I bet you’ve heard this career and retirement advice, “Follow your passion!” (Complete with the exclamation mark!) It’s great advice—but only under certain conditions: You’ve experimented or experienced enough to have and therefore choose a passion. You know what living with this passion as your work would feel like. You are sure you will never […]
I spent the last four days in a fiction writing workshop. If I take a narrow perspective, I “failed” with my writing. (It was a fantasy caper workshop with two genres: second-world fantasy and caper.) My failure? I did not include nearly enough setting in my writing. That’s where the writer explains where we are—and
How Do You React When a Learning Experience Clarifies How Far You Still Have To Go Read More »
I’ve participated in two panels in the past few weeks: one about agile approaches and the other about management. In each case, my fellow panelists echoed each other for several questions, thinking alike. I did not. Not only did I disagree with the other panelists—I explained my claims with data. I thought differently. And because
Great Minds: When Do We Gain from Thinking Alike or Differently? Read More »
I read a terrific piece by Hannah Fry that women don’t excel at math because of sexism. Sexism! Not innate or learned ability. Sexism. When I was a kid, the culture “said” that women couldn’t do math. However, I had two immediate examples that women were great at math. My mom could remember duplicate bridge hands
How Can We Learn to Belong to New Communities? Read More »
Have you ever been in a situation with too much light, smell, sound, or cold/warmth? Or you took a bite of something, expecting a subtle taste—and felt overwhelmed with the taste you got? That’s a sensory overload. We learn to filter out the “noise” from the signal when we feel sensory overload. And some of
What Filters Do You Use to Manage Sensory Overload? Read More »
A colleague is supposedly writing a book. He’s amassed research, taken and written notes, and told (too many) people he’s writing. But he’s not writing. No book excerpts, no blog posts, nor articles. His “writing” is invisible to other people. Another colleague thinks he wants to run a marathon. He researched the “right” way to run
How Much Confidence Do You Need to Start? Read More »
Many of us see early spring as a time of renewal and rebirth. And for those of us in the northern hemisphere, early spring also has religious celebrations. Passover starts tonight and Easter starts this weekend. For me, that’s family time. And, we are fortunate to have three generations at our table this year. (We’re
How Many Generations Overlap With You That You Can Appreciate? Read More »
How Do You Manage Your Energy? Do you ever slog through the days, feeling as if you can’t get going? That happened to me last month. I wasn’t sick or depressed—I didn’t have my normal get-up-and-go. That’s when I realized I was “out of spoons.” The spoons represent our energy—and, at least for me—our resilience.
How Do You Manage Your Energy? Read More »
I stopped with resolutions years and years ago. Instead, up until now, I examined my systems and see where I might want to practice one small change. (See What’s the Smallest Change You Can Make? for one example.) That has worked well for me. This year, I’m experimenting with a suggestion via Daniel Steinberg’s Driving
Stop Resolving: How Can You Challenge Yourself to Seize Each Day Next Year? Read More »
I love to get stuff done. I count various measures on my way to my productivity, but when I cross things off my lists? Yeah, I love that. I know what being productive feels like and looks like for me. It often feels like some amount of “stuff” per unit time. But creativity? I used
How Do You Know When You’re Being Creative vs. Productive? Read More »