While you’re reading this, play All In My Mind by Love and Rockets in the background for ambiance.

There’s no shortage of self-help books out there, and proof of that is the many I have read myself and wrote takeaways from here at The Hot Iron. Many of them talk of systems you can use to better optimize your life. But what are you optimizing from a base of? Do you even have the capability to take on all those things? Is there something holding you back or limiting you? This is the premise of the book Limitless by Jim Kwik.

Kwik, which he emphasizes is his real name, is a self-described brain coach. While not a doctor, he developed techniques he used to on himself following a traumatic brain injury as a child and now coaches on others on optimizing their brains, and thus themselves. The book was recommended to me years ago by my friend Eric and I read it a while back and also used it for a book club at work, and am finally getting to writing up my takeaways (for those who may question my brain performance, I took copious notes, listen to Kwik’s Limitless podcast weekly and re-reviewed the book for this post!). Here goes.

Being limitless won’t just happen – Like anything worthwhile, you need to put in the work, or “lock in” as my kids say. Kwik’s Limitless Model is a tripartite of Mindset, Methods and Motivation. Where he gets into this in much detail, on the surface these concepts are easy to understand, and hard to implement on a consistent, long-term basis. You need to be all-in mentally, come up with methods so that you have routines for achievement, and a system of motivation – the latter for me tends to be as much externally sourced as internally.

Tons of tips, but too much? – It wouldn’t be a self-help book without these, and there’s many of them. One that I already use (on and off) is the Pomodoro method, using my timing cube to work in dedicated bursts and regular breaks. There’s also three magic questions: how can I use this, why must I use this, and when will I use this? Kwik also uses acronyms like “HEART” goals – healthy, enduring, alluring, relevant, truth. The acronyms are used as way to help remember the elements.

Finding what works for you – With all in this book, and like anything, taking them on all at once is not practical. Kwik also offers and gives some basics on a speed-reading technique; sure I could be a faster reader, but do I read fast enough already? Where it could help me (especially in a world of verbose AI-generated slop documents) there are other areas to improve that would be more beneficial, like remembering the names of people I meet and not forgetting them seconds later.

As it’s been a few years since I got the book, Limitless has a newer, expanded edition that includes using AI (of course!) however these takeaways are based on the original. I enjoyed Limitless, as Kwik presents it in an easy-to-understand manner. The challenge for me is the second M of the Limitless Model – methods, as it requires the discipline of scheduling and reviewing. That being said, the book is aspirational and one I recommend if you are looking at self-improvement at a core level. As to what I will do with this copy, I am giving it back to my wife, as I took it from her bookshelf after she originally took it from mine.

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

AI-generated image of timepieces walking

As you start reading this post, do play this classic song in the background, Time in a Bottle by Jim Croce.

Most people reading this have certainly heard the expression “time flies,” let alone saying it many times themselves, this week alone. Of course we all know that time truly doesn’t “fly;” the concepts of the science behind key scenes from the Back to the Future movies and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban certainly haven’t been available to the masses to say the least. Yet we use this phrase anyway.

The idea of time passing by quicker than it should be comes up quite a lot recently in my household, as my oldest child has recently left the proverbial nest for college. We look back on the pictures of taking her home from the hospital where she was born, then it seems like next thing we know we are pulling away from the dorm we just dropped off said kid - now an adult, thinking and saying those 2 words over and over on the ride home.

It’s not that time truly flies, of course, rather it’s that we are thinking of other things through the days of our lives, then when we return our thoughts to something, and it's as though certain events happened without our knowledge. When I was driving my kid to 5:45 am swim practice 30 minutes each way, memories of elementary school musical performances certainly were not top of mind, rather that the Starbucks by the pool was properly staffed to continue my morning caffeination routine. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Some Days to Stop and Remember

Today, September 11, 2026, marks 25 years since the terrorist attacks on the US. I have written about how I reacted that day and details I remember before, and honestly I don’t have much more unique I can add to it. But I am thinking about it this week – something I don’t think about that often any more. Well, there is the exception when I drive from my home south to the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area and I always see a sign for a Wisconsin 9/11 Memorial off the next exit. As I am always taking this route because I have to, I never have extra time to exit and visit it. Sure, it’s on my list of things to do, but I will have to take a special trip there. Nonetheless I am thinking a lot about what happened that days and what followed, especially about the people I know who were directly impacted by it.

