General

Reading Time: 2 min There are times in our lives when it feels like something should happen more often than it does, but the math proves that it’s actually on track. For example, the Atlanta Braves made it to the postseason 14 straight times (1991-2005) but only won the World Series once. It feels like if you make it […]

Reading Time: < 1 min Last summer, I wrote about how luck and chance are two different things. Chance is out of our control. Luck includes a degree of chance, but also is affected by our curiosity and hard work. When something goes wrong, it’s easy to blame chance for it — and you might be right! If you can […]

Reading Time: < 1 min In the book “Seeking Wisdom“, author Peter Bevelin talks about the misjudgement of “say-something syndrome”, which he describes as: “…feeling a need to say something when we have nothing to say” George Eliot put it similarly, saying: “Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.” If […]

Reading Time: < 1 min A few weeks ago, Seth Godin wrote about “The things you can’t see“, talking about small everyday items that only some people are able to notice. One example he gave is the alignment of moldings in a house, which is something I almost certainly wouldn’t notice (but a good builder would). That made me think […]

Reading Time: < 1 min Facing a challenge is rarely a fun thing to do, but it’s also the place where you can grow the most. By seeing where your shortcomings are, it gives you a much better picture of where you need to put in the work. For example, Michael Jordan failed to make the varsity basketball team during […]

Reading Time: 2 min This quote came up in my notes a few days ago, and it felt similar to a post I had recently written about how infinite numbers don’t include everything. If you have a system that generates random output, there is no guarantee that the results will be perfectly distributed. If you output something random 1,000,000 […]

Reading Time: < 1 min Over the past few decades, marketers of all kinds have been fighting for our attention. Like I said last year, your attention is the product that companies are purchasing. As a whole, sadly, they’re winning. These days, your focus shouldn’t necessarily be on gaining the attention of others, but rather fighting to get your own […]

Reading Time: < 1 min I thought this was a fascinating bit of a thought experiment. I was reading a thread where people we debating the idea of a “multiverse”, the idea that our universe is just one of an infinite number of universes out there, thus explaining how life could be possible. Whether you believe that theory or not, […]

Reading Time: 3 min 20 years ago today, the local paper in Midland, MI (where I had gone to high school and stayed for a few years after) ran an excellent article about my grandparent’s story. They literally “Lived on Love Street”. Here is what they published on February 13, 2002. He walks through the entrance to the living […]

Reading Time: < 1 min It’s been interesting to see over the past few years how people often splinter into two main groups — those that are “loud & proud” with their beliefs, and those that have logic and reason for theirs. Either can be good, but a combination of the two might be best. English poet William Shenstone put […]