Humor

Entrepreneurship / Freedom / Humor / Inc.com

The Declaration of Independence: The Best Entrepreneurial Document Ever?

My Inc.com piece today, "The Declaration of Independence: The Best Entrepreneurial Document Ever?", begins The Declaration of Independence: The Best Entrepreneurial Document Ever? Would you be happy for your venture to last a few years and make a few million? How about 240 years and 3 trillion dollars? Nobody pulled in Benjamins like Benjamin. Any entrepreneur who has written a business plan knows the challenge. For one thing it has so many goals. Among others, a plan should: Describe the market need Describe a plan of what you're going to do Attract investment Attract a team Look good Be flexible Describe your competition I suggest the United States Declaration of Independence can claim to be the best entrepreneurial document in history, perhaps combined with the full…

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July 1, 2016
Exercises / Habits / Humor / SIDCHAs

The Sidcha App

You know how valuable I consider sidchas. If you don't have one, I recommend you create one or two for yourself. I'm working on sidcha.com so stay tuned. In the meantime, I thought about an app for sidchas. Here is my main thought. When you do something daily, you don't have to keep track of it. You don't have to compare your performance with your friends'. You don't have to do all the things people do to try to start and keep habits. In fact, I'd say those practices run counter to the point of sidchas. The point of sidchas is you do them. The result is a foundation for your life. Whatever challenge you want to take on, sidchas help you. No matter what…

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June 3, 2016
Humor / Inc.com / Visualization

My Inc. post today: Like TED Talks? This 99-Second Video Covers Them All

My post today on Inc.com, “My Inc. post today: Like TED Talks? This 99-Second Video Covers Them All,” begins: Like TED Talks? This 99-Second Video Covers Them All Everyone loves inspiration, so we enjoy TED talks. But do they change behavior or just make us feel inspired? Who doesn't love feeling inspired? I do, so for a long time I loved TED talks. No longer. Why not? Because I distinguish between inspiration to act and mere feeling inspired. I've been asking people for years, and in no case of someone telling me a TED talk "inspired" them did they also change their behavior. Not a double-blind controlled experiment, but strong enough evidence for me. So I made this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCXp9GFcDhQ Read the rest at Inc.com: My Inc. post today: Like…

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February 29, 2016
Awareness / Humor / Leadership / Perception

Failure is how you feel about your results

I simplify complex or mysterious terms to make them easy to understand and act on. The professional and personal development fields seem to prefer click-bait titles---what sells over what works. Talk about failure and success is filled with clichés ("It's the journey, not the destination," "everything happens for a reason") and grandstanding ("fail early and often," "I failed many times before succeeding") that I haven't found helpful for someone facing a challenge and fearing failing. Successful people tend to say they failed on the way to success and now welcome failure, or even look forward to it, but what they mean by "failure" isn't what beginners think of it. Most people---especially successful ones and especially gurus and instructors---switch meanings of the word "failure," sometimes mid-sentence.…

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November 14, 2015
Humor / Leadership / Relationships / Tips

“To convince” means “to provoke debate” and rarely works

Talk about leading people and a lot of people will talk to you about convincing people as a way of leading them. I recommend against this strategy. Convincing someone implies logically debating. Changing someone's behavior means changing their motivations, which means changing their emotions. Logical argument evokes emotions of debate. Convincing motivates people to disagree. They also feel like you're trying to impose your values on them. If you disagree with me right now, your own emotional reaction is illustrating the point! In other words: I will convince you that trying to convince people provokes disagreement. Either you agree with me, in which case you agree. Or you disagree with me, in which case you've illustrated my point. People who try to convince a lot…

2 Comments
August 18, 2015
The great masters of speaking with authentic voices
Awareness / Exercises / Freedom / Humor / Leadership

The great masters of speaking with authentic voices

Following up yesterday's post's exercise for how to speak authentically, I wanted to give a couple more examples illustrating mastery of speaking authentically. People who speak authentically can say things others can't, meaning they have more freedom. We respect them not for their technical mastery of some craft but that they speak without that. A great master today is Charles Barkley, whom I wrote about the other day. He's famous for speaking about race, sex, class, and other topics many people lose their jobs for, yet people don't condemn him. They recognize he's sharing something about himself, not imposing his values on others. He leads people to accept him instead of judging him. The video below shows a different authenticity. Note the vulnerability he shows…

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March 25, 2015
Humor

Is the New Yorker following me?

