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What fun is life if I’m not making jokes all the time?
Easily amused is supposed to be an insult. Cynical people use this label to imply someone is stupid, simpleminded and unsophisticated. It’s code for low brow, undiscerning and prone to infantile joy. The easily amused person is satisfied by the lowest common denominator. Our social norms view them as inherently negative individuals who lack intellectual and emotional depth. After all, we live in a culture that emphases productivity and…
The sudden motivation to restore your threatened freedom
Do you know somebody who hates being told what to do? Neuroscience researchers explain this personality is called control averse. These people resent restrictions on their freedom of choice and are compelled to reassert this freedom. A study even showed how certain brain regions were more strongly activated during people’s controlled decisions than their free decisions. And the reasoning was, people felt misunderstood and untrusted. But hating being told…
How can we replace what we think with what we know?
Despite living in a time where all the world’s knowledge is available to anyone with a cell phone, we still live in an uncertain realm, filled with empty space, hanging questions and knowledge gaps. And because of the fundamental human desire for predictability and control, we eagerly fill those holes. Our brains have a way of color correcting the world, so to speak, when we believe it’s been filtered…
I’m not convinced your interpretation of me is accurate
In most professional relationships, whether it’s doctor patient, boss employee, interviewer interviewee, therapist client, teacher student or coach player, there are always going to be power dynamics and knowledge gaps. And these imbalances can make it difficult for us to challenge the advice and instruction of the person in the authority position. Resisting makes us feel guilty, impolite or ungrateful. Especially if there is an investment of time or…
I didn’t know how good I had it at the time
A trend you’ll notice in memoirs, documentaries and autobiographies is when the character looks back on some particular period of their lives with fondness, gratitude and wonderment. Maybe it was their childhood when they had boundless energy, no cell phones and romped around the neighborhood every afternoon until dark. Or adolescence when they were coming of age and the whole world was still in front of them. Or maybe…
Conventions about which procedures to perform first in any given project
One of the few lessons I retained from high school algebra was a principle called the order of operations. This is a collection of rules that reflect conventions about which procedures to perform first in a given mathematical equation. The guiding acronym for the order of operations was pemdas, aka, parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction. The way we remembered that was through the mnemonic device, please excuse my…
Circling around the crystalline sky, barely flapping my wings
I used to set a lot of goals. Dozens of them every year. This was a deeply meaningful personal growth exercise that motivated me to accomplish great things in my life. And it’s funny, I will occasionally go back and review my old lists of goals and visions boards from when I first started my publishing business. Clearly, I was a man on a mission. All the cylinders were…
How is this person just like me?
Everyone is the same everywhere. We’re all on the same side of the fence, for better and for worse. Wherever we go, we end up with the same beauty and craziness of humanity, no matter who we meet. People are people. They generally act the same. Now, if this sounds like a gross overgeneralization to you, let me invite you to not be so ethnocentric. Because it’s a philosophy…
Appreciation is the higher order construct
On my last day of work at a startup, my boss sent me one final memo. Scott, you’re the only employee who ever consistently emailed the company leaders with a thank you about your bonuses. We really appreciate it. I was both touched and shocked. How could that be possible? You’re telling me that when forty employees get a bonus check for a thousand dollars apiece, simply for doing the…
The best part about being a sophomore is, you’re not a freshman anymore
Going from zero to one is significantly different than going from one to two. Because the first time you have an experience, you’re just a rookie. You don’t have the benefit of context, comparison, data, precedent and perspective. And so, the event makes you feel blindsided. Disoriented. Like somebody pulled the rug out from under you. Here’s an example of a zero to one experience from my own career….
