I didn’t grow up fishing. I don’t have nostalgic memories of carrying an old tackle box to a lake with my dad or grandfather, learning how to cast just right, avoid spooking the fish, or handle a catch with care. For a long time, I assumed fishing was simple: stab a worm on a hook, toss it into the water, and hope some prehistoric creature bites. Reel it in. Toss it back or throw it in a cooler.

For eleven months of the year, my dad was not a project manager. But every November, like clockwork, the yellow legal pad came out and Thanksgiving planning began. Without realizing it, he ran a full waterfall plan with a fixed deployment date—the fourth Thursday of the month.

Home ownership comes with one universal truth: something always needs fixing. I remember my first condo years ago, when a faulty electrical outlet forced me to learn some basic wiring. I didn’t have the right tools, but I cobbled together what I could find and somehow made it work, albeit poorly, and after way too long.

Fast forward nearly 30 years. Last weekend, I replaced another outlet. This time I had every tool I needed. The job took minutes, and the result was cleaner and safer. Experience certainly helped, but the real difference was having the right tools and knowing how to use them.

It’s rare, but every once in a while, I’ll tie on a fly, make my first cast, and catch a fish right away. Those are the perfect days—everything aligns. The fly’s the right size and color for the conditions, the cast feels effortless, the presentation is on point, and the fish is ready to eat. That’s the “happy path” on the process map.

But more often than not, things don’t go quite that smoothly. Sometimes you’re doing everything right—perfect casts, great technique—but nothing’s biting. You’re casting the same fly, in the same spot, to the same fish, over and over, and getting the same empty result.

Once the NFL season kicks off, the next thing on my calendar is a long-standing tradition: a weekend in Las Vegas with the same group of friends I’ve been meeting up with for more than twenty years.

Each fall, we gather to relax, play a couple rounds of golf, enjoy a few great meals, and spend hours laughing, catching up, and watching college and NFL football. There’s a little gaming too, of course, but the real purpose of the trip is connection and rejuvenation—the kind that doesn’t happen during the other fifty-one weeks of the year.