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Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-22T13:57:00.000Z

We are just over half of our escape rooms done for our Escape in Europe trip. The Alchemist was my favorite so far. We’ve got some highly ranked TERPECA rooms coming up though.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-22T10:19:48.000Z

Disney Paris!

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-22T07:53:50.000Z

Morning light on Cinderella’s Castle as Disneyland Paris opens.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-03-21T20:13:33.000Z

If you have a long enough vacation, it’s important to factor in a day of rest. Especially if the vacation includes a ,lot of activity.

A vacation from the vacation if you will.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-21T17:53:57.000Z

Nice dinner at Chez Rémy Bistro at Disneyland Paris.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-03-21T15:47:33.000Z

Meditation, Language, and LLMs — Roden Newsletter Archive

Really enjoyed today’s letter. Especially the tie in to meditation. Difficult to encapsulate “why” with any particular quote. But it very much resonates with my practice and provides new avenues to ponder.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-21T08:00:15.000Z

We’ve got our backpacks with a change of clothes and heading to the Metro to go to Disneyland Paris!

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-20T15:37:27.000Z

We found Mazie in Paris!

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-20T13:58:49.000Z

Arrived in Paris! 🇫🇷

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-20T13:47:47.000Z

I’m very happy with how our Escaping Thjngs website has shaped up. It showcases our escape room history in fun ways, including special support for trips like our current Escape in Europe 12-room trip. More to come!

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-03-20T09:05:00.000Z

The People of the Twin Cities, Minnesota | JFK Library

Courage.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-20T08:18:47.000Z

Return visit to Sango in Amsterdam for a special espresso and capuccino. Train to Paris in a couple hours.

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-03-20T05:18:34.000Z

As I’ve said before, the fullest picture of our lives can come from reading my wife’s blog as well as this one. She’s much better about relating the day-to-day.

Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-19T13:15:04.000Z

We met Charlie and Isaac, visiting from the UK, who were making the most of their unlimited beers on the canal tour today. Charlie’s goal was to “not be able to walk off the boat.”

“I’m going to make so many bad decisions tonight.” — Charlie

Strategic Leadership is Lacking, Not Trust. - Garrick van Buren

2026-03-18T22:50:45.000Z

The B2B zeitgeist is asserting trust is at an all-time low.

Buyers don’t trust vendors.
Buyers don’t trust marketing.
Buyers don’t trust new anything.

I think it’s a convenient misdiagnosis benefiting everyone.

The “trust crisis” puts the burden on sellers — just build more credibility, just produce more case studies, nurture longer, be more transparent.

An entire industry of sales trainers, CRM vendors, and B2B consultants has organized itself around helping sellers navigate this dearth of buyer trust. If you just get your approach right, the deals will close.

It reminds me of the résumé optimizers promising jobseekers more interviews if they just tweak the formatting, strengthen the action verbs, optimize for keywords. All seller-side technique applied to a buyer-side disengagement. The hiring side isn’t. No amount of résumé polish changes the fact that hiring is frozen – even though the job description still being up.

Same dynamic with vendors. The buying side just isn’t.

The majority of deals I’ve lost over the past two years haven’t been lost to a competitor.
They haven’t been lost on price or credibility.
They’ve been lost to: “Nah, we’ve decided not to do this at all.”

Maintaining the status quo isn’t saying “I don’t trust you”, it’s saying “We don’t actually have capacity for this.”

For one company I talked with, it wasn’t lack of budget, nor credibility concerns on my part. It was lack of strategic alignment within their departmental leadership.

A different $2M professional services firm I talked to wants to 30% growth this year but is too busy delivering (awesome!) for the strategic thinking required to draw a roadmap to the goal. No board politics. No bureaucratic layers. The leadership is the decision-maker.

That’s not a trust gap. It’s lack of strategic bandwidth.

“Uncertainty” and “Volatility” are often the next scapegoats.

Yes, conditions might change dramatically in the next 90 days. This has been true for the past 5 years, 10 years, 25 years, but every year prior. CNN’s 24-hour headline news has existed since 1980 and every new headline is terrifying. But at a 12-18 months horizon, it quickly becomes irrelevant noise.

In 2025, U.S. business investment grew nearly 6%, heavily concentrated in data centers and IT infrastructure. According to Harvard economist Jason Furman, excluding those categories, GDP grew at 0.1% annualized in the first half of 2025. Not a typo. Zero point one percent.

“Our economy might just be three AI data centers in a trench coat.” – Rusty Foster

It may only look that way because no one else is doing anything.

For, it’s not that AI responses are highly trustworthy. Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT all have warnings about their lack of trustworthiness. If trust were actually the concern, AI — the least proven, most hallucination-prone, lowest-quality-output category in B2B — would be the last thing getting funded. Instead it’s the first. An MIT study of 300 generative AI initiatives found 95% delivered zero measurable return on $30-40 billion in investment.

