Nature

Blog / Entrepreneurship / Nature

Today’s Harvard student versus 176 years ago

Let's look at two former Harvard students from now and nearly two centuries ago. 176 years ago Henry Thoreau finished Harvard in 1837, one of its best-known students of his age. Let's look at him before looking at this generation's most prominent Harvard student. Thoreau wrote Walden, his treatise on living simply, escaping petty human affairs and gossip, appreciating nature, self-reliance, and such. He lived for two years mostly on his own, growing his food, building his shelter, figuring out how to spend his time, and so on. The book opens When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore…

July 30, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Nature

“Sin” is a made-up concept.

I grew up in an environment that took the concept of sins for granted. People called certain behaviors wrong by labeling them as "sins." As a kid I never considered the sources of the classification or even if they corresponded to anything other than opinion. As a result, accepting someone calling a behavior as a sin seemed as natural as them saying something was green or wet or upside-down. As an adult I came to question the concept. It hit me that the concept of sin was just something that people made up. No objective way to determine something's sinfulness exists. As best I can tell, people created the concept to control other people with fear and shame, and possibly to make themselves feel better.…

July 22, 2013

Hidden assumptions in “Jobs Americans won’t do” and systems thinking

I keep reading the phrase "jobs Americans wont' do," as in "illegal immigrants do work in jobs Americans won't do." Search on the phrases in quotes and you'll find plenty of articles on the topic. Economists, politicians, and pundits use the tools they use to analyze jobs -- labor supply and demand, wages, competition, and so on -- to understand the situation. These articles never seem to question the existence of some jobs. They seem to take for granted that some work just has to be done and that it has to be done in just that way. Of course we need people to gut pigs and work in the sun all day in huge agricultural fields, they suggest... Â of course we need people to…

July 15, 2013

Some things you have to do yourself

At an outdoor concert July 4 I noticed something that, when I said it, sounded like a meaningful life lesson worth sharing here. The VIP section for some reason had fewer port-a-pods per person than the rest of the venue so they kept having long lines. Also, my friends and I were mostly staying in the tent area with the bar to stay out of the hot sun and walking to the port-a-pods meant going out in the sun. I remember saying "No matter how rich you get, no matter how much you can pay for others to do things for you, no one can go to the bathroom for you." That may sound silly or obvious, but I think it has some meaning. Like…

July 12, 2013

A giant rainbow over Greenwich Village

A giant rainbow over Greenwich Village

I walked outside my building and saw one of the most complete and beautiful rainbows I've ever seen, over the Jefferson Market clock tower. The camera in my phone didn't capture its full beauty, but I hope you can tell some of it. It was too big for my camera to capture it all at once. You can see it fading in the few minutes I watched it so I didn't have time to get a better camera. I was on the way to Brooklyn, where I caught a couple shots of the same storm over Manhattan's skyline from a train platform. I tend to cover leadership and personal development, but if we don't stop and appreciate the beauty of nature, what are we working…

July 5, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Morality and the development of language

I write a lot here about how counterproductive judging others or imposing your values on them is for leadership or influencing them. (Here are five posts on it, for example: Instead of calling something right, wrong, good, or bad, consider the consequences of your actions, What is morality?, On the counterproductivity of motivating people with guilt and blame — aka moralizing, Talking about "truth" or "reality" always confuses things, How willing are you not to judge?) Thinking about the development of language gave me a new perspective that, I think, helps undermine people's attachment to calling things right, wrong, good, bad, or evil. This post may sound philosophical or esoteric, but I didn't write it that way. My goal, as with the posts I linked…

July 2, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Nature

A beautiful spring day

New York City is enjoying some beautiful weather today. My building has a nice rooftop and had some friends over to enjoy the weather and view yesterday. I think people come here for the leadership thoughts... sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy the day. A few related thoughts I've posted before I clicked on to look at myself. A Beautiful Spring Day in My Neighborhood (with slide show!) A Model that Will Bring You Happiness Three Little Birds Is it not important to enjoy and explore the world around you? Now I'm off for a run along the river.

June 23, 2013

How do you know the Earth is round?

