“If we can put a man on the moon, we should be able to solve homelessness.” “New York City has sparkling glass-and-steel skyscrapers with multi-million-dollar luxury condos, yet ten yards from their entrances are homeless people who go to sleep hungry.” These observations are almost cliché. You could say them about any city or country. They show deep misunderstandings about the problems they describe, which keep us from solving them.[…] Keep reading →

If you’ve talked to me in the past few years, you’ve heard how watching Inside The Actors Studio inspired me to learn how actors came to excel so much at skills leaders in other areas of life work hard to achieve but rarely do. On top of that, many great actors on the show dropped out, were kicked out, or otherwise didn’t finish much school. Meanwhile, graduates of Ivy League[…] Keep reading →

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicists, looking at the consequences of one’s actions instead of imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, “Is My Neighbor Obliged to Report Me to Immigration?” I have recently employed a foreign national from Ukraine as a live-in home health aide to care for my wife, who is in a wheelchair, paralyzed and[…] Keep reading →

Teams with members with diverse experience and skills outperform teams without diversity, as I understand research shows. My experience is consistent with that view. I am a huge fan of diversity, and, for that matter, equality. Many people promote having more women in areas where there are fewer—in leadership, in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), in college, and so on. Searching on the topic on the web shows plenty[…] Keep reading →

The more attention I put to what I eat, the more important I find it to living a healthy, fulfilling, satisfying life. I wrote before about my rice cooker / vegetable steamer / miracle appliance, the Hitachi Chime-o-matic. I normally don’t promote products, but it’s so useful, I do with it. An old college friend visited over the summer, saw it, and asked if it’s the same rice cooker I[…] Keep reading →

I have friend who is very charismatic. He makes up catch phrases and says them in a way people enjoy and associate with him. One of them, which he used as a greeting, was “Word word word.” As in, you’d be at a bar and he’d show up and greet everyone with a big “Word word word!” It didn’t mean much more than he felt friendly. At least as far[…] Keep reading →

A coaching client was in tears during a call not long ago. She lives in another time zone so the call was in the evening, after work. I took the call in my home. She called from hers. I felt for her, but my job was to coach her through the situation—to enable her to make herself feel better, resolve the cause, and know how to resolve similar future situations.[…] Keep reading →

People mention my PhD in astrophysics and ask me about scientific discoveries. Lately that meant asking about the possibility of flowing water and life on Mars. My work—high-energy particle physics followed by helping build an x-ray observational satellite—barely touched on observing and exploring planets. For that matter, at this stage of our ability to explore off our planet, I prefer putting resources into non-manned exploration over manned. I don’t see[…] Keep reading →

Nearly everyone I coach wants help handling someone difficult, usually a boss, someone who reports to them, or spouse. When I ask my client why the difficult person behaves how they do, they answer how everyone does: they tell me how the person annoys them. But describing their behavior doesn’t say why they do it. What they do is the result of their motivation. It’s like describing the noise a[…] Keep reading →