Case Reopened: The Eulogy You Haven’t Written Yet

▶️ Watch & Listen to this Episode Here!

TL;DR: This week I’m reopening Episode 63 instead of recording something new. Not because the well is dry, but because I’m about to spend four days away from the routine that argument was written to interrupt, and returning to it now says more than a new episode would.

I’m writing this from 37,000 feet above, or close to it. I’m flying for work and then a long weekend, and I won’t be back in my normal rhythm until Tuesday. Normally that’s just a scheduling note, the kind of thing that changes when an episode goes up but not what goes into it. This week it’s the reason I’m doing something I haven’t done before on this show. I’m reopening a case instead of arguing a new one.

The episode is 63, “The Eulogy You Haven’t Written Yet.” If you’ve been with me a while, you know that episode itself was a return. It picked up a blog post I wrote back in 2013 and an early conversation from Episode 8, and it asked the same question those two pieces asked a decade apart.

What would somebody actually say about you at the end, and how much of that is already being decided by the choices you’re making this month, not someday.

Here’s why I’m not letting this one sit quietly in the archive while I put something newer in its place. I’m about to do the exact thing that episode argues almost nobody does. I’m stepping outside my routine. New city, different calendar, none of the usual anchors. That’s the kind of disruption the episode says most leaders avoid, because routine is comfortable and disruption forces you to look at what you would want said about how you used your time. I’m not writing a new argument this week. I’m walking directly into the one I already made.

I want you to think about something before you go back and listen, or relisten. The 360 review most of you have sat through at some point in your career is the closest thing available to a eulogy while you’re still standing to read it. Somebody hands you an honest account of how you’re experienced, not how you intend to be experienced, and most leaders take that document, feel something for about a week, and then change nothing. Episode 63 asks why that gap exists.

Why we can receive the data and still fail to act on it. That question doesn’t expire. It’s not tied to whatever news cycle or leadership trend was happening when I first recorded it.

I’ll be direct about something else too. I’ve never broken this show’s streak, and I don’t intend to start by phoning something in. What I won’t do is force a brand new hour of content into existence just to protect a number, when the real move for you and for me is admitting that some weeks call for returning to an argument rather than manufacturing a new one to sit alongside it. If Episode 63 is the argument, then this trip is the evidence. I’d rather show you the evidence than write an episode that doesn’t have any behind it.

So here’s what I’m asking of you. Go back to Episode 63, whether it’s your first time or your fifth. Listen for the line about the 360 review. Listen for the eulogy question itself. And then ask yourself what you’d want someone to say about how you spent the days nobody was tracking you.

I’ll be back in the normal rhythm next week. This one just needed to be re-lived first.

Key Takeaways

• Some weeks call for returning to an existing argument rather than manufacturing a new one, and doing that on purpose is different from phoning it in.

• Episode 63 asked what would actually be said about you at the end, and whether your current choices support that answer.

• The 360 review functions as the closest living equivalent to a eulogy, and most people receive that data without changing anything.

• Stepping outside your normal routine is the exact disruption most leaders avoid, and avoiding it is part of what the eulogy question is really about.

• Revisiting an old argument with new lived evidence behind it is not a rerun. It’s the case coming back around.