Hamza Khan

My marks had dropped to C’s and D’s. I was damn near days away from dropping out of university. It was my final year at , and I was dragging my feet through a political science degree, clinging to a half-hearted ambition of becoming a lawyer—only to earn my father’s approval. As a high school dropout, he had traded his dream of becoming a doctor for the kind of hustle required to raise entire family trees (plural) out of poverty. His world of unrealized potential now sat heavy on my slumped, first-generation shoulders. But I wasn’t ready to let go of my dream. I wanted to—I needed to—go all-in on my art. Yet I lacked the skill and confidence to explain any of this to my old man. And so I soldiered on. Slowly, the apathy turned into resentment. The resentment into disillusionment. Until one day, I stumbled upon a keynote speaker who said: “You don’t just go to post-secondary to get a job. You go there to become a full person, to maximize your potential. You go there to engage in personal, professional, and academic development. You go there for holistic development.” The very next morning, I switched majors. I started writing for myself again. I told my dad that the lawyer thing was a no-go. My ‘one day…’ turned into ‘day one.’ And the rest is history. That keynote speaker—the one who gave me my call to adventure—is now a dear friend, mentor, and the final guest of Season 1 of . Join us as we reflect on our respective odysseys and prepare for the next chapters of our lives. Episode 8 drops tomorrow morning on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tomorrow’s episode is for all the day one Ideas Into Action fans. 🫡 We’re running back the elder millennial madness with Scarborough’s finest—the one and only ! Try to keep up with our chaotic 120+ WPM convo on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Lock in on what you want to achieve—and the how will figure itself out.

With twins on the way, I’ve been in a season of slowing down. And honestly, it hasn’t been great for my anxiety. But I keep returning to this exchange with from :

“Everything ends up working out when you focus on where you’re headed.”

And while I appreciated the metaphysical mechanics of that wisdom, I also needed the scientific underpinning. That’s when Bailey and I unpacked the Adjacent Possible Theory, which suggests that each action opens new doors in the direction you’re facing.

First proposed by theoretical biologist Dr. Stuart Kauffman, he used it to explain how life evolves—not through massive leaps, but through a series of small, connected steps. Like when single-celled organisms began clustering to survive. Eventually, those clusters became multi-cellular organisms. Plants. Animals. Us. Not all at once. Door by door. Step by step.

And so it is with growth.

You don’t need to know every step to get unstuck or make progress. Just the next one. Each move opens more doors. One turns into five. Five into twenty. Small steps are exponential in disguise. If you focus on gain, you’ll open multiple doorways to more gain. Psychologist Dr. Stevan E. Hobfoll calls this dynamic a “gain spiral”—a virtuous cycle where each small win opens the door to another. A kind of momentum of abundance. You start seeing doors you couldn’t before.

So that’s what I’m doing right now: staying locked in on where I’m headed—and being present to the reality and its plethora of possibilities.

Even if the next step feels small.