It seems the New Yorker is following me, or at least fishing for stories in my blog. Witness the evidence in this week's issue. Item 1 In week's article "Swim, Swam, Swum," Ben McGrath writes about some people thinking about swimming in the Hudson River. Four years ago, three guys had an idea: that it might be nice to swim in the East River. “It came about pretty simply,” one of them, Dong-Ping Wong, recalled recently, on one of those humid, ambition-melting summer mornings. ... “We’re kind of pussies,” Wong said, noting that none of them had yet taken the plunge, either in the East River or in the Hudson, where they are now focusing their studies. They started four years ago, just two years…

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July 28, 2014
Art / Creativity / Freedom / Humor

Thoughts on reading Steve Martin’s memoir, “Born Standing Up”

I read and recommend Steve Martin's memoir, "Born Standing Up." He writes honestly and concisely. He persevered through a challenging life. Unlike many people we admire, he didn't overcome obstacles that befell him. My list of inspirations on my "Resources and Inspirations" page includes three big ones for me who overcame outside challenges that they couldn't have foreseen and have to handle---Victor Frankl, Jean-Dominique Bauby, and Mark Zupan. Overcoming challenges is hard and brings out the best in some people. Steve Martin's challenges came from inside. He lived his passion without compromise---as challenging a task as overcoming an injury. As a comedian, that meant playing five to ten shows a week for years to empty rooms, handling hecklers, and barely making ends meet. It meant…

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June 14, 2014
113,792 points in 2048 with the 8192 tile!
Creativity / Humor

113,792 points in 2048 with the 8192 tile!

After the game in the picture below I couldn't help myself emailing a friend about it the following. I don't know if I'm more proud or ashamed and if it's from the high score or the poem. Look on my high score, ye mighty, and despair! You met a geek from an antique land Who emailed: "Sixteen small and colored numbered tiles Stand on my screen. Near them, on my Aeron, Half sunk, my procrastinating self sits, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that two-oh-four-eight well my time wasted Which yet passes, composing this poetic note, The hand that moved tiles and the eyes turned red: And on the screen these words appear: 'My name is Spodek, player of pointless…

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May 24, 2014
Creativity / Humor / Leadership

How to win over a stadium of 20,000 angry African soccer fans

"You! You cannot do that here!" A voice in a stadium of 20,000 people told my friend he was breaking a rule. The man yelling pointed at my friend and sounded angry. A man next to the first saw what he was pointing at---my friend---and pointed and yelled he couldn't do that here too. Then another, another, and another. Soon a whole section was pointing at him, angrily yelling at him he couldn't do what he was doing. But what was he doing? My friend didn't understand what was going on. He and two of his friends had decided to go to their first soccer game in Dar es Salaam, where they'd lived for the better part of a year. They had barely walked in…

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April 22, 2014
Awareness / Freedom / Humor

Op/Ed Fridays: “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No!”

This quote by the actor in the video below reveals such profound lack of awareness, you can only imagine the denial that could resolve the conflict between accepting direct government aid and welfare while decrying government aid and welfare and saying nobody helped him. I don't know if the programs he talked about help or hurt society or him. I don't know his situation. I only know what he said (the context of the whole interview is below): "I've been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwpBLzxe4U I'm surprised the video only has around 150,000 views. It seems revealing. Anyway, here's the full interview for context. The clip above comes around 3:40. The interviewer doesn't point out how the actor contradicted…

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February 7, 2014
Blog / Fitness / Humor

