Benjamin Spall

Your Input Is Your Output

2022-02-25T00:00:00-05:00

Your input is important. What you put into your body, whether in the form of food, entertainment, or knowledge will have a profound effect on what comes out.

Your output can only be as good as your input allows it to be. In the words of author and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar (1926-2012):

Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.

When you have a free moment, whether you’re commuting to work on public transportation, or waiting in line at the post office, what do you do? If you pull out a book, or an article on your phone, this input will likely have a greater impact on your later output than if you start playing a game on your phone or subconsciously start scrolling Instagram.

Similarly, if you prepare healthy meals every night, or batch cook healthy meals to eat over several nights, you’re going to feel better overall than if you get takeout five nights a week. (There’s a joke about your input literally being your output in this case, but I am much too mature to make it.)

Garbage In, Garbage Out

There’s a term in computer science known as garbage in, garbage out (GIGO). It means that the output of a computer program is only as good as the data put into it.

As a basic example of GIGO, if you were to create a spreadsheet to keep track of your household budget, your total expenses (the output data) is only as accurate as the data input to account for your mortgage, rent, electric, gas, and other payments (your input data). With accurate input data your spreadsheet is a powerful tool to help keep track of your finances. With inaccurate input data, your spreadsheet is little more than useless.

The same is true in all aspects of our lives. Prior to COVID-19, there was something profound about watching others perform at the very height of their talents, and on the very edge of their abilities. When my wife and I lived in San Francisco we would frequent the symphony, ballet, opera, and a couple of theaters just down the street from us often. When we moved to New York City we made the most of all of these same entertainment venues, while adding Broadway shows to the mix.

I say this not to brag, but rather to express the importance of your input. While your input isn’t your output directly—after seeing My Fair Lady at the Lincoln Center I didn’t suddenly start singing “Oh, wouldn’t it be lovely?” pitch perfect—it does inspire you to sit down and work on your most important output.

Your output can only be as good as your input allows it to be. What are you consuming on a daily basis that can have an effect on your output, positive or negative?

If you’re interested in hearing more from me, be sure to subscribe to my free email newsletter, and if you enjoyed this article, please share it on social media, link to it from your website, or bookmark it so you can come back to it often. ∎

Nature-Deficit Disorder: What It Is, and How to Overcome It

2022-02-18T00:00:00-05:00

Have you ever felt “out of sorts” in your own home?

From a general feeling of malaise, to a sudden lack of ambition or will to do things that you would normally be excited to do—you don’t feel right, but you can’t quite put your figure on the problem.

While these feelings can be caused by a number of things, there’s a chance that if you’re feeling this way, or if you have felt this way in the past, you are suffering from nature-deficit disorder.

In this article, I’m going to dive into the symptoms and effects of nature-deficit disorder, and ultimately discover how to overcome it.

What is Nature-Deficit Disorder?

Nature-deficit disorder is a term to describe what happens to us when we are alienated from nature.

As many of us, especially children, spend more time indoors, we become less attune to the natural world, and in turn, we struggle with reduced attention spans, diminished mental and physical states, and a range of other afflictions.

Coined by Richard Louv in 2005, while nature-deficit disorder is not a medical diagnosis, it is at its core the human cost of alienation from nature. As Louv notes in a 2019 article:

Although human beings have been urbanizing, and then moving indoors, since the introduction of agriculture, social and technological changes in the past three decades have accelerated the human disconnect from the natural world.

He continues:

Among the reasons: the proliferation of electronic communications; poor urban planning and disappearing open space; increased street traffic; diminished importance of the natural world in public and private education; and parental fear magnified by news and entertainment media.

What is the Primary Cause of Nature-Deficit Disorder?

The most common cause of nature-deficit disorder is a lack of time spent outside in nature.

As much of the world’s population continues to move into cities (anecdotal evidence of individuals moving in the other during during the pandemic not withstanding), nature-deficit disorder is only going to become more acute. It it essential that adults and children alike make a conscious effort to not only go outside on a regular basis, but as I’ll touch upon below, find other ways to bring nature into our lives.

How to Overcome Nature-Deficit Disorder

The good news is nature is closer than we think.

I live in New York City, and while there isn’t much nature to speak of directly around my block, I take my dog to Central Park every morning either for a walk or, more often, so she can run around off-leash with her friends.

Prior to adopting Jane last year, I could go days without walking in the park, despite it being just a few blocks from my apartment. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, my wife asked when I had last been outside. “Coming up on three days,” I told her. She asked because I had been outwardly showing signs of nature-deficit disorder: I was lethargic despite sleeping well at night, I was working later despite it not being asked of me, and I was outwardly showing signs of anxiety.

