Book of the Month: Deep Work by Cal Newport

in

We live in a distracted world.

Whether it’s our jobs, our homes, or even in public, our worlds are full of stimuli competing for our attention. Technology, for all its advancements, can be the biggest distractor of all. But as the hustle and bustle of our everyday work and home lives continues to bombard our attention, our brains are processing, absorbing everything around us. We’ve become proud of our multi-tasker badges and our to-do lists and our mottos of getting shit done.

But are we as productive as we think? Some days we may feel accomplished, while on other days we’re just trying to keep up.

Most athletes reading this have had many experiences with flow, the term coined by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, which describes a state of concentration or complete absorption in an activity. When we’re engaged in activities that align with our passions and require intense concentration, we’re more likely to feel “in the zone.”

How many times did the referee’s halftime whistle leave us thinking where the half went? For most us, playing in the moment was part of why we made so much progress.

How well have we transferred flow to our everyday work and personal lives?

In Deep Work, author Cal Newport explores how we can produce more by organizing our time to maximize flow. Newport considers deep work the “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit.” Deep work, as opposed to shallow work, which entails less cognitive demand and can often be completed while distracted. Along with the work from Czikszentmihalyi, Newport also references the impact of deliberate practice, referenced in a previous post, as a foundational component of deep work. As distractibility becomes even more progressive in our lives, Newport’s argument is for taking back our time to accomplish the tasks that demand our full selves.

One of the disadvantages of multi-tasking and constant interruptions is attention residue, a term coined by researcher Sophie Leroy from the University of Minnesota in 2009. Attention residue describes how when we switch from one task to another, our minds can still remain stuck thinking about the original task. In multiple studies, Leroy explored how switching tasks affects performance and found that “People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance in the next task.”

Newport uses researcher Adam Grant’s methods of deep work as one of his many examples. Grant, also referenced in a previous post, is an organizational psychologist at Penn who runs a top podcast on top of his teaching and publishing schedule. The key to Grant’s productivity, according to Newport, is his focus on extended deep work. Grant is able to teach all his courses in the fall then dedicate the spring and summer to his research, effectively dedicating each period of time with his full attention. He’s also known to bunker in his office for days or weekends, unplugging from his world, and reminding others he is not available even when they know he’s in his office typing away.

It might seem harmless to take a quick glance at your inbox every ten minutes or so. Indeed, many justify this behavior as better than the old practice of leaving an inbox open on the screen at all times. But Leroy teaches us that this is not in fact much of an improvement. That quick check introduces a new target for your attention. Even worse, by seeing messages that you cannot deal with at the moment (which is almost always the case), you’ll be forced to turn back on primary tasks with a secondary task left unfinished. The attention residue left behind by such unresolved switches dampens your performance.

When we step back from these arguments, we see a clear argument form: To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction. Pu another way, the type of work that optimizes your performance is deep work. If you’re not comfortable going deep for extended periods of time, it’ll be difficult to get your performance to the peak levels of quality and quantity increasingly necessary to thrive professionally. Unless your talent and skills absolutely dwarf those of your competition, the deep workers among them will outproduce you.

Grant’s method of deep work may not be viable for everyone. Throughout the book, Newport provides several examples of how creatives, craftsmen, and businessmen alike have patterned their time for deep work. Some prefer a monastic approach, cutting people off with no electronics whatsoever in order to commit to the solitude of their work. The famous 20th Century psychologist Carl Jung used to escape to his retreat in the mountains for a few weeks at a time, where he would write, mediate, and walk before returning to his busy practice and social life in Zurich. Others have found a ritual of time blocks, whether daily, weekly, or monthly, to reserve specific parts of the day to their deep work. There are also experts at short time blocks, like biographer Walter Isaacson, who’ve trained themselves over time to set aside short burst of time throughout the day without any attention residue. Many writers, such as JK Rowling, have even locked themselves away in hotels or retreats for a day or two, or longer, just to get away from everyday responsibilities and engage in a pressing part of their mind.

Whichever method you prefer, the argument is simple. If your goal, like mine, is to be more productive in 2026, it’s up to us to prioritize that time in our day to dedicate to the work. Time blocking is a valuable tool for initiating deliberate practice. The others in your lives—children, spouses, friends, colleagues—may not appreciate being shut out of your life completely for a period of time, but if the work is important to you and they care about you, they’ll hopefully realize the necessity of your deep work and support your intentions.

If not, there’s always the personal vacation.

Your One Action for 2026

It’s the new year, and we know what that means. The gyms are about to get swamped.

For at least the next six weeks anyway.

Research shows that most resolutions don’t stick because the required actions never become routines, those routines never become habits, and those habits never become identities.

The problem with our quest to form better resolutions is that we never break it down into simple every day actions.

In 2025, I got serious about a few specific goals and the daily actions that moved me closer to reaching them. Prior to 2025,  I’d make well-intentioned goals. I’d hit on one or two, usually the fitness ones. I’ve always had strong exercise habits. In my late 20s to early 30s, for a few years, I committed to an intense morning writing routine. In my mid-to-late 30s, I got intentional with clean eating and saying no to people. My 40s has mostly been about creating better alignment (both mental and physical) and avoiding burnout.

When I started my real estate career, one book changed the way I think about goal setting and measuring deliberate actions. The One Thing, written by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, asks the reader to simplify the process by focusing on The One Thing, the priority, not priorities, that you can accomplish every day to make a difference. He asks, “What’s the One Thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

Instead of One Thing, I like to focus on One Action. A verb, not a noun.

We may begin the new year with the same unrefined goals. Get in better shape. Lose a couple pounds. Be kinder. Maintain relationships. Quit this bad habit. But consider taking those goals to a simpler level. With action. Instead of workout 3 days a week, make it put my workout clothes out on the dresser before bed. Instead of lose a couple pounds, make it buy one vegetable instead of a boxed food. Instead of be kinder, make it write one message to a friend or loved one a day. Instead of quit this habit, make it tape a piece of charcoal on top of the cigarettes.

Starting the day with a small win sets the tone for the rest of the day.

My One Action in 2026 goes deeper because it involves a morning routine, a combination of multiple actions. At the end of 2025, I successfully combined my exercise routine with reading, meditation, and free writing. (My evening routine, that’s an entirely different story and will be my One Action soon enough.)

This is what James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, would call habit stacking. So instead of doing what I did for many years, watching SportsCenter, the news, phone scrolling, and rushing through workouts, making my daughter late for school in the process, I’m ready, refreshed, and under control to start my day. Then I hit that first period with 6th graders and an entirely different storm transpires. But at least I know I can get it back.

Keller also says, “Anything that isn’t my priority is a distraction.”

Make the time for that One Action, and for now, forget about the rest until that One Action becomes a habit.

For a great listen, check out Jay Shetty’s On Purpose interview with Mindset Mentor’s Rob Dial, a sure way to get you going in 2026. Dial and Shetty, the author of my Book of the Year, Think Like a Monk, break down turning simple actions into routines to help overcome that resolution speed bump that turns into a brick wall.

Here's to a healthy and fulfilled 2026 implementing that One Action.

 

 

 

Top Stories of the Year

2025 had its moments, most of them positive, and I’m excited about what’s in store for 2026.

As year winds down, I wanted to share some of mine (and your) favorites from the blog and beyond.

Top Soccer Stories

Abington’s Randy Garber Wins State Title in Final Game, but His Legacy Will Continue for Years to Come. (Philadelphia Soccer Now, November 17, 2025)

I took my first trip to the PIAA State Soccer Finals where the stars aligned. One of my favorite youth coaches won the state title in what happened to be his final game. I was grateful to be able to capture the moment, well deserved and probably long overdue. I spoke with several Abington legends and former EPYSA players who shed light on what makes Garber such a valuable coach in our game. The story was the third-most read on PSN in 2025, and the social media reactions from one day at the PIAA finals went well beyond anything I’d covered this year, including Club World Cup, Union playoffs, and the USWNT.

West Chester Cruises, VE Comes Back Late to Set Up Much Anticipated EPSA Amateur Cup Final (Philadelphia Soccer Now, December 8, 2025)

Two of the best amateur clubs in the area over the past decade will meet again in the state final, which is now scheduled for February 2026. Both games were played at Bryn Athyn College, setting up an ideal opportunity to cover all of the action in one place. VE beat Philadelphia SC 3-2, while West Chester topped the Ukranian Nationals 7-1. Both teams will also be in EPSA Open Cup play in the early spring, and West Chester will be the area’s lone representative in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.

Juventus Legend Alessandro Del Pierro Reflects on Philadelphia, the U.S., and the Club World Cup (Philadelphia Soccer Now, March 14, 2025)

The U.S. is in the middle of the greatest hosting duties in our soccer’s history, which began with last summer’s Club World Cup. I was fortunate enough to sit in on several high-profile interviews, and it doesn’t get much better than Alessandro Del Pierro. The former Italian World Cup winner and Juventus star shared his thoughts on several topics, including his time in Philly.

From 1994 to 2026: How Player Development in the U.S. Has Evolved Leading Up to the FIFA Club World Cup (Philadelphia Soccer Now, May 13, 2025)

Over a series of interviews ahead of the Club World Cup, I sat in and spoke with some of the best representatives in the game, both internationally and in the U.S: Arsene Wenger, Jill Ellis, Juan Pablo Angel, and Carlos Bocanegra. All legends in their own ways, the players, coaches, and executives spoke about the growth of soccer in the U.S, sharing personal experiences during their numerous years both here and abroad.

Top Stories from the Blog

The Crossing Fawn (June 17, 2025)

The low point of the year was my mother’s passing, which affected our family greatly. I was fortunate to be able to celebrate her in the moment and share my gratitude, and the fact that it was read by so many on my site shows how many other lives Mom touched.

July’s Book of the Month: Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day by Jay Shetty (July 16, 2025)

It’s no coincidence I dove into this book when I did. And I just recently re-read it the past few weeks because it’s so good. Shetty shares his techniques for finding purpose and controlling the thoughts and emotions that can sometimes take over our minds and hearts. His weekly podcast is even better, filled with guests who offer numerous strategies for living your best life.

Rent vs Buy: How to Choose (August 13, 2025)

This was the most discussed topic of my year in real estate, so I wasn’t surprised this post had the amount of readers it did. There are many potential homebuyers, especially first-time homebuyers, playing the game of rent vs buy. Plenty are waging the short-game of affordable rents vs rising monthly mortgage payments and the long-game of building equity in a growing market vs not. The good news is that the 2026 forecast looks better for buyers than last year. Interest rates are trending down, but housing prices are still up with little supply, so how much better remains to be seen.

Book of the Month: Mastery by Robert Greene

in

Did you know Albert Einstein finished near the bottom of his class in college? Or that Mozart, although a child prodigy, never composed his greatest music until he escaped his controlling father’s influence? Or that Henry Ford failed repeatedly on his first prototypes of the quadricycle? Or that the Wright brothers were among many inventors and engineers trying to build the first airplane, most of whom were much more experienced, educated, and funded?

