I came across some quotes from astronauts who had seen the Earth from space that increased my sense of the beauty and fragility of life here — as far as we know, the only life at all. The quotes surprised me partly because I think of astronauts as cowboy- and engineer-types. That surprise strengthened the feeling of the quotes, because you don’t expect cowboy engineers to promote protecting the environment,[…] Keep reading →

If we could use leadership in any place most, I can think of few places more important than in understanding what is happening with our environment, energy, and how it will affect us, meaning the economy. Some conclude that since before Revelations through Malthus and beyond people have been predicting the end of the world, yet the world hasn’t ended, we have solved all problems before and we’ll solve whatever[…] Keep reading →

A recent conversation with a friend who also coaches highlighted some important observations of mastering your emotions and improving your life. We were talking about my Model and Method and how you can predictably and consistently create the emotions and motivations you want. He described how he started putting this stuff into practice. He had learned techniques to change emotions — basically to choose new environments, beliefs, and behaviors. He[…] Keep reading →

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 →

The pattern: overly intense emotions We’ve all experienced someone losing their cool around us. People flip out. They scream or raise their voices. Or, alternatively, sometimes they withdraw and act depressed or powerless. They make rash decisions. They get difficult to be around, etc. Sometimes you’re the one whose emotions get out of control. Some people describe the pattern as “being emotional.” Since I say people are always feeling emotions[…] Keep reading →

Life is full of difficult decisions. People struggle over them, sometimes for years, even people living great lives. You probably have one or two or more. I’ve had my share. A couple questions people asked me recently got me to figure it out. If your questions are reasonably similar, read on. Typical life questions “Which job should I take?” “Should we become boyfriend and girlfriend?” A couple friends asked me[…] Keep reading →

What a coincidence. The day after my long post on the counterproductivity of moralizing for leading people, using the example of deciding for others whether they should eat meat or not, the New York Times published the results of a contest to do exactly what I described as counterproductive. No contradiction here — the New York Times’s goal is not to lead people, but to sell newspapers and what works[…] Keep reading →