Catalysts In Three Flavors

This week I made a thirsty LinkedIn post featuring CRO Roman Noodles because I was in a full-blown spiral about my habits.

I started questioning everything: are the routines I cling to actually Catalysts sparking growth, or are they just well-disguised Crutches?

After a little reflection, I decided that the simple "good habit vs. bad habit" diagnosis felt flimsy. We all know a workout can be a catalyst (giving you energy and focus on a tough decision) or a crutch (enabling you to avoid a tough decision).

Listen, I'm an adult. Sure, I have blind spots and dumb assumptions, but what if I'm already smart enough to pretty consistently identify if something is a good habit or bad habit? Instead of doubting everything, what if I just focus on making the right good habits?

It was at this moment that I stumbled into a far better answer to a more interesting question:

A crutch is, at its core, a consequence-mitigation device.

When you get bored, compulsively checking social media serves as a crutch to shield you from the consequence of being bored. The crutch enables you to avoid being alone, with your thoughts, without purpose. The worst.

A catalyst, by contrast, leverages consequences. A catalyst is one small thing that leads to many more good things. Catalysts should be getting you long-term net positive ROI.

I realized that catalysts come in different forms. Visualize with me-

• -a strong central trunk: A single, core discipline that organizes everything else. A commitment to daily exercise, for example, can become the central pillar supporting better sleep, nutrition, and mental health.
• -a spreading plant: A habit that expands outward, connecting you to something new. A habit of nightly reading might spread to an interest in new subjects that lead to new career paths, social circles, or even rock tumbling.
• -a dense clump of grass: A resilient aggregate of small, interconnected behaviors. Together, a mesh of small habits form a resilient foundation against stress and adversity.

Or more delightfully: Trunky, Jumpy, & Clumpy.

The Trunky Catalyst: For Stability

This is your anchor. It’s a single, powerful, non-negotiable habit that provides a central organizing principle for your life. All other positive behaviors and decisions can branch off from it.

• What It Does: Creates stability, builds discipline, and simplifies decision-making.
• When You Need One: Life feels chaotic, you lack a core routine, or you feel pulled in too many directions. You need an anchor to moor yourself to.
• Examples:
  • A daily meditation or journaling practice (like "Morning Pages")
  • A consistent wake-up time, seven days a week
  • For me, writing this newsletter every other week for 5+ years

The Jumpy Catalyst: For Expansion

This is your explorer. A "Jumpy" catalyst is an engine for cross-pollination, creating surprising links between different domains of your life. It introduces novelty and creates pathways for luck and opportunity to find you.

• What It Does: Breaks you out of ruts, expands your identity, and introduces you to new ideas.
• When You Need One: You feel stuck, bored, uninspired, or that your world has become too small. You need to open new doors and create new connections.
• Examples:
  • Learning a skill completely unrelated to your career (e.g., a software developer learning pottery)
  • Joining a club or social group (e.g., a running club, a book club, a local volunteer group)
  • For me, rock tumbling and growing mushrooms expose me to all kinds of new ideas

The Clumpy Catalyst: For Resilience

This is your foundation. Like a dense, resilient turf, this isn't one big habit but a collection of small, interconnected routines. Each one is minor on its own, but together they form a robust, stress-resistant base.

• What It Does: Builds momentum, reduces friction for daily tasks, and creates a resilient mindset to bounce back from setbacks
• When You Need One: You feel fragile, easily derailed by small problems, or constantly overwhelmed by the "little things." You need to build a more robust and automated operational floor for your life.
• Examples:
  • A morning ritual: Drink a glass of water, take your vitamins, and do 2 minutes of stretching right after waking up
  • A fitness ritual: The night before, put on your gym clothes, put your bag in the car, and pick what workout you'll follow
  • For me, a workday cool down: At the end of the workday, I set the lights to dark purple, close all tabs, review my to-do list, clean my desktop, and write my to-dos for tomorrow

By being able to identify these catalyst types, you can strategically ask yourself: "What does my life need right now?"

• Feeling unstable? Find a Trunky catalyst.
• Feeling stuck? Introduce a Jumpy catalyst.
• Feeling fragile? Build a Clumpy catalyst.

What kinds of catalysts have you engineered into your life? Is it Trunky, Jumpy, or Clumpy? Join me and share your favorite catalyst in this LinkedIn conversation.

A TL;DR from the CRO

I consider myself a "fuzzy" catalyst.

-Roman Noodles, Chief Ruff Officer

New Blog Post: Is Team Building a Waste of Time? How to Measure the Real Impact on Your Work

Forget forced fun and awkward games—what if you could solve your team's biggest problems and prove it with one key metric?

ROCK TUMBLING UPDATE

I've started to really go off the rails with my rock tumbling "best practices," which is a hilarious concept when you really think about it.

When I first started tumbling my stupid rocks, I followed "best practices":

1. Put rocks, water, and grit into the tumbler and let it roll for 7-14 days.
2. After a week or two, check the rocks, clean them, and put in new grit. Repeat.
3. As the rocks get smoother, go from Stage 1 (the largest and roughest grit) sequentially into Stage 4 (polishing grit, very fine)
4. Tada: shiny rocks

Now that I've been doing this for a few years, I've started to try different things.

• Let the rocks tumble for 4 weeks at a time
• Skip Stage 1 and go straight into Stage 2
• Put finished shiny rocks back into Stage 1
• Tumble only one big rock, instead of a handful of smaller rocks

This experimentation isn't exactly mind-blowing stuff. We're talking about rocks here. Rocks.

However, the act of going against the "rules" is so intoxicating. I know exactly why I should start rocks on Stage 1 grit, but I haven't tried doing it the other way and it's my dumb hobby and nobody will know if it comes out stupid (I mean, now you know but it's our little secret, ok?).

Sometimes I feel like my job is all about helping people make "right" decisions and I'm craving the taste of the "wrong" ones.

Sometimes, the smallest acts of rebellion are what give life meaning.

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Your most inconsequential evil scientist in his supervillain lair of...shiny rocks,

Dan from Learn to Scale​

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​PS. Why are restaurant desserts so boring? Boomers.​