving into any negotiation with a win-win mindset changes the way the discussion takes place. If you are thinking about how to help the other party, then that creates a new strategy where you are not their adversary. Instead you are engaging in an exploration on how you can both benefit from the interaction and come out stronger and better in the end.

Grow the pie, don't cut it up - As you seek win-win solutions, look at ways to make more for everyone, not just more for yourself. What can you do in this situation to create additional opportunities, new collaborations and unexpected connections instead of simply trying to divide up what has already been discovered.

Knowing what enough looks like - The modern Stoic author Ryan Holiday frequently relays a story about the author Kurt Vonnugut and his friend Joseph Heller. They were attending a party at a billionaire’s house in New York. Vonnegut asked Heller about how he felt that this billionaire earned more in a day than Heller would earn in his lifetime from his popular books like Catch 22. Heller replied, “Yes that’s fine, but I’ve got one thing that he’ll never have… the knowledge that I have enough”

Finite vs infinite games - The author James Carse defines finite games (something like American Football) as having a clear set of rules, with an indisputable ranking of winners and losers. In contrast, infinite games are more fluid competitions where the rules keep changing, there are no clear winners and losers, and the only goal is to continue to play the game. Choosing to play an infinite game of life and work will reorient our approach toward a more abundant mindset.

Tactical abundance: using scarcity
In our everyday lives, we get the chance to make decisions that track toward abundance or scarcity outlooks. There are many things such as time, our lives, those of our friends and loved ones that are objectively and unquestionably limited. Life is finite; we all are granted a limited amount of time.Using those very real constraints, and flipping them to an abundant way of thinking can help us thrive within those boundaries.

The shortness of life - We are born, live, and then die. The indisputable end date on these conscious hours, days and years can lead to a scarcity mindset (I won’t have enough, I need to get more, etc..). However, there are some positive upsides to scarcity that we can enjoy and use in our generally abundant Social Sector pursuits.

Positively interpreted constraints - Scarcity can be a positive force in creating an abundant life. If we know that life is short and ending, then we eventually come around to the realization that working on the right things and being grateful for the time that we have, becomes enjoyable. As the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, Oliver Beekman writes: “...why treat four thousand weeks [the approximate span of a human life] as a very small number, because it’s so tiny compared with infinity, rather than treating it as a huge number, because it’s so many more weeks than if you had never been born? Surely only somebody who’d failed to notice how remarkable it is that anything is, in the first place, would take their own being as such a given—as if it were something they had every right to have conferred upon them, and never to have taken away. So maybe it’s not that you’ve been cheated out of an unlimited supply of time; maybe it’s almost incomprehensibly miraculous to have been granted any time at all.”

Tap into something bigger than yourself - When we spend our lives working on a Social Sector cause, as part of a religious group, or as a dedicated member of something like a cycling club, we tap into a stream of abundance that surpasses the constraints of time, geographic place and life.

Making it work for you
How do you see abundance in the Social Sector and beyond? Are you living an abundant or a scarcity based life? What areas would you change to increase your abundance?

]]>