Digital communications where we’re all connected all the time mean: There are a million ways to connect—and they all break. When meeting in person, everyone arrives a few minutes late because they can text a few minutes before to say so. Ironically, for meeting online or for phone calls, everyone arrives on time.

Have you heard the retort that the solution to climate change is more babies? Search and you’ll find many people, generally US conservatives, repeating it. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, said: Climate change is an engineering problem — not social engineering, but the real kind. It’s a challenge of creativity, ingenuity, and technological invention. And problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, but by more humans![…] Keep reading →

I prefer blackboards to whiteboards, which are plastic and chintzy, their markers plastic and chemically. Blackboards, on the other hand, are made of rock. Chalk is made of chalk. They’re from the Earth. But my big issue is that markers are nearly always out of ink, which I find out too late, by using them. With chalk, you can tell by looking, as this bar chart I made shows: Try[…] Keep reading →

I didn’t always love performing. Before writing a sketch and performing in the sketch comedy class play in business school, called Follies, I avoided the stage. That performance experience became one of the most amazing, transformative experiences of my life. It opened me up to emotional awareness and expression beyond any expectations. I knew I would perform more, despite the anxiety the mere thought of it created. Taking Meisner technique[…] Keep reading →

The more I cook for myself, the more I appreciate nuance, subtlety, complexity, variety, and so forth in food, as well as the expression of the person who prepared the food. Also, the more I see others as stuck in the yummy phase, which describes the United States population increasingly in number and increasingly in areas beyond food. What’s the yummy phase? The urban dictionary defines it effectively: The period[…] Keep reading →

Tim Ferriss, bestselling author and marketer of The 4-Hour Workweek and follow-up “4-Hour” books, interviewed Martin Gibala, the scientist whose suggesting burpees as a candidate for the single best exercise in the New York Times in 2011 inspired my sidcha. Dr. Gibala’s book with Christopher Shulgan, The One Minute Workout, launches on February 7 (a week before my book, Leadership Step by Step!), which they talked mostly about, how to[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →