Compass Call Archive
Below you’ll find the full archive of past Compass Calls, our monthly guide featuring one True North principal to align your focus, Obstacles Ahead to watch out for, Waypoints to keep you moving, and a Map Check to stay grounded.
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The Mental Model Arsenal
Build a toolkit of mental models to navigate complex problems effectively. Avoid common pitfalls like relying on a single model, failing to apply knowledge, and overcomplicating simple issues. Practice three key models: Inversion to identify failure modes, Second-Order Thinking to anticipate consequences, and Circle of Competence to recognize limits of knowledge. Regularly check your automatic thinking patterns and strive to apply these models in decision-making to enhance your problem-solving capabilities
Newsletter date: September 20, 2025
Strategic Withdrawal
Strategic withdrawal involves stepping back from low-leverage pursuits to conserve energy and resources for more impactful endeavors. Key obstacles include the glorification of grit, sunk cost blindness, fear of appearing weak, ambiguity in measuring returns, and the risk of premature withdrawal. To navigate this, assess the cost-benefit of projects, reposition efforts with clear narratives, and track resource allocation to ensure strategic choices lead to greater returns. Reflect on commitments that demand more than they provide and consider what opportunities arise from letting go.
Newsletter date: November 22, 2025
What AI Can’t Do
Human accountability is the decisive factor AI cannot replace. While AI excels at building plans, breaking goals into steps, and providing reminders, it cannot confront avoidance, challenge excuses, or re engage you when motivation drops. Key obstacles include over relying on tools instead of people, self reporting bias that allows quiet rationalization, and the tendency to pursue goals in isolation. To counter this, Dead Reckoner pairs structured roadmaps with shared visibility, allowing a trusted partner to see progress and intervene before drift compounds. By inviting accountability early, using visibility as leverage, and redefining support as honest follow through rather than encouragement, goals move from intention to execution. Reflect on who can hold you to your highest standard and what progress becomes possible when your path is no longer private.
Newsletter date: January 21, 2026
The Power of Strategic Constraint
Embrace strategic constraints to enhance focus and creativity by imposing limits like time and budget. Avoid the trap of unlimited flexibility that leads to stagnation. Time-box projects into three focused sessions to prioritize effectively and eliminate distractions. Monitor tasks paused to reclaim clarity and assess the impact of self-imposed guardrails on productivity.
Newsletter date: August 21, 2025
The Optionality Engine
Create more choices before you need them by building optionality engines that generate multiple paths to success. Avoid single point of failure thinking, the certainty trap, and resource hoarding. Focus on three types of optionality engines: relationship multipliers, skill portfolios, and value creation labs. Regularly audit your dependencies and actively build systems that create future choices to enhance your opportunities.
Newsletter date: October 20, 2025
The Reverse Compass
To escape the treadmill of high-functioning panic, align with your future self who has already achieved the life you desire. Shift your mindset to act as if you have already become that person, making decisions from clarity and vision rather than urgency and fear. Write a regret-proof letter from your future self, decide as if you've already won, and set identity-defining goals to filter out distractions and maintain alignment.
Newsletter date: December 20, 2025
Energy Is An Asset
Energy is the performance variable most people fail to manage. While ambition pushes output, chronic depletion quietly erodes judgment, narrowing perspective and increasing reactivity. Key obstacles include silent energy leaks from constant context switching, artificial recovery that stimulates rather than restores, and living in perpetual response mode from morning to night. To counter this, protect the state you operate from by installing short, deliberate resets, creating space before decisions, and guarding the first and last thirty minutes of your day from reactive input. By choosing clarity over pressure and recovery over stimulation, performance becomes intentional instead of reactive. Reflect on how often pressure decides before you do, and who you become when depletion sets the tone.
Newsletter date: Feb 20, 2026
The Power of Polarities
High performance requires balancing polarities like growth and grounding, exertion and restoration. Avoid pitfalls such as over-correction and false stability by mapping your poles, timeboxing activities, and tracking consistency. Regular reflection and small adjustments can enhance mastery and sustainability.
Newsletter date: July 20, 2025