In an ever-changing world, where wins and achievements are posted daily across social media and news feeds, it’s easy to get caught up into keeping up. I’m no different than anyone else, trying to improve and grow in multiple areas while managing change. During the journey of being a better father, teacher, writer, and real estate agent, my search has led me toward established processes, action goals, and a drive toward overcoming resistance and boredom. But while my previous book review focused on the role of deliberate practice and increasing deep work, I’m always searching for a greater understanding of the overall journey one takes from amateurism to professionalism, and eventually professional to expert.

Mastery, the best-selling book from Robert Greene, explores the process of growth, breaking down the various steps in which we improve and overcome obstacles in our quest to become better. The book, which is a meaty read, highlights the journeys of numerous successful people, including the periods when they weren’t so successful. With focused dives into the lives of known masters like Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, the Wright brothers, John Coltrane, and Henry Ford as well as lesser-known masters like Yoky Matsuoka, Martha Graham, Cesar Rodriguez, Freddie Roach, Greene establishes there is no singular path toward greatness but enough of a blueprint for others to follow.

Greene breaks the process of mastery into several steps: finding your life’s task, the apprenticeship, the creative-active phase, fusing skills and intuition, and eventually mastery, with numerous examples detailing how those before us navigated the process. One common denominator in every one of Greene’s examples is that no true master skipped steps. Each individual, even the ones we refer to as the geniuses, had to go through each phase before reaching a level at the top of their chosen field.

The first step in the process of mastery involves getting on the right track. Greene highlights masters who found their calling at different stages in their lives. The second step, the apprentice phase, takes the longest of all the phases, and involves learning from more experienced individuals or organizations. Greene breaks down the three phases of the apprenticeship into

1) Deep Observation: The Passive Mode. In the beginning, the apprentice learns by using their senses as the mentor displays the craft.

2) Skills Acquisition: The Practice Mode. The second phase is active. The apprentice learns the requisite skills and progressions with feedback from the mentor.

3) Experimentation: The Active Mode. During the apprenticeship phase, the apprentice becomes an experiential learner, gaining knowledge through trial and error, successes and failures, developing the growth mindset.

One of Greene’s examples follows Cesar Rodriguez, a Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, reflecting back to his journey during the apprenticeship of becoming a fighter pilot. A successful high school football player and Citadel graduate, Rodriguez passed his flight training with ease, but when he entered flight school, he struggled initially in the unpredictable, competitive environment with other “fly boys,” highly-touted pilots with more experience and skill. As students dropped out weekly due to the high demands of the program, Rodriguez found himself near the bottom before he had to dig in and refer back to what made him a successful football player. Eventually, he finished third in his class and went on to become one of the brightest pilots in the Air Force, with three air-to-air kills in the 1990s, two away from being designated an ace.

Connecting Rodriguez’s journey to the apprenticeship phase, Greene writes:

What separates masters from others is often something surprisingly simple. Whenever we learn a skill, we frequently reach a point of frustration—what we are learning seems beyond our capabilities. Giving in to these feelings, we unconsciously quit on ourselves before we actually give up. Among the dozens of pilots in Rodriguez’s class who never made the cut, almost all of them had the same level of talent as he did. The difference is not simply a matter of determination, but more trust and faith. Many of those who succeed in life have had the experience in their youth of having mastered some skill—a sport or game, a musical instrument, a foreign language, and so on. Buried in their minds is the sensation of overcoming their frustrations and entering the cycle of accelerated returns. In moments of doubt in the present, the memory of past experiences rises to the surface. Filled with trust in the process, they trudge on well past the point at which others slow down or mentally quit.

It's during the apprenticeship phase where the rubber meets the road. We learn the value of hard work, deep focus, resilience, commitment. Most of all, we are guided by our passion for our chosen field with the assistance of others who offer their support. Eventually, every person must walk their own path, but we often share roadblocks and dead ends that force us to bust through or turn around and re-assess.

Greene believes that once we transition out of the apprenticeship phase, we enter the creative-active phase where we apply our knowledge and begin to bend and shape the rules of our professions, like Neo in The Matrix. We experiment and test boundaries, but because we are at a much more advanced stage than when we were beginners just playing around with our clay, our efforts have the potential to transform our teams, our fields, and our lives, leading us toward the point where our skills become fully immersed with our intuition and our wisdom becomes unmatched.

What makes Greene’s book so unique is the complexities of each individual and their journey toward mastery. We won’t always see ourselves in every model, but there are enough models to gather bits and pieces and utilize the information in our own journeys. Several times while reading I said, “That sounds like me” and put the book down to troubleshoot my own process. It’s both scary and reassuring to know that whatever phase we’re in, a beginner, an apprentice, or a master, trailblazers before us experienced the same. Mastery is not some golden ticket handed out a birth but something each one of us control.

  

Removing Popcorn Ceilings For a Cleaner Finish

Popcorn ceilings are making a comeback.

Just kidding.

If your home has popcorn ceilings, it’s likely becoming more and more of an eyesore and a nuisance.

I recently helped a friend remove a popcorn ceiling. Though I’d never done it before, it only took some grit and spit, and the end result made a dramatic difference in the before and after. The process can be lengthy and test your patience, but here’s what I found to be most useful steps for removing a popcorn finish from a ceiling.

A popcorn ceiling is essentially a spray on finish that uses a blend of Styrofoam or stucco-like materials to hide imperfections and reduce sound. Popcorn ceilings became very popular in the mid-to-late 1900s as a way to expedite the homebuilding process, improve sound pollution in close-connected properties like apartments and townhomes, and even contained fire-retardant materials to prevent damage across those adjoining properties. Unfortunately, when the finish was first introduced, it often contained asbestos.

Many properties throughout the Philadelphia area have popcorn finishes, and it’s safe to assume they’ve lost their appeal (or maybe never had one at all), but the solutions can be a bigger project than most homeowners are willing to tackle.

The first step in the removal process is safety. Popcorn finishes before 1980 may contain asbestos (and possibly a couple years after). If your home is older than 1980 and has a popcorn finish, consult a professional for safe removal and remediation practices. If the home was built before 1978, there’s also the possibility the ceiling had been painted with lead paint then popcorn sprayed over top, adding multiple hazards during removal.

However, if you know the popcorn finish was done after 1980 or you have performed a test with negative results for asbestos, then it’s time to get dirty.

There are several options for popcorn ceiling. Option 1 would be to scrape off the texture and finish the ceiling, so it looks as clean as any standard drywall. Option 2 would be to cover the popcorn with new drywall. Because it involves more money, materials, hands, and feels like the same strategy as tiling over tile, it sounds ridiculous in my opinion but does work. Some people are into that sort of thing. Option 3 is to skim coat the entire ceiling and add a new textured finish. This involves rolling compound on top of the existing popcorn, which does flake and fall when wet. Again, much like Option 2, in my mind it doesn’t solve the original problem, only repackages it.

Any option will be a multi-day project and contain its challenges but for the reasons above I went with Option 1.

Prepping the room is key. Remove all pictures, furniture, light fixtures, etc. because it’s going to be messy. Cover the floor and and cover the walls with plastic as high up as possible, sealing the gaps with tape. That was everything can be rolled up and trashed once the dust has settled.

Plan for ventilation. A fan or dust removal system would be ideal but a mask or respirator and safety glasses is a priority. This isn’t the best job for the winter months because the dust will travel and can vent back in through the returns and clog air filters.

The scraping process is simple, depending on the celling. Spray the ceiling with water one section at a time to break up the finish. I used a cheap gallon water sprayer. Allow a few mintues for the water to soak in then scrape with a knife, either 12 inch or 6 inch for closer edging. Some spots came up with ease. Others not so much. If the ceiling had been painted over at some point, the process may take a few more cycles of spray and scrape. Avoid too much water, especially if you’re only dealing with a few stubborn spots that can be sanded down later.

Additional sanding may be required to take off the final bits and give the ceiling a smooth finish, but it takes a lot more time, work, and creates a bigger mess. If possible, scrape and sand in the same day to remove all the debris and dust at once.

Skim coating over the joints, rough spots, and knife nicks requires more skill and time but ensures the smooth and level finish throughout before painting. If scraping was difficult and left a lot of knife damage, skim coating the entire ceiling may be the most efficient of them all since it requires the least amount of dust.

Depending on the shape of the ceiling after scraping/repairing, the best technique for an even finish is painting the joint compound on the ceiling. By adding water to the compound mixture and stirring, making it more soupy than pasty, you can roll it on like any other paint. Work in sections then smooth it out with a long knife or squeegee, removing the excess.

The edges and corners present some issues because the popcorn often extends down to the top of the wall. It’s likely you’ll need to scrape completely then skim the edges, corners as well as the top of the walls, reinforcing a clean edge. This means priming and painting the top or all of the walls in another step later.

Once all the popcorn is removed and the ceiling is prepped, sanded, and skimmed, it’s time to prime and paint. Old stains may need an oil based primer to avoid bleeding through, but you’ll enjoy the ease of the final coats once the labor intensive steps have been completed.

Despite the time and effort, the difference between a popcorn finish and a smooth finish will be worth it. You’ll realize just how undervalued a ceiling can be in a room. The results will transform the space.

Late Fall Real Estate Market Updates

During the late fall months, the real estate market tends to slow. But it recent years, the winter months haven’t been as fallow. For many active buyers who’ve been searching and competing in a tedious market, the opportunities are still present to find their next home. Over the next three months, many potential homebuyers begin to hibernate with visions of jumping back into the market in early spring. However, many of those buyers will miss out on the quality opportunities to purchase a home with less competition and potentially more negotiating control.

Nationwide, in the month of October, existing home sales rose 1.2% with a median sale price of $415,200, a 2.1% change from October 2024.

First time homebuyers made up 32% of all buyers, up from 27% in 2024. 29% of all home sale purchases were cash buyers, a 2% increase from a year ago. The average days on the market rose from 29 to 34 days.

In the Northeast region, sales went up 6.8% in the $250,000 to $500,000 range and 9.9% in the $500,000- $750,000 range from October 2024.

Pennsylvania continues to see a rise in home sale prices, with a 55.1% gain since 2020.

(Source NAR)

In Bucks County, the six-month median home sale price in October was $510,000, which was unchanged from October, yet still 8.5% higher than October 2024.

In November, the median home sale price dropped to $475,000, a -5.8% dip from the six-month average and a -3.7% change from November 2024.

Homes in October averaged 30 days on the market, a continuous rise since July, while in November, homes stayed on the market for an average of 27 days.

Bucks County home sales peaked at $530,00 in August, and in July, homes sales averaged 18 days on the market.

(Source Bright MLS and BCAR)

Source Bright MLS

In Montgomery County, the six-month median home sale price was $465,000, a 3.4% rise from October 2024. Homes in October and November were on the market for an average of 26 days, one day higher than the five-year average in the county and 3 days above the six-month average.