While taking a walk in the woods, or indeed your local park, is a surefire way to begin to overcome nature-deficit disorder, if work, parenting, or other responsibilities keep you from being able to do this on a daily basis, there are other ways in which to overcome nature-deficit disorder, or at least reduce its symptoms:

Start a garden: If you have space in your back yard to start planting, this is ideal. If not, even a small balcony or window sill in which you can place some pots will give you some green space from which you can “get back to nature” every day.
Open your windows: Feeling a good breeze rush through your hair needn’t be a sensation confined to the outside. Whenever you’re unable to get away from your work or other duties for a particular length of time, open all nearby windows (put on extra layers if needed) to bring the outside in.
Partake in forest bathing: While this is unlikely something you’ll be able to find the time to do every day, forest bathing (also known as “nature therapy”) is a remarkably effective way to feel at one with the world around us.

The End of History Illusion

2021-11-10T00:00:00-05:00

In 2013, a team of psychologists at Harvard University published a paper in which they outlined “the end of history illusion.”

In the study, the team asked half of the thousands of study participants to predict how much their values would change in the next 10 years, and the other half to tell them how much their values had changed in the previous 10 years.

Here’s Dan Gilbert, one of the psychologists who participated in the study, and the author of the 2006 bestseller Stumbling on Happiness, explaining the results:

At every age, from 18 to 68 in our data set, people vastly underestimated how much change they would experience over the next 10 years. We call this the end of history illusion. To give you an idea of the magnitude of this effect […] 18-year-olds anticipate changing only as much as 50-year-olds actually do.

Gilbert continues:

Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting, and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our life is change.

In 2014, Gilbert summarized the findings of the study, and the end of history illusion more broadly, on stage at TED. You can watch his short talk below:

Seeking Distraction: Our Very Human Reaction to Losing Control

2021-09-09T00:00:00-04:00

Do you ever find yourself actively seeking distraction from what you’re working on?

You know what you’re supposed to be getting on with, but instead you open up a new tab, reach for your phone, or start cleaning your entire home in an attempt to remain in your comfort zone for just a few moments longer.

I recently read the transcripts of a conversation between staff writer at The Atlantic Joe Pinsker, and journalist and author Oliver Burkeman.

During the conversation, Burkeman hit upon the phrase “seeking distraction.” Despite being a chronic procrastinator, I hadn’t previously considered the idea that all along I might have been seeking the very distraction which I so frequently found. Here’s the full quote from Burkeman:

I certainly think that Silicon Valley has a lot to answer for when it comes to its role in pulling us away from what we want to focus on, but at the same time, we do sort of cooperate. If I’m working on a difficult article, it’s not like I’m really happy doing it […] I run away to Twitter because the article is challenging me and causing me to experience uncomfortable emotions, and Twitter promises the opposite.

Burkeman continues:

I think the reason that we seek distraction is that working on stuff that we care about is often scary. It brings us into contact with all the ways in which we’re limited—our talents might not be up to what we’re trying to do, and we can’t control how things will unfold […] meanwhile, the internet feels limitless, like you’re an all-powerful consciousness surfing the unlimited waves of the web and social media. It’s very relieving.

For all the books, articles, and talks about productivity, our cooperation when it comes to being distracted has been significantly underexplored in all of them.

Social media is a distraction, but we seek it out despite knowing this. The internet is, as Burkeman put it, a limitless distraction, and yet I fire up a new tab dozens of times a day while I am in the middle of an important task or working on a deadline.

How do we combat this innate desire to seek distraction at every turn? Ultimately, we need to become more comfortable with, as the author and poet Austin Kleon puts it, “showing our work.” When we show our work in its crudest, most unfinished form, the idea that our work must be perfect before the world (or our boss) sees it will begin to hold less sway.

Until then, download an extension to limit the number of tabs you can have open at any one time, turn your phone face down, and—for the love of god—keep your butt in your chair.

What Is Extrinsic Motivation? Definition and Examples

2021-02-18T00:00:00-05:00

Extrinsic motivation is a behavior driven by a desire to receive external rewards. These rewards can include money, fame, praise, and recognized educational achievement.

To be extrinsically motivated means that you become more motivated to do something when external rewards are placed in front of you.

