How our sense of personal freedom has degraded throughout history and how we can reclaim it — The book 1984 is famous (infamous?) for many things, but chief among them is reinforcing a particular vision of freedom. You could call it optimistic, but it is rooted in an almost pessimistic way of viewing people in societies. That vision of freedom? It’s the vision that — no matter…

Homo Sapiens may be the “wise” species, but we confuse “wise” with “rational” at our own peril — You’ve probably heard that old saying: People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. Whether it’s attributed to Maya Angelou or a leader in the Mormon church isn’t all that important. What is important is that…

Learn to reap the benefits of being known as a good listener — Being a good listener is important. There seems to be nearly unanimous agreement on that. And yet, many of us continue to fail at becoming good listeners. Why is that? I have found that there are 2 primary barriers when it comes to better listening: sins of omission — you…

What we miss when we think we know what progress looks like — Especially when we’re wrapped up in the pursuit of a goal, we tend to see anything that’s not clearly forward progress as a setback. In other words: We think If we’re not gaining ground, we’re losing it. As a result, we can end up making risky moves in an attempt…

It turns out that the ancient Greeks knew some secrets that we’re still struggling to learn — During the height of Ancient Greece’s influence, one could go to Delphi and visit the renowned Temple of Apollo. It was one of a series of temples built around 550 BCE. Unfortunately, it was destroyed under the influence of Roman emperor Theodosius I around 390 CE. In one of the…

How we unintentionally limit ourselves and the next generation — and the paradigm shift that can fix that — One of our favorite things to ask children is what they want to be when they grow up. In most cases we ask the question with the best of intent. We want to encourage children to dream, and I think we also kind of want to live vicariously through them…

Why the changes we try to make usually don’t stick, and what we need to do to see sustained progress — There’s this monologue I love from the show Breaking Bad. It’s about half-measures. You can read the whole thing here (warning: it’s a bit profane and grizzly). The gist of the speech is that the speaker, Mike, used to a cop. He and his partner would regularly be called to…

How we simultaneously underestimate and overestimate ourselves, and how to avoid both — Is there any more overused cliché than “less is more”? I guess that’s kind of ironic, given the spirit of the saying. But I digress. There’s an application for the aphorism that I don’t think gets enough attention. It has to do with achieving goals and managing tasks. When it…

An exercise in critical thinking, to help you wade through the sea of communication — The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning. - Mark Twain We humans have a special tool called language. And we do all kinds of cool things with it. We use it…