Category: Work

  • Rebegin

    Rebegin

    Just like yesterday’s thought that you should keep all your passions and that consistency is best held lightly, here’s another one I’m reposting from Lucian James’ 24th Kō Strategy: The natural world is always changing, always in process. And so are you. You are not a thing, you are a process, a magnificent kind of…

  • Ask someone about their craft

    Ask someone about their craft

    This is so simple and so powerful. Any managers out there want to understand what motivates their employees? Want a surefire way to get a glimpse into a person’s values? Ask them a “craft question”.

  • How to approach a very big meeting or conference

    How to approach a very big meeting or conference

    I’m lucky to be traveling to a big work meet-up (aka company offsite) next week, however, it’s easy for me to be unfocused at large events like this. Too many people and too many choices. I tend to come away not knowing what I got out of it. This time around, I’m going to try…

  • Do you have a user guide for you?

    Do you have a user guide for you?

    Maybe you should? “A User Guide for a Person creates clarity on how you work—what you value, how you look at problems, what your blind spots or areas of growth are, and how to build trust with you.”

  • Family-friendly work

    Family-friendly work

    I started reading Of Boys and Men by Richard V. Reeves, and, as a man and a father who recently went part-time so that my wife could go to work full-time, there is a lot here that resonates, especially so the discussion around balancing work and family.

  • Energy makes time

    Energy makes time

    I’m a big believer that being a little selfish is a prerequisite to being able to be selfless. In other words, you need to take care of yourself in order to take care of others.

  • Sensitive antennae

    Sensitive antennae

    In the excellent book Unreasonable Hospitality, there is a chapter about managing relationships called “Relationships are simple. Simple is hard.” I saw the title of this chapter and jumped to it right away. 😃 So often, we confuse things by saying something is complicated when it’s really just hard.

  • The abundant mindset

    The abundant mindset

    The “growth mindset” has become a bit of a cliché, but there’s a good reason for that. Approaching things with a beginner’s mind is something we should all aspire to. On a similar note, The Abundant Mindset, one of my favorite chapters from Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, describes something very similar and equally powerful.