You might have noticed (from the total marketing onslaught) that there is a new Star Wars movie coming out. As someone who jumped around his living room with an imaginary lightsaber when he was five and inwardly wept at how bad the last trilogy was…I have mixed feelings. But it was great seeing my favorite character in the trailer: Han Solo. In hindsight it’s easy to forget that Han isn’t an inherently good guy. He’s a smuggler, he hung around with mobsters like Jabba the Hutt, and he shot Greedo first. That's right. He did. George Lucas, in one of his many revisionist faux pas, tried to spitshine Han by re-cutting the famous scene in … [Read more...]
Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
This article was originally published a few years ago at the RockStar Success Library. But it's still as relevant as it was then. Don't make too quick a judgement ;-) In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell goes from his examination of macroscopic communication in The Tipping Point to the other end of the spectrum. With Blink, Malcolm looks at the power of first impressions. And more importantly, he examines how our minds create these first impressions and why they have so much power over us. One of the main concepts that Malcolm looks at is the idea of thin slicing. This is how he describes that act of making decisions based on a a small amount … [Read more...]
The Drunkard’s Walk – Leonard Mlodinow
This article was originally published on October 29th 2009. Randomness, especially in our daily lives, is still enthralling to me - I'm working on a new book entitled Manufacturing Luck. Reading a book on the history and development of probability theory might not seem too enthralling. But somehow Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk combines both the technical developments and the characters along the way into a coherent (and enjoyable) whole. Along the way, it points out why the ancient Greeks never studied probability and why most of the great thinking on the subject came about because of gambling. There’s a method to his … [Read more...]
Stumbling on Happiness – Daniel Gilbert
This article was originally published on November 21st, 2011. It still comes up in conversations with friends, clients, and colleagues. Good stuff (even if Dan is now schilling financial services...good on him for making a few bucks!). Happiness is the ever-elusive holy grail that we keep chasing – and it seems after all of our efforts, we’re not getting any closer to achieving it. The problem, as Daniel Gilbert points out in the beginning of Stumbling on Happiness, is that we even struggle to even define what happiness is! Stumbling on Happiness is one of the few books that I’ve read that tackles the question of our happiness from a … [Read more...]
Moving Past the Damming (and Damning) Power of Getting It Right
I've found that one of the biggest challenges for myself as an entrepreneur and creator is the desire to get things right. I know that it sounds a little backwards, but I've found that one of the best ways to not make forward progress is to worry about making sure your progress is the best it can be. Perfection Gets You Stuck Getting stuck because of this focus on perfection manifests in different ways for different people. For some it's analysis paralysis, where they keep accumulating more and more data instead of acting. For some it's constant revision and changes on their projects which prevent them from being released into the … [Read more...]
The Right Questions Make All the Difference
I was catching up with my friend Ian yesterday and our conversation turned philosophical (as it usually does when we are sharing a few craft beers). At one point he asked, "Do you think that American society is on the path to solving its problems, or are we not even asking the right questions?" This morning I'm thinking about how that same distinction can apply to us as individuals. We worry about coming up with the right answers, but we actually need to start by examining the questions we ask about our lives. The quality of our answers, in fact the possible answers we can come up with, are dependent on the questions. And I'm not … [Read more...]