A close friend, Sue, is trying to hire a mid-career engineer. She had a lead on a great guy, who then dithered. He could not decide to leave. (I wrote a little thread on Twitter.) What kept him there? He felt as if he owed his team more work. (How to learn what he knew, […]
What Would It Take For You To Leave Work Every Day as If It’s Your Last Day? Read More »
When my older daughter was in high school, we battled often about her clothing. Her school had a dress code that said girls couldn’t wear spaghetti strap tops and their shirts had to cover their backs and bellies. I thought it was my role as her mother to fight that battle on behalf of the
Which Battles Do You Choose to Fight and When? Read More »
Mark and I got married 37 years ago today. I took a picture of the picture in our printed photo album. (That’s what we did then. People took pictures, printed them, and put them into photo albums. Also, my dress is totally 1984.) I was thinking of our expectations of ourselves back then. We had
How Can We Fulfill Reasonable Expectations of Ourselves and Each Other? Read More »
I wish I could tell you I was perfect at doing all the work on my list. Nope. Every so often, I procrastinate and delay on some specific task. In the past, I worried because I didn’t finish that work. (The more I worried, the less I did.) I created a reinforcing feedback loop that
What Games Do You Create to Succeed in Life and Work? Read More »
When do you choose to fill your gas tank? Do you wait until the tank is almost empty? How about at the quarter-full mark? Somewhere in between? We each make decisions about the gas we have in our cars—or our lives. When we don’t have enough of something, we need to refill the tank. We
When Do You Know It’s Time to Refill Your Tank? Read More »
CAL Newsletter: How Do We Plan for Both Cascading Effects and Catastrophic Success? I learned new words this week for events I’ve seen many times: catastrophic effects and catastrophic success. I’m sure you’ve experienced catastrophic failure. Here’s an example that’s happened to me too often over my career: a disk drive fails, taking all my data with it. I
How Do We Plan for Both Cascading Effects and Catastrophic Success? Read More »
I have limited expertise. (I have many opinions, but I have limited expertise.) That means I need to decide when to trust someone else’s expertise. My decisions depend on many criteria, including the domain—and the personal cost to me. I have substantial expertise in product development, so I check the context, look for options, and
Whose Experience and Expertise Do You Trust and When? Read More »
When I was a kid, I went to summer camp. I loved it. In the last week, I would say to myself, “This is the last Monday. How can I make this my best Monday?” I decided on one thing and did that. Those last weeks were my best weeks. A couple of years went
How Can You Use Your Projected Last Moment to Create a Great Present Moment? Read More »
Now that I’ve had my vaccinations, I’m ready to renew myself. I miss seeing people, locally and worldwide. However, I definitely do not want to work and live the way I did before. Instead, I want to take this time to renew (and maybe reinvent), starting with my thinking. Of course, I looked up the
How Will You Renew Yourself? Read More »
I spoke with a job-seeker the other day. He needs a new job. He feels as if he made some bad choices for previous positions. Those (bad) choices weigh him down. He’s not sure he has anything to offer a new company. Here’s what he told me about his experience: Several years of experience as
How Do You Work to Increase Your Self-Esteem? Read More »