Lessons from a Handwritten Chore List: Building Resilience Without the Internet

Growing up without the internet wasn’t unusual in rural Minnesota—it was just life. But for my family, it wasn’t just about being offline; it was about living intentionally. As other children my age were experimenting with the early dial-up internet, I was learning to read a handwritten list of chores, observing my parents construct a house from the ground up, and learning the type of resilience and discipline that has molded me into the individual I am today.

In hindsight, it wasn't so much about survival in a distant corner of America. It was about living off what one had and the bliss of bringing to life something that would endure. Those are the lessons—the ones that I did not always value while living through them—but I carry forward today in my role as an adviser to businesspeople and business leaders.

Generally, every morning there would be a note taped to the refrigerator. This was neither a comforting nor sentimental communication but was, insistently, a list. This was a list of chores with my siblings' names and my name on it, specifying the work to be completed by who and when, which was typically before dinner. My parents were not really going to deny us dinner if we did not do these things, but they made the threat highly believable. None of us wished to test this statement.

Nonetheless, the chore charts accomplished something more than simply household organization. They taught me responsibility and discipline that has held strong to this day. The focus was not on our emotional reactions to the work or the fairness of the tasks but on the need to contribute, the responsibility for one's part, and the need to not let the group down (or family).

Within the entrepreneurial community, one principle reigns supreme always. Accountability is crucial. Poor performance on the part of an individual, be it the founder or one member within the team, negatively impacts the entire enterprise. Similar to the situation with my siblings and me standing there in front of that refrigerator, no one wants to be the one seen to be not contributing enough.

When I tell people my parents built our house, they assume I mean they oversaw a construction crew. No. They literally built it. My dad wired every outlet, and my mom made countless decisions about details, big and small. The only thing they hired out was digging the basement—and even that, I’m sure, was begrudging.

The origin of this experience lies back in grade one. Moving to another school district meant a year spent traveling long distances to school every day, early mornings waking up early to head to the construction site, and late evenings back to the soon-to-be old home. For my siblings and me, it was the norm to come home every day to see new changes: another wall where there was none before, windows that opened to the outside view, or the smell of newly sawn wood to indicate the journeys we would take in this home.

Every evening, once the sun started to set, we'd gather on the sloped, arching driveway that overlooked sweeping visions of vacant fields. The night meal was unadorned—usually sloppy joes, hot dogs, or whatever my mother could achieve within the constrictions of a firepit's primitive limits—but it was meaningful to us. We'd sit side by side, our toes hanging over the driveway edge, looking out into fields that sloped gently upwards towards the sky. Day by day, the dream became more real, slowly turning into a reality. Though the progress wasn't rapid, it was steady, and this incessant, systematic march taught us some important lessons about the virtues of patience and persistence.

Then, surrounded by loved ones and the quiet contentment of creation, I learned a valuable lesson: progress is not marked by revolutionary change but by the steady beat of commitment, day by day. This is a lesson that I preach to startups every day. I remind entrepreneurs that great things are not instantaneous; instead, they are built incrementally, brick by brick, decision by decision.

My formative years were not ones of extravagance but ones of profound learning moments—ones that are more valuable than money. They taught me the value of hard work, good judgment, and cooperative effort. In addition, they taught me the concept that fortitude is not the only ingredient that makes resilience. Resilience is the capacity to create a strong core that can resist adverse situations.