Extrinsic motivation is a common motivational factor in all of our lives from a young age. From being given a small (often sweet) reward for finishing your homework on time, to telling yourself you’ll finally purchase that new pair of shoes or video game if you get the promotion at work that you’ve been working towards, extrinsic motivation is focused on gaining external rewards for a job well done.

In this article, I’m going to look into what is extrinsic motivation, look at the differences between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and look into extrinsic motivation examples in the workplace, in the classroom, and at home. Let’s dive in.

How Does Extrinsic Motivation Work?

For extrinsic motivational techniques to work (and for them to help you break bad habits), you must be consistent in providing a reward if the action is completed.

Returning to the example of giving a sweet reward to your child for completing their homework, this behavior will only persist so long as the reward is consistently forthcoming upon them holding on to their side of the bargain (completing their homework on time). The same is true for the extrinsic reward of being paid to go to work, or receiving a customer loyalty discount. As soon as these extrinsic rewards go away, it’s unlikely that you will stick around much longer, either.

For more extrinsic motivation examples, scroll down to the “Extrinsic Motivation Examples” section below.

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation

The opposite of extrinsic motivation is intrinsic motivation. While they sound similar, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation work very differently from one another.

Unlike extrinsic motivation, which focuses on external rewards, intrinsic motivation comes from the inside. If you are an intrinsically motivated individual this means that you can (more often than not) become motivated to do something on the strength of your will alone.

While the forces of intrinsic motivation are different for all of us, common forms of this type of motivation include a desire to succeed and show yourself that you can do something, a will to grow (intellectually, spiritually, or otherwise) as a human being, and a desire to push yourself.

The one thing that all forms of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation have in common is they do not involve external rewards. For this reason, it is believed that over the long term, intrinsic motivation incentivises behavior change to a greater degree than extrinsic motivation. While this may be true, it does not discount extrinsic motivational techniques as a way to create a desired behavior.

Beware the Overjustification Effect

As we have discussed, extrinsic motivation is a very real way to get ourselves or others to do something that we otherwise may not be intrinsically excited to do.

There is a potential pitfall to extrinsic motivation that you should be aware of. The overjustification effect occurs when extrinsically motivated individuals cannot be motivated to do a particular task without receiving an external reward because they have become reliant on receiving a reward for performing the task.

This is to say, consistency receiving an award for doing something decreases a person’s intrinsic motivation to perform that task.

This can happen in a variety of ways. If you turn your hobby, such as writing, drawing, or another creative outlet into a job, there’s a good chance that as soon as you start being paid for your efforts (an extrinsic reward), the work itself will start to become less intrinsically motivating. Similarly, if you consistently reward your children with money, gifts, or other promised treasures in exchange for them receiving good grades in high school and college, if they later take on extra schooling in adulthood, they may soon find that, sans your extrinsic rewards, they are less intrinsically motivated than they originally thought.

While you should keep the overjustification effect in mind when looking into different examples of intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation, don’t let it put you off from giving the following external motivation examples their dues.

Extrinsic Motivation Examples

Examples of extrinsic rewards are all around us. From customer loyalty points to a standing ovation, and from sports trophies to an annual bonus, the following external motivation examples are some of the most common:

Getting paid to go to work (other extrinsic motivation examples in the workplace include annual bonuses, and vesting periods for retirement plans and company shares)
Praise and public acclaim (from making others proud, to having the world at your feet)
Prize money, trophies, and awards
Buy one, get one free sales
Customer loyalty points and discounts
Getting paid for getting good grades
Doing something so you don’t look bad

I hope the above definition of extrinsic motivation and examples of extrinsic rewards has helped to not only show you what extrinsic motivation is, but has convinced you that it is not a bad thing. Like anything, extrinsic rewards are a tool that can be deployed—whether for your own sake, or someone else’s—to help you work towards doing what you really want, or need, to do.

How Context Switching Sabotages Your Productivity

2020-09-30T00:00:00-04:00

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, manager, or freelancer, you can be sure of one thing: Context switching is taking a wrecking ball to your productivity.

Context switching is the act of jumping from one task to another, and back again, often within a short space of time.

Context switching makes us less effective as workers, increases the number of mistakes we make, and, researchers have estimated, costs the global economy upwards of $450 billion annually.

The reason is simple—when you context switch there is a recalibration period as you move back to your original task as your brain tries to remember what you were doing, and why you were doing it. One study found that it can take more than 25 minutes, on average, to resume a task after being interrupted. When you consider that the average amount of time spent on a task before being interrupted is just 75 seconds, it’s no wonder why this bad habit has such a high cost.

