I have my first flight coming up since my experiment with not buying food that requires throwing packaging away, as told in Avoiding food packaging Buying no food with packaging, eighteen days and counting Bought first food with packaging after 2.5 weeks Restaurants make “entertainment for your mouth,” designed for profit, not health. Same with packaged food. Eating at restaurants seems weirder the more healthily I eat. Same with pre-prepared[…] Keep reading →

If you don’t act for equality, it doesn’t matter how much you want it, you aren’t going to get it. Almost nobody is acting for equality so we aren’t getting it. Many people think they are acting to create equality, but their behavior is counterproductive to equality, despite their intent. Why do I say people aren’t acting for equality? What are people doing if they aren’t acting for equality? Many[…] Keep reading →

I’ve been meaning to write about a book that challenged and led to me changing beliefs more than any other I can think of. I write about beliefs and mental models here a lot. My leadership seminars and courses cover beliefs, how they influence your perceptions, and how to change them. Some beliefs you change a lot, or at least you feel flexible about. Some beliefs you believe and you[…] Keep reading →

“Nice guys finish last.” Alone, this thought has probably condemned many men and women to abandon being nice. Accurate or not, combined with another belief, that the alternative to being nice is to be a jerk, further condemns people to being jerks. Jerks—people with one type of poor relationship skills—even when materially successful, seem likely to face emptiness in intimacy, what many consider the most important parts of their lives.[…] Keep reading →

The more I cook from whole vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, and so on, the more skeptically I look at companies that prepare food. Restaurants and packaged foods are designed to entertain your mouth, not to sustain you. If the people behind them have to sacrifice your health for their profit, they’ll do it. Increasingly I see them as seeking profit at the expense of my health, since what makes the[…] Keep reading →

“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 →

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 →

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 →

Throwing things away so they’ll end up in landfills pollutes. No two ways about it. Not using something in the first place doesn’t pollute. Recycling feels like it’s roughly in the middle. If you only have two comparisons and no objective scale, how else can you compare something in the middle but roughly in the middle. Since I wanted to feel better about myself, I probably thought of recycling as[…] Keep reading →