No #196 | November 23, 2025

by Matthew Boyd

Good morning, welcome to the weekly Lead It Cool newsletter.

Went to a friend’s wedding last night. Next week’s newsletter will explore what dancing to ’90s pop songs can teach us about ourselves.🤣🕺

In this week's Lead It Cool newsletter:

• 👮The Rookie
• 🤔Escalation of Commitment
• 🏠Home Decor
• 🦃Thanksgiving
• 😎Cool Links

👮The Rookie

The Boydhaus has started watching the series The Rookie (and it’s really good!).

The primary plot of the show is that a middle-aged man (Nathan Fillion) has a mid-life crisis and decides to move to L.A. and reinvent himself as a police officer.

The show follows the training process he goes through, with the overarching question: Can you teach an old dog new tricks?

His TO (training officer) has to adapt her approach because, with a younger recruit, the job is all about building new habits. But with an older recruit? She continually stresses the need to break his old habits and instincts.

This message is driven home especially in situations where his emotional biases (shaped by decades of lived experience) push him toward the wrong call. He’s not inexperienced. He’s over-experienced. And that creates a different set of challenges.

The show ends up flipping that old cliché on its head. It’s not really about whether you can teach an old dog new tricks. The more accurate question is: Can an old dog unlearn the tricks that no longer serve him?

Naturally, he struggles a lot (hilarity ensues). But one part of the show that stands out is how often he reminds himself to approach things with beginner’s mind. To be okay making mistakes. To be okay not knowing everything. It’s strangely refreshing.

I don’t think the show is meant to be inspiring (it’s more of a comedy-drama), but when I’m watching it, I can’t help but get a little fired up.

Because here’s the thing: as we age most of us aren’t struggling with learning new tricks. We’re struggling with letting go of the old ones. The instincts, assumptions, habits, stories, and reactions that once helped us survive, but now might be quietly holding us back.

And unlearning is harder. It requires vulnerability. It requires noticing the moment when habit takes over… and choosing differently. It requires acknowledging that “experience” can be both a superpower and a blind spot.

There's a good quote by Isaac Asimov that really captures this well: "Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in."

Don't be afraid to be a rookie.

🤔Escalation of Commitment

Author Adam Grant has an interesting opinion piece to the NY Times about the USA's current political situation.

He believes that many of our current political challenges are based on the theory of an escalation of commitment.

What this means is that in the face of impending failure, extensive evidence shows, instead of rethinking our plans, we often double down on our decisions. It feels better to be a fighter than a quitter.

Here's more from Grant:

One of the tragedies of the human condition is that we use our big brains not to make rational decisions but rather to rationalize the decisions we’ve already made.​

This is also similar to the sunk cost fallacy, and if you're looking for a pop culture example of this think about the movie Jurassic Park when John Hammond (the owner of the park) remains committed to opening the park despite numerous warnings and failures.

His refusal to abandon the project leads to chaos and disaster (and some amazing quotes😜).

🏠Home Decor

Saw this on Twitter, and it made me pause and think. Which home decor style is better in your opinion?

🦃Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving this week for everyone south of the boarder. 🦃😆

😎Cool Links

🤔The Five Workplace Trends that are Reshaping Leadership. Leadership isn’t getting harder because technology is advancing. It’s getting harder because people are changing. The workplace is becoming more emotionally complex, politically charged, generationally diverse, and socially aware.

👂Welp, Smart Earrings Are A Thing Now. The Lumia 2, a $250 smart earring that’s officially launching today, claims to be the world’s smallest wearable. With a weight of just 1g, Lumia might actually be correct in planting that very tiny flag. It makes the 3g to 5g Oura Ring look big, and the 30g to 40g Apple Watch Series 11 look absolutely massive.

👩‍🍳One of Gen Z' habits is an existential threat to restaurants. Momofuku founder David Chang says America's youth isn't drinking alcohol in the same way as earlier generations, and it has become the "real existential threat" to the restaurant industry.

🎥Why movies just don't feel real anymore. If you're a movie fan, you will very much enjoy this video.

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