I have a friend who is a computer science expert of sorts. But he wasn’t always that way. When he was young, the people around him threw up their hands when they encountered computer problems. They looked for someone to fix […]
Getting an email inbox under control is a daunting task. It’s worse when you have no easy way to prioritize and batch the email answers that master most. For a long time I’ve labored through inboxes newest to oldest (while […]
I was never really an athlete in my younger days. Sure, I played some flag football, played some pickup games, and the rest. But dedicated, hard-going, competitive and cooperative training? Not so much. The shame is that I missed something […]
As a devotee of the Danish art of “hygge,” I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes a space “cozy.” And since I go hard when I’m out working or playing out of the home, I especially want […]
When’s the last time a short film punched you in the gut in a happy, beautiful sort of way? Enter “The Man and His Wife,” a silent film written and directed by my friend Levi Adkins*. The story (kept to […]
Over 16 million humans died in the war that ended this day 100 year ago – on November 11, 1918. This is Armistice Day a hundred years later, and it should not go unremembered. Death like that deserves mourning, and peace […]
Some of my favorite memories of working at my company include the chores that “weren’t my job”: moving boxes, ordering lunch, restocking the fridge, doing A/Vs setup, doing customer support, even sitting at the front desk. We now have some wonderful […]
I remember first hearing about the ancestor worship practiced in some world cultures. I was bemused – clearly this was a silly superstition – one of the sillier religious beliefs that wasn’t mine. But now the phenomenon of ancestor worship […]
In any workplace, you are going to need the help of others to be as effective as you can be. That said, there are two ways to approach getting help. The first is entitlement. If you want to have people […]
When most people think of hospitality, they think of hosting and cooking meals for guests. If they’re southern, they think about serving sweet tea. In any case, you probably think of “hospitality” as something you just do at home. But making people feel […]
I used to dream about becoming “self-sufficient” – growing and making most everything myself. And I put in a good amount of daydreaming time and real work toward that, raising all kinds of poultry, growing a garden, reading books on […]
Everyone fears Mondays, which is probably why I love the idea of rebelling against the expectations of Mondays. I share the opinion with Gary Vaynerchuk that you should go all out in your Monday workday. But that’s its own post. […]
What’s the right balance between being a specialist (being really great at one thing) and being a generalist (being OK at a lot of things)? I and a lot of other people have spent a lot of time thinking this question through. I […]
I’ve been working at the same company for 4 years. So why did I sit in on an orientation presentation series meant for recently hired employees? You pick up on a lot of things here and there from a long […]
I love riding the wave of a growing company. Everything changes as employee headcount grows, and it’s one of the best personal challenges around. One genuine surprise from my experience so far has been seeing how headcount correlates with workload. […]
Not another year Not a fate of shame Another cycle of human days Should not end with a smaller ambition Not another year The coming end carries word That all that is undone before me Can yet see mighty […]
Young people have always been crazy – just crazy in different ways. From pulling pranks to drinking to taking physical risks to chasing the opposite sex, we do a lot of things to toe the line. I used to scoff more at […]
Have you ever wondered how our time will be remembered? You start to ask this question a lot if you’ve read a lot of history. The passage of time can either paint a positive or negative picture of how you and […]
If you think your company is uniquely strange and “not normal,” you’re right, but you’re also wrong. Every company sometimes seems to have hierarchies that make no sense, or places where hierarchy seems desperately needed. Every company sometimes seems to be missing an […]
SPOILER ALERT: This post contains major spoilers for the ending of Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. One of my favorite scenes in all of film comes from Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven. The Christian lord Balian has organized a (so far) successful […]
Set aside the ethics of hunting itself, and you find that *within* the act of hunting, there’s a whole world of right and wrong. Tonight I sat in a tower stand for hours without seeing any activity from the deer population. […]
My father and I climbed into a tower overlooking our farm tonight and sat waiting for deer to appear. And like any good hunters, we waited. My father is probably the hardest-working person I know, and he’s trained me to work hard, too. […]
Once upon a time, there was a man who traded a red paperclip for a car. Now granted, he went through a *lot* of intermediary trades to get there – from paperclip to pen, pen to something else, and so […]
There are few simpler or better gifts you can give than a good photo portrait of someone. Have you ever taken a good camera lens and tried? That’s what I did throughout the weekend at Georgia Tech hackathon HackGT. I doubt […]
n. Dilettante – a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge. People tell me that I’m good at writing. It’s a flattering thing to say about a dilettante like me. They […]
I’ve never reviewed a 5K before, but that’s not going to stop me. Speaking of things that don’t stop me: the amazing, grueling terrain/obstacle course assembled by the team at Terrain Race this weekend at Lake Lanier in North Georgia. In […]
As a marketer, my eyes are always peeled for tactics other companies and organizations are using to get attention and brand exposure. All great marketing follows the same patterns, and all great marketing patterns can be replicated. Here are few […]
So, you want a brand and a company that everyone will love? It’s counterintuitive, but you shouldn’t start by working on your brand or working on your company. You should start by working on your hiring and your team. In the […]
I’m spending the weekend tabling at a hackathon for my company, so I’m thinking a lot about tabling right now and how to do it right. The common script for an interaction between an event sponsor/exhibitor and attendee is as […]
Scooters at the office? Lightsaber battles? Champagne and fries? Starting work at 10 AM? We’ve had it all at my company. These are the strange trappings of the Silicon Valley startup culture that’s arisen in the last decade. They have their problems. They can be […]