Hey folks,

Aaaand we're back after a week off! We were at family camp in Wisconsin, at the camp Chandler worked at in high school. (That was the pilgrimage I mentioned a couple weeks ago - it was an awesome experience.) Highly recommend this camp specifically or family camp in general. A couple things on my mind...

1. Gamma: I've recommended this before, but if you are still building PowerPoint or Google Slides decks by hand you are wasting a huge amount of time. It's fast, and you can tune it to your brand and style. I can make 30 usable, presentable slides in under 10 minutes. It's turned a long belabored process into simply focusing on the content I'm actually speaking, and the slides form around that. I know it's a repeat, it's just that helpful.

2. A workout timer/playlist: I've been a bit of a lazy bones this summer and have been struggling finish my lifting sessions. I was trying the Hypertrophy app, so the workouts ran kinda long, plus I have a home gym and often get interrupted by a kid wandering in. So for this fall, I've been trying something different - I made a playlist that is exactly 40 minutes. I turn it on and do the workout. If I finish before it ends, I'm done - but if it ends first, I'm also done. Something about the same songs in the same order every day seems to help - I think part of me was worrying I was spending too much time in there and needed to get on to the next thing. Funny part is I've finished with time to spare every day since. Simple hack, worth a try.

3. Product vs. Roommate vs. Teammate: I had a couple conversations about marriage this week and there's a pattern I keep seeing: The unhappiest marriages tend to treat the other person as a product - the spouse exists for the other's enjoyment/support/whatever. If you're not getting what you want, the "product" must be defective. More common and in the middle is the roommate: you have your life, I have mine, and we compromise into a harmonious household where we respect each other's boundaries. Never awesome, but you can get by in a marriage like this. But the happiest marriages are teammates. There's a goal outside the couple that you both are called toward and willing to sacrifice for. It's a shared mission - could be a business, church, non-profit, community objective - whatever - but it takes a team to pull off. That doesn't mean teammates don't enjoy each other. They do, a LOT. It's that the mentality going in is a cooperative game, and I think that makes you less petty, more willing to give grace, and it narrows your negative feedback down to what is genuinely compromising the mission.

That's it for this week!

Best,

Blake

P.S. Book recommendation! My 14-year-old, Everett, just published his second novel, Iron Conquest. It's on Amazon now in print and digital. Totally different storyline from his first, and I've been reading it out loud to the family - it is legitimately good. Big jump between book one and book two in both the writing and his ability to tell a gripping story. A few of you have asked how I motivated him, and I can't take much credit beyond saying "hey, I think you should do it." He bought a digital typewriter and committed to writing a little every single day. Super proud. Check it out - it holds up as an adult read, and teens and tweens will love it.