The second mountain, and why I keep walking up it

The first climb is towards success. You know the one: the promotion, the company, the title that finally sounds like you've arrived. The second one is towards significance. Most of us never notice we've reached the saddle in between, because the view from there looks a lot like the one we were promised.

I've spent a fair share of the last twenty years on that saddle with other people. Boards, teams, founders. People who are objectively doing well and subjectively feel like they're carrying a rucksack of somebody else's stones. What I've learned is that the second mountain doesn't ask for more effort. It asks for a different kind of attention.

Nothing to add. Plenty to remove.

Which is why I keep walking up. Not because the summit is worth it (it usually is), but because the walk itself does something no workshop can replicate. It slows the conversation down to the speed of a footstep. It puts the hierarchy at the bottom of the valley. And it gives room to the question that was there all along, underneath the agenda.

This is placeholder text so you can judge measure, rhythm and colour. The real essay lands here; the layout stays the same.

More paragraphs follow in the same measure. Around 65 characters per line, Geist 300 on bone, teal-dark ink. Links look like this, and the occasional pull-quote in Cooper carries the weight.