The surest way to further cement someone to their convictions is to challenge them. Especially with those pesky, irrefutable facts. Yet we do this. We double down over and over again, and generate frustration for ourselves — dumbfounded wonderment at how someone could not see what we see so clearly — and strain relationships, or worse.
Read MoreMoney well spent
What am I supposed to do with all this money? That’s not a lottery winner asking. It’s what University of British Columbia psychology professor Elizabeth Dunn asked herself when she scored her first job. She scanned the research that revealed money often fails to buy happiness, yet she wondered if there was a way to spend money that could increase happiness. She teamed up with fellow psychology Ph.D. and HBS professor Michael Norton to look into it.
Read MoreSleep is the new black
Sleep is the new black and some of us are just waking up to it. (I couldn’t help myself.) After a client told me I had to read Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep, and Bill Gates gave it the nod in his GatesNotes last month, it moved to the top of my bedtime reading stack.
Read MoreHabit forming
As the new year approached last month, my inbox was filled with books, articles, TED talks, and podcasts aimed at weeding out bad habits and growing good ones. We are what we do, and we do countless, repetitive things daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly — consciously and unconsciously. These habits get us on the road (or not) to our intentions, so giving them an annual tune-up keeps us in good working order. A couple of resources that have been on my radar for awhile are worth sharing.
Read MoreBack to Built to Last
WeWork’s IPO debacle and CEO ouster, Juul’s comeuppance, and many other recent fallen giants and C-suite changes spurred David Gelles’ acerbic piece in the NYT. He reminds us, among other things, that the now commonplace “utopian mission statements” from “Christ-like” founders that temporarily intoxicate the market eventually come down to the numbers when investors sober up.
Gelle’s fun-poking at these companies’ “yoga babble” made me want to revisit the seminal research that discovered the critical role of vision, mission, and values in organizations that stand the test of time.
Read MoreDabbler Obsessive Hacker Master
When Mastery: Taking it Home by George Leonard hit the pages of Esquire’s May 1,1987 “Ultimate Fitness” feature, along with John Poppy’s The Keys to Mastery, it went the viral equivalent of its time — lots of letters to the editor, requests for copies and reprints, and CEOs disseminating it widely within their organizations. “A navy carrier pilot . . . wrote that he had been having trouble landing the F-14 Tomcat on an aircraft carrier . . . ‘Insights from Mr. Leonard’s outline of the master’s journey gave me the extra 10 percent of mental discipline that I needed to make the trek down this portion of my path a relatively easy one.’”
Read MoreWhere have I been?
It has happened several times in the last few months — young leaders I’ve encountered calling out Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People as inspiring, guiding, and causing them to change how they are navigating the world. The book even served as the basis for one company’s core values. Of course I’d known about it for decades, though I’d not read it — it seemed dated and sales-y — a sort of “to seem rather than to be” thing.
Read MoreNot yet
The first thing I’ll say about Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck is this is a must read if you’re raising kids. I read it after raising my kids. I offer a blanket apology.
In the decade plus since this research was published, what Dweck calls a “growth-mindset” vs. a “fixed-mindset” has influenced school curriculums, organizational thinking and practices, parenting, sports, and relationships.
Read MoreLife? There’s a book for that
Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived Joyful Life is a field guide for living an intentional life — for you to do life, instead of life doing you. While it’s just the thing for the stuck, the about-to-be college grad, and the baby-boomer eyeing retirement or an encore career, it’s really for all of us at all times in our lives.
Read MoreThe best business book you’ve never heard of
My first week on the job at Heath Ceramics, I stopped by the showroom and picked up a copy of a business book I’d never seen, by an author I didn’t know, who co-founded and led a business I’d never heard of, yet it boasted endorsements from some pretty major names. I was pretty sure I was at least familiar with all the business books you’re supposed to read: from the classics, to the wave of stuff from the 90’s that has held up, to the sea of current influencers. What was this?
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