Category Archives: Inspiration

Why Motivational Speakers Don’t Motivate

Dr. Jim Taylor, who has a PhD in psychology, says the “inspirational-industrial complex” is a sham. Why, you ask? Because the inspiration that comes from other people is manufactured from the outside. This “synthetic” inspiration simply can’t last long because … Continue reading

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Priorities

Power is out.  Pretty much everywhere south of Los Angeles.  Our entire operation shut down immediately.  Even in an office where everyone basically just reads and writes all day, a loss of power is totally crippling. There was nowhere to … Continue reading

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The Easiest Way to Change Behavior

Barriers.  It’s all about barriers. A barrier is anything that makes an action more difficult.  It can literally be a huge physical barrier, like the Berlin Wall, or it could be nothing but air. If you want to stop eating … Continue reading

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Your Horsepower Is Irrelevant

An engine can only produce so much horsepower.  If you’ve got a 300 horsepower engine, it’ll produce 300 horsepower.  Sure, you can expend a lot of effort, bore those cylinders out and up the horsepower 10%, but you’re still in … Continue reading

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Selling Technology Sucks: Start With The Goal Instead

How do you sell $10 Billion worth of product a year? One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards for the technology”. You can’t start with the technology and … Continue reading

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It’s Not God-Given Talent

Professional athletes have god-given talents. Movie stars have big breaks. Musicians get discovered. Executives have connections; uncles or fathers or friends who got them into the business. These are all variations on the same excuse we use to justify someone’s … Continue reading

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Chasing Glamor

I want to be an architect so I can design amazing buildings. I want to be a lawyer so I can help people and win big cases. I want to be a rock star so I can make music. These … Continue reading

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The Million Dollar Answer

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. – Mark Twain We spend a lot of time and money worrying.  We walk around thinking about earthquakes and hurricanes and terrorist … Continue reading

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Lawyer For A Day

Time tracking can be life changing.  And, even though it’s really, really easy to do, it does take a tiny bit of discipline.  Unfortunately, like budgeting, this tiny barrier is enough to prevent just about everyone from doing it.  Fine.  … Continue reading

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Most Of Your Stuff Is Worthless

I’ve written about the benefits of eliminating clutter before.  I’ve made a conscious effort to only buy stuff I actually need and am going to use.  I’ve gone through several rounds of getting rid of stuff I own.  That said, … Continue reading

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Fake It ‘Til You Make It: Physiologically Sound

From Psychology Today: The great surrealist artist Salvador Dali was described by his fellow students at the Madrid art academy as “morbidly” shy according to his biographer Ian Gibson.  He had a great fear of blushing and his shame about … Continue reading

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Don’t Shop When You’re Hungry

You’ll end up buying more than you want. Make plans when you’re fresh, not at the end of the day when you’re exhausted. Set goals when you’re on a roll; don’t undermine them after a failure. The hard part isn’t … Continue reading

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Curiosity, or How Elon Musk Thinks

ELON MUSK: I think, generally, their {other people’s} thinking process is too bound by convention or analogy to prior experiences.  So it’s very rare that people try to think of something on a first principles basis. They’ll say, “We’ll do … Continue reading

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Stalin Was Right

One death is a tragedy.  One Million is a statistic. This fundamental deficiency in our humanity, as it has been called, is a weird phenomena.  Why can we be so emotionally moved by an individual’s story, and yet so unmoved … Continue reading

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Appreciation For Inaptitude

To the Gods: [Thanks] That I wasn’t more talented in rhetoric or poetry, or other areas.  If I’d felt that I was making better progress I might never have given them up. – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 1:17 You hear … Continue reading

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