If you’ve ever wronged someone, you might know how the feeling of guilt drags along behind you like a ball and chain. If you’re like me, you tend to judge yourself more harshly even than other people judge you. If […]
Once upon a time I (with moderate seriousness) considered trying to set the world record for the longest streak of daily blog writing. Collecting jelly beans or forming the world’s largest PokemonGo flash mob just wasn’t going to be my thing. I certainly […]
*SPOILER ALERT FOR GAME OF THRONES, OBVIOUSLY. Don’t listen to this if you haven’t watched the show!* We’re excited to be back podcasting on the philosophical themes of Game of Thrones, and the first episode of this final season brought great […]
Interviews are sort of like antibiotics. Yes, they’re useful to bring great new people into your team. But it’s also important to use interviews to keep the bad eggs from spoiling your culture and productivity. And as with any antiobiotic-germ relationship, the germs are constantly […]
There’s a idea in our culture that spontaneity and adventure are linked: Some friend shows up to our house at 5 AM and invites us on a trip to the mountains. We say yes. The mountains are beautiful under the rising sun. The memories last forever. […]
How do you stand out as a vendor when you’re walking a conference floor full of companies trying to sell their stuff? Over my few years of startup marketing experience I’ve started to pick up the habit of seeing unconventional […]
Permission is the enemy of speed. Everyone knows this. But I think what’s less discussed is the negative psychosomatic effect that permission has. Just *knowing* that you have to ask permission adds a certain friction that makes everything a bit […]
Game of Thrones season 8 is almost here, which means conversation about the themes, characters, and plots of the show is about to come to a water cooler near you. Go ahead, geek out! I’m looking forward to being a fan […]
This week at the office saw the introduction of James’s Jiu Jitsu Move of the Day. In a series of events that could only happen at my company, I welcomed coworkers into the marketing pod and proceeded to show them how to […]
I didn’t finish everything I wanted to accomplish this week. I didn’t work hard enough. I didn’t plan well enough. I didn’t prioritize well enough. When this happens, I sometimes get the thought – from my own training or from other people – that […]
How often do you see your aunts and uncles? If like me you’re grown and out of your home town, you probably don’t get much facetime with these people, even if they were a bigger part of your life when […]
Why do I still have a Christmas tree (albeit a miniature one) in my bedroom? At first, the answer was the obvious one: I was too lazy to take it to one of the proper disposal centers. And so I […]
Fact: there are zero enjoyable games in the world that lack an element of challenge. Also fact: there are few challenges in the world that can’t be enjoyed as games. I don’t like long checkout lines, for instance, but I […]
User experience, n.: User experience (UX) refers to a person’s emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service. – Wikipedia You can’t swing a cat in the software world without hitting a software person talking about UX – user experience. […]
Jumping, running, dodging, lifting, fighting, throwing – one day I will never be able to do these feats again. This sort of realization (among others) helped to make me a disciplined athlete for the first time in my life. I took up […]
Spend too much of your time reacting to and defending your work or your life from other people? Reactivity is no way to live or succeed. I’ve learned this in different contexts, but in one I received some particularly useful advice from my CEO. […]
In the past few days I’ve been making a focused effort to clean up my computer’s hard drive and move more files into the cloud – where I have a slightly more organized system. More organization and less clutter is […]
Running isn’t just about exercise, or about mental conditioning. Half of the fun of running is seeing beautiful places for the first time at high speed. Here are a few of my favorite scenic runs for your next running outing: The […]
Have you ever been on a roll? Have you gone for days or weeks without breaking a habit or missing a beat? Have you then lost all motivation? Have you crashed and burned or sabotaged yourself or procrastinated even while knowing […]
Cooperative fighting (AKA voluntarily letting someone hurt you) is such an absurd idea that it’s bound to contain some funny and interesting moments. This is true of jiu jitsu – when I’m rolling, I get a few unique enjoyments that don’t come up […]
The older I get, the more I realize how ballsy it is to show up and do the same thing week after week. When I was younger, I had the impression that it was the pursuers of novelty and the […]
I’ll admit it: I really like to feel needed. I like to know that there’s something I can (and must) bring to the table for others. I like knowing that I have unique skills. I like knowing that I give […]
Some of us long for variety in our lives. We like reading new books, trying new kinds of skills, going to new places. We can’t stand the idea of being pigeonholed. We’re the kind of people psychologists would pin down […]
Should we really want travel make our world feel “smaller”? Last week I took a flight on Delta Airlines, and their pre-flight advertisement followed this theme of a smaller, more accessible world as it showed beautiful images of people frolicking in tropical […]
My most creatively generative hour+ (lately) of the week is the time I’m in church. My pew-mates can attest to this. Every few minutes (or more frequently) I might pick up a pen and scribble something into the vanishing margins of my […]
It’s a powerful thing to name your enemies. By naming them, you can keep always in front of you what you’re up against. So I figure I ought to take a page from Arya Stark’s playbook and start keeping tabs on […]
There is a phenomenon I’ve noticed over the nearly 5 years since I decided not to go to college. I’ll call it the college opt-out look. It happens like this: PERSON: Are you in school? / Where did you go to […]
“He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly. . .” There’s a great tradition in the […]
I hate being micromanaged. And yet I have a tendency (at least sometimes) to micromanage others. I hate it when people interrupt me. And yet I have a tendency to interrupt. I hate disorder in others. And yet I can […]
Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world in which humans had faith in other humans? Wouldn’t it be nice if people had faith that good wins out over evil, that virtue leads to happiness, and that freedom creates the […]