One of the most important skills to have about beliefs and models is being flexible. Flexibility is one of the hardest skills for my clients to develop... until they get it. Then they realize the value of the skill and get good at it quickly. Today I want to share a way I've found useful to undermine people's rigidity in their beliefs -- to point out how an incredibly strong belief can be based more on just agreeing with everyone else without questioning them than direct observation. One of the most basic facts we all know about our world is that the Earth is round. To say otherwise puts you in a category of kook or loon. Someone who believes the Earth is flat will…

June 17, 2013

Awareness / Evolutionary Psychology / Exercises / Fitness / Models / Nature

A model for a great lifestyle

[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.] You want to do well in life. What areas are most important for you? Do you want fame? Fortune? Power? Family? My explorations into meaning, value, importance, and purpose (MVIP) led me to consider what I wanted. Since I've found MVIP are grounded in emotions, I found I could refine my understanding of what brought me MVIP by refining my understanding of my emotional system and my emotions. I found that emotions stood at the foundation of all of MVIP. Not…

June 5, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Models / Nature / Perception

A model to make sense of complexity

[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.] If you believe everything that happens has a cause, when something happens you want to change you look for the cause and change it. You might have to dig deep for the "root" cause, but once you find the cause of something you can influence the thing by influencing the cause. For example, if your project is late because your boss isn't giving you the resources you need, you can try to get your boss to give you more of the…

June 1, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Fitness / Models / Nature / Tips

A model to cover life’s basics

[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.] Do you ever feel overwhelmed with obligations? So much that you find yourself losing sense of your priorities? Today's simple model reminds me of my basics. If you're reading this at some regular, calm time, it may seem too basic to think about. Its value comes when you're stressed or overwhelmed. Then it can shift your perspective and simplify things. A model to cover the basics: You can't improve anything until you've covered sleep, food, and exercise. However you want to…

May 25, 2013

Awareness / Evolutionary Psychology / Exercises / Models / Nature / Perception / Tips

A model that explains why your enthusiasm when planning disappears when doing

[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.] Scene 1: You plan something big. You're excited. You know there will be challenges, but you also know you'll overcome them. You will do what it takes no matter what. Scene 2: You started the project but it petered out. You don't know what happened to that feeling of invincibility, but it's gone. What happened? How did you lose your motivation? Why didn't your willpower work? Today's model answers. A modelÂ that explains why your enthusiasm when planning disappears when doing :…

May 20, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Freedom / Models / Nature / Perception

A model to help you get more out of traveling and to save money traveling at the same time

[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.] Most people I share today's belief with seem surprised or even shocked when I express it. Probably because the way I say it -- that I don't like traveling -- seems contrary to something nearly everyone values. Also, I travel a lot and talk about how much I get out of it. If I have to travel, I'll find ways to make it amazing, but if I don't travel I can make staying home just as amazing. The best way I…

May 18, 2013

Exercises / Models / Nature

A model to keep from being scammed

[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.] Have you ever been scammed into buying something that didn't work? Has anyone ever tried to sell you something too good to be true? Have you lost money gambling you wish you hadn't? Do you not like that happening? A modelÂ to keep from being scammed: The laws of physics, science, math, and logic. Some scams are cons based on abusing trust, but a lot of them are based on things that aren't possible -- perpetual motion devices, fake controversy about the…

May 11, 2013

Awareness / Evolutionary Psychology / Exercises / Models / Nature / Perception / Tips

A model to handle pain

[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.] Does pain make you miserable? I like the phrase "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional." It says that pain doesn't have to make you feel bad emotionally. How you respond to pain is what makes you feel emotionally bad, and you can control that response. I prefer to say it more broadly. A model to handle pain: Pain isn't bad. Most people understand the value to their lives of physical pain. Our bodies can be damaged and pain motivates us to…

May 9, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Freedom / Models / Nature / Tips

A model to free yourself from being categorized

[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.] Do you like being judged and put into a box? Do you like being told you can't change things about yourself that limit you from living the best life you can? Do you like it when these categories have no scientific basis? Personality traits, types, and dispositions are models that I don't find helpful. A model to free yourself from being categorized: personality types and traits have little to no validity I'm sure people will attack me on this belief. When…

April 13, 2013

Awareness / Exercises / Models / Nature / Tips

A model for stress that calms you down

[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.] Does the world stress you out? Do people and things cause you stress? Do you get even more stressed at your helplessness to reduce how stressful the world is? Do you get even more frustrated and depressed at your bad luck that you had to be born at a time when the world was so stressful? Would you be glad to know you can decrease all that stress? No medicine required. You don't have to change anything except your beliefs. But…

April 8, 2013

Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Nature

Insight into what you’re good at and why from Evolutionary Psychology

I copied this quote from a book on Evolutionary Psychology without writing the source. Sorry for not giving the source (please write me if you know it), but I find it summarizes the challenge we all face in having a motivational system that evolved to solve certain problems but living in a world with different types of problems. In other words, our modern skulls house a stone age mind. The key to understanding how the modern mind works is to realize that its circuits were not designed to solve the day-to-day problems of a modern American -- they were designed to solve the day-to-day problems of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. These stone age priorities produced a brain far better at solving some problems than others. For…

