[EDIT: I covered this series in more depth in Leadership Step by Step, so I recommend the book, but the core is here. I use this technique as a part of my life, basically daily.] Here is The Method on how to use The Model—my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development—in series form. I find the Model[…] Keep reading →

Here is a common belief for the relationships between introversion and extraversion. I’m going to show how it worsens your life and offer an alternative you will resist and fight against, but if you keep an open mind you’ll realize explains your world more effectively and helps you to improve your life. I call it the “Or” model of introversion and extraversion for reasons you’ll see below. It says that[…] Keep reading →

Multiple factors Not all options have only one decision factor. Many have two or more. For example, do you prefer a job with higher pay but lower chance of promotion or higher chance of promotion but lower pay? You have to look case-by-case, but let’s see how our visual representation shows them. A trivial choice The easiest two-part case is when you prefer both parts of an option to both[…] Keep reading →

You know choosing can be hard. I’ve written about it before from a few angles: Why are decisions hard? Difficult life decision? Here’s how to look at it. How to decide among close options A belief to choose without getting mired in indecision Today I’ll give you a tool to simplify decision-making more with a way of visualizing the challenge that shows the hard part. Partly I’m following up on[…] Keep reading →

A couple years ago I wrote two posts on the emotional state where you get so lost in an activity you lose track of time, focused with all your attention. Hours pass without your noticing while minutes may seem like hours as you focus intently. We like this state. A researcher named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied it and named the state “flow.” He wrote a book on it that improved my[…] Keep reading →

I can’t help but comment more on the Nice Guy behavior I mentioned a couple days ago in “The false dichotomy of the nice guy and the jerk and what to do instead.” A lot of the guys I coach have what others have called Nice Guy behavior and described problems with it. I don’t mean being nice as a guy. I mean how Wikipedia put it in its “Nice[…] Keep reading →

[Last week I posted a five-part series on a mental model I have for how our passion and attraction grows and wanes over time and the consequences of that pattern, according to the model. Today I’m posting them all in one post.] Day 1: Introducing a new model: Passion and Attraction I’m starting a new series today on a new model, this time on passion and attraction. Everyone I showed[…] Keep reading →

Do you have more stuff than you want? Do you have trouble keeping yourself from acquiring it? Do you wish you could get less stuff? I’ve been working on getting less stuff for a long time. I find the most important part to not having too much stuff is not acquiring stuff in the first place. Often when I’m with people and they can see I want something but hesitate[…] Keep reading →

[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.] The great business guru Peter Drucker illustrated how different people find different value and meaning from their work (and lives) through the parable of the three[…] Keep reading →