Also a quarter-century ago was when my Mom died, taken far too early by an autoimmune disease. There are many times I think of her, from when I am writing down one child's name whose middle name is hers, to pictures around the house to sometimes wondering what she would think of just about any struggle I am going through. Again it's not all the time, but enough that she lives on in my mind and heart.

Roll With The Changes

Perhaps it's ok that things are this way. Think about it - we can't think about everything all the time, and if we could we'd likely go crazy. Until said time travel hardware is readily available, it's not like we can physically - as well as mentally - achieve it. We can savor the moment, and appreciate the past and look forward to the future, even though it seems like it's here before we think it should be.

Before I close, I have to admit that when thinking of the opening song, the first one that came to mind was If I Could Turn Back Time by Cher however I didn't think it quite fit the tone of the post. As I may second-guess my decision eventually, I am sharing the link to it too.

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

One of the 2026 inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame was Adam Vinatieri. His well-deserved entry followed a 24-year career in the National Football League kicking with the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts, including 4 Super Bowl championships and numerous clutch game-winning kicks through the uprights.

His rise to fame was built on hard work and a steady foot and of those key games were many that helped the Patriots win their first Super Bowl. As a fan of the Patriots and someone who saw many of those games in person, I have many memories of who some call the GOAT – or greatest of all time – of kickers. Reflecting on his playing career, which one, though, is my favorite?

Interestingly my favorite memory of number 4 is not from any game; it’s from meeting him in a supermarket parking lot.

It was a fall day in the late 1990’s (my recollection of the actual date is a little fuzzy almost 30 years later, but the details of the event are surprisingly vivid!) and I was driving home from my consulting assignment in downtown Boston listening to WBCN, the rock station that was the radio home for all Patriots games. The DJ came on to say that there was an event at the recently-opened Stop & Shop supermarket in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, just as I was passing by it on the Mass Pike. At the event there were to be free hot dogs, an appearance by New England Patriots cheerleaders as well as the team’s kicker Adam Vinatieri. Hearing about the latter, I made the complicated trek from where I was heading on I-90 to Allston. Forget the free eats and cheerleaders, I wanted to meet Adam.

When I got to the store, there was a giant mob at the side parking lot. Ugh, I clearly was not alone in wanting to meet the placekicker. Or so I thought. As I approached the large crowd, however, I saw they were in front of the tent queuing for the hot dogs. Phew! I looked beyond this tent and saw another large crowd. As I approached it, another tent was for the cheerleaders, and they were signing mini posters featuring their entire squad. I thought it would be nice to get one for my friend Clint’s young daughter; he and I have been tailgating for Pats games for years and we started a fan Web site GoPats.com a few years earlier. The cheerleaders gladly signed a poster for her, but when I asked for one for myself, I was sternly told only one per person. Whatever.

As I left that tent I saw another, much smaller, next to it with a couple of people under it, one sitting at a table, with only a few people around. I was surprised, as that was where Vinatieri was. Why nobody else was flocking to see him was beyond me, but it gave me an easy opportunity to meet him. When I got there I shook his hand, exchanged pleasantries and made some small talk about the Pats season was going. I recall they were coming off of a loss and I didn’t want to piss him off. Of course, for anyone who knows me and my relationship with sports, small talk is about all I am good at – I have never been someone who remembered every play of the game or had any idea what they should do next, but I digress. He was very pleasant and we had a nice short chat. I then opened my wallet and asked him to sign a GoPats.com business card that Clint and I had printed up to get some traffic to our little fan Web site; remember it was the 90’s, promoting the Web in print was something you would do!

Pictured above is that card, which I have held onto all these years, along with a few other autographed and non-autographed business cards from notable people. For years, starting as a kid, I actually collected business cards, similarly how people collect baseball or other trading cards. Those are long gone now but I still have a few including this one.

So why would a fan of a team pick a moment like this as their favorite for an athlete, and not like the multiple Super Bowl wins or that kick he made in the infamous Snow Bowl game at old Foxboro Stadium that I was at? Simple - it’s personal. Sports, or anything for that matter, can mean different things to different people. It’s not that the other events aren’t important, rather this has unique meaning to me. Where the date may have blurred, the experience did not. Congrats to you Adam, a class act on and off the field, and I can vouch for both.