The median sale price in November was $460,000, which was a 3.3% increase from October and 2.2% increase from November 2024. Average home sales peaked In Montgomery County in July, averaging $500,000 and lasting 19 days on the market, the yearly low.

(Source Tri County Suburban Realtors)

Source Bright MLS

Throughout Bucks and Montgomery County, market trends continue to be hyper specific. Doylestown sale prices continue to rise at a rate 2.7%, topping out at $719,000 for the second half of the year. Warminster and Upper Southampton saw the greatest gains in sale price and time on market. Warminster prices went up 11.8% and spent 28.5% fewer days on the market than in 2024. Upper Southampton (8.7%) and Warwick (8.2%) both saw significant gains, yet Upper Southampton homes stayed on the market 46.4% fewer days while Warwick homes last 19% longer. Upper Moreland saw the greatest gains among the selected Montgomery County markets, rising by 9.3% from a year ago, but homes stayed on the market 61.5% longer. Montgomery (5.7%) and Horsham (4.2%) remain strong markets with positive gains and fewer days on market (-10%, -17%).

Stay tuned for predictions after the new year heading into the very active spring market.

Book of the Month: Peak: Secrets From the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool

For decades, researchers have been trying to articulate what makes individuals more successful than others over a wide range of professions and fields. Anders Ericsson’s Peak has been one of the more notable compilations of what determines success. His research has influenced many others in seeking out detailed characteristics and theories, and some of his findings have even been redefined and repurposed on a universal scale.

At the core of Ericsson’s book is the concept of deliberate practice, which describes specific conditions of practice that have a greater effect of learning and performance. Deliberate practice requires several conditions: complete attention, practice of skills previously developed by experts, pushing outside of one’s comfort zone, well-defined goals, and feedback with the time to improve mental representations and skills. This type of practice, according to Ericsson, differs greatly from free play, deliberate play, and other types of practice, which align on the spectrum of practice but tend to allow for more freedom and often have less focus on specific skills and concepts with little to no feedback, even if they do sustain the individual’s complete attention.

Deliberate practice differs from just going out into the backyard or to the nearest court and polishing skills but arises out of one-to-one or one-to-many trainings in which a coach or experienced professional is leading the session. In these practice settings, Ericsson believes we are creating mental representations, something that separates performance levels in all activities, whether sports, music, trades, or any profession. Mental representations are mental structures that correspond to an object, an idea, a collection of information, or anything else, concreate, or abstract, that the brain is thinking about.

Mental representations are enhanced through practice experiences, such as dribbling past a defender in front of a goal or cutting a line of paint along the edge of a ceiling. Each time we perform, we are getting immediate feedback and processing information. Perhaps the move didn’t work because of a bad touch or the defender guessed correctly. Maybe the paint went on the ceiling because of a twitch or because there was too much pressure on the end of the brush.

Over time, our skills improve the more we are placed in these specific settings. That’s why the kid who never plays forward isn’t likely to come into a game late and score the winner or why a team who’s never had to defend a lead against a good team fails to resist pressure. But in deliberate practice sessions, our mental representations improve dramatically.

Here, Ericsson writes about how mental representations can influence a soccer player’s ability.

In pretty much every area, a hallmark of expert performance is the ability to see patterns in a collection of things that would seem random or confusing to people with less well developed mental representations. In other words, experts see the forest when everyone else sees only trees.

This is perhaps most obvious in team sports. Take soccer, for instance. You have eleven players on a side moving around in a way that to the uninitiated seems a swirling chaos with no discernible pattern beyond the obvious fact that some players are drawn to the soccer ball whenever it comes near. To those who know and love the game well, this chaos in no chaos at all. It is all a beautifully nuanced and constantly shifting pattern created as the players move in response to the ball and the movement of the other players. The best players recognize and respond to the patterns almost instantaneously, taking advantage of weaknesses or openings as soon as they appear.

To study this phenomenon, I and two colleagues, Paul Ward and Mark Williams, investigated how well soccer players can predict what’s coming next from what has already happened on the field. To do this we showed them videos of real soccer matches and suddenly stopped the video when a player had just received the ball. Then we asked our subjects to predict what would happen next. Would the player with the ball keep it, attempt a shot at goal, or pass to a teammate? We found that the more accomplished players were much better at deciding what the players with the ball should do. We also tested the players’ memory for where the relevant players were located and in what direction the w ere moving by asking them to recall as much as they could from the last frame of the video before it was hidden from them. Again, the better players outperformed the weaker ones.

We concluded that the advantage better soccer players had in predicting future events was related to their ability to envision more possible outcomes and quickly sift through them and come up with the most promising action. In short, the better players had a more highly developed ability to interpret the pattern of action on the field. This allowed them to perceive which players’ movements and interactions mattered most, which allowed them to make better decisions about where to go on the field, when to pass the ball and to whom, and so on.

Recently, I listened to a conversation between sports psychologist Dan Abrahams and a well-known soccer coach about why young players like Lamine Yamal can be so good at such a young age when compared to their older peers. Mental representations were a focal point in that conversation.

It’s not the age of the player that really matters but the time spent building skills in an environment that fosters growth effectively. While a player like Lamal has spent thousands of hours in a competitive learning environment, much like other players his same age around the world, the difference, most researchers believe, comes from the duration he’s engaged in learning during that time.

One of Ericsson’s famous studies had been quoted by Malcom Gladwell in his book Outliers, connecting mastery to 10,000 hours. The concept eventually became known as the 10,000-hour rule and has become a universal indicator for future success.

The famous study involved practice time between elite violinists enrolled in prestigious schools in Germany. The instrument was chosen because of its high level of difficulty as well as its competitive nature at advanced phases. What’s interesting to note is that in the study, the participants agreed that most of the important factors in improving were seen as difficult and not much fun. Despite being high-level performers, they rarely viewed practice with a positive light. They did, however, view it as important for improvement. But the defining factor, according to the study, was the amount of time the students practiced.

The music education department violinists practiced an estimated 3,420 hours before the age of 18, the next level performers practiced around 5,301 hours, and the top performers, the future soloists, practiced an average of 7,410 hours. The numbers of hours of practice time for the top group was consistent with estimated practice times for middle-age violinists in the Berlin Philharmonic and Radio-Symphonic-Orchester Berlin prior to turning 18.

The study also showed a tremendous difference in practice time during pre-teen to teenage years, when other influences and/or forms of resistance enter into a child’s life. The study failed to show a difference in the type of practice or the type of instructor, which could affect performance over time. The 10,000-hour rule is an estimate of the number of hours the top level participants practiced by the age of 20. In some fields, Ericsson believes, individuals can become experts with less than 10,000 hours, while in other fields that number could be significantly more or less. Ericsson asserts that there is nothing special about reaching a specified numbers of hours, only that higher-level performers tend to practice more than their contemporaries.

Peak provides several other characteristics for success in multiple performance fields in addition to well-researched examples of how individuals and organizations can reach higher levels in work and in life. Ericsson’s research is often cited by his peers, who continue to build on some of the concepts that he extrapolated throughout his career. One peer in particular, Angela Duckworth, whose popular book Grit, one of my all-time favorites, led to greater insight into the connections between passion and purpose over time. She often cites Ericsson’s work as a foundation for her groundbreaking research.

 

 

 

 

8 Home Maintenance Tasks To Check Off Your List Before Winter

A few weeks ago, my dad informed me that he could finally turn off the air conditioning in Florida. For us northerners, winter has arrived a little earlier than expected compared to previous years. The other day, we had to defrost the ice from our windshields, and lately, the heat’s been running throughout the night. For homeowners, the late fall means different things. It could mean getting ready to welcome families for the holidays, preparing for weekend getaways on the slopes, or planning hibernation. Whatever the reason, we can use these upcoming weekends to get ahead of the winter folly before our time is occupied.

Here are 8 simple tasks to prepare for winter:

1) Sealing Window and Door Drafts

If your house is like mine and drafty in the winter, the cause could be older windows and doors. My windows aren’t getting replaced anytime soon, so they require a little TLC. Inspecting the windows both inside and out and sealing any gaps can make a huge difference in your home’s ability to retain heat.

Many experts recommend checking for drafts using a few tried and true methods. My preferred technique is the smoke test. Take an incense stick, since it’ll burn longer without the need to re-light, and move the stick around the outside of any window or door. Check to see if and where the smoke blows in. If it does, you’ll need to seal that gap.

Also check the caulk on the outside of the windows. Worn caulk will need to be stripped and replaced.

Interior gaps can be filled with caulk, weather stripping, or insulation foam, depending on the location and the size. In the past, I’ve even purchased the plastic sheets that cover the windows. They were easy to install and did prevent cold air from trickling in.

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/insulation/21017161/how-to-seal-windows-for-winter

2) Clearing Roof, Gutters, and Downspouts

We had a ton of rain in recent weeks. Plus a nor’easter. Though we didn’t get as many tropical storms or hurricanes this season, intense wind and rain can still cause damage to the home’s exterior. Some areas are difficult to spot at a glance. Checking the roof for any lifted shingles and the soffits and fascia for anything out of place after a heavy storm is a must. Clogged gutters and downspouts can lead to water intrusion or ice buildup, which could penetrate beneath the roof sheathing or cause cracked downspouts.

If your home has trees in close proximity, the leaves have likely fallen into gutters and become wedged in the downspouts. If possible, and not too high, use a ladder with help to remove the leaves and debris. If high ladders create anxiety, hire a professional. They’re fast, largely inexpensive, and will save you the stress.

https://www.homedepot.com/c/ah/how-to-clean-gutters/9ba683603be9fa5395fab90ce752a5b

3) Tree Pruning

Wind and heavy snow will blow down limbs and branches. If it looks like it may fall on the house or anywhere nearby, go ahead and clip them. Raising the deck (my dad’s favorite pastime) and inspecting suspecting limbs will prevent any damage later when those limbs and branches drop.

https://extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/fnr/fnr-506-w.pdf

4) Repairing Hardscapes

In PA, extreme conditions form a tremendous amount of potholes throughout the winter. And many of them don’t get fixed, leaving craters on well-traveled roads. The same type of damage can affect sidewalks, driveways, steps, porches, and patios. Most local hardware stores provide a number of options for sealing all types of cracks in concreate and asphalt. Many of the products can be used and cured within hours. But it’s best to take care of them now before the next freeze, otherwise later those small cracks will turn into larger ones, and the large gaps will become craters. It’s those craters that roll ankles and lead to unnecessary trips to the ER.

https://www.thisoldhouse.com/masonry/21016504/fixing-cracks-in-concrete

5) Maintaining the Heating System

One of the most important mechanical devices in the home, the heating and air conditioning systems play a major role in temperature regulation, but in the winter it also keeps everyone in the home safe. If you haven’t already, schedule a professional to inspect the system to ensure it’s running properly. For forced air systems, change the filters every season. For an oil delivery system, check to make sure you have fuel in the tank. You don’t want to run out (happened to me two years ago) or discover a faulty gauge (happened to a friend of mine) after the system stops working even though the tank still says it’s half-full. Losing heat for a short-time in the late fall isn’t terrible, but losing heat in January when the professionals are slammed means it could take days until an issue can be resolved.

