Category Archives: Insights

Office Politics and Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

In reading an interesting article on office politics today, I was reminded of the power of self-fulfilling prophecy. In particular, Ben Horowitz noted the following in discussing how to handle complaints from one executive about the competence of another: On … Continue reading

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Why Twitter, Facebook, etc Seem So Addictive

Many theories have been offered for why Twitter and Facebook and [fill in the blank] seem so addictive. One of the theories that makes a lot of sense to me was recently offered by Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational. … Continue reading

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Being a Possibilian

David Eagleman, the neuroscientist who wrote Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, calls himself a possibilian. Basically, instead of adapting a belief about the afterlife, he likes to think of what the possibilities are, from no afterlife to a reincarnation … Continue reading

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Paul Graham on Your Top Idea

Paul Graham has a nice write-up on the top idea in your mind. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article: I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That’s the idea … Continue reading

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Copy and Paste Living

Over the holiday weekend, I noticed that one of the mp3′s that I had uploaded to this site would not play. Actually, even more confounding than that, it would play in the Safari web browser but not in Chrome or … Continue reading

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Your Inner Voice

I like to periodically read the Commencement address that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford in June 2005. He gave the address not long after learning that he had pancreatic cancer and that the initial prognosis was just a few months … Continue reading

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Are You Focusing on the Right Numbers?

Ever find yourself focusing your attention on a set of numbers, making decisions based on the numbers, only to find out later that they were really not good indicators after all? I’ll give you an example of how I was … Continue reading

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Make Money, But Give Freely of Yourself, Too

It’s great when you can make money doing what you love. Not everyone gets to do that, of course. But, regardless of which group you fit in, you should still have an outlet (or more than one) in which you … Continue reading

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Need to Understand Motivation? This 11-minute Video Will Help

We all love money, don’t we? And most of us probably think that money is the key to motivating people: more money = more motivation = better performance. Well this formula is true when applied to people who crank out … Continue reading

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Contributing versus Achieving

Management guru Jim Collins, in recollecting a day he spent with the legendary Peter Drucker years ago, said that Drucker told him The critical question is not “What can I achieve?” but “What can I contribute?” When we think about … Continue reading

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