Blog

In relay sports, the anchor person is strongest or fastest competitor on the team. They help pick up the slack at the last stage of the race and hopefully get the squad across the finish line before the competition. However, in the sport of business, the anchor person is a bit different. They’re not necessarily the fastest or smartest, but what they bring to the organizational table is a…

Believe it or not, the best part about having a nametag tattooed on my chest is not when strangers ask me to open my shirt and flash them in public. It’s when my friends flash people for me. Here’s how it usually happens. Someone will be talking to me about my nametag for the first time. They’ll begin asking some practical questions about the backstory and logistics of my…

My friend recently switched from a small nonprofit job to a corporate philanthropy position. When asked what the biggest difference was, she said: It’s so refreshing to actually have resources. At my last job, people would yell at me for printing something in color. If you’ve ever worked for a startup before, you can relate. Words like scrappiness and ownership aren’t clichés, they’re necessities. Because in any bootstrapped environment,…

One of life’s great satisfactions is leaving. Making the decision that you’ve done what you needed to do, feeling complete about an event or experience, and then just walking out the door. Without justification, without guilt, and without the fear that somebody is going to call you out for leaving when you did. It’s so empowering. Because the tendency to stay longer than you want to is quite strong….

Being ourselves is important. We now live in a world that places a considerable burden on each of us as individuals to come up with some unique self to be and rewards us accordingly. For the most part, that’s a useful thing. But at a certain point, that pressure of individuality can become an impediment to our growth. If we’re holding onto that identity ship with our fingernails, unable…

There was a new guy at our office a few years ago, back when people still went to offices. In our first interaction, he noticed my nametag and thanked me for wearing it, as he had about forty new coworkers to meet that day. This is a common interaction in a group setting. People will assume my nametag is worn specifically to help them feel more welcome. Which is…

Happiness is overrated in the macro and underrated in the micro. Because on a major scale, there are so many things in this life more important than being happy. Happiness isn’t the target, it’s what we get for hitting it. Personally, my target it fulfillment. Which comes from making meaning in line with my values. If that is intentionally achieved, my incidental reward is happiness. On a minor scale,…

Anyone can be mindful if things are going well. Meditating on a mountaintop doesn’t take a ton of skill. The real question is, what is your default response to life’s difficult moments? Stoic philosophers promote a life in harmony within the universe, over which one has no direct control. Frankl later coined a term for this called response flexibility. His research found that between the stimulus and response, there…

Time can be the great thinner of things. Especially when it comes to our cherished habits and beliefs. Because the older we get, and the smaller our ego and pride get, the more we engage our capacity to outgrow what’s no longer working for us. And this process doesn’t have to be painstaking. It’s certainly a grieving process, as any change is. But the thinning is less about renouncing…

Sorkin’s monologue at the end of the most successful baseball movie in history makes a powerful point about evolution: Every time you start threatening the way that people do things, every time that happens, whether it’s a government, a way of doing business, whatever, the people who are holding the reins, they have their hands on the switch, they go batshit crazy. It’s tribalism at its most human. Because…