In this article I’m going to dig into why context switching sabotages our productivity, I’m going to argue that we need to become better at structuring our days so we’re not constantly responding to new emails, phone calls, and other notifications the moment they come in, and I’m going to describe why monotasking is the cure to excessive context switching.

What is Context Switching?

Context switching (also known as task switching) is the act of jumping from one task (or context) to another, and back again, often within a short space of time.

This could mean you’re writing a piece of content for a client, only to stop what you’re doing to answer the latest email that showed up in your inbox. Or it could mean you’re editing a video and you receive a phone call from a friend, your spouse, or your boss, so you drop what you’re doing to take the call.

In my article on monotasking I noted the following when it comes to the cost of context switching:

Context switching is inherently bad for us—every time we switch between doing our work and reading an article online, or reading an article online and checking our phones, we experience a “transaction cost” that drains our energy and slows us down.

This “transaction cost” adds up over time, as the below chart shows:

Image: Time lost to context switching, courtesy of Carnegie Mellon

So, how can you stop context switching from sabotaging your productivity and learn to avoid it altogether?

How to Avoid Context Switching

Without further ado, here is how to avoid context switching in three easy steps:

Schedule Your Time

While scheduling your time won’t make it impossible for you to context switch, it will make you aware of the time you have allocated for each task in a given day or week, and it will therefore up the stakes should you start moving between the task you’re supposed to be working on, and another.

I’ve written before on how having a to-do list and sticking to it is the number one thing you can do to increase your overall focus and productivity. When scheduling your time, ideally give yourself a loose plan for the week ahead, followed by a more structured schedule that you write out the evening before.

While I encourage this list to be aspirational and to represent a full day of work, don’t overload the list and overwhelm yourself to the point that you feel paralyzed and, in turn, do nothing. I recommend keeping your list to approximately five to six items, but keep in mind, even one major task on your to-do list is not too few.

Reduce Distractions

This goes without saying, but one of the main ways in which you’re going to avoid context switching is by reducing both physical and digital distractions.

Pavlovian conditioning is a form of behavioral psychology in which an animal, or human, can be conditioned to respond in a certain way to a stimulus that, had it not been conditioned, should in no way be associated with the act in question.

An example of this in our digital lives is the way in which we immediately reach for our phones when a new notification comes in. We have been conditioned to react to the sound of the notification and the small red circle that screams out that there is something new and exciting to see here. This conditioning is a nightmare when it comes to context switching—every time we react to a new notification on our phone, or a new email in our inbox, or a new shiny object of any description that manages to place itself between our brain and the work at hand, we experience the cost of context switching and, as I noted earlier, it can take more than 25 minutes, on average, to fully resume the task at hand.

The good news is, it is within our power to reduce these digital distractions. You can turn off the notifications for your most distracting apps in the “Settings” area of your phone, or you can turn it on Airplane Mode so to become entirely unreachable. If you have a tendency to keep your work or personal email open in a tab in your browser throughout the day, close the tab(s) and only open them at defined periods throughout the day.

Embrace Monotasking

Nothing makes avoiding context switching easier than embracing the life-changing magic of monotasking.

While a mainstay of job postings for decades, it turns out that the ability to “multitask” is less about being able to work on two or more tasks at the same time, and more an exercise in futility as we switch between different tasks while not giving our full attention to any of them.

Monotasking (also referred to as single tasking), on the other hand, is the act of working on one task at a time, instead of attempting to work on multiple tasks at once. When you monotask you take context switching out of the equation.

As professionals in our work and home lives, we are often juggling multiple tasks at the same time, creating numerous “transaction costs” throughout the day as we shift our attention from one task to the next, as imagined by the above bar chart. If we choose to monotask, instead of multitask, however, these transaction costs go away, and we are left with uninterrupted time in which to concentrate on the task at hand.

Spend the next week training yourself to avoid context switching by scheduling your time, reducing distractions, and embracing monotasking—and let me know how you get on.

Lego Braille Bricks: Improving Blind Literacy Through Play

2020-08-31T00:00:00-04:00

When I write about meaningful work, a topic that I believe to be at the center of all that it means to be human, it’s projects such as Lego Braille Bricks, from Danish toymaker The Lego Group that first come to mind.

The Foundation arm of The Lego Group, known as The Lego Foundation, recently announced that after a successful pilot program they are launching Lego Braille Bricks in twenty countries over the next six months. Lego Braille Bricks are currently available in six languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, Danish, and Norwegian, with a view for Braille Bricks to be available in 11 languages by early 2021.

