I just read this article, “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy, Consider Time.” Before commenting on it, I’ll note that I saw it linked to from a tech site, Hacker News. That community tends not to value MBA values and view people with MBAs as not adding the value engineers do. Having been a tech-founder (before my MBA) and a non-tech-founder (after my MBA) of different ventures I understand that[…] Keep reading →

I wrote the following after reading this article from a venture capitalist giving advice to people thinking about starting companies. A lot of advice VCs give entrepreneurs seems to me versions of “make my job easier,” like how to write a great business plan, how to pitch, etc. In this case, I see him asking entrepreneurs to improve the signal-to-noise ratio so he can have an easier time funding companies.[…] Keep reading →

Following up yesterday’s post on balance sheets and charts for using and producing energy and reporting our numbers to see if we can make them balance, let’s look at carbon flows. People who don’t know about carbon emissions, flows, and balance confuse simple ideas with each other. For example, some talk about how volcanoes and cows digestive systems produce tons of carbon and wonder why we should bother changing our[…] Keep reading →

Imagine living your whole life nearsighted and one day you wear glasses for the first time — everything going from fuzzy blobs to clear. Or you know after you get out of the pool and your ears have water in them? Imagine you heard like that for your whole life and suddenly they cleared and you could hear properly. Or you’ve been wearing gloves and for the first time you[…] Keep reading →

Wrapping up my series on the counterproductivity of leading with morality, ethics, and judgment, I’ll present a model based I got from Einstein. Without all the emotion judgment can grip you with, you can understand the physics model easily. Then you can apply it to the emotional situation. Then I bet you’ll improve your life. Before Einstein: the problem of the aether Before Einstein, people created a concept called the[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I wrote on how to lead people (yourself or others) you disagree with without judging them. I skipped cases where you felt you could not work with the person under any circumstances. Let’s look at such cases today. I’m going to treat these cases strategically. Most cases will be unique at the tactical level so you’ll have to figure out how to apply the strategy. If you can’t work[…] Keep reading →

Prelude: this is about leadership (of others and yourself) Yesterday I outlined an essay on the counterproductivity of deciding right and wrong for people who disagree with you. Today I’m fleshing out the essay. The point of this blog is to help people lead — to influence others, to work with them in teams, to negotiate with them, and so on — even when you disagree. So I’ll leave deciding[…] Keep reading →

I liked Michael Pollan‘s Omnivore’s Dilemma, which people have suggested I read for years. I like his perspective on food and “food.” I don’t intend for the following to detract from his overall message, but his chapter 17, “The Ethics of Eating Animals,” makes a great example for leadership. Leadership means motivating others, which means changing their emotions. Few of us like when others motivate us with guilt or blame,[…] Keep reading →

For all my lessons learned, the Model, the Method, and so on, if we want to improve our lives, little works more effectively than Eat well Sleep well Exercise If you do nothing more than the above, you’ll at least have a stable baseline of neutral. Last I checked, no medicine works better than exercise at keeping yourself happy. This advice costs nothing, takes little extra time, and requires no[…] Keep reading →