Last year, each of my engagements was three weeks from initial call to kickoff. The difference wasn’t trustworthiness. It was whether leadership had a specific, unavoidable, urgent, project. No amount of effort on my part could manufacture it if they didn’t.

GDP growth of 0.1% outside data centers.
86% of B2B buying journeys stalling before a decision.
Buying committees doubling in size.
95% of AI initiatives delivering zero return.

None of this is a trust problem.
All of it is a leadership problem.

In 2025, a record 234 CEOs were swapped out — up 16% year-over-year. Tenures less than 36 months increased 79% year-over-year. A CEO who knows they have 30 months before the board reconsiders them isn’t going to invest in a bold 36 month bet.

Thus the strategic vacuum perpetuates itself.

The post Strategic Leadership is Lacking, Not Trust. appeared first on Garrick van Buren.

Johnny.Decimal - Barry Hess

2026-03-18T13:57:57.000Z

I learned about Johnny.Decimal from Pika blogger Michael Borland. The last post on his blog clued me in. Sadly he has since passed away. RIP Michael. ❤

I’ve dipped in and out of Getting Things Done (GTD) many times over the years. The most organized I’ve felt in life is when I was truly adhering to the process, including physical tickler folders in a filing cabinet. A filing cabinet!

Today Johnny.Decimal came across my view, and I think I might give it a go. The current state I’m in is this:

My work has been all-consuming, in a good way.
- My work is not organized, but rather little note papers on the desk, a million Basecamp to-dos, and a general trust that the most important things will remain in my brain or come to the fore as necessary.
- With the productivity power of LLMs, I’m putting more and more balls in the air every day.
- While I know I can’t copy-paste a personal system onto our work to-dos, I hope Johnny.Decimal can help bridge that gap.
My home projects are abandoned.
- There are papers piling up on my office floor, awaiting organization.
- My office is a mess.
- I’m daily making small decisions about what is important to get done (pay the bills) and what isn’t (scan the documents).
- I have notes and reminders spread across Things, Apple Reminders, Apple Notes, and Obsidian.
- I’ve uncharacteristically missed some important tasks over the past year. Late estimated tax payments being one glaring example.
- There are little projects to do, but my system has become disorganized and overwhelming. So any spare moments with energy I generally pour down the drain of internet distraction.
- I have lots of woodworking ideas that I can’t work on now, but I suspect I’ll pick back up in the next decade.

At this point in life I’m not seeking to be an efficiency master. I’m well aware that I’ll never get everything done. I’m happy to sit and read a book or watch a movie. Yet I would like to feel that my ideas and projects are organized in a way that I can find (or be reminded of them) again later. I’ve had that feeling before and it was the first year after starting GTD.

I’m watching some introduction videos now, and I might actually pony up for the course to get my bearings. If only I could justify the time…

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Post on Jamie Thingelstad - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-18T10:03:32.000Z

Good morning from Brussels, Belgium. 🇧🇪

Escape in Europe — Day 3 - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-17T20:51:03.000Z

9:50a Jamie up, enhancing Escaping Things site
10:25a Time to be up
11:30a Leave hotel to Central Station
11:44a Intercity Heerlen line to Utrecht
12:45p escape room! Amazing.
Stroopwaffels warm and fresh first time. Plus a sugar waffle.
Exploring Utrecht.
Magical experience at Keen Coffee.
music box museum
4:00p Tammy steps out to get Brandi Carlile tickets!
impromptu Macaron stop
stopped at Belgisch Biercafé Olivier Utrecht
Dinner at Casa Damstraat
6:00p Escape Room again. We liked it so much we decided to do another room!
Train back to Amsterdam, Walk back to hotel

Post on Patrick Rhone - Patrick Rhone

2026-03-16T18:04:07.000Z

The Last Quiet Thing | Terry Godier

One of these is a product. The other is a relationship.

File under: One of the many reasons I wear an analog watch.

Escape in Europe 2026 — Days -1, 0, 1 - Jamie Thingelstad

2026-03-16T18:03:01.000Z

Day -1 (March 13)

4:30p: Flight cancelled. 😞
Reschedule first escape room.
Realize we will not be able to see Anne Frank museum now.

Day 0 (March 14)

Tyler drove to Ultimate Collectibles on his own. First solo drive!
Recognize π day!
Lunch at Yum! with pie.
FaceTime with Mazie!
6:50p: Should have been flying. It seemed fine. Hear airplanes flying overhead while having frozen pizza for dinner.
Watch Anaconda at home.

Day 1 (March 15)

Prepare house for floor refinishing while away.
Plenty of time to pack.
4:30p: Lyft to MSP.
6:50p: Flight DL162 to AMS