30 Lessons For Living
What can we learn from those near the end of their lives about living today? Karl Pillemer wrote 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans to provide us with practical …
Books
How Charitable are you Supposed to be When Criticizing the Views of an Opponent?
“Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticizing the views of an opponent?” *** Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s book, Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, already gave us how …
The Unwritten Rules of Management
William Swanson’s unwritten rules of management is full of pithy advice. Swanson is the former chairman and CEO of Raytheon Company. Originally a part of a presentation to engineers and …
The 8 Causes of Plateaus
Have you ever found yourself trying really hard on something you care about? Maybe you’re learning how to play the piano. But the more effort you put in, the less you seem to get out of it. …
Save Time: Intelligently Skimming a Book
The second reading level is called inspectional reading, or reading to inform. In effect, you’re skimming a book. The point of skimming is to get the gist of something and determine if …
The Antilibrary: The Hidden Value of Unread Books
The legendary Italian writer Umberto Eco had over 50,000 books in his private library. When asked why so many, he had this to say: It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you …
Daniel Dennett: How to Make Mistakes
In Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, Daniel Dennett, one of the world’s leading philosophers offers a trove of mind-stretching thought experiments, which he calls …
The Tyranny of Email — 10 Tips to Save You
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my habits recently and how they affect me. One thing I’ve placed an increasingly watchful eye on is email. Email seems pervasive in our lives. We check email on …
The Four Levels of Reading: Improve Skills One Level At A Time
One of the secrets to acquiring knowledge is to read. A lot. My Hero, Charlie Munger, said it best “In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t …
The Building Blocks of A Great Daily Routine
We know one of the biggest things you can do to improve your working habits is switch creative work first and reactive work, like replying to emails, later in the day. That’s easy to say, but …
The Most Productive Change You Can Make In Your Working Habits
In an increasingly interconnected world, finding focus and enabling time to do work is becoming harder and harder. Demands are outstripping our capacity at an alarming rate. It’s time to start …
The three types of specialist
The success of any revolution requires, as Kurt Vonnegut writes in Bluebeard, three types of specialists. Slazinger claims to have learned from history that most people cannot open their minds to new …
2013 Summer Reading List — Curated Recommendations For a Curious Mind
I bet you’d like to read more this summer. Wouldn’t we all. Well, stop talking about it and start finding some books already. Here is a curated list of multi-disciplinary books that can …
Philip Roth — One Skill That Every Writer Needs
In his book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey explores Philip Roth. Roth is full of insight. His comments on writing, taken from Reporting: Writings from The New Yorker, stuck with me. …
Assertive Inquiry
You might be surprised at what A.G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble’s former CEO, can teach you about conversations. This excerpt is from his book (kindle edition). In any conversation, …
William James on Habit
William James offers three maxims to aid the successful formation of new habits. *** In his book, Daily Rituals, Mason Currey explores William James’s thoughts on Habit. “Recollect,” …