Ideas are free, execution is priceless.

Imagine your boss hounds you for months to stay on top of a new project. That workload consumes a nice chunk of your time and attention, causing you additional stress that normal. Then, in the eleventh hour, right before you’re about to ship something out the door, your boss suddenly decides that project is no longer a priority. Look, thanks for all the awesome work you’ve done so far,…

Our society’s norm has become to instantly criticize anything that the public encounters. People have developed a zero tolerance policy for ideas that are different from their own, and so, their default response is to throw negative energy at others. If you haven’t been paying attention, here’s their strategy. Focus on what’s wrong, imply the worst, cast blame, try to control, devalue people. People actually think this works. Probably…

Buddhists teach a concept called the second arrow. It’s when a person encounters something that leads to pain, and then launches into a whole chorus of mental processes that lead to more suffering, often adding more pain than was there originally. The first arrow is our reality, like tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and face planting into dog poop. The second arrow is the sense of unworthiness…

Everyone seems to want to work faster, stronger, smarter, better and cheaper. But is that actually what drives optimal performance? Even if it does, do we really need yet another superlative to elevate our pulses and spike our blood pressure into the red zone? Doubt it. In my experience, the force multiplier of human potential is not any of those things. What has far more power is the practice…

One of my coworkers was a chronic kick the can down the road personality. She would consistently cancel and postpone our meetings. Three or four weeks in a row. Every time we were due for a check in on our latest project, her excuse was that she just needed got a better handle on things and get some projects off of her plate so she could prevent projects from…