The Empty Quarter

Eric Weiner, who wrote “The Geography of Bliss,” has a way of making you fall in love with places. His travel memoir from visiting the desert made me think back to a time when I stayed in the desert.

On day two of my journey into the Empty Quarter, the world’s largest sand desert, an odd, unbidden calm swept over me. My breathing slowed. My mind no longer darted from thought to thought, like a chimpanzee with ADHD. I could think again.

I’m not sure how to explain this uncharacteristic tranquility. Maybe it was the way the desert light played across the sand, shifting from khaki to brown to Martian red in the course of only a few hours. Maybe it was the complete absence of even a trace of civilization: not a single road or building or other human, save my Bedouin guide Suhail. Maybe it was the lack of Internet connection or cell-phone signal.

Most likely it was some combination of the three, plus an elusive fourth element, one that for centuries has attracted people to this unforgiving land on the Arabian peninsula. It is a strange attraction, for there is nothing nice about the desert, “a bitter, desiccated land which knows nothing of gentleness or ease,” wrote Wilfred Thesiger, a 20th-century British explorer who crossed the Empty Quarter on camel and foot.

So, how to explain the unexpected beauty of this unforgiving, desolate land? What is the allure of a vast expanse of sand, and not much else? It boils down, I think, to a kind of desert essentialism. Everything we treasure in the non-desert world evaporates like water on hot sand. Money is of no use here, nor is reputation, fame, or any of the other ego food we spend so much time pursuing elsewhere.

Only two things that matter in the desert: water and shade, and neither are entirely under our control. “The desert teaches you never to take yourself too seriously,” says Belden Lane, a professor of theology.

Pierre Loti, a 19th-century French novelist and desert traveler, explains the appeal this way:

“You get drunk on light and space. You know the heady intoxication of just being able to breathe, just being alive…one has the illusion of truly being united with universal permanence and time.”

Deserts like the Empty Quarter strip us bare. They demand to know, “Who are you?” It is not interested in the various roles you play in more temperate climes—parent, son, employee, upstanding citizen—but only cares about the real you, the essential, naked you.

The Empty Quarter may be empty but that emptiness is not static. The color of the sand shifts, as do the sand dunes. They are enormous, rising to heights of eight or nine hundred feet. More like sand mountains than dunes. Each one looks different, too, their shape and contours changing with the prevailing winds. Here, the land literally shifts beneath your feet. There are two ways to react to such uncertainty: fear or faith. It is no coincidence, I think, that all three major monotheistic faiths were born in the desert.

The desert is a spiritual proving ground, an unforgiving crucible of sand and heat.

In the Torah, God leads the Israelites through the Sinai desert, even though a shorter route to the promised land existed. This was not a mistake (God doesn’t make mistakes.) The desert was a test. Were the Jews still shackled by the slave mindset? Were they tempted to return to the promise of a regular meal in Egypt, even if it came attached to shackles?

In the fourth and fifth century AD, renegade Christian monks retreated to the desert. “To me a town is a prison, and the desert loneliness a paradise,” wrote Saint Jerome, one of the “desert fathers,” as they are known. Some still do so today.

In the desert, death is never far away. I was reminded of that when I stumbled across the skeleton of a camel, its bones bleached bright white by the desert sun. When I went for a walk and briefly lost sight of my guide, I thought: if I don’t find him, I will die here. This was not a hypothetical. It was a certainty. Yet it is this nearness of death that makes us feel more alive.

Even a few days spent in the desert can have a lasting impact. As Wilfred Thesiger said, “No man can live this life [of a nomad]and emerge unchanged. He will have within him the yearning to return…for this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate climate can match.”

Will I return to the Empty Quarter? Perhaps. But the real question, I think, is whether the desert, and the lessons it has taught me, stick. I sure hope so.

I had 3 takeaways.

First, his notes about desert essentialism is one I’ve found to be so true in nature. It’s just you – no titles, no status, and no wealth. Stripped of everything, you are forced to get to know yourself.

Second, I thought his observation about the two ways to react to the uncertainty of the desert (fear or faith) was powerful. It is much easy to talk about being rational when you live in a world with exponentially less daily uncertainty.

Finally, as much as Eric was talking about how the desert cast a spell on him, I found Eric’s writing cast a spell on me. A great reminder of the power of a well-crafted essay.

Fueling the outcome, not the conflict

When you’re part of a large enough organization, the moment you try to do something meaningful, there will be opposition. That’s just how progress works.

The surprising thing is that the strongest resistance often comes from within, not outside.