6) Inspecting the Fireplace and Chimney

I love a good fire. There’s something pleasing about natural warmth that fills the entire house (and saves on oil use). If you plan on running the fireplace often, have a professional check to make sure everything is clean and operational.

Like the HVAC system, you don’t want to wait until there’s a problem before realizing there’s a problem. Whereas a heating system breaking down leaves the home without heat, a buildup of creosote in the fireplace or chimney could lead to something worse, so eliminate the worry and have peace of mind all winter.

https://blog.smarttouchenergy.com/heating-system-inspection-checklist

7) Cleaning the Oven

Now that the grills are put away, the oven will be doing a lot more work over these next few months. Turkeys, pies, roasts, cookies, and many other delicious holiday meals and treats. Now is a good time for a power clean. Some ovens have a self-clean function that takes several hours and burns off all the build-up. Other ovens can be cleaned easily with specific products and a little elbow grease. It also might be a good project to delegate to the teenagers in your household.

8) Preparing for Outages and Snow Removal

In my old neighborhood, I could count on 3-4 solid power outages a winter. Several Christmases ago, I bailed water out of my sump pump for hours on Christmas Eve during a power outage and bought Chinese take-out just like in The Christmas Story. We’ve had some mild winters by our standards in terms of deep freezes and snow accumulations. This year, I don’t think we’ll be as lucky. Preparing for outages can be a lifesaving and/or time saving task down the road. Throwing out multiple refrigerator/freezers full of food is not a fun activity.

Have an emergency kit ready with flashlights, batteries, even rations if necessary. Check to make sure the sump pump is working and install a battery back-up if your house is prone to outages. If affordable, this could be the year to look into a generator.    

There may some additional odds and ends to deal with depending on the nuances of each home, but once the items above are checked off, you’ll have more time to enjoy the festive season with fewer worries.

 

Book of the Month: Find Your Why by Simon Sinek

Have you ever questioned why you do what you do?

Not like “Why did I buy sugar-free Gatorade instead of regular?” or “Why do I put ketchup and mustard on a hot dog?”

More along the lines of:

What led you to your field of study?

How did you get into your hobbies?

How did you find your job?

Or maybe, more simpler,

Why did you get out of bed this morning?

I’ve asked myself these questions over the years for various reasons as my own journey has taken several turns.

Simon Sinek, author and entrepreneur, first emerged in 2009 with his book Start With Why, aided by a Ted Talk with over twelve million views, and has since contributed to a purpose-driven movement that included several more books on inspiration and leadership as well as a popular podcast.

Sinek’s message is simple. Your reasons for everything you do should begin with your motive. If we’re fortunate enough to follow our passions, which may or may not include our vocation, then we’re more likely to continue our drive toward that passion.

I’ve written before about dharma, ikigai, finding the point, and purpose-driven activities as way to live with more meaning to achieve a healthier lifestyle. Similar findings from Dan Buettner’s research into Blue Zones found that people who live long, fulfilling lives are often close to their passions.

In his book Find Your Why, Sinek provides a guide for answering the question of how to merge passions, purpose, and service. Sinek’s work revolves around his Golden Circle, three rings which contain WHAT on the outer ring, HOW on the middle ring, and WHY in the center. Often times, we describe ourselves in relation to our occupations. We are lawyers, doctors, coaches, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, and on and on. Over time, we form our identities around the What. When we meet people for the first time, somewhere in the opening we ask our new acquaintance, “What do you do?”

When asked why we do we what we do, our responses could range from “I don’t know,” “I just got into it,” or “It pays the bills.” We get locked into the routine of progressing, living, surviving, and our lives become more routinized and efficient. Some of us have spent so much time in the hamster wheel that we lose our bearings and the origins of our passion.

If we’re lucky, we work in a field directly related to our dharma and make enough money to support our fulfilling lifestyle. Research shows, however, that’s often not the case. Money is only a motivator up to certain point. After that, it’s our sense of meaning that drives us onward.

Unfortunately, roadblocks that interfere with our why comes from all angles, whether its financial strain, a dead-end career, a horrible boss, a bad team, or a lack of growth opportunities, all resulting in a lack of drive.

Sinek reveals a simple method for discovering your why by paring our purpose down to one sentence. Here he begins the process by digging into the past:

Each of has only one WHY. It’s not a statement about who we aspire to be; it expresses who we are at our natural best. If you’re already living your WHY, then spelling it out for yourself will turn into an even more powerful tool. And if you’re struggling to live your WHY, then finally understanding your purpose, cause or belief can help you change course and realign with a new perspective, a new role, or perhaps even a new company to help you find the feeling of fulfillment that may have eluded you thus far.

At its core, the WHY is an origin story. By looking to our past and teasing out the most significant threads—the experiences we’ve had, the people we’ve been influenced by, the lives we’ve touched and the highs and lows we’ve faced—we can identify patterns. For individuals, our WHY is fully formed by our late teens. To uncover our WHY we must bring together our standout memories—our defining moments—and examine them to find connections. For tribes, the WHY also comes from the past—either the origin story of how the company was founded or from specific stories shared by other members of the tribe that represent what makes them proud to be part of the tribe. Either way, discovering your WHY is like panning for gold in the river of the past; the gold is there, lost in the debris of the river, hidden by rushing water. Only when you take the time to pan for significant moments of the past, retrieving them nugget by nugget, will they turn into treasure.

After revealing our most significant experiences, both positive and negative, Sinek wants us to then identify several themes throughout those experiences. How did we reach X? How did we overcome Y? With these the first two steps complete, we’re ready to write our first WHY statement using his model:

To _________ so that _________.

The first blank represents our contribution, and the second blank represents our impact.

We’re not done yet.

Sinek then recommends sharing our stories, themes, and Why statements with a trusted friend. This workshop allows us to pass our WHY statement through what Hemingway called a bullshit detector. Because we may see our lives differently than the way others see us, having an outside opinion from someone who doesn’t tell us what we want to hear can help us revise our statement, steering us toward finding what we truly want. In Sinek’s experience working with individuals and organizations to help discover their WHY, anyone who tries to do it alone usually misses the mark.

Finding your why doesn’t have to be a long and painful experience, though it may evoke painful memories of a past you’ve overcome. In the end, your compass will point closer to its true north and with it, your inspiration should be more understood. Though it won’t take away from the challenges, boredoms, and pains that come with pursuing our passions, at least it will keep us heading in the right direction.

 

 

How Capital Gains May Impact Real Estate Decisions

The real estate market has been kind to homeowners over the past fifteen years. It’s been so kind, in fact, that many long-term owners are analyzing payoff statements and home values as if watching Yamine Lamal dribbling inside from the right corner of the penalty box. Because of their growing equity, they’re now facing the possibility of paying tax on capital gains.

Capital gains tax is a tax one pays on any asset that makes a profit, whether it’s stocks, bonds, or real estate. There are two types of capital gains: short-term and long-term. Short-term capital gains are profits from selling assets held within a year or less. Long-term gains are from profits of assets held longer than a year.

Because short-term capital gains are taxed at normal income rate and long-term gains are taxed at a capital gains tax rate, which is lower, it makes more sense to hold onto an asset for a longer period of time. When it comes to real estate, homeowners will need to consider how capital gains influence their profits, especially if they are short-term investors.

However, there are several exclusions.

The IRS highlights a few main exclusions. “If you have a capital gain from the sale of your home, you may qualify to exclude up to $250,000 of that gain from your income, or up to $500,000 of that gain if you file a joint return with your spouse.” (irs.gov)

This is what’s known as a Section 121 exclusion. In order to meet this exclusion, the owner must meet two criteria:

“You have owned and used your home as your main home for an aggregate of at least two years out of the five years prior to the date of sale. Any two-year period within the five-year window qualifies, and one would not qualify if the exclusion were used on another home in the same time period.” (irs.gov)

For the year, 2025, the rate of capital gains for someone filing as single would be as follows:

 For a married couple, filing jointly:


For a married couple, filing single:

For head of household:

How to calculate capital gains:

1) Determine your basis. The basis includes the price of the purchased home plus any renovations. For example, if someone purchased a home for $500,000 and put $50,000 in to update the home, their basis would be $550,000.

2) Calculate the sale price minus sale costs. If the home sold for $750,000 several years later and the seller paid $30,000 in selling fees, the sale price is $720,000.

3) Find your gain. Subtract the basis from the sale price. If the sale price is less than the purchased price, the sellers nets a loss. In this example, the gain would be $170,000.

4) Adjust for the exclusion. If you are eligible for an exclusion, reduce the capital gain by $250,000 (if filing single) or $500,000 (if filing jointly). In this example, the taxable gain would be $0.

There are a number of additional exclusions and disqualifications. Here are a few of the more common ones, but it’s still important to speak with your tax advisor prior to listing your home to plan ahead. If you’ve recently sold your home, make sure you discuss the potential for taxable gains during the next filing period.

Some exclusions (mentioned in more detail in IRS publications):

Divorce or separation:

Death of a spouse

Member of the Uniformed Services, Foreign Service, the intelligence community, or Peace Corps

Home destroyed or condemned

Vacant land

Work-related move

Health-related move

Or

1031 Like Exchange (If you sell a home but use the profits to purchase a new one, this is considered a like-kind exchange. Profits from the sale can be excluded from capital gains tax, however, when the property is sold again, the profit will be subject to tax.)

More details can be found at:

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p523

Me Meetings to Get Priority Tasks in Order

Recently, I was in the middle of a conversation with a friend when I made a time check.

 “Sorry,” I said, cutting him off, “but I have a meeting.”

 “With who?” he asked.

 “Me.”

 It took him a few seconds to realize what I’d meant. Then he understood.

I’m not an anti-meeting person, just the President of the That Meeting Should Have Been An Email Supporters Club. Some meetings are important and time efficient, and the leaders who organize them are well-intentioned. But often they fail to recognize the value of time. Taking people away from engaged priority tasks not only removes their focus for that time block but also a significant time after. According to research from the University of California Irvine on the impact of fragmented work, it took study participants an average of 23 minutes to regain focus after an external interruption.

I’m all for brainstorming sessions, conversations on necessary topics, and presentations that will improve personal or professional skills. Most of the time, however, that’s not what happens. Meetings turn into gripe sessions, time-fillers, or a micro-manager’s attempt at trying to assert authority. Most meetings happen because that’s what organizations do, not because the information is important.

To use the kids’ terminology. Just let us cook.

A Me Meeting, however, can be a valuable block of time in an individual’s day. A Me Meeting is exactly what it sounds like—time set aside with oneself to organize future priority tasks for the day.

