I ask people about their passions a lot. Many tell me they have no passions, which makes me sad for them. I don’t think passions are something you find lying around but something you create and build from small interests through self-awareness, effort, and dedication. It means they haven’t created something they could have. They either never invested enough to find out what it took to create a passion or,[…] Keep reading →

I’m going to present an over-simplified case related to issues many of us face in much smaller contexts. The goal is to learn from simple hypothetical cases to build experience for more complex, real-life cases. Normally I separate my North Korea posts from leadership ones, but they overlap here, along with my being in China now. One of the greater challenges the world faces is how to bring some kind[…] Keep reading →

The number one defining property of leaders Defining property number one about leaders from leadership guru Michael Feiner (and my professor) is leaders ship. They get the job done. Nobody I know of whose paycheck doesn’t originate with fossil fuels or fundamentalist religion believes we are heading in a healthy direction for our environment. But we all respond to incentives and the incentives of our system — huge roads, low[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written about Do The Math, the blog that takes a quantitative, scientific, and usually non-judgmental approach to understanding our impact on the environment. I posted on it today for the first time about some questions I’d been thinking about for a while but haven’t approached in that blog’s way. He has written about increasing his efficiency in using energy. I generally applaud that approach and do it myself, but[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on The Method 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 — which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on The Model — my model for the human emotional system designed for use in leadership, self-awareness, and general purpose professional and personal development — which I find the most effective and valuable foundation for understanding yourself and others and improving your life. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get[…] Keep reading →

My first interview yesterday on playing Ultimate Frisbee in Pyongyang reveals how dramatically and positively the experience affected me. As much as it inspired and influenced me as an individual, I have come to see the event in a larger context. This series of posts covers Ultimate Frisbee in North Korea. Ultimate in most places might purely be about sport. North Korea is not a usual place, so it’s about[…] Keep reading →