Day 43: The Factory Worker Inside You

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 3
Tuesday, February 17, 2026

I’m still working through Seth Godin’s Linchpin, and tonight I want to talk about something that might make you uncomfortable.

There’s a factory worker living inside you. And if you’re not careful, he’ll run the show.

The System That Built Us

Godin makes the case — and he wrote this back in 2010 — that the industrial revolution didn’t just build factories. It built an education system designed to feed them. Sit down. Follow instructions. Get good grades. Go to college. Get a job. Do what you’re told. Collect a paycheck.

The highest value of that system wasn’t innovation. It wasn’t creativity. It was compliance. The goal was to produce people who could do a job for a day’s wage and not have to think.

And for a long time, that system worked. For the factories, anyway.

But here’s the thing Godin saw coming sixteen years ago: that era is over. And if it was over in 2010, it is buried in 2026. The rise of AI, the speed of change in the marketplace, the sheer volume of information and tools available — all of it demands something the factory model never taught us.

Applied creativity.

The Moment You Start Phoning It In

I know the factory worker mindset from the inside. During my days working in an insurance office, I felt it pulling at me constantly. When your contribution doesn’t seem to matter, when you’re not making progress, when the environment is draining — it is incredibly easy to just phone it in. Go through the motions. Clock in, clock out, repeat.

I think we all have moments like that. Seasons where the path of least resistance is to stop caring and just do the minimum.

I started breaking out of it when I realized something simple but powerful: my level of effort actually moved the needle. When I brought energy and intention to my work, things changed. When I phoned it in, they didn’t. The results were directly connected to the investment.

That’s not a complicated idea. But it’s one most people ignore.

The Rogue in the Cubicle

Here’s what I’ve learned about myself over the years. I am a creative free spirit living in a corporate, data-ordered world. Those two things don’t always get along.

I have to turn on music to keep my brain engaged. I have to move. I have to conceptualize problems in different ways just to stay satisfied — not because I’m difficult, but because that’s how I’m wired. And honestly, that creative wiring is exactly what makes me good at what I do.

Because if we look at things the same way every time, we never solve problems. We just keep describing them. New solutions require new ideas, and new ideas come from people who refuse to think inside the factory lines.

That rebellious streak? It’s not a flaw. It’s the linchpin quality Godin is talking about.

AI and the New Frontier

This is even more real for me right now as I learn to work with AI tools. The way I see it, AI is the ultimate amplifier of applied creativity — but only if you know how to use it.

I’ve been learning how to iterate: ask questions, get feedback, supply my critiques, apply my business knowledge, layer in my creativity, get more feedback, and iterate again. The process works. But it only works if you bring something to the table.

And here’s what I’ve noticed: the quality of the answer depends entirely on the quality of the question. If you’re not clear about what you need, the tool won’t save you. You have to understand what you’re working with — the sophistication of the model, the way you communicate and express yourself — so that the response fits the context of what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

In other words, AI doesn’t replace thinking. It rewards it.

The factory workers of 2026 are the people who will ask a machine to do their thinking for them and accept whatever comes back. The linchpins are the ones who will use these tools to multiply what they already bring — their creativity, their experience, their judgment.

Which One Are You?

So tonight I’ll leave you with this.

Are you a factory worker or a linchpin? Are you phoning it in — going through the motions at work, at home, in your health, in your relationships? Are you following the old model: sit down, follow instructions, don’t make waves, collect your check?

Or is there a rogue inside you that knows you were built for more?

Because here’s the truth: in today’s world, nobody is coming to hand you a better life. The era of doing what you’re told and being rewarded for it is over. If you are not taking the initiative to drive your own success forward — to learn new tools, to think creatively, to bring something to the table that nobody else can — then you are falling behind. Right now. Today.

Not tomorrow. Not next quarter. Now.

The people who thrive in 2026 and beyond won’t be the ones who followed orders the best. They’ll be the ones who refused to stop thinking, refused to stop growing, and took ownership of where they’re headed.

So if you haven’t started, start now. Not when you’re ready. Not when conditions are perfect. Now.

Day 43 of 280. Be the linchpin.

Day 42: Everything Is Connected

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 2
Monday, February 16, 2026

I’ve been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin again, and it’s stirring things up. But tonight’s post isn’t about Linchpin. It’s about something that book keeps pointing me back to — a thought I’ve been carrying for years.

Everything is connected.

A Hospital Bed and a Fish Bone Diagram

In 2018, I was lying in a hospital bed going through chemotherapy for the second time. A 13-centimeter tumor. Four one-week hospital stays. I didn’t know how much damage the cancer had done. I didn’t know how long I had.

A few friends from work would come visit and keep me up on the projects we had going. And because I didn’t have a whole lot else to think about, I started processing — really processing — how our business workflows actually worked. Where data originated. How it matured through systems and the activities of people. How something that started at the beginning of a process was eventually consumed by somebody at the end who had no idea where it came from. It just magically appeared.