Per The Lego Foundation:

Each brick in the Lego Braille Bricks toolkit retains its iconic form, but unlike a regular Lego brick, the studs are arranged to correspond to numbers and letters in the Braille alphabet. Each brick shows the printed version of the symbol or letter, allowing sighted and blind children to play and learn together on equal terms.

Unlike typical Lego sets, Lego Braille Bricks cannot be purchased by the general public. Lego Braille Bricks toolkits, which consist of a minimum of 300 bricks in five classic Lego colors, three base plates, and one brick separator, will be distributed free of charge to select institutions, schools, and services catering to the education of blind and visually impaired children, according to The Lego Foundation.

Why Braille Bricks?

Braille is an essential skill for children who are blind or have a visual impairment. Per The Lego Foundation:

With thousands of audio books and computer programs on the market today, fewer young people are learning Braille. Yet, individuals with blindness or impaired vision all over the world rely on Braille to work, study and enjoy their daily lives to the fullest.

Alongside the Lego Braille Bricks toolkit, The Lego Foundation has created a wealth of activities to make it easy for teachers and other educational figures to get started with their Braille Bricks.

Here’s a short video about the project from The Lego Foundation:

In my view, the most satisfying jobs are those that speak to your core values as a human being. If you believe that your school or other institution is eligible to receive a Lego Braille Bricks toolkit, contact The Lego Foundation’s official Braille Bricks partner in your country.

How Diffusion of Responsibility Alters Group Behavior

2020-08-26T00:00:00-04:00

Diffusion of responsibility is a sociopsychological event in which the presence of others makes it less likely for those present to take responsibility for the situation at hand.

Similar to the bystander effect, which occurs “when the presence of more witnesses to a crime, accident, or other event decreases the chances of any one of these witnesses coming forward to help,” diffusion of responsibility theory states that the presence of others leads individuals to assume that other people have already taken steps to fix the issue at hand, or will soon do so.

In this article, I’m going to look at diffusion of responsibility theory, digging into how this theory came to be, honing in on a number of examples of how it plays out in real life, and uncovering how it helps to explain one of the most shocking murders in modern American history.

Research Into Diffusion of Responsibility Theory

The most well-known research into diffusion of responsibility theory comes from social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley.

In 1968, Latané and Darley published a study on diffusion of responsibility in emergency situations. The study described an experiment in which the pair asked participants to take part in a group discussion over an intercom. Seated in separate rooms, participants were played a pre-recording in which one of the participants appeared to begin to have a seizure.

While some of the participants were led to believe that they were in a discussion (albeit in separate rooms) with five other people, others were told they were in a discussion with just one other person. For the latter group, 85 percent of them went to get help when they believed the person they were talking to was having a seizure, and a full 100 percent reported the incident after the experiment had ended. For the first group, however, just 31 percent of participants went to get help, and only 62 percent reported it after the experiment ended.

Latané and Darley chalked this stark difference in rates of the incident being reported down to diffusion of responsibility: Participants were less likely to call for help—an acknowledge that as far as they knew could have saved the life of the individual who they were being made to believe was having a seizure—when there were other people present whom, logic dictates, could also call for help.

The study itself had been in part commissioned to gain a better understanding of how diffusion of responsibility has played an instrumental role in the rape and murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese in New York City in 1964.

Diffusion of Responsibility Examples

Examples of diffusion of responsibility theory in action include everything from doing nothing when you witness someone fall over on the sidewalk and cry out in pain, to the genocide of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II.

As that last example suggests, diffusion of responsibility is not an adequate defense against either committing a crime or being witness to one and not coming forward.

Here are some diffusion of responsibility examples:

After a woman collapses on the sidewalk and cries out in pain, you feel little personal responsibility to help her because there are other individuals around her who, you tell yourself, are better positioned to help.
You notice large quantities of black smoke coming out of a building as you drive by on the highway. It would be inconvenient to stop, so you drive on, assuming the next person to drive by will call the fire department instead.
An example of diffusion of responsibility in the workplace is witnessing racist, sexist, or otherwise inappropriate behavior coming from one employee toward another and not reporting it because you believe it’s not your place to speak up.
You notice fraudulent behavior in your company; money is going missing or customers are being cheated out of what they’re owed, but you decide not to report it because everyone else at the company seems to be in on it.
The former Nazi soldier who claims at the Nuremberg Trials that they were “only following orders” when they took the lives of European Jews during the Holocaust.

