Ideas are free, execution is priceless.

During a recent family holiday dinner, our poodle shaggy plume of a tail knocked my drink onto the hardwood floor. Splattered everywhere, including onto my shoes. My mother about had a heart attack, while a few other relatives gasped audibly. But for some reason, it didn’t bother me. Not even in the slightest. There was no pet scolding, hand wringing, pulse racing or expletive screaming. While continuing my conversation…

Despite being the world’s foremost expert on nametags, labeling is something that I try to stay away from. Not physically, obviously, as there has literally been a label on my shirt every day for over twenty years of my life. But the practice of mentally, intellectual and emotionally labeling myself, that’s a different story. It’s just so tempting to grossly dismiss my own value by virtue of slapping a…

Harvard’s business journal published a fascinating article written by a professor of psychology. Markman writes that when something has gone wrong at work, people blame lack of communication. The assumption is that greater access to information is the solution. But before you leap into action, and in the process create a lot more work for yourself, let me suggest that you think of the complaints about communication problems as the canary…

How long does one nametag last? For a question people ask me so often, there’s no good answer. Calculating the average shelf life of a single sticker is basically an unsolvable equation. There are simply too many variables to consider. First, there’s the issue of waste. I reuse my nametags on multiple shirts during the week, since it conserves paper. And so, there’s no way to properly track each…

A commonality among unhappy people is, they don’t pursue their values with sufficient intensity. They continuously fail to live up to their own ideals. And without that foundation of true nature, it becomes very difficult to build a fulfilling life. Everything feels like an uphill battle. Turns out, though, that when our ambitions are married to our highest values, that becomes the positive driving force that enables us to…