Lying there, I could see it like a fish bone diagram. One thread of data with dozens of offshoots — different teams, different efforts, different parts of the business process. And I could see how the busted processes, the workarounds, the bull crap people had to do just to keep things straight — it all became very apparent.

That clarity has stayed with me. As a data professional, I try to share it with anyone who will listen: if we understand the overall business workflow, we can pass out the pieces, identify the problem areas, and start making things better. That’s true in any business, any organization, anywhere people work together.

But here’s the thing. That principle doesn’t stop at the office door.

The Insurance Company

I actually made the connection about life being connected even before the hospital bed.

In the mid-2000s, I worked at an insurance company where I was miserable every day. The owner smoked four to six cigars a day ten feet from my desk. Profanity filled the air. Morale was rock bottom.

And I realized something that changed my trajectory: I couldn’t be angry at work and healthy at home. It invariably carried over. My frustration at the office became tension with my family, and that was not a sustainable position.

I had to start working on myself personally — not because I loved the job, but because I knew that everything was connected. If one part of my life was poisoned, the rest would suffer.

Fast-forward a few years. I was working on my master’s degree, thriving in an academic setting where I had previously been a mediocre student. And I realized the difference wasn’t intelligence. It was devotion to the process of getting better — and being the same engaged, enthusiastic person in my whole life, not just pieces of it.

When I stopped compartmentalizing, everything changed.

The Kobe Bryant Principle

I heard a story about Kobe Bryant that stuck with me. Kobe deliberately studied the referee’s handbook — every rule, every call, every technicality. Not because he wanted to argue calls. Because he wanted to master the environment he was operating in.

If he wanted a specific foul called, he knew what action to take. He knew how to get timeouts. He knew how to stop the clock. He used the rules of the game to his advantage — not by breaking them, but by understanding them so deeply that he could stretch them.

That’s what excellence looks like. It’s not just knowing the rules. It’s knowing how to apply them so you can accomplish what you need to accomplish while still taking care of the people around you.

Kobe demanded that kind of mastery from himself. And he rose above almost every player who’s ever played the game because of it.

The Real Question

Seth Godin wrote Linchpin in 2010, and he was already pointing out that the industrial age — where the highest value of the education system was producing factory workers who would do a job for a day’s wage and not have to think — was over. That we had entered an era of applied creativity.

That is even more true today. The market is changing. AI is reshaping everything. The people who will thrive are the ones who see the connections, who understand the whole system, who refuse to compartmentalize their lives into disconnected pieces.

So here’s what I’d say to you tonight.

If you feel like two separate people between work and home. If you feel like two separate people between groups of friends. If how you feel in your mind doesn’t match how you act on the outside — you need to have a frank conversation with yourself.

The way God created us is to be whole. Engaged and excellent in all the areas of our lives — not fragmented, not compartmentalized, not running different versions of ourselves depending on who’s watching.

Everything is connected. Your health affects your work. Your work affects your family. Your family affects your purpose. Your purpose affects everything.

The data taught me that in a hospital bed. Life has been confirming it ever since.

Day 42 of 280. Everything is connected.

Day 42: Show Your Work

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 2
Monday, February 16, 2026

Hello and welcome to Day 42 of the 7-40 Challenge.

I’m excited to be here today. I’m getting stuff done, having a pretty good day. I lifted weights today for the first time in three weeks — my hand is finally feeling better — and it felt great to be back under the bar.

The Key That Unlocks Achievement

I’ve been thinking about why this challenge is working. And I keep coming back to one word: accountability.

It’s really easy to say you want to get something done. And then not set a standard to live up to. And then wonder why you weren’t able to achieve it at the end.

It’s the difference between wishing and planning.

Accountability — actually having to document things, show your work, show how you got there — is making a real difference. Because if I look in the mirror and I don’t like what I see, I can own my results. I can trace back through the data and find exactly where things went right or wrong.

I know that if I watch what I eat every day, take in the right amount of water, and work out like I’m supposed to, it helps me burn calories. It helps me reshape my body. It helps me lose weight.

But if I don’t track these things? If I don’t talk about what I did, how I did it, where I’ve been and where I’m going? When I don’t reach where I want to be, I have absolutely no reason to be surprised.

Transparency is the key that unlocks the door of achievement. Because if you know what to do, and you’re not transparent enough to say whether you’ve done it or not, then who are you fooling but yourself?

A Lesson in Owning It

Let me give you a real example.

I had a job once where I had been entering data all morning. Hours of work. And about halfway through the day, I realized I had been entering everything in the wrong place — in our sample area instead of our actual area. People were depending on me to get the job done.

I had two choices. I could pass it off. Make excuses. Hope nobody noticed.

Or I could focus in, redo four hours of work, and get it right.

With a little focus, it only took about an hour and a half to fix. I finished on time. Met the deadline. It was one of the first times I had made a mistake like that and immediately pivoted to attacking the problem with a solution instead of an excuse.