People can use Me Meetings any time. Well-established business leaders use them after they wake up. Some hold self-meetings before they sit down to work. Others use them at the end of the day as a recap and prep for the following day, so they can rest easy knowing they have tomorrow planned. I often hold a Me Meeting early in the morning, sometime after exercise, when it’s time for my focus to shift from personal to professional priorities. Other times I use them mid-day during lunch to jump start the afternoon.

A Me Meeting can be a simple time block, anywhere from five minutes to thirty. Anything longer likely turns into a priority task, but that’s okay. We wouldn’t fly an airplane without a flight plan and functioning navigation equipment. Start the day with a heading and a time commitment for productivity. Write down the top-three priorities or tasks then go after them without interruption. Ditch the phone, turn off the notifications. Disappear. Get to work.

Writer Stephen King writes his first drafts with the door shut, both literally and metaphorically.

Entrepreneur Alex Hormozi sits in a room with no windows, no phone, plenty of coffee, his headphones on, and doesn’t come out sometimes until 16 hours later.

Writer Cal Newport claims in a 40-hour time blocked week he can accomplish 60+ hours of output.

Entrepreneur Codie Sanchez writes “2 hours of dedicated work is worth more than most people’s 8 hours.”

Gary Keller, a big proponent of time blocks, says, “Until your #1 priority is done—everything else is a distraction.”

Me Meetings also create accountability. Miss a deadline, fall below the expectation, or quit when something gets challenging, send the excuses to the person in the mirror.

I’m working on being more productive and accountable. It’s one of my priority goals for the second half of 2025.

Because I know what’s not productive.

5 Soccer Teambuilders Any Coach Can Use Right Now

In the early days of a new season, many coaches may find teambuilders to be a useful way to incorporate teams skills and boost team cohesion. In a previous post, I wrote about benefits to the teambuilding approach, so this article will focus on practical activities I’ve found successful over the years. Though coaches can manipulate any activity into a teambuilder to emphasize important team skills and values, an experiential learning approach highlights specific components to improve team skills individually or collectively.

When teaching teambuilders, I focus on 5 insights. There is no right or wrong way, just methods I’ve observed.

1) Make it challenging. The goal should be to force the team into situations where grit, growth mindset, team spirit, and other desired skills are tested. Use failure as a learning tool.

2) Every player has a role. If a player can do it by himself, it’s not a team builder. Messi is also a great passer. Any player left out will not feel like a part of the team.

3) Change rules to increase difficulty. If a team finds success, celebrate. Then push toward a higher level.

4) Allow the players to find solutions. We don’t go onto the field and move players like chess pieces, so let them figure it out on their own. Our adult brains are more in tune with problem solving. We’re trying to develop theirs.

5) Debrief to promote reflection. Use teachable moments from the teambuilder to expand on specific team skills. These are the moments that will define a team’s season. They become patterns, whether positive or negative. Don’t use teambuilders to fill time. Patterns will be obvious if the coach steps away and observes, but their guidance brings it all together.

Here are 5 soccer teambuilders any team can use right now:

Radioactive Ball

Equipment: 1 soccer ball for each team

Space: Use the width or length of the field

Rules: Each team lines up at the starting line, moving in, and sits down. The first player starts with the ball at the starting line. Players must use their feet or thighs to pass the ball to the next player. After the player passes, they move to the back of the line to extend the chain. The relay continues until the ball crosses the far line (checkpoint). Teams complete the same pattern back until they cross the finish line.

Penalties: If the ball touches the ground, the team must restart. If a player touches the ball with their hands or head, the team must restart. Once a team crosses the checkpoint, if they drop the ball, they restart at the checkpoint.

Next Level: Players must juggle the ball to the next player (5 juggles max).

Dribbling Minefield

Equipment: 1soccer ball for each team. 1 blindfold for each team. Cones and equipment for mines.

Space: 10 x 30 yards

Rules: Split the players into teams of 3. Each team will have a ball and a blindfold. Spread the cones and equipment around the minefield. One teammate will wear the blindfold and dribble through the minefield. Two teammates will coach the dribbler. One coach can be on the minefield. Coaches cannot touch the dribbler or ball. They must use verbal commands. The goal is to get the team through the minefield safely. Switch roles after each completion.

Penalties: If the dribbler hits a mine or dribbles out of bounds, the team must restart. If a dribbler peeks or a coach touches the dribbler or ball, the team must restart.

Tunnel Relay

Equipment: 1 ball for each team.

Space: The width or length of a field

Rules: Form 2 teams. Each team lines up at the starting line. Last teammate in line starts with the ball. Teammates space about 1 foot apart and stand with feet together. Set up cones every 10 yards to serve as checkpoints. At the start, the last player dribbles through the team like cones. When the player reaches the front, teammates stand with feet apart, forming a tunnel. New first player must pass the ball through the tunnel. New last player receives. If the pass gets stuck, tunnel players can roll ball with their feet. If the pass skips a teammate’s legs, the passer must retrieve and pass again. When team reaches original order, they move on to the next checkpoint.

Penalties: If a team uses hands or intentionally skips a teammate, they must return to previous checkpoint.

Pinball Passing

Equipment: 1 soccer ball per player. 3 exercise balls

Space: 10-15 x 30 yards

Rules: 2 teams on opposite sides start behind their goal line. Place 3 exercise balls (pinballs) in the middle. Each player has a soccer ball (flippers). Players must pass the soccer balls into the pinballs, causing them to move across the opponent’s goal line. Players may retrieve any ball but must return to their goal line to pass. Team earns 1 point if pinball crosses opponent’s line. Ball stays out for rest of round. 3-4 minute rounds.

Penalties: Players cannot touch the pinballs (yellow card). Players cannot pass from in front of the goal line (yellow card). Players cannot block an opponent’s pass (red card). Red carded players are out for the round.

Rondo Volleyball

Equipment: Cones, 10-12 soccer balls

Space: 2 10 x 20 yard grids. 1 2-3 yard channel in between.

Rules: Split into 3 teams. # depends on size. 1 team begins in one grid. 2nd team begins in opposite grid. They are attackers. 3rd team begins inside the channel as defenders. Coach plays ball into 1 grid to start. 1 defender enters the grid after 1st touch. Attacking team must keep the ball away from defender. Once every attacking player touches the ball, team must pass through or over channel defenders to opposite side. Attacking team earns 1 point for a successful Rondo and transition pass. New attacking team begins once a player receives transition pass. 1 new defender enters.

Penalties: If a defender steals the ball, forces a bad pass, or a channel defender blocks a transition pass, that team replaces the attacking team. If a transition pass goes out of bounds without reaching the opposite grid, the defenders replace that attacking team. If the team receiving the transition pass allows it to go out of bounds, the defenders replace the receiving team. The team that lost possession becomes new defenders in opposite grid.

What to Know about a Home Appraisal Contingency

Potential home buyers face a number of decisions prior to submitting an offer, and some of those decisions involve contingencies. A contingency is a stipulation in a contract that impacts whether or not the contract can be fully executed. In previous posts, I wrote about mortgage contingencies, inspection contingencies, and sale and settlement contingencies. An appraisal contingency can be included with an Agreement of Sale if a buyer requires a mortgage to purchase a home.

For the 74% of buyers in the U.S. who will need financing to purchase their dream home, most will include an appraisal as part of the process. An appraisal is an estimate of fair market value for a property conducted by a professional not affiliated with the transaction in the state where the property is located. Most times, an appraisal is ordered by a lender prior to settlement to ensure the value of the loan matches the value of the property prior to a sale, however, there are a number of other scenarios that may require appraisals: refinances, pre-listing fact-finding, settlement of property in divorces, and estate planning.

A buyer using conventional financing can submit an appraisal contingency with an Agreement of Sale. The main component of an appraisal contingency is determining how the value of the home compares to the amount of money a buyer is asking for a lender to provide.

If a buyer is using an appraisal contingency, they will have an appraisal performed on a property within 30 days (or sooner if a shorter closing) of the executed contract. The appraiser will provide the lender with a detailed report. In the contingency addendum, the buyer will state that the agreement is contingent on the appraisal meeting the contract price or a specific amount below the contract price if the buyer has additional funds to make up the difference. The difference between a contract price and an appraised value is what’s known as an appraisal gap, which can impact whether or not a buyer is able to continue with a sale.

In terms of the contingency, if the appraisal comes back with a value that is equal to or greater than the contract price or the stated value below contract price, the transaction resumes on schedule. The buyer agrees to cover any gap by either providing additional funds at settlement, adjusting the loan amount stated in the mortgage or contingency paragraph in the Agreement of Sale, or adjusting the Loan-to-Value Ratio (LTV). In order to cover the appraisal gap, the buyer will put more money down to make up for the difference in the two values.

With the contingency, if an appraisal is completed and comes in low, the buyer can terminate the agreement or enter into a new agreement with the seller to account for the difference. If the buyer does not terminate or agree to new terms, they waive the appraisal contingency.

If the buyers is using an FHA or a VA loan, an appraisal contingency is already built into the contract language because these loans are backed by the government. If the home does not appraise for the value in the contract, the buyer has the right to terminate the contract with all deposit money returned.

Buyers should consult with their real estate agent and lender prior to submitting an offer to determine if the appraisal contingency is necessary, but in many scenarios the buyer should consider it in order to protect themselves from entering into a contract for a home they may not be able to afford. In the current market landscape in the Philadelphia region, many home prices are still trending up, so it’s likely the sale price will be higher than previous comparable sales, thought the amount of the difference may vary between markets and transactions.

The gaps should not be as high as they were two to three years ago when sale prices exploded, but clients of mine submitted and offer this week on a home that went for over $90,000 above asking price.

If you’d like to learn more about contingencies for buyers, sign up for my Contingency Workshop on September 25th at www.gregoldfield.com/buyersworkshop1

 

Teambuilding to Start the Season on the Same Foot

“A player who makes a team great is more valuable than a great player.”

--John Wooden

For decades, coaches have been improving player development by attaining and transferring knowledge on technical, tactical, and physical skills and concepts. However, in most team environments, social and emotional development is still often overlooked. A coach can have a great collective of individual players, but if the team doesn’t work cohesively toward a common goal, it will get no further than a group of less talented individuals. In today’s push to accelerate players to the highest levels, we’re missing out on the social and emotional progressions, especially on the heels of a pandemic that continues to affect some children (and adults) years later. And when young players cycle through teams like a revolving door, at some point the lack of social and emotional development will catch up when their skills begin to plateau.

For as long as I’ve been teaching and coaching, I’ve turned to John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. Wooden, the longtime basketball coach at UCLA in the 1940s through 1970s, wasn’t the first coach to emphasize team culture or social development. But he certainly found a model that matched his own values. From 1967-1973, Wooden’s teams won 7 of their 10 NCAA titles, back when a team had to win the conference to get to the NCAA tournament. Even with NBA legends Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and Bill Walton, Wooden’s teams exemplified teamwork both on and off the court.