“Running is bad for your knees” and other stupidity fools can’t stop spouting

If you run, fools will tell you running is bad for your knees. One of the downsides of running is that these fools get excited to tell you that. So they do. I think they think they're helping, telling you something special that you don't already know. Let's get to the point. All exercise risks injuring you. All of my greatest injuries came from exercise or sports. Athletes get injured more than non-athletes. There is no sport or exercise with lower risk of injury than sitting on the couch, which is where you'll end up listening to those fools, which is why I call them fools. Search on "yoga injury" or any other sport and injury. People who exercise don't do it to avoid injury.…

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December 12, 2013
Blog / Humor / Tips

14 proven ways to make you and people around you miserable

Most of my posts try to present ways to create more happiness and emotional reward. For once I'll write the opposite, from which one can learn just as much. In the list below the items seem to clearly hurt relationships and your mood. For some reason when people do these things on their own they act like they're acting productively, like when they give people unsolicited advice, they genuinely seem to feel like they're helping others, as much as they push back when others give them unsolicited advice. I think my first tip covers most of the rest that involve relationships with others. The second tip covers most of the rest that involve yourself. You can thank me later for this excellent advice. 1. Impose…

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November 23, 2013
The Onion, burritos, short-term pleasure, and long-term happiness and emotional reward
Gerrit, moments before entering a brief, fleeting world where nothing at all matters except for a giant chicken burrito.
Awareness / Blog / Humor / Tips

The Onion, burritos, short-term pleasure, and long-term happiness and emotional reward

The great satirical online newspaper The Onion illustrated one of my favorite stepping-stones to creating the life you want. I wrote about it in this relevant post, "A model that will bring you happiness." They didn't realize they were onto something more effective than they thought, but their description of how deeply changing your environment can change your mood shows a great way to start changing your life -- whether you want to get more things done, feel happier, avoid feeling miserable, or whatever. It's a big deal to realize things in your environment you can directly control can consistently, predictably, and reliably create emotions you want. Combine that with knowing you can control your beliefs and behavior and some practice and you can create…

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November 9, 2013
Blog / Humor

Encouraging reader feedback I couldn’t help but share

Sometimes readers write with questions, suggestions, and feedback. It helps me improve what I write for them. I value what they write and use it to improve my writing. I don't yet have an experienced editor. What you're reading is better for what they shared. Based on that, plus the principle in my post "Sharing what you love fills your life with sharing, love, and stuff you love," I can't help but share a comment I got from a reader: I found your blog through the Mr. Money Mustache forums and have been reading it from beginning to present. My life has greatly improved since I've started reading, and while this isn't a major thing I wanted to share a quick anecdote from this morning.…

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September 15, 2013
Blog / Humor / Tips

A curious way to measure intimacy and an effective way to increase it

I'll share today an unexpected and curious way to tell how much intimacy you have with someone and an effective way to increase it. By intimacy, I mean any kind of intimacy, which could be in a professional, friendly, romantic, or any other type of relationship. Intimacy increases trust and decreases friction between people so it's valuable to have. Knowing how much you have tells you how closely you can interact. Being able to create it can deepen and strengthen relationships and make them more productive. Intimacy has its risks too, as does today's tool. Used effectively, it will create intimacy and its benefits. Used ineffectively, it can ruin relationships. Getting close to someone always risks inviting pain or other problems. If you're easily offended…

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August 1, 2013
Art / Exercises / Humor / Models / Tips

A model for what makes a great story

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” 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.] Storytelling seems so common to all cultures it's probably in our genes to like a good story. We love hearing messages in the format of a story. If any has given you advice on how to give a presentation, someone probably told you to make it like a story. Storytelling skills are a universally useful and attractive social skill. So what makes a great story? Why do we like to listen to some but not others? I don't claim to be…

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May 21, 2013
A model to make you more intelligent and free
Exercises / Fitness / Freedom / Humor / Models / Tips