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

In recent years, many national politicians have said there needs to be “Church-like Committees” for various scandals that are swirling around Washington, DC. When I’ve heard this, I had faint recollections from my youth of when the original Church Committee was active, and the work it did in exposing the problems with the intelligence apparatus that seems to have an ever-growing grip on the US. It was this thinking that got me to pull a book off my shelf that I received as a Christmas present for my Mother-in-Law a few years ago that I never read, The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy, about the namesake of the Church Committee, the late US Senator Frank Church from Idaho.

This extensive novel by James Risen was based on just about every source available except for firsthand interviews of Frank Church himself, as he has left this mortal coil, including documents, journals, and interviews with others who were involved in and around the Church Committee as well as Frank Church at that time. As I read through the lengthy tome, many takeaways did come to mind.

What it takes to execute on checks and balances – As I was reading through the story which details the genesis of the Church Committee behind the scenes to the panels that was on television, I was in awe of all that was involved, from the extensive office to the numerous people and all they did. One thing not included in the book was how much it actually cost to pull this off, however money doesn’t seem to be much of an object to Washington, DC, especially when it’s not their own money.

A committee of presidential candidates – In addition to Church’s own short-lived candidacy for President of the United States, there were several other people on the Church Committee who did run for president, including Walter Mondale, and Gary Hart, with the former being Vice President to President Jimmy Carter.

Jethro‘s Dad worked on the Committee – Not something taken directly from the book, but around the same time I was reading it, I listened to an episode of Craig Ferguson‘s podcast where he interviewed Diedrich Bader, the actor who played Jethro in the Beverly Hillbillies among other roles. Bader said his father William was one of the lawyers who worked on the Church Committee. It’s a small world after all.

Was Frank Church truly the last honest man? – While reading this I always kept in the back of my mind its title and wondered to myself that, since Frank Church died in 1984, has their not been another honest man in Washington, DC? Where there certainly are not many who could claim this title, I would say former Texas Congressman Dr. Ron Paul and current Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie fit the bill, in my humble opinion.

The Last Honest Man is an interesting and well-researched story, though it is hard to believe that what transpired actually happened (and happens) in the US. As for what I did with my copy of the book. I decided to leave it on an Amtrak train outbound from Chicago to Milwaukee. I hope someone got a chance to pick it up, get beyond its 400+ page size and (re)discover an interesting story about an interesting man in an interesting time.

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

AI-generated image of an iron bring struck while it is hot on a 19 anvil

Yesterday, December 30, 2025, passed by rather quickly and uneventfully. Perhaps it was due to the fact I have been off work for a few weeks to use unspent vacation time and the days have been a blur, or perhaps the end-of-year and family things we had going on... heck, it was a combination of all of that. For you see, the previous day marked 19 years that the blog you are reading this from was started.

If you scroll the archives at TheHotIron.com you will see I have written a similar post every year. Sometimes it was shortly after another masterpiece went live, other times several weeks. Though I don’t write as often as I would like to, the ideas still flow and get captured on an ideas list, which is located adjacent to the stack of books to write takeaways from that is slowly getting smaller.

Where it could be taken that these paragraphs are merely a marker to say, “hey, I haven’t given up yet,” for me it is to celebrate how much I actually did write, especially with all that 2025 slung my way. I still enjoy writing, and any time I get to sit down and do so is a gift. Even the few minutes to crank this out – without AI – and to craft the prompt to generate the accompanying graphic with AI was pure joy.

Happy Birthday to The Hot Iron, and Happy New Year to you!

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

People can be funny about titles. Funny good, and funny bad.

When I was in college, there was a guy I knew who worked in the school’s public relations office, and when it came time to order new business cards, he knew he was leaving his position soon so he decided to be funny – funny good – and had his title listed as “human being.“ Though that was bold for a stuffy, small New England college, I liked it. Years later I would borrow his title line for my own personal card.

When I started my second job after college, my title was Associate Consultant. After a year I was promoted to Staff Consultant. But I had to switch jobs a few years later in order for my title to be Senior Consultant. In my mid-20’s I was funny – funny bad – about my job title and wanting a “bigger” one, when the reality was that I did the same work despite what I was called.

A colleague recently lamented they hadn’t had the title of Vice President yet in their career. I laughed and said to do what I did: take the easy way out and start your own company, then you can name yourself whatever you want. When I did that, I wasn’t just the president – I was “founder and president.” This was the mid 2000s and being a founder was starting to be a big deal again after the dot-com bust. Even though my company was just one person – me – I was a founder, dammit!

