Tag: Mindset

In 1894 there was a major crisis in London. It seemed that there was no solution in sight, and that the city was destined to be doomed. The problem was the incredible amount of manure being deposited onto the streets by the city’s horses. Horses were the way to get around, no one wanted to…

A friend asked my yesterday why I do so many crazy things. What’s my raison d’etre? He mentioned a few specific examples, and I had reasons for each, but those reasons weren’t similar to each other. I’ve been thinking about it since then, though. Is there some universal motivator that’s behind everything I do? If…

The other day Todd and I were sitting in a cafe. Next to us was a guy who appeared to be a typical San Francisco yuppie. I wouldn’t have talked to him, but Todd is more extroverted than I, so pretty soon we were chatting away. He had overheard us talking about travel, so that’s…

Today I got selected as one of the first Amtrak residents. The original pool was narrowed down from sixteen thousand to just over one hundred, and then again to twenty four. This event makes it increasingly difficult to push away the idea that I might actually be a good writer. I was flattered, but not…

Some of the most interesting attributes are those that are both good and bad. A simple prescription of elimination of the attribute or building it isn’t sufficient. Instead we must learn to manage it, blunt the negatives and channel the positives. Stubbornness is one such attribute, and it’s one that I’m perhaps too intimately familiar…

There are some skills you have to build only because you’re so bad at them. Mediocrity can go overlooked, but we’re reminded of our biggest weaknesses constantly, either directly or through the reactions of others. For me, one such weakness was the inability to empathize. I may have realized that my way wasn’t always right…

Since you’re reading my blog, it’s probably fair to guess that you’re not content to coast through life, and that you’ve got ambitions that you’re chasing. Maybe, like mine, these ambitions are beyond your current scope. They’re things that will require years of effort to achieve, and maybe the feasibility of ever achieving them is…

I’m exhausted. I took a red-eye from Las Vegas to DC, which is a bad idea to begin with because the flight is only four hours long. Even if you sleep the whole time, you’re still exhausted. I didn’t sleep, though, partly because it’s hard to sleep on planes, and partly because the largest airplane…

My sister, who I’m immensely proud of, is launching a career as an interior designer. She studied it in school and rose quickly to the top at the firm that hired her right out of college. When it became clear that there was no room for growth there, she decided to find a job in…

I’m aware that everyone, including myself, is probably a little bit of a hypocrite. What irks me the most is when I do something, say wear a chain with my name on it, think it’s cool, and then see someone else do it and think it’s lame. So when I hang around self improvement fanatics…