How to Prevent Diffusion of Responsibility

Preventing diffusion of responsibility in your day-to-day life is similar to avoiding becoming a passive bystander.

Head on over to my article on how to prevent the bystander effect to learn how to avoid diffusion of responsibility creeping into your life, and the lives of your friends and family members.

The Bystander Effect: The Psychology Behind a Social Phenomenon

2020-08-16T00:00:00-04:00

Have you ever been walking down the street, or driving in your car, and witnessed a crime or accident take place in front of your very eyes?

From a robbery, to a car wreck, to someone simply falling down onto their knees, the victims of these events have been led to believe that in their hour of need someone will come to their rescue, to help lift them back up and help them to receive the necessary care and assistance they need.

The bystander effect does away with this belief.

In this article, I’m going to look at the psychology behind the bystander effect, I’m going to explore the sad case of Kitty Genovese, whose brutal rape and murder popularized this very concept, and I’m going to look into how we can turn ourselves from passive bystanders to active contributors so we are ready to spring into action when needed.

What is the Bystander Effect?

The bystander effect occurs when the presence of more witnesses to a crime, accident, or other event decreases the chances of any one of these witnesses coming forward to help the person or persons in distress.

The bystander effect is amplified by the number of people in a group. The more people who witness a crime, accident, or other event, the less likely a single individual will take action.

To state this clearly, as the bystander effect is a difficult concept to understand the first time you learn about it:

The more people who witness a crime or accident, the less likely any one of these individuals will help or report it
The less people who witness a crime or accident, the more likely any (or all) of these individuals will help or report it

The reason for this is due largely to the diffusion of responsibility concept. If you are in a large group of people, such as walking down a busy sidewalk, and you see someone fall over and cry out in pain, you will feel little personal responsibility to help this individual as there are a large number of other people around you who, you tell yourself, are better positioned to help.

If this same example were to play out on an uncrowded sidewalk, with just one or two other people present beside yourself, you would be far less likely to experience a diffusion of responsibility. Instead, you would feel a personal responsibility to help the person who has fallen over get back onto their feet, and to help them with anything else they needed thereafter.

Here’s a good video from Khan Academy on the bystander effect:

Kitty Genovese and the Bystander Effect

One of the most famous examples of the bystander effect is the sad case of the rape and murder of Catherine “Kitty” Genovese in New York City on March 13, 1964.

Returning home from work late one evening, the 28-year-old was attacked and stabbed as she attempted to enter her apartment building. The attack lasted half an hour, with Genovese reportedly pleading for help for much of this time. Despite this, nobody in the nearby apartment building came outside to help, or dialled 911. It wasn’t until half an hour after the attack first began, at 3:50am, that someone called the police.

In researching the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese, social psychologists Bibb Latané and John Darley noted that both a diffusion of responsibility and a sense of social influence (nobody else is intervening, so why should I) attributed to the bystander effect in the Genovese case.

How to Prevent the Bystander Effect

While many unique situational factors contribute to the bystander effect, there are ways to avoid being a passive bystander to ensure that you, your friends, and your family are ready to spring into action should your services be needed.

Here’s a short list on how to prevent the bystander effect:

Act as if you are the sole person witnessing the crime or accident.
Attend first aid and de-training to make you feel more prepared.
Remind yourself that you don’t need medical or de-escalation training to be a proactive bystander (what I like to call an “active contributor”). Calling 911 is always better than doing nothing.

Active contributors can make the difference between life and death for the person under stress. Don’t be a passive bystander. Step up for your community, whether you are in a crowd of one or one hundred.

Remember, you can prevent the bystander effect from taking hold by acting as if you are the sole person witnessing the event, and taking charge of the situation at hand; even if this simply means calling 911.

What the Most Satisfying Jobs Have in Common

2020-08-12T00:00:00-04:00

What makes a job satisfying? While all jobs have their positives and negatives, the most satisfying jobs tend to have a number of things in common that ensure job satisfaction and fulfilment over the long term.

While these jobs may not look alike on the surface, the most satisfying jobs (and looking at a longer timeframe, the most rewarding careers) have a number of key characteristics that, when combined, allow you to feel fulfilled at work.

These characteristics are essential in order for us to perform meaningful work. While they include how well you’re paid, the length of your commute, and whether or not you get along with your colleagues and boss, they go deeper than this, looking at core values that get to the center of who you are as a person.

In this article, I’m going to dig into a list of the most satisfying jobs according to the most up-to-date research to uncover specific career paths you may wish to go down, after which I’m going to look into what makes a job satisfying in the first place.

