General

Reading Time: < 1 minDoing less often requires doing more. The iPhone was far easier to use than other phones when it came out in 2007, but it took years to develop that kind of interface. Similar is the quote from Blaise Pascal that simply says “if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter“. Writing […]

Reading Time: < 1 minOver the years I’ve gotten better about this, but the “six-week delusion” still gets me pretty often. What is it? Here’s Juliet Funt explaining it in “A Minute to Think“: Sometimes we delay reeling in our tuna based on a thinking error I call the Six-Week Delusion. For example, if you’re asked to meet with […]

Reading Time: 2 minThere are some simple math problems that can stump a lot of people, like the “bat and a ball” question that I shared a few years ago. This is a related problem: This kind of issue comes up quite a bit. For another example, suppose you want to deposit four checks at the bank, but […]

Reading Time: 2 minAs a lifelong fan of the Detroit Lions, it’s been great to see them become an elite NFL team. I don’t know how long it will last, but it’s quite enjoyable right now as they’re clearly one of the best teams in football. There is one stat in particular that is crazy to me: over […]

Reading Time: < 1 minI was recently reading “The Challenger Sale“, and they got to talking about what makes a great sales manager. The book goes into some depth, but this part stood out to me when they were discussing the core attributes of a person (and not their sales skills specifically). From the book: Yet interestingly, we also […]

Reading Time: 2 minI’ve always been a fan of the phrase “the customer is always right” as long as you put the caveat “…in matters of taste” at the end of it. I certainly give no credit to rude or forceful people that use “the customer is always right” to try to get their way, but people can […]

Reading Time: < 1 minIf you’ve read some of my posts over the last few years, you’ve probably seen some of my fascination (and struggle) with the idea of separating decisions from outcomes. Brent Menswar’s book “Black Sheep” gives a simple name to it: outcome bias. Using an outcome to justify whether a decision is good or bad is […]

Reading Time: < 1 minThe difference between a stated goal and what the goal really is can be staggering. Take this simple idea from Madeleine L. Van Hecke’s book “Blind Spots“: Maybe it will hit you that you’ve been acting as if the goal of the outing was to “cover every inch of the zoo,” rather than to “have […]

Reading Time: < 1 minIn reading Tara Jaye Frank’s book “The Waymakers“, she shared an interesting thought that I think applies to many areas of life. She said: When I first became a mother at twenty-five, someone gave me a quote on a tiny piece of paper by Jill Churchill that read, “There is no way to be a […]

Reading Time: 3 minI was recently listening to the “How to take over the world” podcast episode that discussed the life and values of basketball legend John Wooden, and there were some amazing things shared during the show. One area that host Ben Wilson spent some time on was sharing the attributes of Wooden, with a brief comparison […]