On the flipside, a very good friend is president of her company yet she never uses that title. Instead, she uses Principal Consultant or something to that effect. Why? She’s more interested in a title commensurate to the work she loves, not that she runs a business. Her title also resonates more with her clients. It wasn’t until I saw her name and title on a contract once, then I made an extra effort to annunciate it, much of her dismay.

These days my title is “Senior Program Manager and Agile Delivery.” Why “and Agile Delivery?” A while back my organization was going through an Agile transformation and we thought it was a good idea to add that to titles. Then we stopped going through the Agile transformation, but my title remained the same. I’ve dropped the “and Agile Delivery” from my email signature and my LinkedIn profile, but I still see it internally.

Today masses of humanity are calling themselves AI Experts. Before that they were calling themselves Social Media Experts. Before that they were calling themselves Web Experts. Before that they were calling themselves Business Re-engineering experts. Before that… well, you get my drift.

So why all the talk about titles? I recently rediscovered a business card I got back in the 90’s that triggered this. I was at a fundraiser and sports broadcaster Mike Tirico, who at the time was working for ESPN, was in line right behind me at the entrance of the event. Someone came up to him and asked him for his business card, and as he was taking one out of his wallet, I asked him for one as well, to which he obliged. When I took a look at it, it showed his title as simply “talent.”

“Talent: is a title that is often given to people in media and entertainment. You will never see a prefix of “senior” or anything else with it. Perhaps this should carry over to the business world? In one word it simply says all that it needs to.

Deconstructing Job Titles

It doesn’t take long after accepting a title when you realize it’s merely an external moniker and what really matters is what you do and how you are compensated for it. For whatever the title, however, it is what we uniquely contribute to the job that matters, and that is our talent.

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

When was the last time someone said to you, “slow down, take the time needed and finish the task to a quality completion?” Whether it’s at work, home, school or anywhere else in life, typically an urgency is raised by someone else and imposed on you; whether a last-minute task or a poorly-developed plan, it’s now on you to complete it. I have referred to this before as a “culture of ASAP”, however most would just say it’s pretty much standard operating procedure these days.

When the suggestion from a work-related book club was made to read Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport, I had mixed emotions about it. By simply reading the title I knew I was generally in agreement with premise, however I was already lamenting finishing the book and not being able to integrate any of it. I knew the usage of the word “slow” comes from the expression “slow food,” which is a movement where people take the time to prepare meals using real ingredients and not rushing to eat. Rather than judging this book by its cover, I bought a copy and decided to see how I felt after reading it.

Any biases aside, I was hoping to gain some key takeaways from Slow Productivity, which did happen.

Humans derive great satisfaction from being good at what they do and producing useful things – This line I took from the book verbatim, and I can’t agree with it more. Having satisfaction and pride is not egotistical, as I see it essential to us getting up every morning and facing the day. Granted, there’s many times when someone does something for the money, but this I see as a goal for the journey in what someone spends most of their time doing. This line reminded me of how I got started working with computers and my first consulting gig using them in high school.

The importance of work intake – Whether something is assigned to us or we take it upon ourselves, we often don’t consider the full 360-degree picture of it. We often say we will “make it work,” but don’t think that balancing the new task or activity among all the others we have in process will impact the quality or completion of any or all of them. The concept of “task-switching” instead of multi-tasking comes to mind here, as we are not doing multiple things at once, rather we are switching between multiple things, not giving any of them the focus and attention they deserve. Even if we believe it’s the right thing to do, not doing it well – whatever it is – is a consequence.

Rituals in how we work – Where I know some people who can just sit down and do the task before them, I am not one of them. I often use rituals in my own work. For example, as I write this, I am at a coffee shop and not at home nor at my co-working space, as I find I can sometimes be more focused and creative with beans grinding and various conversations in the background, not to mention other venues where I have gone to in order to simply think. My notes for this post indicated I read this book while sitting in parking lots when taking my kids to various sports practices.

Slow Productivity was a quick read, and in the end worthwhile to me, namely as it reaffirmed many of my beliefs and gave me some additional context in approaching many of the tasks I take on. This is a good book for anyone who feels a little stuck in their working ways, or for a leader who doesn’t feel their team is working as well as they could be, as it may enlighten them on their approach to them.

