There are many books on how to go after what you want in life. From specific step-by-step instructions in the how-to guides to more universal recommendations in philosophy, religious, and self-help texts, advice for how to get everything you want in life abound. However, texts on how to figure out what you want in life are less common. There are...
Read MoreThere are times in your life when nothing can seem to be more important than that one thing in your life: that job you're applying for, the big game, or that test coming up. You can win championships, graduate from school, or make your first million dollars. Heck, you can get that bike you wanted more than anything for Christmas. No matter what...
Read MoreOne of the most important things in life is picking a direction and a destination. If growth is the point, then you need to determine what areas of your life you wish to improve and by how much. Since we all only have 24 hours per day, we have to choose how we spend that time to realize our dreams. In short, we need to determine how good we want...
Read More“What do you want to be when you grow up?” It seems like a simple, innocent question. Asking a child this question is either just to make conversation, to get to know them, or to understand what they want to do so you can keep it in mind for where/when you can help them in the future. No matter what the reason, the result is straightforward:...
Read MoreOne of my first ever blog posts was about creating a “life architecture roadmap”—in other words, assessing the current state of your life and identifying your desired future state so that you could create a roadmap filled with practical next steps and milestones to get there. The idea is a play on Enterprise Architecture, a discipline in which...
Read MoreOne of my favorite psychology studies of all time is the one where they give the test group a plant to take care of in their elderly home and then provide a plant for the control group that is taken care of by a staff member. The results were stark: the group who had the responsibility for taking care of the plant lived much, much longer than the...
Read MoreIn the immortal words of Creed Bratton of The Office, “If I can’t SCUBA, then what has this all been about? What am I working toward?” While this is quotation is meant to be funny since a man working an office job (with plenty of references to drugs, murder, and other seedy activities during the workday) for decades was all leading up to a...
Read MoreThe most common cliché for people graduating from school is that they want to “change the world”. Of course, that is a very subjective statement since you change the world just by existing (because it’s different than if you didn’t exist) and there are plenty of ways to change everything—from the Pet Rock to travel to Mars—that can be seemingly...
Read MoreDo you ever have the attitude of, “I’ll change when the world changes?” Yes, this attitude applies to arguments between people (e.g., “I’ll apologize when he apologizes.”) and individual’s behaviors (e.g., Michael Bolton’s “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.” in Office Space), but it also applies to your attitude toward the world. After...
Read MoreHaving advised executives for roughly 20 years at the time of this posting, I can tell you that I’ve had over a thousand conversations on strategy. These conversations are/were about 30 minutes long, meaning that I’d have to convey a lot of information in a short period of time. That makes it necessary to simplify as much as possible, making the...
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