Self expression isn’t always easy. Maybe that’s why I admire those who openly exhibit an apparently unshakable confidence to be themselves.
It’s easy not to realize that behind outwardly confident people there are probably many encounters with ignorant people than most people are even aware.
It seems that in life, it’s almost impossible to escape criticism entirely. The schoolyard “Sticks and Stones” saying and the online advice of “Don’t feed the trolls” is only a small part of the story. Read more »
We all have bad days at work. When we do, it is not uncommon to entertain the thought of: “do I stay, or do I go?”
Recently I came across strong arguments to support either option.
From “don’t quit your job…never be without an income stream”, to “appreciate what you have until you have a plan to go after something better,” to the enticing: “Oh, go for it, don’t live a life with regrets.” Read more »
A recent #BlogChat on Twitter spurred me to contemplate the value of writing short pieces. During the Twitter Chat, I was challenged to write a Series of posts to break up my usual style of writing longer blog posts.
As an analyst, I naturally started weighing the pros and cons of writing short pieces. I even considered writing a Blog Series about that. That was until it later occurred to me that it didn’t really make sense to write a lot about writing a little.
So, I decided to condense my now defunct series on “Being Concise” into the following: Read more »
In the current economy many people are cutting back on “extras”, or at least attempting to. But are we as frugal as we think we are?
Maybe we should start by getting clear on what frugality means to each of us. As we know, frugality can have a full range of definitions and connotations which range from the negative, i.e., being a Scrooge-like miser, to the positive, i.e., being a monk-like minimalist.
In general, as expressed in this blog post entitled: “Frugality – Not Just for the Poor”, frugality is described by The Frugal Goddess as a positive, i.e., “it is about getting the maximum out of available resources.” Read more »
How comfortable are you (and/or your friends, family, associates, etc.) with uncertainty?
From my experience, such as when it comes to health advice/studies, it seems that the last thing most people want to hear is that findings are “inconclusive”, i.e., that the result is neither negative nor positive. There is no certainty in that. That would leave many of us in a limbo state of not knowing what to do with the information we have.
Though, that is not to say that we couldn’t come up with a conclusion anyway.
Clearly it is always possible to “find facts to fit any point of view.” Tim Berry, of Palo Alto Software, nicely summarizes this point in a post where he even humorously suggests a “facts for hire” business concept. Read more »
Some people have no shyness whatsoever about offering their advice and opinions, writing books and articles, commenting, or expressing their thoughts in any variety of ways. Others are just the opposite. (And, there is a whole gamut of personalities that fall anywhere in between those two extremes.)
Conventional wisdom states that if you know more about a particular subject than someone else (or if you have a particular insight based on your unique experiences), then that qualifies you (and sometimes even obligates you) to share that information with others. Yet many of us don’t feel that that is enough of a reason to do so.
For those of us who have gotten used to “holding our tongues”, here are four reasons why we may be doing so, and why I believe we should re-consider our reticence. Can you relate to any or all of the following four points, too? Read more »
There is no shortage of quotes posted on Twitter every minute of every day.
Many are the motivational kind. The kind of quote that is easy for Tweeters to find, post, and re-Tweet. The kind that people can instantly feel inspired by regardless of how helpful it actually is or isn’t.
[I don’t want to digress too much, but the following sidebar might be worth considering in this context. Consider this post that points out how overemphasizing motivation, and ignoring ability and triggers, is what makes Facebook Behavior Change Apps ineffective: “5 Reason Facebook Behavior Change Apps Aren’t Working”.]
But I digress a bit with that. Getting back to my point….
Sometimes I, too, enjoy the clever words in motivational quotes.
However, more often than not, these quotes also just make me want to point out the non-universality of their contrite claims. Read more »
There were some recent news reports that the board game, Scrabble, was changing the rules of the game to now allow Proper Nouns.
But, before anyone, who hasn’t yet heard the whole story, gets overly excited about nothing, be comforted to know that any kind of sacrilegious move like that would not apply to the Classic version, but would only apply to an upcoming Family Friendly version of the game.
While Scrabble really is “just a game”, our first knee-jerk reaction to the initial news reports does tell us something about ourselves. Read more »
As you may have noticed, it’s been a few months since I’ve last updated this blog.
As you may not know, this wasn’t exactly a planned hiatus. Probably not unlike other writers out there, somehow I got myself into this rut where I didn’t believe I had anything worthwhile to say that wasn’t already probably being said by someone else. So, I stopped writing. Though, that is not to say that I didn’t miss the satisfaction of getting my thoughts down in black and white, which I truly did miss.
Anyway, a number of different inspirations have come together for me lately to inspire me to recommit to some new goals for this blog and I wanted to start by sharing these insights with you here. I’m hoping these will guide me on a new course, one that we’ll both consider worthy of sticking around for. Read more »
The latest “rule” about the “new economy” and the “new job market” (or, rather, on how to take advantage of the economic downturn by becoming an entrepreneur) seems to be: “get ahead by breaking the rules”.
I’ve always found that advice to be a bit suspect or a bit too “convenient”, overshadowing the role that luck and selective memories often play.
Of course, that’s not to suggest that we don’t benefit from the “learning opportunity” of missteps, whether due to breaking the rules or not. However, when it comes to rules, sometimes the “learning” is that some rules aren’t meant to be broken in a willy-nilly way. Read more »
Self expression isn’t always easy. Maybe that’s why I admire those who openly exhibit an apparently unshakable confidence to be themselves. 
