credit: Cherie Cullen (US Army/DOD) And Get Smarter and More Effective in the Process The best way to get smarter is to ask questions — a lot of them. When we ask questions, we open ourselves up to collecting more information — information that we wouldn’t necessarily get otherwise. That’s largely because when we ask questions — if we do it right — we… Read More »How to Ask Better Questions
credit: Pixabay At this time 2 years ago, I was driving 7 hours to Columbia, Missouri. My mission was simple: meet with 3 professors in the Philosophy Department at the University of Missouri and persuade them to consider me for their PhD program, despite my lackluster academic record and credentials. I Had a Dream You see,… Read More »On Survivorship Bias and the Pursuit of Dreams
credit: Ed Schipul Analogies are helpful. They can help us think about things in new and useful ways. They help us to understand complex things that we’re heavily biased about by using something we have little bias about. Whenever I find a useful analogy, I try to share it. So, as I paid a lot of… Read More »5 Things About Productivity and Success that I Learned from Watching Baseball
And How Honest Folks Can Use Them Victor Lustig was perhaps one of the most successful and notorious con-artists in modern times. He was persuasive enough to con two different businessmen to “buy” the Eiffel Tower from him (which, of course, he didn’t own). He even pulled off a scam where he got Al Capone to… Read More »The 10 Commandments for Con-Artists
credit: Pixabay How Writing a Weekly Newsletter Has Helped Me Become a Better Writer, a Better Reader, and Care More About Adding Value. A few months ago, I launched Woolgathering, a weekly newsletter in which I provide 4 main things: links to stuff I’ve written (almost exclusively on Medium) in the past week a brief meditation… Read More »The Unexpected Power of a Newsletter
In 1940, author George Orwell published a brief piece in The New English Weekly. It was a review of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He admits that he understands Hitler’s appeal — not just as a charismatic speaker, but as the orator of something deep and true about our needs as humans: …human beings don’t only want comfort, safety,… Read More »The Dangers of the New Entrepreneurial Mindset
The old adage goes “actions speak louder than words,” and by and large, people seem to buy it. But I’m not sure that I do. Actually, let me step that back a bit. I believe that actions are what is important. Actions are the things we do that affect other people. Actions move projects and… Read More »Sticks and Stones: On the Underappreciated Power of Words
I write a lot each day. About 12 hours (or more) of my day are spent hunched over a keyboard, clickity-clacking away at some email, blog post, or note. And though I have already written so much throughout my life, I always fee like two things are true: I need to write more — a lot more.… Read More »Writing Is Magical
And How Not Accepting that Can Cost You I was at a sales seminar about a year ago, when I heard a piece of advice so stereotypically salesy that I nearly did a spit-take: “you can’t be willing to take ‘no’ for an answer”. Sure it was actually not that candidly said, but distilled down, that… Read More »Sometimes, the Answer Really is “No”
credit: Brendan C (Flickr) If you clicked on this article, odds are you’re interested in self-improvement — personal growth — whatever you like to call it. You want to get better at whatever it is you do, or you want to start doing something new in order to make yourself better. You’ll find numerous articles around the web that will… Read More »There Is No Self-Improvement if You’re Not Already Pretty Good
