Slingshot Yourself Through Life, One Quarter at a Time

Looking Back on a Whirlwind

I just got back to Vancouver after a whirlwind five months exploring Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica with Kim, Zac (four), and Sandy (one and a half). Quite the adventure, but good to be back settling in.

And just three days after arriving, I got an invite to put into action one of my commitments for my return: meet more with people in person to talk personal development strategy. It was a Q2 co-goaling session organized by my friend Paul, who also happens to be one of the very first Innate Edge guinea pigs. This session, by the way, is him pushing to activate his own Innate Edge, which he has given the superhero name Captain Confluence.

At this session, a coach named Cole led six of us through a workbook reflecting on Quarter 1 and planning Quarter 2. I’m used to doing these things on my own with my own system, so it was nice to shake things up with a different set of questions, around other people, and sharing our results.

Low Effort, High Effectiveness

The only thing I didn’t like so much about the session? It felt slow. Because while the others needed time to reflect on their Q1, I didn’t. Mine was simple. My last three months were focused solely on two things:

1. Our travels (making the most of our time in Argentina, Brazil, and Costa Rica).
2. Beta testing ARC, my flagship program that’s bringing together all the Zag-tastic (or Zag-iotic?) ideas, systems, and frameworks I’ve been researching, writing about, and testing over the years.

Just those two things. Didn’t accomplish much else. I’ve only written maybe two newsletters in that time and I’ve barely done any research except to answer questions that came up from my ARC sessions. I’ve just been learning through doing, from interacting.

In one of the workbook pages, I rated my Q1 effort at 4 out of 10 but gave my effectiveness an 8. I created lots of memories personally and made a lot of progress professionally. So much progress that I almost feel bad for my ARC beta testers (who were my priority) because if I could go back and redo Q1, I would run the process completely differently. But hey, that’s what they signed up for as beta testers, and that’s why they paid next to nothing for it. So I don’t feel too bad. (Actually, I feel great.)

Looking back, my Q1 was full of progress, good times, and memories, but also very simple. ARC and our travels. That’s it. And that simplicity, that focus, led to great results.

Serial Self-Slingshotting

Where did that focus come from? Well, it came from the effort I put into my brutal annual review. That exercise was me carefully pulling back the strings of a slingshot, calibrating it, aiming it… and then letting go for Q1. Shooting myself in a direction with the momentum to go “wheeeee” through three months without having to stop, rethink, recalibrate. It was a little bit scary to let loose and let my plan fly at the beginning of the year, but I’m glad I did.

I’m surprised at my lack of regret for writing way less then usual. On the contrary, I learned how much of a time suck writing can be and how much more valuable it’s been to work directly with people, accumulating and testing ideas in real life. Meanwhile, I transcribed and distilled those interactions, so now I have a database full of all sorts of fresh ideas to… maybe write about one day? But, more importantly, to put into action.

So, yeah, Q1 was a good sling: a little bit scary, as I wasn’t sure exactly how it would turn out or what it would hit, but it was strategically aimed and I was excited to see where it would take me.

And even though I slung myself in one direction for the first three months of 2025, I didn’t just “go on a ride.” I kept extra careful track of what went well and what could go better. Essentially, as I was hurtling forward, I was simultaneously gathering the intel I needed for my pullback for the next sling – for Quarter 2.

Next Up: Social Over Solo

The co-goaling session helped me set my sights on the target for my Q2 sling: Social over Solo.

Q1 taught me that talking with my ARC beta clients has been far more informative and rewarding for me than writing, learning, experimenting on my own. So, I’m shooting even harder in that direction this next quarter.

Thanks to my Q1 focus on ARC, I have a much more refined process that I am extremely excited by – it starts with for helping people identify their Innate Edge (the answer to: What type of role would an all-knowing ‘CEO of Humanity’ assign you to in which you would flourish while making a positive impact?) and then creating the rails afterwards to channel it. Or maybe instead of rails, the fork of a slingshot and direction to aim? In any case, I have high clarity and confidence about ARC’s effectiveness, how it works, why, and for whom. It has even led to breakthroughs for my toughest client of all: my wife, Kim.

Time to Sharpen More Edges

So now, I’m firing toward people in my network who can benefit most from ARC, who are interested, and who can potentially help me in return, especially through connections within their networks. I’m offering to take them through the new-and-improved Innate Edge process, show them its power, and then ask for their help to grow it.

On that note: I consider you part of my network, so if you fit the above criteria, please let me know.

