A Blog on Community, Design and Technology
From the category archives:
When it comes to getting things done, the old adage “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is deceptively over-simplified. OK, sure, it’s pithy and it captures why being connected to others is important, but there are a lot of assumptions built in to the expression that we have to implicitly accept to [...]
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When it comes to our work, wouldn’t we all be happier and more motivated if we were given the freedom to chose what we do, how we do it, when we do it and who we work with? What does having autonomy at work mean to you and where’s the sweet spot?
Special thanks to Daniel [...]
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I spent a couple of happy, quiet hours last night with my nose in Pamela Slim’s book Escape from Cubicle Nation. She makes some powerful arguments for why passion is a necessary ingredient to a happy work life. This well worded bit of wisdom stood out:
“What many people don’t realize is that when you force yourself [...]
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It’s not always easy to tell who’s really leading when an entire team is just going through the motions and following procedures in a manual that they’ve all used before for similar projects. When all the variables for a project are known and the expectations and plan are clear to everyone from the very beginning, [...]
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There’s a reason people say “try walking a mile in their shoes“. Achieving empathy isn’t just about putting yourself in someone else’s position, it’s also about seeing that position from someone else’s perspective. True empathy is being able to strip away your own thoughts, feelings and judgment in order to clearly see a situation through [...]
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Traditional rewards aren’t always as effective as we think and business as usual needs a new system of operating that’s more closely aligned with human nature. That’s Dan Pinks argument in a nutshell, and I think his case is strong. For those of you with some time, I’d highly recommend watching the full video. For [...]
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John Lehrer, author of How We Decide and Proust Was a Neuroscientist, wrote a piece for the Globe this week titled The Truth About Grit. The article highlights some important findings of studies done by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University.The findings suggest that personality traits like grit, rather than standardized measurements [...]
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It’s been almost a year since I read The Age Of Turbulence, but I find myself repeatedly returning to a few of Alan’s thoughts on human nature and self esteem that resonated with me. Despite being discussed in the context of human factors in economics, the following passage in my eyes stands easily on its [...]
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I had some fascinating and energetic conversations both online and off this week that started as shared reactions to my post The Cookie Jar Principle. The concept of giving more than you receive in your relationships (both on an individual level as well as in the context of community) seems to really resonate with people [...]
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Give more than you take. It’s as simple as that. If we embrace this one powerful principal in our lives, individually we will enjoy meaningful, vibrant relationships and collectively create a culture of abundance. If we can’t, we end up with an empty jar.
We can all point to a friend or colleague who breaks the [...]
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According to Jonathan Haidt, there’s one key personality trait (more than any other) that predicts who becomes liberal and and who becomes conservative. In this lecture, Haidt draws on the latest from developmental and moral psychology and makes a very persuasive argument why “openness to experience” – that craving for novelty, diversity, variety, travel and [...]
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The most influential communicators are the ones that can boil an idea down to its core and translate it into simple, straightforward language. Here’s a perfect example from Seth Godin:
“Persistence isn’t using the same tactics over and over. That’s just annoying. Persistence is having the same goal over and over.”
Simple. Profound. Right on the money.
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If you chose to only read one book this year, I strongly urge you to consider this one. It ranks at the very top of a small collection of books that have fundamentally changed the way I think. Daniel Gilbert is not only brilliant, his writing style is irrepressibly humorous, charming and entirely accessible. Stumbling [...]
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I wish more people in the business world would get how they create negative, counterproductive atmospheres when mistakes are made and blame is casually thrown around as a bi-product of scorched-egos. The following short, taken from my recent reading of What Happy People Know – How the New Science of Happiness Can Change Your Life [...]
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As an African proverb says, “Until lions have their historians, all tales of hunting will glorify the hunter.”
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Last night I had a hankering to revisit a book that I read in Grad School called Emotional Intelligence – Why It can Matter more than IQ. For the emotionally aware, it’s a great read, albeit a little tough going given all the neuro-psychology lingo, but it’s pretty damn intriguing. After pulling it out of [...]
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I dont know where I heard this quote, but I had it written down on a piece of scrap paper and I, apparently, still think it’s worth writing down. Although short, it’s reasonably profound advice.
“Appreciate certain facets of people for what they are without the expectation of renaissance men.”
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