She thanked God that life was not always winter, that spring always came at last to chase away the cold and heaviness, and to release one to warmth and movement again.

There was no use grieving over what might have been.

So take a step toward calm, and relieve people from needing to broadcast their whereabouts and status. Everyone's status should be implicit: I'm trying to do my job, please respect my time and attention.

We've frequently been trapped by things that used to work well but no longer do.

If you stop thinking that you must change the world, you lift a tremendous burden off yourself and the people around you. There's no longer this convenient excuse for why it has to be all work all the time. The opportunity to do another good day's work will come again tomorrow, even if you go home at a reasonable time.

You'll often hear that people don't like change, but that's not quite right. People have no problem with change they asked for. What people don't like is forced change—change they didn't request on a timeline they didn't choose. Your "new and improved" can easily become their "what the fuck?" when it is dumped on them as a surprise.

If you want to make a product better, you have to keep tweaking, revising, and iterating. The same thing is true with a company.

Pare down to the essence, but don't remove poetry. Keep things clean and unencumbered, buut don't sterilize.

If you can't fit everything in within the time and budget allotted then don't expand the time and budget. Instead, pull back the scope. There's always time to add stuff later — later is eternal, now is fleeting.

If you still want people in the office every day, change that requirement to every afternoon instead. Then let your troops have their mornings to themselves.

Ironically, you'll probably get far more done when only half of your workday overlaps with the rest of your team. Instead of spending the entire day dealing with Urgent!!! emails and disruptive phone calls, you'll have the entire start (or end) of the day to yourself.

The right time to hire is when there's more work than you can handle for a sustained period of time.