There’s nothing wrong with abundance and joy. But being spoiled causes two real problems: it makes it difficult to appreciate what you have. If perfect is the standard, it’s rarely met and never exceeded. it leads to tantrums. Tantrums about sharing, about the lack of ‘more’ and about the endless poverty of comparison....

If we need to wait until after the short-term emergency is settled, it’s unlikely we’re ever going to get to work on the long-term important work. Of course, we want to do “everything we can” when an emergency strikes. But the standard for that has always involved tradeoffs. Perhaps we should resist trading the important work for the urgent...

What a waste. Something went wrong, and the other person cared enough about the relationship to let you know. Perhaps they’re hoping that you can rebuild a bridge. That you can see what they see and care enough to do something about it. A half apology is a little like half a balloon. It takes effort, but it doesn’t have...

Consider building a word cloud of your writing. It might be all the text on your website, or the last 50 emails you sent. It might be your new book or the speech you’re going to give at Rice University. It only takes a few minutes. I use wordclouds.com because it’s easy and free. Click the ‘word list’ menu and ‘extract words from...

Paving the ground might be an option. Pavement is invisible to the driver. It’s expected, smooth, resilient and gets out of the way. You only notice a road when it’s not paved well. Nature, on the other hand, is never perfect. All untouched forests are natural, yet each is different. That’s the point. Hardness can be...

“If I were you…” or, more commonly, “if you were me.” Management has never been easy, but as the world becomes more complex, it gets more difficult. We’d like to imagine that the person (or AI bot, or freelancer, or firm) that we hired has enough drive, insight and common sense to do exactly what we do in the situation....