I don’t get to see a lot of movies these days — and it’s almost unheard of that I’ll watch one twice. But this weekend marked my second viewing of the short documentary film, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. If you’re interested in the alluring, frustrating, asymptotic pursuit of mastery, this is movie is a must-see. […]
I haven’t been blogging much the last few weeks because I’ve been putting the finishing touches on a new book, which will be out at the end of the year. (Pre-order now. It’s worth it. I beg you.) But the mailbag is always brimming with emotionally intelligent signage, so I’ve plucked four recent reader submissions
Happiness. It’s what we all want, right? But what does it look like? How do we find it? And is the joy in the pursuit or in the realization? For answers to these and other questions, tune in to Office Hours tomorrow (Friday, 12 October 2012), when our guest will be Gretchen Rubin, author of
Chade-Meng Tan is an amazing guy. He started out as an engineer at Google, but his current title is Jolly Good Fellow with a job description that reads, “Enlighten minds, open hearts, create world peace.” As part of that mission, he developed a personal growth curriculum at Google called “Search Inside Yourself.” With his new
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I wrote a book about the rise of people working for themselves. A lot has happened since then — a historic recession, the emergence of widespread broadband, the explosive growth of smart phones, the further erosion of job security, lower barriers to entry for small
That’s the question at the center of a fascinating new book by New York Times Magazine and This American Life contributor Paul Tough. It’s called How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character (Buy it at Amazon, BN.com, or IndieBound). And Tough will be talking about it, and taking your questions, on
In a survey last week, the Pew Research Center asked a question whose form I’ve come to find interesting and useful: “What one word best describes Barack Obama/Mitt Romney/Joe Biden/Paul Ryan?” (As it happens, in my upcoming book, I use this type of question to show what people really think of sales.) The answers to these
Have you heard the one about . . . ? Chances are, by the time you’ve reached this blog post, you’ve already heard dozens of stories in your day. Before you go to sleep, you’ll encounter dozens more. And you might desire some of these stories so deeply that you’ll pay for them. As a
Chris Nordyke runs an insurance agency in Corvallis, Oregon. But it’s a different kind of agency — with a unique approach to sales, service, and motivation. Just look at the sign in its lobby.
As I mentioned in the last post, summer is a great time for emotionally intelligent signs. One reason is that more people are traveling, camera phones at the ready, as this batch of road photos demonstrates. Tabitha Core found this pleading sign in a work zone in the suburbs of Durban, South Africa: On the
