Category: Society
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Better Relationships
Yesterday, I wondered if I had anything useful to say about improving how people work together. While this topic is worthy of consideration, it’s a secondary concern. The primary question on my mind is more about how any two people relate to each other. Sure, it matters how effectively we can work together. But we…
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Working Together
What’s needed for team members to work well together? Observations I could go on. I’ve worked on many teams, some much more effective than others. The best teams work in a state of flow. The team members inspire each other. They grow together. Leaders can help bring the right people together. They can set the…
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Access to Great Content
Reading or listening to good books is one of my favorite activities. Yesterday, Malcolm Gladwell’s Revenge of the Tipping Point was released on Audible. I started listening as soon as I could. If his first book, The Tipping Point, was about the phenomenon of social contagion, this book promises to be more about the causes…
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Meditations
I’ve read about a third of Meditations: A New Translation by Marcus Aurelius, updated by Gregory Hays. Based on how much Ryan Holiday has gushed about Meditations, I expected to be blown away. But so far, that hasn’t happened. I agree with Pierre Hadot that the entries seem like “spiritual exercises”. In his Introduction, Gregory…
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The Origins of Taste
As we bumble our way through childhood, we begin to notice some cool things that touch our hearts. I learned how to ride a bike, and this gave me access to a much larger world than my own backyard. I could ride to two different parks, my elementary school, and more. Along the way, I…
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People Are Weird
Everyone has their quirks. We each have our habits, mannerisms, attitudes, convictions, rehearsed actions, hang-ups, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. It takes time for you to get to know anyone else well enough that you begin to understand his or her specific weirdness. Even when you know people very well, you can still discover additional weirdness…
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Mississippi Burning
Sometimes I wonder how it’s possible for multi-generational conflicts to exist. Then, I remember watching the movie Mississippi Burning. I remember the scene that hit me like a sledge hammer when I first saw it, so many years ago. Here’s the trailer. The movie is a work of fiction inspired by true events that took…
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The Not Knowing
Sometimes, we know exactly what we want to be doing. And sometimes we don’t. Life offers us plenty of chances to leap into the abyss, not knowing what we’re going to find after our feet leave the ground. We like certainty. Some of us like to calculate probabilities. We often feel uneasy with uncertainty. The…
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Will AI Reduce Call Wait Times?
I’m curious how long it’s going to take for AI to improve customer service drastically. For many reasons, great customer service is difficult to find these days. Today, I was on the phone for over a half-hour attempting to get a simple question answered. The automated prompts failed to connect me to someone who could…
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Deep Cleaning
It’s been an insane day of deep cleaning. While I don’t collect much, I tend to let bills and other paperwork accumulate. Today, I recycled lots of paperwork and removed some clutter from my office. Karilyn dived into the deep cleaning: dusting, vacuuming, and helping to make my office more functional. Dare I say liveable?…