"Every day is an experiment"
One of the comments made in Celeste Headlee’s book “We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter” (or perhaps one of her videos) is that we may have been better conversationalists before the printing press was invented. Put another way, the rise of mass literacy may have caused us to become poorer listeners.
My sense is that it’s happening again.
I am constantly amazed at the number of people that choose to be unhappy. And I use the word “choose” deliberately.
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Don’t worry, I’m not about to tell you that you need one to do the other. Far from it. But in reflecting on my goals and process I stumbled into a concept shared by both. I don’t have name for it — or, rather, any name I assign seems too limiting — but I can […]
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Placing sometimes artificial constraints on an activity is a fascinating creativity technique. The canonical example might be that Dr. Suess’ book Green Eggs and Ham was written on a bet — a bet that an entertaining children’s story could not be written using only 50 different words. That constraint led to one of the best […]
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Viewing everything as an investment of some sort helps prioritize and clarify some of the decisions we make.
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Considering the “cost of failure” is quick, easy, and now one of my most important evaluation tools.
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If you had a chance to send a message to 20,000 people in 100 words or less, what would you say? – Easy: Back. Up.
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There’s plenty of good news if you know where to look. I’ll share my list of places I look.
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Free speech is a complex topic, invoked by many when it doesn’t actually apply, or used as some kind of a shield against its consequences.
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Enlightenment Now is a great book and you should probably read it. Here’s why I decided to stop.
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My morning was derailed by three separate articles that really struck a nerve. The concepts are so simple and important, and yet so often ignored, I’m having a hard time thinking about much else.
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What we don’t understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. And what we cannot control…we attack.
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Habit creation for self improvement feels like a current fad, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t nuggets of value to be had.
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Hello, my name is Walter. I’m a boy Pembroke Welsh Corgi, born in 2013. I live in Woodinville, Washington, but I do travel a little, mostly in western Washington. If you find me my owners would love it if you let them know. You can reach Leo Notenboom via the 206 number on my tag. […]
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I was recently interviewed by Josh Spector, the man behind For The Interested, a curated newsletter of interesting articles and other information that Josh both finds and occasionally writes himself. There’s an associated For The Interested Facebook group made up of newsletter subscribers, and as part of an experiment to learn more about the people […]
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I have opinions. (I’ll wait for everyone that knows me to stop laughing….) I tend not to be terribly shy about sharing said opinions. (Again, another pause for the audience to catch their breath….) I recently read an article that discussed how the Dutch are somewhat more “brutally honest” when it comes to opinions, and […]
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No surprise: what we experience and expose ourselves to directly impacts what we believe to be true.
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