That’s accountability. Not perfection — but ownership. Seeing the problem, admitting the problem, and fixing the problem.

The 7-40 Connection

That’s what this blog does for me. Every day I show up here and document what happened. What I did. What I didn’t do. Where I’m winning. Where I’m struggling.

And because of that transparency, I can’t hide from my own results. I can only improve them.

How about you? Are you showing your work? Or are you hoping nobody — including yourself — notices the gap between what you said you’d do and what you actually did?

Show your work. Own your results. The transparency is what makes the transformation real.

Day 42 Habit Tracker

  • ✅ Bible Study and Prayer
  • ✅ Exercise (Warrior Shredding Workout A + Walk)
  • ✅ Water 100 oz
  • ✅ Calorie Tracking
  • ✅ Gratitude Practice
  • ✅ Reading (30 minutes)
  • ✅ Creative Hour

Day 42 of 280. Show your work.

Day 41: Gratitude Sunday — My Church

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 1 Sunday, February 15, 2026

Welcome to Gratitude Sunday.

Today we went to service as a family, and the pastor preached a message about mental health. One of the things he said was that you can be a Christian and still struggle with depression or anxiety — not because you’re not trying to follow God or not trying to be close to Him, but because your life is out of balance.

That message was relevant to me.

Recently, my life was out of balance. I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I wasn’t taking adequate care of myself in some ways. And so today was confirmation that the steps I’ve been taking — these seven habits, this daily discipline — are the right ones. Getting things back in order matters.

But more than the message itself, I’m grateful for the place where I heard it.

I’m grateful to attend a church that meets me where I am. My faith in God and my belief in Jesus are strong. Being able to go to a place that builds that faith and supports that belief is a gift I don’t take for granted.

Tonight’s post is short, but it’s sincere.

I’m thankful for my church. Thankful that my wife, my son, and I attend as a family. Thankful that he’s involved in the youth group. Thankful that they love Jesus and teach God’s word.

Sometimes gratitude doesn’t need a lot of words. It just needs to be said.

See you tomorrow for Day 42.

Day 41 of 280. Round 2 has begun.

Day 41: The Linchpin Question

~ David Willis ~ Leave a comment

Round 2, Day 1 Sunday, February 15, 2026

Good morning and welcome to Day 1 of Round 2 of the 7-40 Challenge. It’s a chilly morning in Oklahoma, and I’m out on the road getting my walk in early. Getting back to the challenge. Getting back to work.

Round 1 gave me a lot of forward momentum, and I have no intention of slowing down.

What Is a Linchpin?

I’ve been reading Linchpin by Seth Godin, and it’s challenging my thinking in ways I didn’t expect.

First, the literal definition. A linchpin is a pin passed through the end of an axle to keep a wheel in position. Without it, the wheel comes off and everything falls apart. I actually have a linchpin holding the gate of my trailer up right now. If it weren’t there, the gate would fall down and damage something. Small piece. Critical function.

Seth takes that idea and applies it to people. A linchpin, in his framework, is someone indispensable. Someone who provides value, leadership, and creative thinking without being told what to do. They take risks that pay off because they’ve done the work to be excellent at what they do. They’re rarely caught off guard. They’re often honored. And when it comes down to it, they’re extremely hard to replace.

The Air Gets Thinner

Here’s what hit me. Seth says that people who show up at a job just to be present — that’s easy. People who show up and follow orders — also easy. But people who innovate and create? The air gets a lot thinner up there. There aren’t as many people willing to do that.

From what I’ve seen in my own life, I agree.

It is so easy to go in, get depressed, collect the paycheck, and let the cycle take over. Then one day you lift your head up out of the water and realize you don’t know where you are. You’ve been floating for too long. The whole terrain has changed.

Why This Matters for Round 2

This book is challenging my thinking about the excellence I pour into every day. My need to attack these goals and these habits I’m forming. Because we’ve only got so long in this life. We only have so much time to make a difference. So much time to love those around us. So much time to leave a legacy. So much time to do what matters.

What matters to me? My relationship with God. My family. My friends. Caring for the world around me.

To do that well, I need to become a linchpin. More indispensable. More intentional. More excellent.

And because of that, I practice these habits daily. I put my accountability right here on the blog for you to see.

The Seven Habits for Round 2

  1. Bible Study and Prayer
  2. Exercise (1 hour daily)
  3. Water (100 oz daily)
  4. Calorie Tracking
  5. Gratitude Practice
  6. Reading (30 minutes daily)
  7. Creative Hour

Same seven. Deeper roots. Higher standards.

The Question

How about you? Are you working to be indispensable? Working to give your best and be the best you can be — not because it’s demanded of you, but because you have the opportunity to do so? To make a difference?

I’m going to get through Day 41. We’ll see you tomorrow for Day 42.

Day 41 of 280. Round 2 has begun.