About

Hi, my name is Greg.

This site is dedicated to sharing the methods I’ve used my whole life to do big things. My wife recently pointed out that I seem more wiling than many people to learn and perform challenging tasks, and if I bottled that up people might want to hear about it.

With reflection, I realized I use the same approach to diverse tasks for which I’ve had almost zero formal training. They include:

• Writing a novel

• Expert-level kayaking

• Quitting tobacco

• Writing a guidebook

• Expert-level skiing

• Building a home addition

• Playing guitar

• Getting over a major injury

• DSLR photography

• Open-water swimming

Find your purpose

Setting goals and building good habits constitute the basis by which we achieve anything, but as an adolescent and young man my goals fell outside a lot of social norms. I didn’t understand our education system, and aside from figuring out how to pay rent, making money didn’t motivate me. Goals like attending graduate school or climbing a corporate ladder were abstractions, and I floundered looking for purpose.

I did, however, have two noticeable passions:

• Helping people, and

• Adventurous sports.

I realized late in life that my interest in people’s wellbeing would have been a good launchpad for careers like teaching, nursing, social work and therapy.

On the other hand, I learned early that I had a significant drive to learn and become competent at a range of athletic activities from water skiing to rock climbing. I went to college in Colorado and majored in English-lit, but my real education took place in the great outdoors where I hiked, climbed, boated and skied in the Rocky Mountains. The repetitive nature of those activities, and consistently striving to be better at them, quietly worked its way into the various corners of my life. Literally, the approach I took to getting better at whitewater kayaking was almost exactly the same as the approach that helped me become competent on the guitar.

Anybody can do it

To be sure, I am not more talented than a lot of people. What I’ve learned, though, is that setting goals and thinking about the steps needed to attain them helps us pay attention to the details in a way that accelerates the learning curve.

Any big activity can be broken into pieces and parts that make the larger task more doable. The trick is taking the time to figure out the parts, having enough confidence to fail, and picking yourself back up and continuing when you do.