According to the Wookiepedia; “May the Force be with you” was a phrase used to wish an individual or group good luck or good will. It expressed the speaker’s wish that the Force work in the favor of the addressee.
Flow, on the other hand; is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. This concept was first introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi back in 1975 as the keystone of his work in positive psychology – that is, psychology focused on helping healthy people be better, rather than more traditional approaches that center on dealing with deficiency and disease.
All that is to say that the title of this article is a playful “portmanteau sentence” combining a couple ideas that are key to my intentions in 2026 and beyond…
I Intend.
Welcome to my 2026 intention setting post! This is a habit I have been keeping up for the last seven years, although my first experiment with publicly sharing my thoughts and goals once a year was back in 2012. Since I have described this practice several times before in those other articles, I’ll keep it short this year.
The point of this post is primarily twofold:
- To write out my personal intentions for the coming 12 months or so, as a way to explore my ideas outside of myself, on the page, and ultimately force clarity of thought – making the abstract concrete, and therefore actionable.
- To publicly share these clarified intentions as a form of personal accountability.
A tertiary purpose is the hope that something I write here will resonate with you – and maybe even trigger positive action that changes the course of your life. Of course, just hearing your own thoughts reflected in someone else’s words can be enough – so, no pressure! If you do take something away from this article – I’d love to hear about it!
The ‘Undeluded’ Life
Socrates famously said that “the unexamined life is not worth living” and I tend to agree with him. Socrates believed that a life devoid of introspection, self-reflection, and critical thinking is essentially meaningless and lacks value. This quote emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and questioning one’s beliefs, actions, and purpose in life.
In following this advice, I have recently come to understand just how deluded my self-image has been – and how that has been holding me back.
On Delusions
Before moving on, I do want to recognize something. It is very possible that some, many, or even all of my delusions of my own specialness may very well have contributed to my current “success,” however you measure that. This reminds me a bit of Marshall Goldsmith’s book; What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, where he essentially says that high-achievers often have unconscious habits that create interpersonal friction and limit their growth, even if those habits helped them succeed initially.
That concept, that beliefs and habits have effective “seasons” that come and go is important here. It means that my mid-life realization may only be helpful because it happened now, rather than earlier in my life. The young person doesn’t yet know what they are good at, and so they likely need some irrational belief in their own unproven skills and talents, because without that confidence they will never try enough things to discover what they are truly good at – who they truly are. Now that I’ve spent 45 years on this planet, and something like 30 of those years working alongside other humans, I have a very good sense of what I am capable of and also what I am not. I know a lot more about what I want, what I deserve, and what is actually within my capacity to do about it.
So, while I am letting go of my delusions, you may still need some of yours. And that’s okay too. What’s also okay is that many folks have reached the level of self-awareness I am just now finding long before me. None of this invalidates my growth or your journey.
And Awareness
The key here, IMO, is awareness. In some cases, you may choose to knowingly hold on to a delusion. Let me give an example: I choose to believe in free will. All the real concrete evidence I can find leads me to believe that most likely, we are fleshy automatons that simply react to stimulus based on our genes, experiences, and beliefs. But the thought that I am not actually in conscious control of my life is not an attractive one to me. It feels hopeless. So, I choose to believe that I do in fact have free will, so that I can act as-if I did, even though the facts may be otherwise.
In other cases, this awareness can lead to letting an unhelpful delusion go, leading to personal growth and better outcomes. Another example: For much of my life I have held a strong belief in my own exceptionalism. I believed that I was smart and capable. Not just that, but smarter and more capable than the average human. This blind confidence has allowed me to do many things that would have otherwise been impossible – quitting all employment to pursue entrepreneurialism for one.
But blind belief can have all kinds of negative consequences. If I think I am exceptional, then I start to hate myself for not naturally succeeding. I get frustrated by the effort actually required. Or worse, I don’t even try because I expect. Becoming aware of this has allowed me to re-frame from being a smart person to becoming a successful entrepreneur. It’s not some inherent quality within me – it is the action I take that matters. Stop waiting for the success I expect and instead go out and make it happen – using whatever tools I have at my disposal. As I previously noted, I find the work of Carol Dweck helpful here, if not necessarily complete in this context.
Three Words
With this new, less deluded self-image combined with a pursuit of slow productivity, I set off into 2026. To keep me on track throughout this next revolution (around the sun), I will focus on three words: Flow, Family, and Friends.
