Level 1: NOT BUSY My schedule is wide open. I can choose infinite paths. Zero commitments. The weekend. I sleep like a baby. Life is good, but am I living my best life?
Level 2: STUFF TO DO I have a few commitments wandering around my brain. They are reasonable, knowable, and not deadline-based. I
If a customer, a colleague or a friend is generous enough to share their feelings, those feelings are what they are. We might disagree with the assumptions that led to those feelings. But acknowled…
Put this one next to Dunning Kruger, which shows that people of low ability traditionally overrate how talented they are. The Massie Effect is the tendency of people who support good causes to beli…
In a competition between someone who knows the most and someone who is willing to learn the most, the edge usually goes to the curious and empathic professional, not the one who is simply protectin…
Sunday Firesides: Why Bad Things Happen to Good People (According to a Stoic)
One of the most difficult existential questions is why bad things happen to good people, especially if there’s a just, benevolent force at the helm of the universe. Seneca, an ancient Stoic philosopher, offers an answer that invites us to consider ourselves as athletes and warriors. He first observes that the “part of each man […]
This is version 2 of my take on recording a year’s worth of Plus Minus Next weekly reviews in a plain text app like Obsidian or iA Writer. Changes:Plus Minus Next now have their own pages, for viewing backlinksTip: use tags to identify Plus, Minus, or Next items in your interstitial journaling entriesThe download consists of a series of files in a folder. Be aware this is not a complete Obsidian vault: it's designed to be copied into your existing vault.You'll see that the weekly review page is essentially a simple list, as my approach is to stay away from app-specific plugins and features when a simple, more universal solution will do.There’s a different icon next to each month, chosen to reflect the seasons of the southern hemisphere. You may like to change them to suit your tastes or part of the world, or just delete them.Screenshot of Plus Minus Next page, showing Outline pane on the rightThe advantage of the icons goes beyond looking pretty: in the outline pane it’s easy to see which week numbers belong to which month, and which weeks cross from one month to another.If you’re new to Obsidian and would like to learn how to set up your notes from scratch, check out Nicole van der Hoeven’s getting started video.
More companies have been asking their employees to return to the office after a long, pandemic-induced period of working from home. One change this transition brings is not being able to access needed personal items from your household’s ample stock of supplies; you have to import all the things you like to have on hand […]
The problem with winning all the marbles is that the game is then over. And owning all the marbles is not really worth the effort if it means no one else has a chance going forward. And quick money…
Most leadership advice says the same thing: to be a good leader, you need to be generous, humble, and authentic. My guest, professor of organizational behavior Jeffrey Pfeffer, would say that kind of advice may make us feel good and represent the world as we’d like it to be, but it doesn’t actually work in […]
It’s the age-old question. What boosts creativity? What’s the best way to get in the zone? Hint: It’s not drugs and booze (although it might increase how
When markets are in turmoil, like they have been for most of this year, I like to have a buy-and-hold mindset when it comes to making new investments. It is hard to know when you’ve reached the bottom and can start buying again, but if you think about a ten or twenty-year hold, then it […]
Hurry, sure. We need to hurry. Hurry puts it up on our priority list. Hurry gives us urgency and focus. But rushing is something that leads to errors and then apologies. “I’m sorry, I r…
“I need your John Hancock.” “He’s the prodigal son of our family.” “That job was like working in the seventh layer of hell.” “He has a Willy Loman-esque resignation about him.” “We’re navigating between Scylla and Charybdis here.” Anybody with the literacy of an eighth-grader could read those sentences. Heck, a third-grader could read those […]
Try to fit in every general and conceptual detail when describing a very big concept and it’s likely that we’ll be confused. When you’re intent on explaining all of it, we glaze o…
Perhaps that super-genius is playing a very well-thought-out long game, anticipating every countermove with plenty of resources and alternatives at hand. It might be the local business you’re…
In the 19th century, scientists conducted dissections on live animals to study their living anatomy. Known as “vivisection,” the operations were highly controversial. While some argued that vivisection imparted valuable insights that couldn’t otherwise be gleaned, others felt the additional knowledge the practice produced was negligible, especially when weighed against the cruelty involved in harvesting […]
