Monthly Archives: June 2012

Spending less improves your life

on June 30, 2012 in Blog, Freedom, Leadership, NorthKorea, Tips

Preface: I started writing this blog about how cutting personal costs (of any resource, including time, money, energy, attention, etc) improves your personal life. Rereading it I realized it overlapped so much with what leaders can do in business, I’ll tag it leadership too. Translating the post into business-speak I’ll leave as an exercise to the reader. You can probably do it on the fly. People who know me in[…] Keep reading →

The bigger problems you don’t consider big deals, the more important people consider you

on June 29, 2012 in Blog, Leadership, Tips

Does the title of this post not explain itself? People who know what they’re doing stay calm under pressure. Things that bother some people don’t bother them. People who don’t know what they’re doing freak out at little things. In money terms, if you don’t have enough to live on, problems on the scale of a few dollars may bother you. If you have millions, problems of a thousands of[…] Keep reading →

The U.S. has a “dysfunctional patent system”

on June 28, 2012 in Blog, Creativity, Entrepreneurship

The U.S. has “a dysfunctional patent system.” Those aren’t my words. They aren’t the words of an ignorant person either. They are the words of U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Posner, one of the nation’s most esteemed judges and faculty at University of Chicago. A patent dispute between Apple and Motorola prompted that description. Here’s an article from a couple weeks ago — Famous judge spikes Apple-Google case, calls patent system “dysfunctional”[…] Keep reading →

Sharing what you love fills your life with sharing, love, and stuff you love

on June 27, 2012 in Awareness, Blog, Tips

Sometimes it seems like everyone I talk to hears about burpees. I enjoy them. Doing them fills my life with the emotions they support — friendship, freedom, and motivation. I talk to people about leadership, nature, science, curiosity, and so on. I tell people how I figure things out after I analyze things. All these things make me feel good. Sharing these things — by sharing I mean communicating and[…] Keep reading →

A tip for high-status behavior

on June 26, 2012 in Blog, Leadership, Tips

A friend taught me a great lesson in how people with higher status behave compared to people with lower status. Here it is as a piece of advice What you can say in many words, say in few. What you can say in few words, say with a gesture. What you can say with a gesture, say with a subtle gesture. These words give great advice while describing the effectiveness[…] Keep reading →

Burpee overview

on June 25, 2012 in Blog, Fitness, Freedom

[This post is part of a series on my daily exercise and starting and keeping challenging habits. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Yesterday I started to consolidate posts on burpees but when I realized it was the day after the six month anniversary of starting doing them daily,[…] Keep reading →

Explaining China’s support for North Korea

on June 25, 2012 in NorthKorea

I’ve had trouble explaining China’s fortitude in supporting North Korea. A recent article by the former U.S. Ambassador to China, J. Stapleton Roy, explained it for me. His article also stressed that people and nations are behaving rationally in the region, however self-contradictory and irrational they may seem to those who don’t understand their perspectives and motivations. I figured China supported North Korea in the Korean War mainly to keep[…] Keep reading →

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