I recently finished the book The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It’s a great, concise book that does triple duty as an autobiography, confessional of a dying man, and collection of frank and quirky advice.

One of my favorite stories from the book is so short, it’s easy to overlook. But it gives flesh and bone to the vague skeleton of a principle I’ve come to hold to tightly since I first entered the world of business. I’ll let Pausch’s story do its own heavy lifting.

Fragility

Randy Pausch tells the story of how, when he and his sister were pre-teens…

Watching my kids grow up has been an experience truly unlike any other. And I’m not referring to how fast time flies, and how quickly they grow, and all those old clichés. That all happens, yes, but what’s really gotten me is how much of their growing up is bringing back my own memories of growing up.

And beyond that, I’m being reminded of all sorts of differences between child me and grown-up me. They’re sneaky differences — differences that seemed to have established themselves some time between when I was 8 and 38. I can’t pinpoint exactly when they…

A few days ago, I turned 38. As I read that sentence to myself, it’s still hard to reconcile with how I see myself.

38. That’s almost 40! That’s the age of my parents — my friends’ parents — Mr. and Mrs. Whatever. But me? I’m not almost 40!

But the truth is I am almost 40. Time just kept on moving forward, despite my not having given it permission to do so.

As I’m wont to do whenever I turn a year older, I reflected a bit. But as I started to do that, I caught myself. I was…

I’m always on the hunt for simple principles for better living. So here’s one that I’ve held dear for quite some time. It goes back to my early days in college — right after I failed at being an illustration major, and began studying philosophy. One of my first classes was Classical Ethical Theories, where we studied what the great minds spanning 2,000 years had to say about what constituted good living and right actions.

That class introduced me to Immanuel Kant, who had a unique way of thinking about how to go about living in the world with others:

…

I love the power of a good question. A good, simple question can refresh stale thinking and change how you view yourself. It can get your mind back on track, and out of a rut.

Here’s a good one, which I lifted from a very tense scene in the movie Whiplash. The fanatical perfectionist teacher, Terence Fletcher, has the band play the jazz song “Whiplash” — giving new drummer Andrew Neiman a shot at showing his stuff.

Initially, Fletcher stops Andrew a few times — letting him know that he didn’t quite have the right tempo. After a few…

The topic of personal identity is a big deal. People can spend their whole lives just trying to find out who they are. And people’s conceptions of who they are can radically change after certain life events, or certain experiences they go through — be they traumatic or joyful. People even actively work to change their idea of themselves — as well as how others see them — through sustained action.

What we usually end up with after our respective journeys to find out who we are is a series of adjectives and nouns that indicate roles. We’re a parent…

When I was a kid, it was clear to me that my father really disliked his job. Aside from the many nights he didn’t see me before I went to bed — and the early mornings when I woke up and he was already gone — he would also explicitly tell me that he hated his job.

His dislike for his job became a sort of rallying cry between the two of us. After all, his father (my grandfather) hated his job as well. I came from generations of men with jobs they hated. As I approached college age, my…

I worked with this guy, call him Josh (not his real name), for a few years. He was a bit younger than me, and after he had been t at the company for about 2 years, I became his manager. In an effort to get to know him better, as I like to do for my team, I took him to lunch.

Josh had served in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, and had been in combat situations on several occasions. He had seen an IUD blow up a truck. He had been part of a firefight with some insurgents who…