Category: life
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On Climbing the Wrong Hill
This week, after first reading it several years ago, I was prompted to return to Chris Dixon’s wonderful post about climbing the wrong hill. The term comes originally from computer science, but to illustrate it he uses the example of a young, smart graduate who works on Wall Street and is considering staying despite hating…
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Joy
Writer Donna Ashworth, who authored the book Wild Hope has written many wonderful words on the topic of joy, happiness and hope. Here are a couple of favourites that I’ve come across lately, in case you need it today. I love the line ‘Joy is supposed to slither through the cracks of your imperfect life’.…
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On getting older
‘Ageing is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.’ This quote from David Bowie has long been my favourite way of thinking about getting older. His description of it as an extraordinary process seems about right. You slowly become the person that you always should have been. You know…
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Use the difficulty
I love this from Michael Caine – the philosophy by which he has lived his life: ‘Use the difficulty’ is such a good, pithy way of articulating the benefits of learning from setbacks and challenges. We all have tricky times in our lives, or times when everything feels stalled, or when we feel that we’re…
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On becoming ‘the only’
Kevin Kelly has a great provocation, taken from his book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier, about not always striving to be the best but instead aiming to become ‘the only’. What he means by this is the need to focus on becoming a true reflection of what only you can…
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On Self-Renewal
This speech on the topic of self-renewal, delivered by John W Gardner to McKinsey & Company in November 1990, is outstanding (thanks to Zoe Scaman for the link). Gardner, who was the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare for President Lyndon Johnson, wrote his book Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society in 1963. The…
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Shoshin, and the Beginner’s Mind
Falling down an internet rabbit hole I ended up on this post, part of an anthology of submissions from the University of Sydney on the topic of ‘simple pleasures’. The author uses Mozart as an exemplar of having a childlike approach to life: ‘Growing up, my piano teacher would paraphrase 20th century pianist Artur Schnabel, saying…
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Shipped in 2023
Wow. This is my tenth year of doing an end of year retrospective taking a look at the shape of the work which I’ve done over the past 12 months (previous years: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021). I find it a helpful thing to do. It’s useful to take a step back and think about the mix…
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Perception vs Perspective
What’s the difference between perception and perspective? Why does this matter? It may be a subtle distinction but understanding this difference can really help us to improve or change something. Perception is how we translate the world around us (often through sensory inputs). It is how make sense of something, and what enables us to…
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Leadership, Teams and Bids
Psychologist Dr John Gottman (along with his wife Dr Julie Gottman) is renowned for his work on marital stability, relationships and predicting divorce in couples. In his research he has famously predicted with a 94% accuracy which marriages will end in divorce. After decades studying the way that married couples interact and the factors that…