At my niece’s kindergarten graduation Friday the entire graduating class of four-and-five-year-olds sang a song with a chorus “I love America.” The song was light-hearted and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. As a thoughtful person, I couldn’t help think about what having a whole class sing the song meant. I enjoy playing with ideas and what better time to ponder education than at a graduation? I’ll be the first to[…] Keep reading →

Two observations I’ve made about how good people are at things: People who aren’t good at something talk about how awesome they are at it. People who are great at something talk about the humiliations and failures that got them good at it. I’ve found this pattern far more accurate than I would have expected. I love hearing stories from people about the disasters that made them who they are.[…] Keep reading →

People confuse someone else’s values being different from their own with being worse than their own. If other people’s values were worse, then statements like the following two would portend the end of society. The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no[…] Keep reading →

In my seminar yesterday I mentioned “plays well with others” may be one of the most valuable skills in adulthood for team-based activities. Yet we treat it as a joke for children, or at best a euphemism implying the student in question doesn’t do well academically. Have you ever learned something amazing while developing yourself as a leader or person and wondered why leadership and personal development isn’t taught in[…] Keep reading →

Thanks to all who attended this weekend’s leadership and personal development seminar through Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York and Parsons the New School of Design. Thanks also to those who made it possible.

[This post is part of a series on willpower and how to understand and use it. 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.] An example of an ineffective way to use willpower to get in shape is to will yourself to go to the gym two days a week for[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on willpower and how to understand and use it. 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.] How to use willpower summarizes the previous posts. Use willpower either for brief, self-contained projects that you’ll finish before running out of mental energy to sustain it[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on willpower and how to understand and use it. 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.] Yesterday’s discussion of when not to use willpower — when you aren’t aware of where you are emotionally or where you want to or when you risk[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on willpower and how to understand and use it. 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 all you could do was act on whatever emotion was most dominant at any time, you would be purely reactive. You would not be able to[…] Keep reading →