Let’s jump right in.

The Most Satisfying Jobs for a Fulfilling Career

In 2017, Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago released a report titled Job Satisfaction in the United States.

In the report, Smith and his colleagues ranked the twelve most satisfying jobs in the country on a scale that measured job satisfaction and general happiness. Per Smith:

Three occupations finish in the top dozen on both job satisfaction and general happiness. The clergy distinguishes itself from all other occupations by ranking first in both job satisfaction and general happiness. Firefighters do almost as well being third on job satisfaction and second on general happiness.

According to the University of Chicago report, these are the most satisfying jobs for a fulfilling career, ranked from most to least satisfying:

Clergy
Physical Therapists
Firefighters
Education Administrators
Painter, Sculptors, Related
Teachers
Authors
Psychologists
Special Education Teachers
Operating Engineers
Office Supervisors
Security and Financial Services Salespersons

And this is a list of the least satisfying jobs according to the same report, ranked from least satisfying:

Roofers
Waiters/Servers
Laborers, Except Construction
Bartenders
Hand Packers and Packagers
Freight, Stock, and Material Handlers
Apparel Clothing Salespersons
Cashiers
Food Preparers, Misc.
Expediters
Butchers and Meat Cutters
Furniture/Home Furnishing Salespersons

Smith notes in the report that “Most of the occupations ranking high in general happiness are professions involving helping others.” This is instructive, as we will see in the next section…

What Makes a Job Satisfying?

In a TED Talk on how helping others makes us happier, social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn dug in on this phenomenon:

In one experiment, my colleagues Kiley Hamlin, Lara Aknin and I brought kids just under the age of two into the lab. We gave kids this windfall of Goldfish [crackers] for themselves and a chance to give some of their Goldfish away to a puppet named Monkey. Now, we trained research assistants to watch these videos and code toddlers’ emotional reactions. Of course, we didn’t tell them our hypotheses. The data revealed that toddlers were pretty happy when they got this pile of Goldfish for themselves, but they were actually even happier when they got to give some of their Goldfish away.

Dunn continued:

This warm glow of giving persists into adulthood. When we analyzed surveys from more than 200,000 adults across the globe, we saw that nearly a third of the world’s population reported giving at least some money to charity in the past month. Remarkably, in every major region of the world, people who gave money to charity were happier than those who did not, even after taking into account their own personal financial situation. And this correlation wasn’t trivial. It looked like giving to charity made about the same difference for happiness as having twice as much income.

It’s clear from Dunn’s research that giving money to charity and other charitable sources can make us happier, but her research, correlated with Smith’s University of Chicago report, also shows that one of the key characteristics that the most satisfying jobs have in common is not just giving to others, but feeling a sense of connection with those you are helping.

Per Dunn:

Back in my lab, we’d seen the benefits of giving spike when people felt a real sense of connection with those they were helping and could easily envision the difference they were making in those individuals’ lives.

You can watch Dunn’s full TED Talk below:

Of course, directly helping others and making a difference in those individuals’ lives isn’t the only thing that makes a job satisfying. The most satisfying jobs have a number of key characteristics that, when combined, allow you to feel fulfilled at work.

I should stop here to say that what makes a job satisfying will be different from one person to the next. The way I find meaning, fulfilment, and satisfaction in my work is unlikely to be exactly the same as to how you find it in yours, and we all have different wants, needs, and ideas of what the perfect job or career looks like.

With that said, these are the seven key characteristics of what most commonly contributes to making a job satisfying:

1. Directly Helping Others

No surprise here. The most satisfying jobs, for most people, are those in which you are directly helping others and feeling a sense of connection with those you are helping.

The sense of fulfilment that comes from helping others in this way cannot be understated. How do you feel when you finish work every day? Do you feel like you truly helped another person, whether directly on a one-on-one level, or indirectly through something you worked on. Or do you feel like you just pushed some numbers around on a page?

It’s not surprising that so many millionaires and billionaires turn to philanthropy at the end (and now, often during the middle) of their corporate careers. They figured out that while they enjoy success at the corporate level, and all the benefits this brings, ultimately they are most fulfilled and satisfied in their work when they are directly helping others.

2. Your Pay

The most satisfying jobs offer a level of pay that you personally believe is enough for you to live on while comfortably paying your rent or mortgage and other bills, and setting some money aside in savings each month.