For your information, the process entails:

• 1 hour of self-assessment you do on your own time
• a 2-hour in-depth Innate Edge interview with me
• 1 to 2 hours of discussion where we walk through your report and figure out how to articulate your Innate Edge and put it into practice

This isn’t a sales pitch, though. My Q2 aim is “Social over Solo,” making connections and continuing to hone ARC through interaction. I just wanted to update you on what’s new and exciting from my side and challenge you to similarly focus on an exciting direction for Q2, then sling away.

Also Worth Sharing

Strategic Tension

A common lesson from almost almost all of my ARC beta clients: Choose only one area of your life at a time to put under tension.

For instance, in Q1, whenever we were relocating from one country to the next, I completely dropped my focus on improving ARC (or anything else) to get through with that. Only once settled did I push on ARC improvements. Trying to do both at the same time, e.g. pushing progress with ARC while acclimating to a new country, led to more stress than progress.

Quick Q1 Travel Report

This from the perspective of Kim and I scouting for a second winter home closer to Canada than Cape Town (where we love and spent our previous six winters before this past one):

• Buenos Aires: Seems like its on the up economically. Lots of potential. Lack of nearby nature in view a dealbreaker. Huge city with no clear central hub for people like us. Not much cheaper than Australia (or Canada) for lower quality infrastructure, so not great value… except the wine (and real estate?).
• Florianopolis: Great place to be as an active couple or with friends. Tons of outdoor adventures, beaches, hikes, waterfalls, little towns. Would be great if we spoke Portuguese, if it were closer to Vancouver, and if we had a place in a walkable area with A/C, no mosquitos, and a pool. Also lacks central hub for non-Brazilian families like ours. Amazing value buffets and produce.
• Costa Rica (Uvita and Samara): Shocked by 3x Brazil prices and often more than Canada for groceries – even tropical fruit. Stark divide between resident expats and Ticos – no different than SE Asia, I suppose, but more than we were expecting. Liked Uvita’s lush-ness, waterfalls, but didn’t like its sprawl. Samara less lush (dry season) but much more compact. Nosara a more high-end Samara. All the alternative schooling options seem like a plus. Not written off yet.

Michael Ovitz’s System

From the Invest Like the Best podcast episode, Turning Potential into Prominence:

Patrick O’Shaughnessy
I bet a lot of people would want to sign up for the sheer amount of experience that you’ve had, the ability to enjoy. So many people, so many works of art to help create things just like The prolific nature of how you’ve worked and lived.

What’s the North Star behind all that? Is it happiness? Are you seeking happiness? Do you care about that word? Is it something else? For those that say, okay, great, if I’m optimizing for this, I can maybe live something like you have.

Michael Ovitz
Let me give you the foundation for that answer. Every Sunday for 50 years, I do the same exercise. Hell or high water, I’ve never not done it. … [E]very Sunday. I sit down at my desk, I open my calendar. Now it’s on Outlook.

And I have my Outlook calendar on the left screen and my Outlook calendar on the right screen. The one on the left screen has the week before. The one on the right screen has the coming week.

And I go through every single meeting I had, every transaction, every human I met could be social. And I decide if they go on what’s called the Sunday list. Which is on Sundays, since I don’t do anything, I put names of people I want to get to know better, and then I parse through the week. The names from the week before that I want to re-engage with. They’re either people I found wildly intelligent, people I thought were doing really interesting things outside the scope of my expertise, people I made money with and people I lost money with, and people that I thought bored me to death.

And then I have some people I meet that it’s just, I could tell in five minutes it’s a giant mistake. They don’t go on the list, and then the list gets carried forward. And I’ve done that my whole life.

I want to basically achieve a state where I’m happy doing what I’m doing.

Granola’s Good for Digestion

Perhaps the biggest improvement to my own system in Q1 was using Granola.AI to transcribe and summarize my meetings. I use this data and Granola’s simple AI summary templates to:

• Extract the most interesting ideas and concepts discussed, which I store for future reference
• Get feedback on what I did well in the call and what to improve on
• Systematically track clients’ progress, identify blockers, and note next steps
• Mine for clues about what a client’s Innate Edge might be
• Focus on listening rather than taking notes

Also Worth Reading

• 5 Steps to a Brutally Honest AI-Assisted Annual Review: Use AI for a brutally honest annual review that forces real change.
• Watch Yourself, Win: The Best Self-Improvement System: Improve anything by recording your ‘performance’ and reviewing the ‘game film’.
• I Finally Found My (Not-So-)Superpower: Combine strengths, values, and AI to find the ‘superpower’ you’re meant to unleash.