Tag: Mindset

I have a technique that I use to deal with a lot of situations that I call setting strong defaults. It started with dating as a means to eliminate the ridiculous and common “but where do YOU want to eat?” loop where each person keeps asking the other person where they want to eat, and…

Most people don’t live a life that’s in alignment with what they want to do. That’s not a criticism of any of those people; for our entire history as a species we have had to spend most of our time doing things we don’t want to do in order to survive. All of us are…

It’s easy to analyze when things go poorly, but that it doesn’t come as naturally when things are going well. When things are good it’s very easy to just brush it away by assuming that the success was somehow due to you. I know I’ve thought that many times, especially when I was younger. As…

I’m not sure exactly what causes it. Maybe it’s the exponential rise in options that all of us have in nearly every aspect of life. Maybe it’s the simplification of entertainment and the desire for a fairy-tale ending. Or maybe it’s something else I can’t think of. We are way too focused on perfection. We…

To simplify, we could say that there are three phases in which one’s life can be. Sometimes everything is going wrong, or at least everything is statically in a bad place, and the goal is to find one area to fix to create a foundation on which to build. Maybe most common is a scenario…

I try to avoid talking about politics for the most part, because virtually nobody is open to changing their minds about anything. In times like these, though, these conversations seem unavoidable. Of those conversations, I’ve found approximately two people who I feel are reasonable when they talk about politics. I agree mostly with one of…

I love when readers suggest posts, because it takes away the part of my job where I try to guess what would be most interesting or useful. A couple weeks ago a reader named Wolfgang said: “I’d love the read a post about reconciling adventure and productivity sometime.” One of my good friends nudged me…

As I’ve written before, I think that one of the most important skills one can have is basic competence. It doesn’t sound as appealing as programming, writing, or engineering, but it’s a rarer skill, and thus more valuable. Most skills are clearly defined and can be easily taught, which makes them easy to commoditize. Competence,…

If you’ve been reading my blog for a long time, you may have noticed that I have some common traits with adrenalin junkies. I’ve climbed cranes and towers, jumped freight trains, bungie jumped, ridden a motorcycle etc. I think that these activities, some more than others, are valuable. I remember climbing “the most dangerous trail…