[This post is part of a series on Communication Skills Exercises for Business and Life. 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.] I just got off the phone with a client who was preparing for a call with someone important to help her. She was nervous because of his status[…] Keep reading →

In yesterday’s session on starting habits, when I described how easy it was finally to floss my teeth daily after I started my burpees. An attendee asked me to clarify. After the session ended, others asked me to clarify more and the following diagrams emerged. Starting burpees This chart schematically shows my burpee habit performance. Flossing before burpees This chart schematically shows my flossing habit before I started doing burpees.[…] Keep reading →

Have you put everything you had into something? Have you tried as hard as you possibly could? Have you run until you dropped? Skied as fast as you possibly could, risking injury? Decided to lift a weight you couldn’t conceive of lifting and done it? Have you run sprints in the rain, alone? Have you put your name and reputation on the line for all time? Have you said no[…] Keep reading →

This morning was beautiful in New York City. I was thinking of a running, but when I saw how nice it was I couldn’t stop from taking the train to Central Park and running in my favorite place in the world. A mile in it started drizzling. It turned into a downpour, for roughly the second mile. You rarely want to run in the rain but once it happens, you[…] Keep reading →

Two-and-a-half weeks ago I decided to avoid buying any food with packaging for a week. I’m on eighteen days and counting. I didn’t try to come up with a perfect rule because trying for perfection kept making me delay trying. I settled on the rule that I wouldn’t buy food that had any packaging or get food at a restaurant. I’d figure out on the fly what to do in[…] Keep reading →

This morning I read New York magazine’s weekly listing of bars and restaurants, describing fun places in the city to go to. They have a section listing some activities called “The Cut,” which I think means these are the activities that “make the cut” of their curating. I used to read the listings to find things to do. The section is for that, and I presume many people use it[…] Keep reading →

Following up yesterday’s post, “The basics: more simple and valuable than you think” about how the masters tend to focus on basics, I found a series of videos made by a great basketball player, Michael Jordan. He’s made few instructional videos. He could do things no one else could and made them look easy. He can teach anything he wants. So what does he teach? Simple basics. Things like getting[…] Keep reading →

When I teach and coach basics, someone in the audience always wants to know about some advanced application of the material. I understand why they ask. When you’re learning the footwork to dance salsa, you really want to do the fancy spin moves, so you ask about that. The great dancers concentrate on their footwork, though. The masters seem always to suggest sticking with the basics. I find that the[…] Keep reading →

Following up on “Passions, you create,” which I recommend rereading, where I wrote about passion not being something you happen to find, like if you just turned over enough rocks you’d find it… Everyone has the same potential to develop passions, as far as I can tell. If all you do is turn over rocks but never dig in—that is, look at what others do and think about those things[…] Keep reading →