What made Wooden’s methods unique was that his goal was never to win. His goal was what he perceived to be Competitive Greatness, or playing the best a team could play. Contrary to the modern era, where many attempt to prioritize product over process, Wooden was a strong proponent of the idea that winning is a potential benefit of performance. Teams can play great and lose or play poor and win, so controlling the process and performance became his team’s mission.

Building a cohesive team is an entirely different coaching skillset, but devoting early parts of the season to teach essential team skills can lead to elevated performances down the line. If a team thrives early, coaches can reinforce team skills that are firmly in place, while a drop in performance could result in identifying specific team skills to practice in future training sessions. Once a foundation is set, a team moves closer to reaching Competitive Greatness.

Some terms have been revised

Expecting players to naturally improve how they interact is like expecting every back heel to end up in the back of the net. Children and young teens (even adults) benefit from learning how social and emotional components influence the team’s performance in positive and negative ways. If the goal is to build the best team then practicing how to function as a team and how to respond to expected team situations becomes just as important as teaching technical, tactical, and physical skills.

How do we teach team skills?

Spencer Kagan, a longtime educator and proponent for cooperative learning, uses the acronym PIES when determining if an activity enhances cooperative learning. Kagan believes there’s a difference between a team activity and one that builds cooperation.

PIES stands for:

P- Positive Interdependence

I- Individual Accountability

E- Equal Participation

S- Simultaneous Interaction

Positive interdependence encompasses the relationship teammates share when relying on each other to reach common goals. Individual accountability holds every team member responsible and eliminates the person in the group who watches everyone else do the work. This is different than star players getting more action. In some ways, individual accountability also involves managing players, especially when one player’s mistakes are blips but that same player highlights others’ mistakes as if they were apocalyptic.

Every player has a role or function in a team. Some roles look and feel different than others. Equal participation in a cooperative sense ensures every player contributes. Whether it’s to score goals or prevent them, ever player should know their role and be actively fulfilling those roles at the same time. One of the hardest jobs for a coach is maintaining the motivation and preparation of players not in the game. However, whether coaching six year-olds or sixteen year-olds, the last player on the depth chart should feel as important as the first.

When teaching team skills, I’ve blended cooperative adventure learning models with competitive environments that relate more directly to the what our teams will experience together. Though many educators try to separate cooperation and competition, I believe they can be taught together. If we want our teams to function as a cooperative unit, players need to be mindful of the impact from single-minded winning, which can lead to cheating, implosions, stunted development, or even the loss of satisfaction associated with a strong performance because of a poor result. Instead, we want the satisfaction of winning to come from the positive social and emotional environment when a team, not just certain individuals, collaborates equally toward a common goal.

Players learn from the culture coaches create.

(Coming Soon: 5 Soccer Teambuilders Coaches Can Use Right Now)

Book of the Month: The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom

It’s easy to be consumed by the need to build financial wealth. Regardless of income, education, or socioeconomic status, many of us are driven by the desire to provide for our families, grow, and live fuller, more enriched lives. Money can help make that happen.

Legendary comedian Jim Carrey once said, “I think everyone should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that’s not the answer.”

In his book, The 5 Types of Wealth, author Sahil Bloom offers a comprehensive guide for establishing a more well-rounded portfolio of wealth. Bloom, a former pitcher at Stanford University, spent his early professional career in finance, establishing an upward trajectory in pursuit of the financial independence most Americans seek.

However, Bloom recalls an encounter with a friend that changed his perspective on life and inspired a book that has been a NY Times Bestseller and mentioned as one of Amazon’s Editor’s Best Books of 2025.

At the time, Bloom and his wife were living in California with young children, across the country from their families on the East Coast, where both he and his wife grew up. His friend, who had recently lost his father, asked Bloom how often he’d traveled back to see his aging parents.

“Once a year,” Bloom replied.

His friend calculated the age of Bloom’s parents with the average lifespan and mentioned to him, “So you’re going to see them fifteen more times.”

That moment impacted the rest of Bloom’s life, initiating his return to the east coast and his career as an author.

5 Types of Wealth establishes an in-depth view of the ways in which individuals can attain greater prosperity, with financial wealth named as the last of the five types of wealth behind:

Time Wealth

Social Wealth

Mental Wealth

Physical Wealth

When it comes to the 5 types of wealth, we may recognize our own strengths and weaknesses or be able to identify these categories in others we admire, but Bloom makes the argument that in order to enhance financial wealth, we need to lock in on the other four. Backed by research from numerous scholars and authors, Bloom’s book provides an abundance of references and strategies for anyone inclined to seek more knowledge in a particular area.

Lately, I’ve been very hung up on time wealth and have written about it recently. I’ve been more deliberately tracking the amount of time I spend working, driving, exercising, meditating, writing, on my phone, watching soccer, with others, all in an attempt to quantify my use of time and find ways in which I can leverage it. I don’t consider myself a time-oriented person and would never be known as always time efficient.

My college coach Barry Gorman’s first team rule was Be on Time.

Former Eagles player, NFL coach, and ESPN analyst Herm Edwards used to say, “Early is on time, and on time is late.”

Former Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban said, “Time is the most valuable asset you don’t own.”

When we’re young, we’re considered time billionaires. It’s taken me half my life to understand the greater value of time, yet I’m still trimming wasted time like unnecessary words in a draft.

Bloom writes that there are three pillars to time wealth: awareness, attention, and control. Here he describes the significance of attention:

In 1666, when the bubonic plague was devastating London and its surrounding cities, forcing universities to shut their doors and send students home, a twenty-three-year-old at Trinity College at the University of Cambridge fled to his small village fifty miles away. Just as in the early months of our COVID-19 pandemic, young students were forced by unfortunate circumstances to pause their lives and enter a state of lockdown.

But rather than wallow away while isolation, this particular bright young man ran with the forced constraint and spent the year in a perpetual state of creative and intellectual flow. Despite the absence of formal educational requirements, he immersed himself in his books, studies, and experiments, pursuing his curiosities with intense focus and fervor.

During the single year of his confinement, the young student made groundbreaking discoveries in fields across science and mathematics, among them:

 ·      Developing the initial principles of calculus

·      Formulating the law of universal gravitation

·      Defining the three fundamental laws of motion

·      Laying the foundation for the behavior of light

·      Designing a reflective telescope

The young student was Isaac Newton, and the year 1666 became known as his annus mirabilis (Latin for “miracle year”), a nod to the breadth and depth of his output over such a short period. In a single year, he produced the output of several incredible lifetimes.

We don’t all need to focus our time on groundbreaking theories that will alter humanity, we just need a sustained presence in things that matter to us. Time blocking is a modern behavior strategy touted by many athletes, artists, businesspeople, researchers, and scholars as a way to establish a routine for uninterrupted deep work. When giving important tasks our undivided attention, we’re able to produce more in shorter amounts of time, essentially bending time in our favor, a concept that goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks and beyond.

Time is only one of the five types of wealth that can enhance our lives. Bloom offers additional anecdotes and research to support a more deliberate approach to improve the other areas as well. To find out more on building emotional, mental, physical, and financial wealth, find Bloom anywhere on social media these days. He’s had a great run on numerous popular podcasts as of late and offers his insights in a weekly newsletter The Curiosity Chronicle.

Building wealth for tomorrow comes from prioritizing desired behaviors today.

 

 

Rent vs Buy: By the Numbers

Rent vs Buy has become a hot topic as of late. With home prices still rising, interest rates remaining the same, the uncertain effects of tariffs on inflation, and the demand for homes higher than supply in most parts of the Greater Philadelphia area, many potential homebuyers are faced with the difficult decision of whether to buy or rent. A previous post highlighted the pros and cons to each, with money, time, emotional and physical wellbeing all important factors. Sometimes, it’s easier to see the numbers, so potential homebuyers can make the best decision.

(Disclaimer: Many articles and websites, including ones referenced, compare monthly rentals and sales to a period beginning around 2021, which was historically the largest spike in home sales and rentals in our lifetime due to a Covid market freeze followed by extremely low interest rates to stimulate growth. So the year-to-year numbers going back to 2021 will show dramatic declines in monthly rental payments and inclines in monthly mortgage payments, which fuels the spicy “generation of doomed homebuyers” narrative. There is a clear and obvious short-term financial advantage to renting in our area. The goal of this post is to provide information on the buy-rent gap, so anyone interested in real estate can make informed decisions.)

The sample properties compared throughout this article are 3 bedroom, 1.5 to 2.5 bath townhomes. Considered a starter home for most first-time buyers, a merging property for couples or friends, or a downsize option for empty nesters, these properties have been selected for their uniformity across a wide number of areas. The neighborhoods selected are located in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, where as detailed in another post about current local trends, home prices continue to go up in specific markets.

* The properties selected represent the number of homes rented with the specific comparable features (3 beds, 1-2.5 baths) within the past 180 days (unless noted). The total number of rentals closed is higher in every market.

Source: Bright MLS as of August 2025

* The properties selected represent the number of homes rented with the specific comparable features (3 beds, 1-2.5 baths) within the past 180 days. The total number of homes closed is higher in every market.

 # The monthly payment uses a 30-year fixed, 6.5% interest rate, 3.5% down payment, and $1,800 per year in Homeowner’s insurance. The payment also reflects annual taxes, mortgage insurance, and HOA (if applicable) for the specific neighborhood.

 Source: Bright MLS. Calculations from Fannie Mae

Referencing the two tables above, it’s clear that renting is cheaper than buying in each of the highlighted neighborhoods. This is a trend found in most markets around the country and with the exception of post-economic breakdowns, is typical in the rent vs buy conversation. However, most buyers want to know the differences in how each decision impacts their finances. Of the six neighborhoods, the average difference between renting and buying is $1,099 per month. Newtown Grant has the largest gap in monthly mortgage payment vs rent at $1,887 per month, a 48.5% swing. Wynmere Hunt has the smallest difference at $724 per month, or 24%.

According to Bankrate, in February, the national average per monthly mortgage payments was $2,768 versus $2,000 a month in rent, which equals a difference of $768 or 32.2%. Carriage Hill (30.9%), Village Shires (31%), and Windrush (31.5%) all fall within 2% of the national average while Saw Milly Valley (26.2%) remains below the national average. That’s two neighborhoods in Horsham Township where the gap between buying and renting is well below the national average. These neighborhoods are still well above the $1,590 per month average for Pennsylvania properties according Zillow, which shouldn’t be surprising.

Jiayi Xu and Danielle Hale, in an article for realtor.com, posted an update on the largest metro markets across the country that shows the buy-rent gap declining for 0-2 bedroom homes from this time last year. “In June 2025, the average monthly cost of buying a starter home in the top 50 metros was $908 (53.1%) higher than renting, whereas the cost of buying was $956 (54.7%) higher than renting in June 2024.”

