An admittedly twangy playlist, perhaps not for the backyard barbecue party, but maybe for some quieter time later on, perhaps concerning what David James Duncan calls the “constantly backfiring experiment in self-government known as ‘the United States,'” presented without further comment:

Josh Ritter, “Henrietta, Indiana“

Josh Ritter, “All Some Kind of Dream“

James McMurtry, “State of the Union“

James McMurtry, “We Can’t Make it Here“

James McMurtry, “No More Buffalo“

Merle Haggard, “Are the Good Times Really Over for Good?“

John Prine, “Some Humans Ain’t Human“

Kacey Musgraves, “Merry Go Round“

Jason Isbell, “Cumberland Gap“

Jason Isbell, “White Man’s World“

Gary Clark Jr., “This Land“

Guy Clark, Joe Ely, John Hiatt, and Lyle Lovett, “Blowin’ Down the Road” and “This Land is Your Land”

Everyone’s keeping score somehow.

Are they keeping score by the metrics that matter?

If not, how much are you going to bother to care?

Ahhh, the calming power of a spreadsheet …

Not a sentence I ever thought I’d type.

Spreadsheets are not my happy place, but spending some time with one over the weekend reinforced an old lesson: a little rigor can go an awfully long way.

At a certain point, the pain of uncertainty outweighs the pain of running some extremely simple calculations through a spreadsheet.

And then it’s possible to begin again — calmly.

There are many ways to get to the majors.

Only some of them come with a uniform with your name and number on them.

There’s only one starting shortstop on the team. If you can play that position better than everyone else, go for it.

But, for almost everyone, the day comes when we realize we won’t get that position. And then it’s decision time: do we still want to go to the show? If so, how will we get there?

It turns out that the great shortstops can do what they do because of a much larger supporting cast — many of whom never set foot on the field while the cameras are on.

Coaches, trainers, managers, scouts, batboys, you name it: it takes a lot of people and a lot of effort to put on the show.

The thing about those roles, though, is that you have to embrace not playing to succeed in them. Managers can’t play shortstop. But not many shortstops can manage, either.

A friend of mine likes to say about work, “When you’re here, be here — and when you’re not, don’t be.”

When you’re on stage, give it all you got.

But you’re allowed to go back to the dressing room after the show while everybody else goes home.

Even if you arrive at it on your own, simply having the answer isn’t good enough.

The effort is surely worthwhile, but the answer itself — so long as it remains in the realm of ideas — is only the beginning.

After nearly 30 years of looking for the right answer and then rushing on to the next test, acting as if ideas alone are the answers we need is a difficult habit to break.

There’s something you have to do. (There always is.)

It feels uncomfortable. (It always does.)

Perhaps the reason it feels uncomfortable is that it seems as if doing it would conform to a vision or version of yourself that you can’t stand.

Maybe you don’t want to fit in. Maybe you don’t want to stand out. Either way, the effect is the same: no action.

At that point, change the script. There’s another way to act the part. (There always is.)

If you feel the need to hide, hide in the role that allows you to act.

As June rolls to an end, the height of summer is upon us. And that means it’s time to do some real reading.

Offline, I’m deep into David James Duncan’s The Brothers K, a wild Northwestern reinterpretation of the famous Russian novel. It’s a Bildungsroman not only of the Chance brothers but of the United States in midcentury, as the old crewcut certainties give way to Vietnam and the counterculture. It’s pointed and poignant, deeply philosophical and uproariously funny.

Online, I make a daily habit of Seth Godin’s daily blog, I’ve delved deeper into the amazing resources at Farnam Street, I’m dabbling with Yuval Noah Hariri, I’ve been working my way through a novel excerpt about the borderland, I was reintroduced to Slate Star Codex, and I grinned my way through a big chunk of new friend Margo Aaron’s back catalog.

And I finally updated my library on this site. The shelves are full of podcasts, websites, articles, ebooks, and print books … head on over and check them out.

The world needs lifeguards, swim instructors, and swim coaches.

But those three tribes serve different people in different ways.

Not every lifeguard can help a team win gold. And not every coach is qualified to make an open-water rescue.

Save the drowning, teach those seeking to improve, or push the already-talented: three different ways to show up for three different clienteles.

The choice is yours. And it’s worth making.

I was discussing the Eisenhower (important/urgent) matrix with some friends the other morning, and someone wisely copped to the difficulty of discerning the true urgency of important tasks.

Either, he said, everything important feels urgent — or it’s too tempting to let the important things linger until they’re undeniably urgent.

As he also recognized, though, “undeniably urgent” is a long way of saying “emergency,” which is no way to handle your most important work. Nor is it any way to handle yourself: being in constant emergency mode is inimical to working well on work that matters.

There’s no magical prescription for this conundrum. Real life doesn’t come sorted into colored boxes separated by clear, impermeable lines. But that’s only the more reason to practice approaching what’s important with the appropriate urgency.