March 17, 2013

Video: Surrounded by North Korean soldiers and flowers

Nature / NorthKorea

Video: Surrounded by North Korean soldiers and flowers

Visiting a flower show in North Korea led to being in a building overflowing with North Korean soldiers (including, as a group of guys will notice, cute female ones), and flowers. They named some types after their leaders, so they have a lot of Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, which they arrange into shapes of North Korea around small models of important places, like where Kim Il Sung was born and such. You can also hear the over-the-top North Korean music. Sometimes I held the camera low so as not to call attention. I hoped to catch some of the times the cute female soldiers looked at us and giggled, but they were more discrete than I was quick with my camera. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doWpYyVh4dQ

March 5, 2013

Video: On the unexpected beauty of the land of North Korea

Nature / NorthKorea

Video: On the unexpected beauty of the land of North Korea

Here I talk about the unexpected beauty of the land of North Korea -- at least of the parts the government let us see. It was early Spring and North Korea is pretty north, so there weren't many leaves on the trees yet. And whatever your feelings about the government or people, the land, flora, and fauna remain the land, flora, and fauna and it's hard not to appreciate the beauty of nature. We had just had a barbecue lunch in a park near Pyongyang. Maybe in Pyongyang, I'm not sure because they didn't give us any maps. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTE7y4SALL4

February 26, 2013

Blog / Entrepreneurship / Leadership / Nature

Leadership in garbage we can learn from

I just read that Sweden is separating their trash so effectively, they're buying garbage from other countries. That is, their reducing-reusing-and-recycling programs work so well, their waste-incineration program is running low. Needless to say, reducing waste reduces pollution more than incinerating garbage, so one program starving the other helps the environment. According to Phys.org, Europe's average amount of trash ending up as waste if 38 percent. Sweden's is 1 percent. I shudder at what the United States' is. My home country doesn't lead in this area. It follows. Probably embarrassingly, at least for people who don't like to pollute the air and water their children breathe and drink. Since I started composting, my garbage amount decreased a lot. Cutting back on processed food reduces my…

February 7, 2013

Blog / Leadership / Nature / Tips

Responsibility and accountability: expect stagnation without them

The other day I saw a post for a headline that caught my eye "On Scale of 0 to 500, Beijing's Air Quality Tops 'Crazy Bad' at 755" because I was just in Beijing. I remember early one evening looking up in the sky and seeing a low flying airplane. Actually, I only saw its lights in the smog. I got confused looking at it because it looked close, so I expected it to appear to move fast. But it was moving so slowly I figured it had to be very far away. Then I realized why it didn't look like it was moving. It wasn't. It was the light at the top of a building a couple blocks away. The smog was so dense…

January 19, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Evolutionary Psychology / Leadership / Nature

Comparing biology and physics from a business leadership perspective

I studied physics to nearly the farthest levels you can at one of the great institutions. Now I study evolutionary psychology more. I've thought about these things a lot. As a practicing businessman and inventor, I look to nature -- physics -- for ideas to create and engineer to bring to market. As a leader I look to people -- biology -- to interact with, team up with, buy from, sell to, etc; in short, to influence. Sometimes I think about the fields and how I interact with them daily, not abstractly asking about the fields or as a researcher but in how I use their domains in my professional life. If you work on sales, you're using biology and psychology. If you invent something…

January 12, 2013

Awareness / Blog / Nature

What color is a mirror?

I don't know if this will sound deep or what, but this question hit me the other day and I found it making me think enough about perception to share it here. Perception being one of the main components of my Model, I like thinking about and understanding more about perception, whether literal, physical perception, or conceptual. Maybe it will read like a koan. Everything has a color. My computer is black. My shirt is gray. That lamp over there is red. Even glass is clear, which I'll call a color. What color is a mirror? For the purposes of discussion, I imagine a perfectly reflecting mirror. If it always reflects whatever you see it reflecting, does that mean its color keeps changing? Does that…

January 7, 2013

Nature versus Corporate (slideshow)

Nature versus Corporate (slideshow)

Here are the same pictures as from the previous post in a slide show, randomly ordered. Funny, I was thinking about the questions I asked. They feel like leading questions, but reading them, they seem open-ended. I guess you can tell my values. I could have asked questions about market share, returns on investment, competitive strategy, and so forth to get different pictures to rank higher. Things have different values in different contexts.

December 20, 2012

End of content

No more pages to load