It’s easy, in those moments, to get inside your own head – to feel like a victim or to make it a battle with the people opposing you. Especially because these are often people on your own team.

There are many ways to deal with this, but the one that preserves both progress and mental peace is to rise above the conflict and refocus on the outcome.

Yes, people may talk behind your back. They may actively work against you. But the moment you lose sight of the end goal – the impact you’re trying to create – you’ve lost the plot.

When in doubt, add fuel to progress toward the end outcome, not the conflict.

In the short term, you may take a few punches. But in the long term, it’s progress toward the outcome that counts.

Sickness and culmination

One of the lessons I’ve learned over time is that when I fall sick, it’s rarely random. It’s usually the culmination of two things:

(1) I’ve been pushing too hard without enough recovery. Sickness is thus my body’s way of forcing a break.

(2) Something’s off mentally. This is either unresolved stress, resistance to something I don’t want to do, or a lingering sense of pressure I haven’t faced.

When that happens, recovery isn’t just about rest. It’s also about reflection and using that downtime to get to clarity.

We often think of physical and mental systems as separate. But they’re deeply interconnected.

Every time I find myself under the weather, it’s a reminder to heal both my body and my mind.

One step at a time

Over the past year, I’ve made a series of changes to improve my metabolic health. It’s hard to pinpoint which one has had the biggest impact – I’ve become stricter about sleep, and my food habits have definitely improved.

But if I had to pick one change that has likely mattered more than the rest, it’s walking.

It started simply: parking half a mile away from the office, taking the stairs no matter how many floors.

Then came short walking breaks between meetings, 1:1 walks (both live and replacing video), and walks to think through problems or dictate blog posts in the evening with the goal of walking at least 2500 steps after dinner.

As a family, we also added a post-dinner walk most nights.

All of that has added up. I began the year averaging about 8,000 steps a day. That number is close to 16,000 now. And I can feel the difference.

Walking is a wonder drug. It regulates our blood sugar, strengthens our heart, and steadies our mind – one of the simplest, most reliable medicines we have.

It’s remarkable how something as simple as walking can quietly transform how you feel – one step at a time.

If you get the chance

I subscribe to the Collaborative Fund’s blog and really look forward to their posts because the most beautiful of them are written by Morgan Housel. One of their recent posts struck multiple chords and I assumed it was another Morgan Housel masterpiece… until I realized it was written by a Ted Lamade. I’m sharing in full as it is worth the read – thank you for a wonderful piece of work, Ted.

After winning a Golden Globe in 2006, Phillip Seymour Hoffman replied to a question about how he got to this moment in his life.

Nearly two decades later, his response is more relevant than ever.

“Even if you are auditioning for something you know you don’t like or are never going to get, whenever you get a chance to act in a room that someone else has paid for, it is a free chance to practice your craft. And in that moment, you should act as well as you can because if you leave that room and you have done this, there is no way the people who watched you will forget it. That is the only advice I have because it is always about that — if you are given the chance to act, take those words and bring them alive; and if you do that, something will ultimately transpire.”

This mindset explains how within two years, Hoffman played Sandy Lyle in Along Came Polly and Truman Capote in Capote, winning an Oscar for the latter.

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Retired United States Navy General William McRaven echoed a similar sentiment in his book, The Wisdom of the Bullfrog, writing,

“I found in my career that if you take pride in the little jobs, people will think you worthy of the bigger jobs.”

He illustrated this point with a story from early in his career when rather than being assigned to lead a mission, he was tasked with building a float that would represent the Navy SEALs (often referred to as “frogmen”) in the Fourth of July parade.

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After receiving the assignment, McRaven was admittedly dejected. In his mind, he had joined the Navy SEALs to lead missions, not build parade floats. But a seasoned team member offered him a quiet piece of advice, saying:

“Sooner or later we all have to do things we do not want to. But if you are going to do it, do it right. Build the best damn Frog Float you can.”

McRaven took the message to heart, pouring himself into the task and the float went on to win first prize in its category.

Over time, McRaven would lead far more consequential missions, including commanding the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and later the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which oversees all U.S. special operations forces, including the Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and Air Force Pararescue.

Unfortunately, I didn’t appreciate this lesson enough early in my career. As an example, after graduating from business school, I thought I could come right in and impart my newly found wisdom, when I should have been a better listener and executed the mundane tasks with as much vigor as the more interesting ones.

Fortunately, I don’t think I am alone. If I had to guess, anyone reading this can point to a similar moment in their career.

The thing is, this happens to all of us. Even the very best.