Flow
I introduced this concept above. I hesitate to dive much deeper into the idea of “flow” here as that could turn into a whole book. In fact, many books have already been written on the topic. One of my favorite introductions to flow is The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium by “the father of flow” himself; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (me-high cheeks-sent-me-high). I am choosing this word as a reminder to live a high-flow life. This has been a goal of mine since before I even heard the term for the first time. I have sought out flow experiences for as long as I can remember – that feeling of being completely in the zone where you are both entirely single-minded and yet utterly connected to everything around you. You and the thing you are doing become one and time becomes meaningless. It can happen in the office, in the mountains, and in a conversation. Okay, I said I wasn’t going to explain it… =)
The point this year is to continue to make that effort more conscious and more honest. Less exceptional, more quotidian. I intend to make less excuses for avoiding or not seeking flow throughout my life. I intend to remove the barriers that I have erected between myself and everyday flow. In short, I plan to eliminate everything that is not helping me to be all that I can be, and nurture everything that is. One aspect of this for me is alcohol – I think I’ve had enough of it. I want to remember more of my great late night conversations and never again spend Sunday aimless and sedate due to a hangover. Place is another aspect. As I write this we are early in the process of preparing to move to the Colorado Rockies where I will be surrounded by beauty, 15 minutes from world-class mountain trails, 30 minutes from great snowboarding, and generally exactly where I feel most myself.
Family
Another great thing about moving back to Colorado… It’s my home. Not just that I was born there, but my Dad was born there, and his Dad, and, yep, his Dad too. even more importantly, I have a bunch of living family in Colorado as well. My two sons, my Mom, and my sister and brother in law all live within 90 minutes of our chosen destination. You may be thinking that moving back is why I added family as a word this year. That would be backwards. I’m moving home in large part to be near to my family again. There are other beautiful places on this planet. We chose this one for one reason: Family.
This is an area of my life that I really screwed up. I won’t tell the whole story today. But I will share one of the delusions (one that is so cliche it pains me to admit it) I have recently destroyed. Even though I probably knew better – because people, books, and movies all told me – I acted on the delusion that my (only) job was to provide for my family. This took me off to Boston and to New York City and all over the world. And now that I can finally buy the presents for them I never could before, all I want is to be near them. To be in their lives. To have them in mine. While I have been working on this for at least the last six years, there is only so much you can do at a distance. Of course, proximity is no cure either. It’s a tool. One that I intend to use this year to strengthen the bonds with my family.
Friends
My final word for 2026 is “friends.” It’s not just family that I find myself craving more of in my 40s, its community. People and relationships don’t really come naturally to me. I don’t know if it’s a neurodivergent thing, a personal foible, or just laziness on my part. I do know that I don’t tend to keep in touch with all the wonderful people in my life as much as I’d like. At one point I actually thought of it as a waste of time. Something like; “we know we like each other, why spend time proving it when there is work to be done!” Of course, this was a non-verbal instinct more than a coherent thought at the time. And that time has passed. I’ve come to realize that friends are not like that at all. They are not items to be collected (“we’re friends now, so that’s sorted”). They are many things but above all I think they are simply the folks we enjoy spending time with. Obviously that means that time spent with them could never be a waste – in fact, it is a goal unto itself.
These days I work in order to have time to spend with my friends – rather than sacrificing time with friends to work. This is a privilege. It’s also a choice. One of the best ways I’ve found to fill my life with friends is to work with your friends and become friends with the folks you work with. We’re going to spend about a third of our adult lives at work – why not enjoy that time with friends? So, similar to flow, and to family, this word is one that I already believe strongly in and I choose it as a focus for 2026 in order to (hopefully) truly realize it in action. Remove impediments. Seek opportunities. Choose work based on who it’s with. Make time to enjoy the company when and while it’s available.
Goals
We made it! This is the last bit. Here is where I outline my goals for the year, this is what transparency and public accountability looks like (I hope).
Fitness
Mind, body, heart, and soul. This year I am leaving out my habits and just including meaningful goals.
- Move (back) to Colorado!
- Heal up my Achilles tendon and complete an ultramarathon of any distance
- Read at least 50 books, most of them physical (more actual reading)
- Publish at least 25 works (blogs, podcasts, papers, webinars, etc) – and generally write more of what I want to write and less of what I think I should
- Complete at least one creative project with my own hands – design and build something in the real world
Projects
Doing things for others.
- Khadga Consulting: Re-focus specifically on Service Provider networks (it’s what I know best, and who is most consistently hiring me)
- NAF: Successfully hold at least two AutoCon events (we may have a little extra here, TBD)
- NAF: Complete the fourth annual State of Network Automation Survey (and report)
- IX-Denver: Start a local NOG-like meet-up
- OIX: Grow and engage the community
- Launch at least one new major initiative
Money
The credits must flow!
- Increase overall revenue by X% (advisory consulting is going great, time to pick up the pace just a bit)
- Rebuild cash savings to $Y (after several lean years, it’s time to rebuild the buffer that got us through them)
- Invest $Z in retirement accounts (keep feeding the future)
Bada Bing, Bada Boom
There you have it. A snapshot of my thoughts, and an outline of my intention as we all head collectively together into 2026. I truly hope this is your best year yet!
