Tessory

Monet Nielsen
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This is where the experimenting happens. Tessory is the forge of Tesseros. Biweekly stories from life and work as we try things, break things, and figure out what actually sticks. AI tools, household fixes, work projects, family routines. No tech background required. Honest experiments and the small shifts that come from them. New episodes every other Tuesday. Start anywhere. hello@tesseros.com . tesseros.com/tessory

  1. Jul 14

    Passion as Information: What to Do When Nothing Is Lighting You Up Yet

    In my mid-20s, Simon Sinek's "Find Your Why" video swept through the office, and everyone around me lit up while I quietly panicked. I'd been told my whole life to follow my passion, and I didn't have one. Around the same time, my team read Good to Great chapter by chapter in a work book club, and I remember doing the math instead of feeling inspired: getting from a 90 to a 100 can cost almost a third of the work that the 80 took, and I didn't want to spend those extra hours on a version of great I hadn't chosen. What feels like missing passion can be information. It tells you "not this, not yet," and it points you toward trying the next thing instead of forcing the thing in front of you. Once I started designing my own roles around what genuinely interested me, Good to Great finally made sense. I wanted to be great at things I'd actually picked. This week's Tessera: pick one thing at work or at home that feels stuck or flat, swap it out for something you wouldn't normally try, and pay attention to whether it draws you in. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e17-passion-as-information Timestamps:00:00 The passion myth and following your why02:28 A perfectionist's honest math on effort04:45 Rebuilding a retirement plan around what you control09:11 Automating repetitive templated work with AI10:44 Perspective Flip version two and hosting update

  2. Jun 30

    Momentum: Starting, Keeping, and Redirecting It

    There's a spot on the bike trail behind our house where the path drops and then swoops back up, and you can see both the short slope and the long climb right in front of you. My younger son gets nervous at the top because the gravel there is slippery, so if he stops to walk up he slides. But if he kept his momentum down the hill, it would carry him three-quarters of the way up the next section, and one or two pedal strokes get him over the rest. Stopping is what makes it hard. Staying in motion is what makes it easy. That's one of three aspects to momentum I've been contemplating: the physical kind, where staying in motion beats starting and stopping. There's also the design kind where you build a process so momentum can pass from one person to the next, and the redirecting kind for when the exact piece you want to move won't budge no matter how well it's designed. This week's Tessera: Name which of the three you're dealing with right now - starting, keeping, or redirecting, and get that moving today instead of waiting for the whole thing to be right. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e16-redirecting-momentum Timestamps: 01:09 Designing process momentum at an accounting firm 03:52 Physical momentum on the bike trail 05:27 Getting stuck on the AI game competition 06:20 Redirecting momentum into a website audit 08:00 Choosing which aspect of momentum you need this week

  3. Jun 16

    Feedback vs. Reassurance: Knowing What You Need

    Growing up, part of my family was into racing, which meant I got direct, specific feedback on how I drove. There were so many trips where my grandma would talk through exactly how I used the accelerator, how much I braked into a corner, how I came out of the exit. It wasn't harsh, it was honest and precise: here's what you did, here's what it cost you, here's what to try instead. I didn't understand at the time how rare that kind of feedback is. Most people never get it, not because nobody notices, but because people don't always say anything. Feedback and reassurance are two different things, and most of the friction comes from asking for one while meaning the other. If you want reassurance, ask for that directly, it's a legitimate thing to need. If you want feedback, mean it, attach a timeline, and be ready to hear something that stings. This week's Tessera: Pick one thing you're building right now, hand it to someone who will tell you the truth, give them a date, and follow up on that date instead of waiting for them to circle back on their own. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e15-knowing-what-you-need Timestamps: 00:00 Feedback versus reassurance 00:25 Direct feedback from racing as a kid 02:18 Playtesting Perspective Flip and deadlines 04:26 The difference between asking for feedback and asking for reassurance 05:22 Nice versus kind 07:05 The backyard landscaping story

  4. Jun 2

    Attitude and Effort: Practicing Discomfort Before You Need It

    There's a gardening process called hardening off. When you've grown seedlings inside and want to move them outside, you don't just put them out and leave them there. You bring them out for an hour, then back in. The next day, a couple of hours. Then half a day, until they can stay outside on their own. In this house right now, the mantra is attitude and effort. One kid is learning to keep playing a game after he's lost. The other is being asked to show up for gym and track and try, not win just try. And the household rule is that if the kids are being asked to push into discomfort, the adults have to be doing it too, which is part of why this podcast, and Tesseros, and learning AI tools in the open, all exist. You don't build resilience by thinking your way through fear. You build it through small, repeated exposure, the same way a plant hardens off. Cold calls, an uncomfortable conversation, a new tool you don't know how to use yet, all work the same way. If it's your feelings on the line and not your safety, you go out for an hour and you come back. This week's Tessera: Pick the one thing you've been avoiding because it feels uncomfortable, not because it's actually risky, and give it one small, contained practice effort. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e14-practicing-discomfort Timestamps: 00:45 The household mantra of attitude and effort 01:54 Practicing discomfort (The sidewalk test) 03:19 Shifting from fear to logic at work 06:12 The gardening process of hardening off 07:38 The web of skills: Harmony over balance 10:50 Experiencing one uncomfortable repetition today