A model to make you more intelligent and free

[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” 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 once spoke with a psychologist who specialized in intelligence. She told me that flexibility in how one sees the world is a major part of intelligence. At first I didn't see the connection, but then it made sense. The more ways you can look at a problem, the more ways you can try to solve it. By contrast, if you limit the number of ways you see something, you limit the number of ways you can solve it. Most people…

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April 27, 2013
Video: Teaching our North Korean guide colloquial English
Humor / NorthKorea

Video: Teaching our North Korean guide colloquial English

Last year we tried teaching our guide, Ms Yu, the phrase "You're so money and you don't even know it." So this year when Jordan was busy doing something else, I decided to teach it to Ms Han, then have her say it to him. I don't think she quite got the meaning of the phrase, but I think the fun came across. About halfway through the video switches to her saying it to Jordan. Like I've said before, I don't know when the United States and North Korea will have peaceful relations, but we're bringing it closer -- more than any diplomat. I wonder if she'll remember it the next time we visit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeGWJMHu748

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March 8, 2013
Video: Incredible kids in a North Korean country schoolhouse
Humor / NorthKorea

Video: Incredible kids in a North Korean country schoolhouse

If you want to see the most amazing kids, you might be surprised to find some in this country schoolhouse in North Korea. Yes, we only see what the government lets us see, and the government seems to have learned showing off its kids shows off a part of the country the world will love, but this did happen and it's part of North Korea. Watch this video. You won't be disappointed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04zR_KCQ7F4

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March 4, 2013
Video: Incredible kids in Hamhung, North Korea
Blog / Humor / NorthKorea

Video: Incredible kids in Hamhung, North Korea

Another reason visiting North Korea became one of my most educational and thought-provoking experiences, as well as of my travel-mates. This experience was too incredible not to include it on my blog's main page (if you haven't been reading my North Korea posts, click to see the videos I've been posting of my trip there last April -- some inspirational, all educational). Our tour bus took us to a kids camp in Hamhung, North Korea, then to the city. I don't know how they chose to take us to see kids, but it seems they brought us to a lot of kids places. After our amazing experiences interacting with North Koreans directly at Kim Il Sung Square as well as playing Ultimate Frisbee in Pyongyang…

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March 3, 2013
Blog / Humor

My cowboy joke

When my friend was in the hospital last month I looked for jokes to cheer her up and found this one online. Now it's one of my favorites. So much I wanted to share it here. Most jokes as funny as this one are dirty or off-color, so it's nice to find a clean one this funny. What does it have to do with leadership, emotional intelligence, self-awareness, passion, importance, values, or anything else I cover on this page? I don't know. Maybe nothing. But I like it. It's the old west in the U.S. A cowboy goes to a saloon for a few drinks. When he's done he walks outside to find his horse missing. He walks back in the saloon and says, "My…

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February 21, 2013
Blog / Humor

Life lesson in unintended consequences of being right

We've all had this annoying conversation. You've been on both sides of it. Admit it. I had a conversation with a friend yesterday. He was totally sure about something we disagreed over. I could tell he knew he was right, I was wrong, and had to convince me of it. Frankly, I felt I was right and he was wrong, but I didn't feel so compelled to convince him of anything. Like I said, we've all been on both sides of that conversation. Convincer and convincee. We don't like being told we're wrong. We also can't stand when someone else gets things so wrong and just won't listen to reason. Today I realized a great life lesson: Any time you think you're right and someone…

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February 5, 2013
Blog / Freedom / Humor

More on Martin Luther King and leadership

Hearing Dr. King talk about injustice anywhere being a threat to justice anywhere, I couldn't help but notice how he polarized people too. The content is different, but the structure sounds like the "You're either with us or against us" I heard from a U.S. President ten years ago. It tells people they aren't safe, no matter where they are. If you read this page regularly, you know I don't like labeling things right, wrong, good, bad, or evil. I don't like polarizing people either. King did both regularly. He considered himself right, just, and good. He described people he disagreed with as wrong, unjust, and evil. I wonder how much he considered that they probably didn't consider themselves wrong, unjust, and evil. Could he…

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January 22, 2013

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