Pittsburgh was the only metro area out of 50 where buying a starter home was more affordable than renting, but in the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro homes averaged $1,770 a month to rent vs $2,395 a month to buy, a difference of $625, or 35.3%. The article also claims the cost to rent has gone down 2.4% while the cost to buy has gone down 2.7%. However, this is one of the reasons why researching local markets becomes necessary because throughout the Philadelphia metro area, there are neighborhoods where the buy-rent gap is higher than the state and national averages and others where the gap is lower.

One of the main financial reasons why individuals buy a home instead of renting is because ownership helps build equity, which improves an owner’s financial power over time. One of the drawbacks to obtaining a mortgage is the amount of interest paid to a lender for borrowing the money to purchase. A potential buyer needs to give to receive, and when it comes to home ownership, each individual must weigh the overall costs of ownership. The total interest paid over time to build equity is very high, in the hundreds of thousands for each of the highlighted properties. The incremental shift of more money that goes towards principal and less toward interest each month, known as amortization, is a scale of numbers we don’t often look at when viewing our loan statements, but it is very real. 

* The monthly payment uses a 30-year mortgage with a fixed 6.5% interest rate and $1,800 per year in Homeowner’s insurance. The payment also reflects annual taxes, mortgage insurance, and HOA (if applicable) for the specific neighborhood.

 # Not including fluctuations in equity due to market changes and/or a reduction in mortgage insurance after reaching 80% of the property’s loan-to-value.

 Source: Bright MLS August 2025 and Bankrate

Equity represents one of the biggest differences between buying vs renting over time. Using the above examples, a buyer would build an average of $84,035 in equity in the highlighted neighborhoods after 10 years with 3.5% down and $148,836 in equity for 20% down. These numbers can change depending on the type of loan (conventional, FHA, VA), term of the loan (15-year vs 30-year, fixed vs arm), percentage down, and the time it takes to reach a loan-to-value percentage, usually 80%, when private mortgage insurance is no longer necessary. The numbers also change when the value of the home rises or falls, though more likely to rise in our current economy, and equity will increase at a greater rate as the loan reaches the end of its term.

During that same 10-year period, the renter will have attained $0 in equity.

No matter the decision, buying or renting has to make sense for the potential homebuyer, who must weigh the short-term and long-term pros and cons to make either dream scenario a reality. Experienced agents are available to help make either decision happen.

Feel free to contact me if you’re considering one or the other and would like a detailed analysis of your search area.

Leaving Everything on the Field

As a young soccer player, one of the phrases embedded in my mind was “Leave everything on the field.”

It wasn’t my best effort unless I crossed the lines winded, burning, and cramping, Most coaches instill a similar mantra in their players to express the value of hard work.

Early in my professional journey, I was fortunate enough to work with some experienced professionals at the twilight of their careers. When they retired, most had grand plans to travel the world and do the things they never had time to do. But when I'd see them again, those plans were still on hold. This shaped my thinking about time-money-life experiences ever since.

In his book, Die With Zero, author Bill Perkins asks the reader to re-think our idea of saving for our post-retirement lives.

Perkins quotes a 2018 study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute that claims for retirees in their sixties to nineties, the median household spending to household income hovers around 1:1. He goes on to cite that retirees who had $500,000 or more right before retirement had spent a median of 11.8% of that money 20 years later or by the time they died. Despite having smaller margins, retirees with less than $200,000 saved for retirement had spent only one-quarter of their assets. Retirees on pensions spent only 4% during the first 18 years after retirement. Even with their limited spending, one-third of retirees increased their assets after retirement.

The point Perkins is trying to make is that we tend to over save and under spend in our retirement years, leaving the remaining balance to our family, favorite charities, or the government if we haven’t prepared.

The idea isn’t to promote reckless spending but to reconsider what we’re preparing for in the later years of our lives.

Eventually, this leads us to time.

We spend much of our adult lives understanding what our time is worth, but once we fully maximize the monetary value of our time, we have less physical capacity to enjoy it. So instead of retiring with visions of experiencing life to its fullest, most of us end up remaining in our worn paths, riding out our days, and never doing the things we’ve always wanted to do. We essentially die with a massive savings of time we never withdraw. All that time spent working and building leads to a treasure of unused experiences.

Perkins asks, why aren’t we leaving it all on the field?

We’re all familiar with the expression “Time is Money.”

What about “Time is Experience?”

How can we build experiential wealth that compounds over time?

At the end of the movie Shawshank Redemption, the narrator Red famously says, “Either get busy living or get busy dying.” Unfortunately, most of us spend our lives preparing to die while forgetting to prepare to live.

Referencing the graphic from the book, when we’re young, pre-marriage, pre-kids, we have ample amounts of time but no money. As we age and become more committed to our family, work, or community, we build wealth but lose time. All the while, our physical health remains strong while we work, provide, and save, until eventually we start to lose the capability to experience all we’ve been saving for.

Think of all the important meetings, double-shifts, overtimes, next projects, next tournaments—the priorities that replace the wealth of experiences we put off for a later date that never materialize.

What family vacation are you waiting for because “it’s not the right time?” Or because of a very important work commitment. Or because there’s a great opportunity to guest play in a big tournament for the special team.

Perkins isn’t advocating for no financial planning or succumbing to massive crippling debts. Dying with zero shouldn’t mean going broke in your 70s (even though we have a system in place that prevents that from happening, for now). He’s not saying don’t give money to family or charity, though he does recommend giving it while we are alive and can experience the full impact. He is suggesting to maximize the wealth of life experiences while we still can. Dying with zero means planning for a lifetime of experiences and financial contributions so we aren’t left with regrets.

Dying with zero means leaving everything on the field.


Books of the Month: The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

When I first got serious about writing over fifteen years ago, I dealt with imposter syndrome. I remember walking into my first creative writing workshop, wondering how long it would take for the other writers in the room to figure me out. Many of the literary references went over my head. When the professor made a Vonnegut joke, I was the only one who didn’t laugh. In my mind, I was a soccer player though my body had its objections.

What I learned then and what I know now is it doesn’t matter where you start.

For every Tiger Woods, there is a Scottie Sheffler. For every LeBron James, there is a Steph Curry. For every Lamine Yamal, there is a Didier Drogba, Jamie Vardy, or Clint Dempsey.

When comes to artistic pursuits, many people hold the belief that people are either creative or they’re not. Great athletes, musicians, and writers are labeled prodigies without recognition for practicing religiously at an early age.

S.E. Hinton started writing The Outsiders when she was 15 years-old.

Mary Shelley published Frankenstein when she was 20 years-old.

Stephen Crane published Red Badge of Courage when he was 24.

But, on the flip side:

Toni Morrison was 40 when she published The Bluest Eye.

Mark Twain was 41 when he published Tom Sawyer.

Raymond Chandler, 51, Annie Proulx, 57, and Frank McCourt, 66, all published debit works well into their adult lives.

Rick Rubin and Steven Pressfield are successful creatives who dismiss the notion that people are born great. They even go as far to say that everyone is born with creativity and has potential to produce art. They believe the difference is tapping into artistic frequencies and spending the time to do the work.

Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being and Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art have had a tremendous impact on my creativity over the past five years. As someone who delves often into self-help and craft writing books, I find their work transcends art, providing sound direction for living with purpose and gratitude.

Some of you may be familiar with Rubin already. If not, you’re certainly familiar with his work. King of Rock, Licensed to Ill, Danzig, Dice, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and Wildflowers are just a small sample from the dozens of albums he produced from the 80s and 90s. As co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, Rubin helped bring rap and hip-hop into the mainstream, but over the past forty years, he’s collaborated with some of the greatest recording artists of all time across a wide number of genres, including Public Enemy, Johnny Cash, Jay Z, Slayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Chicks, and Adele, the latter two who won Album of the Year at the Grammys.

The Creative Act is a compilation of thoughts about the creative process that reads similar to Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. His primary concept is receiving what he calls Source, a creative inspiration that can be found all around us and tapped into at any time. Rubin’s a strong proponent for living in the present and often considers himself a supporter for artists finding the work they were meant to produce. He writes about how the goal of creative work is to produce the best an artist can while in the moment, without deadlines, external pressures, or outsider opinions. He believes artists should create for themselves and nothing else because not even the gatekeepers, himself included, can predict how the finished product will be received. The only thing the artist controls is the work itself.

In the following passage, Rubin describes the origins of a creative endeavor.

In the first phase of the creative process, we are to be completely open, collecting anything we find of interest.

We call this the Seed phase. We’re searching for potential starting points that, with love and care, can grow into something beautiful. At this stage, we are not comparing them to the best seed. We simply gather them.

A seed for a song can be a phrase, a melody, a bass line, or a rhythmic feel.

For a written piece, it may be a sentence, a character sketch, a setting, a thesis, or a plot point.

For a structure, a shape, a material choice, a function, or the natural properties of a location.

And for a business, it could be a common inconvenience, a societal need, a technical advancement, or a personal interest.

Collecting seeds typically doesn’t involve a tremendous amount of effort. It’s more a receiving of a transmission. A noticing.

As if catching fish, we walk to the water, bait the hook, cast the line, and patiently wait. We cannot control the fish, only the presence of our line.

While Rubin has been a household name since the early 1980s, Pressfield spent much of his early artistic life under the radar. A former copywriter and self-proclaimed B level screenwriter, Pressfield’s writer’s journey had been largely derailed by something he calls Resistance. For Pressfield, Resistance represents a combination of self-doubt, self-distraction, and self-sabotage that prevents an artist or anyone with a specific goal from staying focused.

In the passage below, he compares the fight between the creative Muse and Resistance as a daily battle in the endless war of completion.

Resistance is like the Alien or the Terminator or the shark in Jaws. It cannot be reasoned with. It understands nothing but power. It is an engine of destruction, programmed from a factory with one object only: to prevent us from doing our work. Resistance is implacable, intractable, indefatigable. Reduce it to a single cell and that cell will continue to attack.

This is Resistance’s nature. It’s all it knows.

Known for his historical fiction, Pressfield found acclaim with his novel The Legend of Bagger Vance, which became a movie (though he admits, not a good one) directed by Robert Redford and featuring Hollywood stars Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron. His book Gates of Fire, about the Battle of Thermopylae, is taught to students at West Point. War of Art, which came after he’d managed his own personal battles with Resistance, propelled Pressfield to widespread notoriety and continues to rank as one of the top craft books for aspiring and seasoned artists.  

What makes Pressfield so unique is his ability to break down the mysterious elements of creativity and creation into industrial terms, overcoming Resistance, turning professional, and welcoming the Muse. In one of my favorite podcast episodes, Rubin features Pressfield on Tetragrammaton (November 29th, 2024), and the pair discuss many of the concepts found in their books, among them their views on talent, critics, inspiration, blocks, and abundance. Their own artistic journeys prove how regular people can unlock creativity by tuning into sources and overcoming the forces that prevent us from reaching our goals. Both authors also appear on Brian Koppelman’s The Moment, my go-to podcast for creative inspiration.

