I’ve gotten encouraging feedback on my series on my daily beliefs and how to create your own. A friend wrote with an idea to involve readers to help make the series more useful and active: to offer readers suggestions for alternatives to beliefs and models that are holding them back. New ideas could come from me or other readers. I liked his idea. Today I’m opening up to people looking to[…] Keep reading →

I’m sure many people have thought and written great stuff about the Egyptian pyramids and overcoming the challenges to building them. I haven’t read much on them, but I’m writing not so much about the pyramids than on how one person’s thoughts developed as he learned to solve harder problems, though nowhere near the scale of a great pyramid. Stage 1: The challenges of mechanical engineering When I first thought[…] Keep reading →

A pattern I’ve noticed works a lot in life: When everyone is going in one direction, try going as far as you can in the opposite direction. Some examples: When car companies kept making bigger and more dominant SUVs, the Prius did well. In retrospect it seems obvious, but the car appeared nearly alone and successful in the U.S. market for years before other cars competed meaningfully. Now Smart Cars[…] Keep reading →

Yesterday I wrote about being called intelligent or smart and the sometimes downsides associated with it. I found that while society seems to value intelligence, on a personal level people value getting the job done, relationship skills, experience, people’s networks, and other things, at least in leadership and decision-making roles. For a few roles that don’t require teamwork people value intelligence, but they aren’t that common in professional environments. What[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

My series on beliefs got me more page views and emails from readers than average. Did it get you to examine your beliefs? Did you do the exercise that started it for me? It costs nothing and takes only a few minutes. I ask not just because I’m curious, I ask for a reason we could all benefit from. As much as I like how my beliefs work for me,[…] Keep reading →