  5. May 20

    Perspective: Choosing Your Lens

    We went for a hike over the weekend and my youngest was not into it. He was done before we left the house. Then the grassland changed to forest, streams appeared, the temperature dropped, the air got damp, and the birds started sounding different. He forgot to complain because things got interesting: a small waterfall, caves built into the rock where people had had fires. He stopped counting how long he'd been walking and started getting excited about what was coming next. It wasn't until we were almost back out that he asked if we were almost there. The trail didn't get shorter. He didn't develop more endurance. What changed is what he was looking at, and that changed the whole experience. Perspective is a functional skill, not a personality trait, and it's different from changing the thing itself. Both moves are useful, and choosing the wrong one costs you. This week's Tessera: Pick one thing that's felt immovable lately and run it through three lenses before deciding what needs to change: what would an optimist see, what would someone looking back on this in a year see, and what's the most sideways, absurd angle that could still technically be true? Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e13-choosing-your-lens Timestamps: 00:36 The hike and shifting perspective 02:18 Perspective as a functional skill 04:55 The three lenses behind Perspective Flip 06:58 Using AI to reframe and build 08:42 Changing the stories we tell about ourselves 10:52 Applying the three lenses this week

  6. May 5

    Jump the Track: Knowing When to Pivot

    My fridge died a couple weeks ago, in the morning, right as we were getting ready for school. A power surge took out several appliances across the neighborhood. It still had lights, but the control panel was blank except for a row of eights, and neither compressor was kicking on. I spent about 90 minutes with Gemini working through it methodically before landing on the control board being fried, and the repair not being worth it. That's the moment that pushed me back into an idea I'd been chasing down for a friend a few weeks earlier: the railroad track analogy from episode 154 of Moonshots with Peter Diamandis and will.i.am. The analogy: building a career or a life used to mean choosing a track and staying disciplined on it. Now the tracks themselves get moved, sometimes blown up, while we're still traveling on them, and the skill isn't staying on track anymore, it's developing the agility to jump to another one without breaking everything in the transition. This week's Tessera: Name one thing you're still trying to make work even though part of you already knows the track has shifted, and ask honestly whether you're staying because it's still going somewhere, or because leaving feels like losing. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e12-knowing-when-to-pivot Timestamps: 00:45 The railroad track analogy for resiliency and agency 03:10 The broken fridge and troubleshooting with Gemini 05:25 Pausing the kitchen remodel to get clarity 07:50 Publishing the new Tesseros pages and the fear before hitting go 10:20 Using AI as an iterative tool for quick wins 12:10 Applying the railroad track idea to work and life

  7. Apr 21

    Harmony and Integration: Why Your Business Isn't Separate From Your Life

    Someone asks you at the soccer field, or school pickup, or a community barbecue, so what do you do? And the answer feels complicated, because you don't want your work to be your entire identity, but it's where you spend most of your time, it's how you pay your mortgage, it's what's turning over in your head at 11pm when you meant to be asleep. For entrepreneurs, your business isn't separate from your life, and it never was. A lot of the friction, the guilt, the pressure to switch off, the sense that you're not doing balance well, comes from expecting otherwise. Harmony, not balance, is the goal. Balance is equal weight on both sides. Harmony is different parts working toward the same thing, because your business and your life are made of the same material, your energy, your values, your time. What depletes one depletes the other, and what fills one can fill the other too. This week's Tessera: Pick one moment from the last week where you felt guilty for thinking about work outside work hours, and look at it through the opposite lens: did it actually cost you something, or was it just the story that you should have been fully off? Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e11-integration Timestamps: 00:46 The integration of business and life 01:43 The Tesseros pivot to entrepreneurs 03:22 Navigating a shifting AI landscape 04:36 Harmony over balance 05:54 Externalizing the thought thread 08:52 Full, not busy, and this week's challenge

  8. Apr 7

    Better Than It Was: Making Progress When You're Depleted

    My five-year-old wanted more iPad time, so I told him if he wanted that, he needed to help move the house forward first. I'd asked him to wipe down his bathroom counters. He wanted to scrub the toilets instead. I wasn't going to say no to that. I got the cleanser in, he got the scrub brush, and I went on to other projects while he worked. When he came to get me, I asked if it was all the way clean. Almost, he said, it's as good as I can get it right now. Is that good enough? Of course it is. It's a five-year-old scrubbing a toilet. I didn't go redo it, so he never felt like he'd wasted his time. Coming back from spring break into some hard news and a couple of short weeks that made it difficult to get organized, I keep landing on the same idea: things don't have to be perfect, they have to be better than they were. This week's Tessera: Stop waiting until you have the energy for the full version of something, and instead match the smallest useful version of it to whatever energy you actually have right now. Read the companion article at https://tesseros.com/tessory-e10-progress-when-depleted Timestamps: 00:45 A chaotic return from spring break 02:15 Leaning on the robots 03:30 Maintaining a menu of projects 04:45 Minimum viable improvements 07:15 Switching modes instead of pushing through 09:20 Quiet business administration and automated reports

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About

This is where the experimenting happens. Tessory is the forge of Tesseros. Biweekly stories from life and work as we try things, break things, and figure out what actually sticks. AI tools, household fixes, work projects, family routines. No tech background required. Honest experiments and the small shifts that come from them. New episodes every other Tuesday. Start anywhere. hello@tesseros.com . tesseros.com/tessory

Information

  • Creator
    Monet Nielsen
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Monet Nielsen
  • Show Website
    Tessory