Why are we so busy, and what is it about our culture that fuels this busyness? I’ve been thinking about this question on and off since 1985, when I was a college student in Denmark for the summer. I was sitting at a picnic table with five or six other students having lunch. “I have…
Do you need a better relationship with your phone? Do people you love tell you that you spend too much time on your phone? Are you using your phone more than three hours a day? Do you suffer from “text neck”? Do you find yourself saying, “I’ll look at xyz for five minutes”, and then…
“We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: ‘So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of…
Confession — right now I’m standing at a crossroads with a minor case of the burnout blues. It’s foggy, and I know in one direction lies the dark woods of melancholy and depression, and in the other direction lies sunny fields of possibility, where goals seem meaningful and effort seems desirable. So I’m writing this…
What yoga taught me was how to get out my head, listen to, and connect with the physical sensations in my body. I initially hated yoga because it seemed all about the end game, your ability to twist into a pose and hold it for what seemed like an infinite number of incredibly boring seconds….
Someone recently recommended “The Upside of Stress” by Kelly McGonigal. So I dutifully checked it out and watched Kelly’s Ted Talk. This was especially interesting to me because I had recently watched an episode of “The Expanse” where one character talked about trying to help a struggling butterfly out of a chrysalis by cutting the chrysalis. And…
Sometimes curiosity gets a bad rap, so you might wonder why curiosity matters. After all, it allegedly killed the cat and got Adam and Eve kicked out of Eden. And look at what happened to Bluebeard’s wife! Yet most of humanity’s progress has been a direct result of curious people asking lots questions and trying…
I recently had the delightful experience of working with a life coach for a month, an unexpected gift of synchronicity that fell into my lap. It was an extremely fruitful relationship, and I produced an abundance of ideas I was super excited about during our month together. New business ideas, new book ideas, a competition…
I learned how to use the Pomodoro technique years ago when I was trying to find strategies for my kids and their homework, but I never considered applying it to myself. After all, I was proud of my workaholic tendencies. I knew how to focus and get work done, to keep my nose to the…
As long as I can remember, I’ve avoided stepping into the light for fear of being found wanting. I’m a behind the scenes, work in the shadows kind of person. I’m a creative person however, so when I feel the desire to create or make something, I’ve usually used a pseudonym. My first YouTube channel,…