What would happen if you let the pause be uncomfortable? Let your child be who they are? Let the sickness run its course? Let your advice go untaken? Let your parents be disappointed in your decision? Let yourself compare unfavorably? Let the person in the […]
Can you imagine? Being wrong for hours, sometimes even days was life before the internet and our ability to pull Wikipedia out of our pocket. Before portable computers and our instant ability to resolve factual disputes, writer Ben Tarnoff points out in a New Yorker […]
Oliver Burkeman poses an uncomfortable question in Meditations for Mortals: what if you never get on top of your to-do list? What’s more, what if you never become the good listener or the dedicated runner or achieve a Zero Inbox like a worthy person would? […]
There was a period in my life when I was so edgy and wary it felt like I was having a million tiny little heart attacks every day as I tried to suppress all the zings of feeling I didn’t like and didn’t want to […]
In a culture that applauds giving your all, it almost seems against nature to sanction anything less, which is why I’m a tad leery to bring forward a concept that does exactly that: The 85% Rule actually proposes dialing back our effort to 85%. Yes, […]
Pilots do it. Astronauts do it. Surgeons do it. Taking a two-minute timeout to run through a checklist before undertaking a critical endeavor is a proven way to minimize errors, including life or death ones. It’s why the Joint Commission instituted a universal protocol for […]
Mastering ChangeYou may not have asked for it, but it happens anyway. Being a human being is to be in constant conversation with change. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus kind of said, our lives are like rivers. You never step in the same river twice. […]
It used to be that people in wealthier nations were happier than those in poorer countries and that those folks from the wealthier nations got even happier over time. But starting about 20 years ago that began to change. Why this is the case isn’t […]
There’s a restaurant in Los Angeles called Homegirl Cafe, one of the Homeboy Industries businesses created to provide jobs for former gang members. Gregory Boyle, the Jesuit priest in back of that project, was having lunch with Diane Keaton at the cafe one day. When […]
Be cool. 