I bought my younger daughter a set of Legos for Christmas. The set came with a little, orange plastic tool that looks like this: It’s called a Lego brick separator. It seems to be common add-in for most of the bigger sets now, but definitely didn’t exist when I was a kid. Watching my daughter
I’ve seen the parable of the Taoist Farmer quoted in three different places in the past week. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s the story of how a very even-keeled man interprets events in his life. Seemingly good things happen. Seemingly bad things happen. Either way, the farmer is unmoved. There was a farmer whose horse ran
Parenting books highlight that positive praise works far better than negative criticism. The advice given is that, rather than criticizing your child each time they do something wrong, wait until they do something right and then praise the heck out of it. It turns out this works pretty well with adults, too. And, positive praise
The original Karate Kid features one of the great villains of classic cinema. Johnny Lawrence, portrayed by William Zabka, is a stereotypical 1980’s bad guy. Lawrence is California-surfer cool, handsome, wealthy and popular. He and the rest of the Cobra Kai dojo ruthlessly bully and menace Daniel LaRusso throughout the movie, only to be rebuffed
When did changing your mind become a bad thing? Good decisions require a solid understanding of the relevant ground conditions and thoughtful analysis of all readily available information. And, the available resources for making them are always some kind of constraint – be it time, money, or effort – otherwise we’d continue to analyze forever
It seems there’s always a big, looming argument or problem that eats up all our time and energy. We obsess about it. We replay it in our heads over and over. We methodically plan our reaction to every possible scenario. And, we wake up in the middle of the night with new ideas on how
According to timeanddate.com, today is Gummi Worm Day. Tomorrow is Corn Fritter Day. And, Friday will be Yellow Pig Day. I hadn’t heard of these before, until a Google search. But, once I started looking, something amazing happened. I found a new “holiday” for almost every single day of the year. In fact, some days
We’re all moving through the day so quickly that it seems we barely have time for a proper conversation anymore. We’re so eager to keep moving that at a speaker’s first pause for breath, we jump in – ready to dispense advice or solve their problem. This might be understandable if most people were looking
One of many things Amazon is famous for its two pizza rule. The rule simply states that every internal team should be small enough that it could be fed by two pizzas. It’s unclear whether Amazon adjusts for the specific appetites of the team members involved, but the broader point is clear. This rule is
This is how all change happens. Change that looks like it happened overnight rarely ever did. Meaningful change requires years of hard work and effort from dedicated people behind the scenes. It’s just that most people never see behind the curtain to experience the “gradual” side of the equation. Your decisions and actions today (both
