Blog
That’s the great thing about data, it doesn’t judge you
What should we care about? When humanity is dealing with numerous overlapping traumas, how are we supposed to know which problems to prioritize? There are no easy and simple answers for these questions, because there’s a mob mentality on what is important. Social pressure often decides what issues deserve our time, money and energy. The squeaky wheels gets the attentional oil. In fact, people might even call you out…
Until blood spurts and bits of flesh fly
Discipline takes care of you in ways that motivation can’t. Because your action isn’t conditional on feelings or mood, it hinges on commitment. Your fuel is not desire but will. Whereas if you work from a place of motivation, there is a particular mental and emotional state necessary to complete your task. Which you may or may not be able to access at any given moment. And that gives…
Bring talent to the table that’s transferable everywhere you go
In concentration camps, certain prisoners were selected by their captors to hold more advantaged positions within the population of the camp. Since these people possessed creative, linguistic or industrial skills, the guards viewed them as valuable assets. They gave them access to material benefits beyond those available to others, like warmer clothes, better shelter and more food. My friend wrote and directed a documentary about this very phenomenon. The…
Create a positive trajectory of entrepreneurial functioning
Did you know that resilience was somebody’s job? I stumbled upon a fascinating study in the international journal of management about the construct of organizational resilience. In the last few decades, this phenomenon has gained new momentum in academic literature, mainstream media and business publications. Numerous researchers revealed that companies, institutions and other entitles can survive and thrive amidst adversity or turbulence. As long as there are dedicated team…
The mental equivalent of a taffy pulling machine
People can spend an inordinate amount time worrying about, analyzing, and trying to understand or clarify particular thoughts and themes. They’ll engage in this exhausting a repetitive negative thought process that loops continuously in their mind without end or completion. As if replaying a certain scenario enough times could somehow change its outcome. Like the single woman who keeps reading the same text message over and over again, searching…
Questioning everything all of the time is exhausting and dumb
Innovation hinges on the ability to ask one crucial question. What if? It’s the fundamental thought experiment that challenges assumptions, explores possibilities and drives human imagination. Take a glance at your surroundings right now, and you’ll seen hundreds of objects that only exist because somebody somewhere asked the question, what if. As an example, on desk at this very moment is a bottle of sparkling water. But it’s not…
The variable is the rest of the world
A social experiment is a type of research. In fields like psychology and sociology, scientists are seeing how people behave in certain situations and respond to particular policies or programs. They divide individuals into two groups. Active participants, those who take action in an event, and respondents, those who react to the action, often who are unaware they’re part of the experiment. The goal, of course, is to monitor…
I don’t have to know jack squat about astrophysics
A filter is a way of viewing our experience of reality. It’s a tool that frames our observations about the world and ultimately gives us better results than we would have without it. And there are as many filters as there are people to see through them. We can create and deploy as many of them as we want, once we discover how the filter creation process works. Below…
Playing a game of seek and no hide
Let’s talk about the things we hide behind. There are so many ways to avoid being seen, noticed or interacted with in this world. And each tactic is more fascinating and seductive than the next. That’s human nature for you. We’re all expert at using things to protect ourselves from criticism, punishment and vulnerability. We have been conditioned to quell many of our top fears, like the fear of…
Is that you asking, or your fear asking?
Do you know someone who needs to check in over and over again to make sure everything is okay? Someone whose repetitive need for reassurance drives all of your interactions? It’s totally exasperating when you’re on the receiving end of it. Particularly when someone’s level of distress is high. People’s reassurance compulsion often goes up when their life is coming apart at the seams, so they work overtime to…
