Reading Time: 2 min If you’ve followed my writing for very long, you know I’m not a big fan of automated emails. There are cases where they are done correctly and can be valuable, but the most common implementation seems to be “cool, let’s blast stuff out!”. If you’re going to automate, I suggest two main rules: It seems […]
Reflecting on experiences
Reading Time: < 1 min We all experience many things, and there is a lot to be learned from those experiences. The question is: how do you actually learn from them? As explained in Tara Jaye Frank’s book “The Waymakers“, it’s not the experience itself that creates the learning. She shares: John Dewey, American philosopher, educator, and cofounder of the […]
The Sunday Summary: Making assumptions, multitasking, and seeing every animal at the zoo
Reading Time: 2 min In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week. Mon, September 23: Finding material to deploy attention“Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy […]
Covering the zoo
Reading Time: < 1 min The difference between a stated goal and what the goal really is can be staggering. Take this simple idea from Madeleine L. Van Hecke’s book “Blind Spots“: Maybe it will hit you that you’ve been acting as if the goal of the outing was to “cover every inch of the zoo,” rather than to “have […]
You can’t be perfect, but it’s easy to be good
Reading Time: < 1 min In reading Tara Jaye Frank’s book “The Waymakers“, she shared an interesting thought that I think applies to many areas of life. She said: When I first became a mother at twenty-five, someone gave me a quote on a tiny piece of paper by Jill Churchill that read, “There is no way to be a […]
Interleaving your skills
Reading Time: < 1 min A few years ago I wrote about the idea of intentionally making some things more difficult and I recently discovered that this concept has a name: interleaving. The book “Hidden Potential” has some great examples of that: I assumed it would be ideal to practice one skill until you make progress, and only then move […]
Multitaskers are the worst at multitasking
Reading Time: 2 min A lot of what I write on here is about me, and this post is a great example of that. While I know that true multitasking is a myth, it’s still something I sometimes spend too much time trying to streamline. In his book “Lost and Founder“, Rand Fishkin shares this: David Strayer, professor at […]
Of course we make assumptions about others
Reading Time: 2 min It’s easy to say that we should never assume anything about anyone, and I agree in theory, but it’s not really possible. While we can limit our assumptions to a degree, we’ll never escape them entirely — and maybe we shouldn’t. In her book “I Never Thought of It That Way“, author Monica Guzman shares […]
Finding material to deploy attention
Reading Time: 2 min In Daniel Kahneman’s classic book “Thinking, Fast and Slow“, he said something simple that I’ve been chewing on for a long time. He said: “Intelligence is not only the ability to reason; it is also the ability to find relevant material in memory and to deploy attention when needed.” The reason this stuck with me […]
The Sunday Summary: Word of mouth is in person, tracking everything, and Makers vs Managers
Reading Time: 2 min In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week. Mon, September 16: Just a little bit can ruin your day“Our study revealed that individuals who watched just three minutes of negative news in the morning were 27 percent […]