Anyone’s fired up in week one and at the finals. Lead through the boring middle of the season.

Enthusiasm is free in the first week and free again when something is at stake. The hard part is the long stretch in between, where nothing is decided, nobody is watching and the work is identical to last Tuesday. Whoever holds standards up through that stretch is doing the real leading. A final is mostly a reading of what happened in the middle of the season.

Pick the dullest recurring thing on your calendar and decide now how you will treat it in six weeks. Give it one small ritual that makes starting automatic. Then notice who else is still trying, and say so.