“Hello, valued customer, your call is very important to us. Now please wait 15 minutes because we don’t want to spend the money to staff our phone lines.” There was an actual human being who decided to record that message. That actual human being may really have...
It’s holiday time! My gift today is the story of a recent decision. You may want to try it. It's made life a bit more effortful, but it's produced real results. It has paid off in both expected and unexpected ways. Whoa! I quit Facebook. I quit Facebook. Yeah, it’s...
As we saw in part 1, and part 2, we often we get stalled because we have "microfears." These steer us away from the Important Things we want. It's our thinking that does it. We imagine what might go wrong, feel a bit of fear, and then suddenly notice we have a...
When things get stalled, as we saw in the article that answered the question What is a Microfear?, fear is often why. Not big fears; small ones. We're afraid of failing at something we want to learn. We're afraid of starting an ambitious project that might...
There's a lot that doesn't get done, despite our best laid plans. There's that novel we've dreamed about writing. The weekly billing, which always seems to be late. The networking and prospecting we need to keep our business running. Early in my career, I learned...
One of the most valuable distinctions you can make about language is to develop insight into active and passive voice. “Mistakes were made” is passive voice. It doesn’t say by whom those mistakes were made. People use passive voice to avoid...
Check out the new article in BBC Capital about Why We Should All Give Up on Goals Already. The title is a bit sensationalistic, but the article seriously asks when do goals hinder, rather than help, achievement.
Eric Barker shares his non-intuitive, scientifically-backed insights on what does and doesn't lead to success.
Want followers? Want to get more from a negotiation than you go in expecting? Want more loyal relationships with your employees? Want people to be committed to your cause? Want deeper friendships and romantic relationships? Empathy is the key. It’s the ability to...
Entrepreneurship isn’t about taking risks Entrepreneurship is all the rage these days, and I’ve had a lot of people ask me if they have “the right personality type” to be entrepreneurs. They think entrepreneurship is about risk-taking. Entrepreneurs must love risk,...