Whether the goal is finding inspiration or fighting resistance, The Creative Act and The War of Art reveal a normalized view of how artists can create personally satisfying works by building a receptive mindset and focusing on simple, every day actions.

 

 

 

 

Rent vs Buy: How to Choose

in ,

I recently read a post on social media about the demise of our country due to rising home prices. The author of the post referenced an article (among many) that compares the market statistics from 2021 to now as evidence that most Americans will never afford a home.

Yes, new homeowners are currently paying more per month than renters, at higher than normal rates, across the country and certainly in the Philadelphia region, but let’s pump the brakes on saying future buyers are doomed. Outside of the aftermath of major U.S. financial collapses (Remember Covid?), traditionally it’s always been cheaper to rent. The question of rent versus buy is valid for many potential homebuyers, but there are numerous factors to consider which option is best.

Owning a home is an investment. Anyone who takes their hard-earned money, in some cases most of it, and puts it into a physical structure they hope will increase in value over time is taking a chance. A homeowner has to consider income, debts, financing options, taxes, how much money they’ll need to update or maintain the property, and somehow try to balance that with living expenses, emergencies and/or hardships, and inflation. Ownership can be costly, and pushing ratios too high can lead to a less than desirable lifestyle.

Money is not the only investment in home ownership. A homeowner is also investing time. Homes need regular maintenance, everything from keeping up with the yard to fixing leaks, painting a room, changing light fixtures, or updating a bathroom. The projects that can be done in a few hours or over several weekends mean less time with family or for meaningful activities.

There’s also the stress of owning a home. Ever wake up in the middle of the night to hurricane-force rain and hope the sump pump is still working? Ever spend Christmas morning bailing out that said sump pump because of a power outage with no backup generator (another cost). Ever search lawn mower repair videos for hours on YouTube because a new one isn’t in the budget? Ever pray to your god for the heating system to make it through one more winter?

These are real homeowner stressors.

But homeownership also has its joys. Eating Thanksgiving dinner at your table. Roasting marshmallows and s’mores over a fire in your backyard. Waking up in your bed looking at your ceiling, your walls, looking out your windows at the accumulating snow on your driveway. Grabbing a beer out of your fridge and sitting down to watch a game in your living room. Ownership brings a sense of satisfaction in knowing some of the money you give to a mortgage lender is building your investment into your property, increasing your financial wealth.

These are things renters don’t get to enjoy at the same level.

I’m not making a stance one way or the other. Everyone has different situations and needs to weigh a number of factors together to form a very important financial decision. I’ve been having more of these conversations lately about renting versus buying, and laying out the pros and cons for each can help anyone find the best path.

Many potential homebuyers have been watching the market and interest rates, waiting for the return of those once-in-a-lifetime 2-3% rates. They may be waiting for a while. In fact, many of our parents and grandparents would be thrilled with the current rate. When my parents bought their first home in the late 1970s, their rate was near 18%. Most experts predict rates to remain near mid-to-upper-6% in the foreseeable future. Renters don’t need to worry about interest rates.

Renting also has a fixed cost as opposed to the rising expenses owners face for insurance, school and real estate taxes, home maintenance, and utilities. Typically, affordability allows a renter to save, eventually building enough cash for a down payment and closing costs when it’s time to buy.

Many potential renters may feel it’s easier to secure a lease agreement in a desired neighborhood or a multi-unit property, however, in recent years, throughout Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware, and Chester counties, the rental market has been as competitive or even more fierce than the residential sale side. In some areas, rent has jumped hundreds of dollars a month this year alone, forcing renters to consider properties outside of their desired areas. Frustrated buyers may dabble in the rental market for relief only to compete with close to a dozen other potential buyers for a property with a rent already near the top of their budget.

Because the market is flooded with renters who are being outbid in residential sales, many landlords can charge higher rents that more than cover their own mortgage, insurance, and taxes. Many rental agreements require the tenant to cover basic utilities and simple maintenance (lawn care, snow removal, lightbulbs, batteries), which can be hidden expenses that add up over time. Individuals going through the rent vs buy scenario should also remember that money from rent essentially pays the owner’s mortgage, so they can be the ones establishing equity and long-term wealth.

There are opportunities available without making a massive jump in monthly costs. A client of mine who was paying hundreds more a month in rent is about to close on a condo larger in square feet and with a monthly payment within $250 a month of their rent. Another client who briefly entered the rental market immediately experienced the competition of limited supply and high demand, which included close comparisons of credit scores, income ratios, and background checks for each application, adding another $40-$80 a pop. One prospective property’s rent went up $300 a month days after going on the market once the owner realized the demand. Renters have less control to compete on price and terms as in a residential sale. In addition, rentals often require a security deposit, first, and last month’s rent upfront, which can be almost a third to a half of what a buyer would need to bring to a settlement on a comparable home anyway.

Many potential renters are hesitant to jump into the real estate market because they feel they don’t have enough for a down payment or because big-name influencers preach the dangers of any borrowing whatsoever. Buyers don’t need a sizeable down payment to pursue their dream of purchasing a home. There are many financing options available. Over the past two years, more than 70% of buyers financed their homes, among them more than 90% of first-time homebuyers who used financing. I’ve written about the topic of mortgage professionals and multiple articles for buyers in previous posts.

Potential homebuyers facing the rent versus buy scenario will ultimately decide what’s best for themselves. It takes preparation and strategy that’s for sure. This is coming from a guy who had two roommates after purchasing his first home. Many of my family and friends were successful using a similar strategy. That was when the previous buyers were doomed after the mortgage collapse of 2008.

Next week, we’ll look at the market numbers of the rent vs buy discussion.

 

Inspection Contingencies and Timelines

In the movie Tommy Boy, Big Tom Callaghan makes a famous joke to a client when he says, “I can get a hell of a good look at a T-bone steak by sticking my head up a bull’s (you know where), but I’d rather take the butcher’s word for it.”

When it comes to homes, a potential buyer will want to stick their head everywhere possible and within the acceptable parameters of an Agreement of Sale. Most real estate agents, including this one, will recommend a potential buyer get a home inspection prior to moving into a home, but whether or not the home inspection is part of the transaction is a separate discussion.

Home inspections can be a major part of the buying process. During the immediate aftermath of the Covid shutdown, which affected many local real estate markets, buyers competed by offering well over asking price with many waived contingencies, aided by rates from low 4% to mid 5%. I was a buyer during that Wild West period as well. Had I missed on the home I eventually purchased, I may still be looking.

Those times have eased up considerably, and although home inspections are still a common negotiating tool, waiving them is not the knee-jerk reaction it once was, and in most transactions to date, they’re standard operating procedure. If the buyer plans on triggering the home inspection contingency in an offer, both buyers and sellers can benefit from knowing what that entails in the Pennsylvania Agreement of Sale.

Much like in previous posts on Mortgage Contingencies and Sale Contingencies, a Home Inspection Contingency follows a specific process if a buyer would like the agreement to be contingent on the results of specific inspections before moving forward. This means the buyer is doing their due diligence in making sure the property is as advertised. It also means the seller is held accountable for any issues not accounted for in a Seller’s Disclosure.

(Note: A Seller’s Disclosure, separate from an Agreement of Sale, is a legally required document in Pennsylvania that must be completed by a seller, highlighting any known issues /updates of the property for sale. It’s understood the buyer is viewing the property with these disclosed issues reflected in the sale price. This doesn’t necessarily mean the property is being sold “As Is” but means the seller is disclosing known facts about the property during the period of ownership. Sellers can be held liable for known undisclosed defects, even after an agreement of sale is executed, which is a separate issue from anything found through any number of inspections).

In an Agreement of Sale, a buyer has the option of electing or waiving a number of different inspections, with the most common being Home/Property and Environmental Hazards, Wood Infestation, Radon, Water Service and On-lot Sewage (if serviced by private systems). Other inspections may include Deeds, Restrictions, and Zoning, Property and Flood Insurance, Property Boundaries, and Lead-Based Paint Hazards (If the property is built prior to 1978, also separate from a Lead-Based Paint Disclosure).

During the time between acceptance and settlement, a seller must allow any representative, whether an inspector for a buyer, an insurance company, mortgage lender, or municipal official, to enter the property to complete this inspection. Parties and their agent may attend these inspections.

If any of the inspections are elected, what follows is a clear-cut process that could alter the execution or the terms of the transaction.

Inspection Period

If activating an inspection contingency, a buyer has a specific number of days (typically 10) to inspect the property through a certified home inspector. Following the results of the inspection, the buyer then has three options for action within that time frame:

 1)   Accept the property and proceed with the transaction.

2)    Present the reports to seller and terminate the agreement, with all deposit monies returned.

3)    Present the reports to seller along with a written reply for any corrections and/or credits as a result of the findings.

Negotiation Period and Response Period

After the 10-day inspection period ends, the buyer and seller enter into a 5-day negotiation period during which the seller can:

 1)   Agree to the proposal and satisfy all terms.

2)    Negotiate the terms of corrections and/or credits at settlement.

If the buyer and seller reach an agreement, the transaction continues with the new terms, however, if no agreement is reached or if the seller fails to respond to the buyer’s reply to inspections after an additional 2 days have passed, the buyer has the option to either accept the property or terminate the agreement.

If no agreement is reached, and the buyer fails to terminate via written notice before the 2-day period ends, the buyer will agree to all terms and accept the property.

On-lot Sewage

On-lot sewage inspections are a lot more involved, so if the buyer is requesting corrections to an on-lot sewage system, the seller has up to 25 days (or less if specified) to respond. In that response, the seller can include the name of the company, payment provisions, retests, and a completion date for the expected corrections. Within 5 days after receiving the seller’s proposal, or if no proposal is given, the buyer will be able to:

1)    Agree to terms and accept the property.

2)    Terminate the agreement.

3)    Accept the property and agree to the existing system, making all repairs and corrections at their own expense.

Both parties should be made aware that if the seller denies permission and/or access to the property to correct the defects, the buyer may within 5 days after the denial, terminate the agreement. If the buyer fails to respond to the seller’s proposal within 5 days, they will accept the property and proceed with the sale.

Contract Dates

Because an inspection contingency, as well as other parts of an agreement, relies on specific dates, both buyers and sellers need an accurate timeline from the execution of the contract to the settlement date to account for all these fluid pieces. Any time period for an agreement of sale begins on the first day following the acceptance date, including weekends and holidays. Contracts follow calendar days not business days. The only important date that cannot be a weekend or holiday is the final settlement date. For this reason, a clear timeline that includes all necessary dates makes for seamless communication from acceptance to execution.

As we enter into more balanced markets across the region, home inspection contingencies will play major role in most contracts for the foreseeable future. Both buyers and sellers can benefit from understanding the timelines to avoid any disruptions in the process. Like little Tom Callaghan at the end of the aforementioned movie, they don’t want to be stuck on a dingy in the middle of a lake praying for wind.