A reader asked me to write about common traits of leaders and successful people across different industries and fields. Of course there’s a famous business book that covers seven of their habits. I’ll look at it from a couple different perspectives. Functional skills hold you back at higher levels Functional skills are ones to do a specific type of work, like sales, programming, engineering, marketing, and so on. Most people[…] Keep reading →

People often ask if graduate school was worth it. I’ve made it work for me. As someone who left his field of graduate study, I wrote the following on graduate school to someone asking if it will suck out your life power, you’ll have no social life, no free time, low pay, a lot of stress etc. I got a PhD in physics at Columbia in 2000. I helped build[…] Keep reading →

The other day I was invited to speak to a couple groups of high school students in a summer program at Columbia on entrepreneurship and leadership. The students inspired me then for the questions they asked. Their teacher asked them to comment on my talk after I left, which he sent to me, and their comments inspired me again. Many of the comments are insightful beyond what I would have[…] Keep reading →

The more I spend time out of school, the more I find value in non-academic things I learned. The more I see people who just work hard—by “just work hard” I mean working hard for other people for a pay check without choosing the job—the more they don’t seem to create greatness or deep satisfaction with their lives. The more I see the great people our society admires don’t seem[…] Keep reading →

One of my students jumped for joy last semester. She got a job offer during class—specifically, during a field trip. I consider the exercise an example of great teaching. Context I couldn’t make the last class of the semester and wanted to make it up. An email from NYU inspired me. It was about a series of job fairs including one for start-ups. I had already planned a session on[…] Keep reading →

I’m not impressed with intelligence. I say that as someone people often describe as intelligent. Too many people (including myself in the past) consider themselves strong in the abstract ability to solve problems over the activity of solving them. I value execution over ideas. Concrete over abstract. Earned over entitled. Experience over observation. I wasn’t always like this. I used to hold the opposite values—mind over body. Note the difference[…] Keep reading →

NYU-Poly collects student evaluations of courses and Professors. One of my students liked the class so much she sent me her evaluation to post independently and publicly. I feel honored and flattered. Professor Spodek’s dynamic personality captured my attention from the start of  the first class in January 2014. I have an entrepreneurial mind and I still remember lessons from the first day applying, making me a better business thinker[…] Keep reading →