Look no further than Tom Brady, who has admitted he was consumed by this mentality early in his career at Michigan.

After his sophomore season, Brady was buried on the depth chart, only getting one or two reps per practice. As a result, he expressed his frustration to the coaches, to which head coach Lloyd Carr responded,

“Brady, I want you to stop worrying about what all the other players on our team are doing. All you do is worry about what the starter is doing, what the second guy is doing, what everyone else is doing. You don’t worry about what you are doing. You came here to be the best. If you’re going to be the best, you have to beat out the best.”

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Carr then suggested Brady meet with Greg Harden, a counselor in the athletic department.

Once again, Brady vented his frustration — complaining about getting limited reps.

Harden’s advice was simple:

“Just focus on doing the best you can with those two reps. Make them as perfect as you possibly can. Then focus on the next two, and the next two, and the next two.”

How did Brady respond?

In his words,

“So, that’s what I did. They would put me in for those two reps, and man, I would sprint out there like it was the Super Bowl. I’d shout, ‘Let’s go boys! Here we go! What play we got?!?’ And I started to do really well with those two reps because I brought enthusiasm and energy. Soon, I was getting four reps. Then ten, and before you knew it, with this new mindset that Greg had instilled in me — to focus on what you can control, to focus on what you’re getting, not what anyone else is getting. To treat every rep like it’s the Super Bowl — eventually, I became the starter.”

We all know how Brady’s story played out from here, and it all started with two reps.

Last spring, my then eight-year-old son was wrestling with getting to play very limited minutes, so I read him this story about Brady. After sitting in silence for a few seconds, he looked up at me and said, “Tom Brady barely played too??”

To which I responded, “Yeah bud, like you. You just gotta make the best of your chances you’re given.”

After leaving his room that night, I thought to myself — I would give just about anything to be able to go back in time and tell my younger self this.

Would I have listened?

I hope so, but if this is a hard concept for adults to grasp, I imagine it’s even more difficult for kids.

Nonetheless, I wish I had appreciated this fact of life earlier. The fact is, someone is almost always watching, so it’s worth treating everything you do with purpose and pride. And, even if no one has their eyes on you, it is still a chance to “practice your craft”. To improve. To build strong habits.

Since time is limited, we only get so many opportunities.

We might as well take advantage of each one we get.

The Power Tech stack

A product team’s success in building good products is usually a function of velocity – iterating quickly in the right direction. While the right direction is a function of product strategy, the ability to iterate is often a function of the “tech stack” – i.e., the set of technologies used to power the product.

We’re seeing a lot of news about the world’s “power tech” stack of late – as every country and company races to keep up with the AI revolution. The best likely impact of the AI race is likely going to be the knock-on effects of cheap electricity. Cheap electricity can then power the production of all kinds of critical technology.

The country that’s gotten this memo is China. Ensuring there is cheap electric power enables dominance across key aspects of manufacturing – from batteries to drones to robots. And the benefits compound across many of these bets.

China has also been leading the way in building additional capacity for the past 2 decades. Again, you see the compounding impact in their curve.

And a big part of this recent compounding is driven by the fact that China installed more than twice as much solar capacity in the first half of 2025 as the rest of the world combined. That’s crazy scale.

Other countries are adopting too. Spain has invested heavily in wind and solar in the past 5 years. Now, Spain’s electricity costs are a whopping 30% lower and the difference is illustrated beautifully by the difference between its prices and that of the price of gas (which drives electricity prices elsewhere in Europe).

Pakistan offers another example. After struggling with energy issues for decades, they’ve gone all in on solar.

Here’s a way to put this all in perspective. This data is from 2024.

Pakistan has become the third-largest importer of Chinese solar modules, acquiring a staggering 13GW in the first half of this year alone. To give you some international comparisons, the UK is only on course to add 1.5-2GW of solar capacity this year. In 2023, the US economy added 32GW of solar capacity. 

This likely means Pakistan will be the sixth-largest installer of solar panels this year. But in local terms, it is more significant. The country’s entire electrical generation capacity was only 46GW in 2023. 

In other words, in just six months, Pakistan imported solar capacity equivalent to 30% of its total electricity generation capacity – an absolutely staggering amount. 

As they continue to invest, they’re able to reduce their dependence on imported natural gas – so much so that their Petroleum minister recently said LNG demand has peaked.

The key here is that energy wealth translates to income.

All this to say that the race that’s redefining this decade is how quickly countries embrace cheap electricity. It is the core component of the power tech stack of this century.