What do all of these have in common? Valuable Quality Fair/equal/equitable/just versus unfair/inequality/unjust Moral/ethical/right/acceptable versus immoral/unethical/wrong/unacceptable Useful Normal versus abnormal Broken, needs to be repaired, needs to be fixed Pleasing versus disgusting When’s the last time you found yourself saying something like: I have no idea why someone would buy that, that’s worthless. That chair was really poor quality. I’ve…
Category: Contemplations
Direct communication isn’t what it seems
We’ve all played the game telephone as kids. We know when a messages is passed around a circle it comes out different, sometimes drastically different. It’s not hard to understand that indirect communication distorts a message. But where does that distortion come from? Indirect communication is nothing but a series of direct communications. Which means the problems with indirect communication…
Spring cleaning, throw out old ideas
If you’re like me, you amass a million stickies containing ideas that in the moment seemed so important you had to get out of bed, scramble for a piece of paper and jot them down. These pile up. Even if you’re diligent about collecting them, will you really go through them? And when you do, will you be able to…
The psychology of making yourself successful
Here’s a simple formula for taking being successful at something you’ve never done before: 1. Make sure it’s worth doing. Are the rewards justifiable? For example, if you want to provide a new service to customers, is there a sizable market for that service? Will it be worth it in the long run to invest in a new direction for…
There isn’t a bigger boat
Just after I finished sharing what it’s like to intentionally buy based on value, I thought to myself what a silly thought. We all intuitively buy based on value. But then I realized that’s not entirely true. We buy based on the perception of value. And our perception of value can be arbitrarily manipulated by ourselves and others. What made…
Buying on Purpose
A few years ago I was moving from Chicago to Seattle. I hired a company to move me out of my apartment in Chicago and another to move me in, in Seattle. The company in Chicago charged an hourly rate. At the time, mired in the concept of the billable hour, I couldn’t help but think about time while they…
Simplicity can be easy
Simplicity is desirable whenever possible, especially in business. People often claim it isn’t easy to achieve. As if it were some elusive art. In the context of a project, when simplicity is hard it’s a sign of neglect in some other aspect of the project. Often that aspect is in determining a clear objective upfront. An objective that states a…
Weaknesses that stand in the way of strengths
Why overcoming weaknesses that stand in the way of strengths is a good idea:
Visceral reactions
At least once a week, we all have something come across our inbox (whether a voice mail, text message, email or otherwise) that triggers a visceral reaction. The reaction could lead to responding in ways that will not only be unproductive, but could make us regretful. The trick is to find a way to put enough space between the initial…