As for what I am doing with this book, I am going to hold onto this and bring it with me the next time I am in Chicago and drop it off in a high-profile place in the Loop; perhaps some leader will see it and it will help their thinking about those who work for them and that there’s a better way to be more productive.

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

Previously I have talked about my “other” job, leading my kids’ high school booster club. It is truly a labor of love – there’s a lot of hard work to it, but the rewards are readily visible. That’s not to say it is all smooth sailing; in any organization there are challenges, and a booster club is not immune from them either.

One of our greatest challenges, as I also talked about before, is getting volunteers to staff the concession stands at sporting events. In addition to providing sustenance and tasty treats to fans, they are a significant fundraiser for us. Not only is this a challenge, but also is something newsworthy as well, so I recently learned.

Ahead of the TV broadcast of an Appleton North High School Football game on local TV station NBC26 in Northeast Wisconsin, I and one of my colleagues on the booster club’s board of directors were interviewed by reporter Noah Cornelius on the effort and needs for concessions. You can read and watch the interview here on the NBC26 Web site and watch the video of the interview here and it is embedded below.

Noah conducted a great interview as we showed him all of the logistics and planning that goes into a concessions stand, and I thank him for the opportunity to share our story and his great presentation of it. He told our story well, especially the need for volunteers.

For the popcorn doesn’t pop itself!

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

You've probably seen elsewhere online something similar to the picture atop this post: a stack of books, and it is usually accompanied with some text along with it saying that this is someone's reading list for the summer, fall, holiday break, vacation, hospital stay, etc., et. al., yada yada.

In my case, the picture above is not of books I have yet to read, rather it is of books I have already read. What's odd about that is that I pretty much always give away books after I read them and write takeaways from them that I share at this humble blog, but as you can extrapolate, I am a little behind on my writing... by almost a year.

Anytime I can sit down and read is a gift, especially when it's a paper book and not a screen. I have been good over the years with this cycle of reading and sharing, but part of the queue is a little backed up right now.

So I am sharing the spines of these worthy reads, in the hopes that I can use it as a motivation to write more. Feel free to add a comment of encouragement to this post.

Deconstructing Reading and Writing

“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email

Where did you learn to be a leader?

Over the course of my career, I have found few if any people who took leadership training, then became a leader. Often is the case someone rises from the ranks of an organization and is bestowed a title of leadership, such as manager. Does leadership training follow? I’ll just say that it didn’t for me, and most everyone else I know.

So then, how does one learn leadership? For myself, it was from the numerous examples of leaders I had over the years – some good, some not so good – and from them I developed my own leadership style. Other sources included indirect leaders and stories from others about their leaders.

Could one of those sources for leadership learning be a dog?

This is the theme of Lead Like a Dog by Lori Thomas. A leader that I have had the pleasure to work with first-hand, she wrote this book as a leadership resource, tying human leadership principles to examples reinforced by her dog, Ginger. Could someone already in a leadership role like me, though not a dog owner, take away something from this book? Certainly.

Agile principles apply to everyone – Lori is a Certified Scrum Product Owner, and much of the book talks to Scrum and Agile principles. However it is also very relatable to leaders – or anyone – who do not work with Agile. The idea of working in short sprints, and making adjustments, applies to dogs as much as it does to people and projects.

Leading a team is all about individuals – Where one would think “one-size-fits-all” applies to all people on a team, it does not (especially not for hats and people with big heads like me, but I digress). Understanding who people are, what motivates them and bringing out their best should be the job of every leader. This is something I know Lori does well, and in the book she talks to her experience with it.

You CAN teach old dogs new tricks – Whether a leader or not, anybody is capable of learning and continuously growing. This was more of a reaffirmation for me than something new, as I am doing it myself as are other “old dogs” I know and work with do on a daily basis. Where these days companies are looking for a 1,000% match in skills, perhaps instead they should be hiring for the capacity to learn those skills?

Lead Like a Dog is a great, uplifting read that I recommend not just for any seasoned leader but as well someone newly thrust into the role, whether they are a dog and/or pet owner or not. The wisdom that Thomas shares here, from her own experience, is evergreen and relevant today, especially in the current climate of staff reductions and negative opinions of Agile and Scrum.

Where I typically give away the copies of books I read, occasionally I hold onto a few and this is one of them. As the author is a colleague and friend, I will keep it until I next see her and have her autograph it.

This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

Did you enjoy this? Subscribe to The Hot Iron by RSS/XML feed or Read by Email