About Hannah Williamson

As a leader (and as a person), your most valuable resource isn’t your money. It’s not your title. It’s not even your time. It’s trust. Trust is the currency of relationships. It determines how much we’ll risk. Hard conversations, innovation, and healthy cultures are impossible without it. While earning trust pays dividends, it’s gradual work […]

“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face,” Mike Tyson said. Sometimes, that punch isn’t literal. It’s life dealing you a blow. And it doesn’t even have to be major to knock the air from your lungs—just well-timed. I turned on my phone for the first time since my brother and I […]

April Fools brings to mind pranks, jokes, and humorous shenanigans. It gives us permission to take ourselves and our lives a little less seriously, if only for a day. But the truth is, we’re fooling ourselves all the time, with often harmful results. It comes down to our thinking. We tell ourselves lies in ways […]

Time is strange. It can move fast and slow at the same time—a month can feel like an entire year and (somehow) a single day. Last quarter is gone. You’ll blink and this next quarter will have disappeared. When it does, you might be left wishing you’d started with a plan. The good news? Now […]

Bad news first: You don’t default to doing good, hard things. You probably default to conserving energy and hedging your bets. It’s nature’s way of protecting us. But it’s not very satisfying, is it? Most of the time, it’s the struggle and sense of adventure a challenge presents that leads to the greatest personal satisfaction. […]

Fear makes a terrific short-term motivator. If a vehicle is careening toward you or a big branch snaps just behind you in a forest, the release of adrenaline and cortisol might just save your life. Fear is designed to keep us safe. And most of the time, it does a pretty great job.  But fear […]

Goals are, without a doubt, among the most powerful tools on the path to transformation. They clarify our destination. They focus our effort. They marshall our motivation. The result? They invite us to change. But goals, by themselves, aren’t enough. You can have successful days and even successful years and still fall short of a […]

Most people approach the future like someone armed with a machete in dense undergrowth: they find their way by trying to see past everything competing for their attention, knocking aside obstacles as necessary. The result? Wasted energy and lack of direction. Creating a plan for your life is like building a railroad: it provides a […]

Here’s an unfortunate truth: All goals eventually lose their shine. The goal that seemed essential and exciting on day one can feel more like a chore after a few weeks. Maybe progress hasn’t come as quickly as you hoped. Maybe pursuing your goal is much more, well, ordinary than you anticipated. Or maybe you’re encountering […]

You’re doing too much. All of us (if we have good, honest friends or mentors) have probably heard these words at some point. Some of you are there right now. You’ve been running at a sprint for weeks—maybe months!—and it’s starting to catch up with you. Why do we find ourselves here over and over […]

Hopefully, by now, you have two to three SMARTER goals you intend to focus on for the next 90 days. You may have taken the first step or two in the right direction. But big goals can be daunting. And we never start without facing opposition. What are we to do? The answer might sound […]

Full Focus is committed to a single mission: We make it nearly impossible for people not to get the Double Win. But what is the Double Win? Why is it so important? And how do you get there? They’re questions that can lead us into a brighter future. The Hustle Fallacy and The Ambition Brake […]

It’s New Year’s Day. And if you haven’t already set some New Year’s Resolutions while staying up too late last night, you’ll probably find yourself thinking about the next twelve months sometime today. And if you’re not careful, you’re bound to fall into one of these common traps. Trap 1: Letting Shame Chart Your Course […]

When General Electric pioneered the SMART goal framework, they taught goals should be realistic. And they were dead wrong. Ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes is an ultramarathoner who has run more than 350 miles nonstop. Crazy? Maybe. But listen to what he said to Outside magazine: Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think […]

Dreaming matters. But if dreams stay dreams, they won’t take you anywhere. In fact, dreams that stay dreams can work against you—keeping you stuck instead of leading forward. That’s why we forge aspirations into goals. There’s a world of difference between an aspiration and a goal. Aspirations can hang vaguely in an imagined future. Good […]

Have you seen the Academy Award-winning film, La-La Land? It’s full of beautiful moments, but perhaps the most haunting is a song that captures the entire film. It features these lines: “Here’s to the ones who dream / Foolish as they may seem / Here’s to the hearts that ache / Here’s to the mess […]

Too often, “gratitude” is one of those “should” disciplines—right alongside flossing your teeth and changing the oil in your car. We know it’s good for us, but we avoid it, except for (perhaps) an obligatory annual reflection over family dinner. It seems trite, underwhelming: like the “one more thing” our life doesn’t need. But what […]

When was the last time you looked through childhood pictures? It can be a strange experience to see yourself in your much younger self: your hair is shorter and darker now, your face a bit less round, but that mischievous grin and some fierceness in the eyes haven’t changed a bit. The same goes for […]