While not as important as your raw salary, receiving generous benefits from your employer such as fully-paid health insurance, dental insurance, 401(k) matching, and more will also go a long way toward improving your job satisfaction.

The numbers aside, one element of pay that isn’t discussed enough is fairness. Do you believe that you are paid fairly for the work that you do, both in comparison to your colleagues, as well as others in your field?

3. Work Fulfilment and Flexibility

How fulfilled are you in your day-to-day work? The most fulfilling jobs (and the most fulfilling careers) tend to be those that allow you to work on a diverse range of tasks on a daily basis.

This makes sense when you think about it. You may be a welder by trade, but that doesn’t mean your skills are limited to welding together new pieces of furniture, or fixing holes in damaged vehicles. Changing up what you do day-to-day by (for example) working on a new piece of concept art in the morning, while traveling to a remote location to fix a broken pipe in the afternoon, will bring variety to your work. This variety will keep you more engaged over the long term.

The most satisfying jobs also allow you to have a certain level of control and flexibility over your work. Returning to the example of a welder; an apprentice welder will have little control over what they work on (or observe) from one moment to the next. If you own your own welding business, on the other hand, you will have full control on the type of customers you take on, and what you’re working on at any given time.

4. Your Commute

The length and complexity of your commute will have a significant effect on how satisfied you feel in your job.

The rise in the move toward remote (or semi-remote) working, a move that was accelerated due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, goes a long way toward combating this. But for everyone who cannot work from home over the long term, either due to the nature of the work itself or because of your employer’s policies, having a short and hassle-free commute can dramatically increase your job satisfaction.

5. Your Employer’s Reputation

The reputation of the company you choose to work for matters more than we typically give it credit for where it comes to job satisfaction.

While it will be personally important to you that your employer has a good company culture (with generous benefits to go along with it), for many of us it is equally important to us that this culture is recognized outside of our workplace, potentially through industry awards such as the annual Great Place to Work certification.

Equally, it is important that your employer conducts itself in a way that leads you to not be embarrassed to say you work there.

6. Opportunities for Advancement

While some people are content in their current positions, many want to feel that they have the ability to work their way “up the ladder” at their current company. This is known as the opportunity for advancement.

Knowing that you are able to advance in your current position is likely to positively affect your job satisfaction. Similarly, many of the least satisfying jobs are those in which opportunities for advancement are few and far between.

While promotions and pay rises are the goal, there are other ways in which your employer can show that they care about your professional advancement, including offering to send you to workshops or seminars that are designed to improve your skills in areas relevant to your job.

7. Good Working Relationships

Finally, when considering what makes a job satisfying we often undervalue how important it is for us to generally get along well with our colleagues and bosses.

While you don’t need to be best friends with the people you work with, having positive relationships with these people, and even considering some of them friends that you enjoy seeing outside of work, goes a long way toward your overall job satisfaction.

If you’re just starting out after college, or you’re looking for a career change, studying the most satisfying jobs according to the most up-to-date research, and learning what makes a job satisfying in the first place is a great place to start.

The Life-Changing Magic of Monotasking

2020-07-29T00:00:00-04:00

You’ve no doubt heard that multitasking isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.

There has to be, as they say, a better way. The opposite of multitasking, monotasking helps to increase our creativity, energy, and focus by giving our full attention to the task at hand. Far from an admission of defeat, in today’s fast-paced world it could be argued that monotasking is the only way any of us are able to get anything done.

In this article I’m going to dig into why monotasking, not multitasking, is the secret to getting ahead in life and work, the dangers of context switching when trying to achieve deep work, and the five steps that you can take right now to start monotasking today.

Let’s dive in and discover, in an ode to Marie Kondo, the life-changing magic of monotasking.

What is Monotasking?

Monotasking, also referred to as single tasking, is the act of working on one task at a time, instead of attempting to work on multiple tasks at once.

The benefits of monotasking cannot be overstated. When we multitask, we’re putting tremendous stress on our brains as we flit backwards and forwards between different tasks. In an article for Forbes, Sandra Bond Chapman notes that environments that place a high value on the ability to multitask, including the majority of today’s places of work, are promoting a potentially damaging narrative:

Multitasking is a brain drain that exhausts the mind, zaps cognitive resources and, if left unchecked, condemns us to early mental decline and decreased sharpness. Chronic multitaskers also have increased levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, which can damage the memory region of the brain.

Similarly, Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the world experts on divided attention, noted in the Guardian that our brains are not wired for multitasking:

When people think they’re multitasking, they’re actually just switching from one task to another very rapidly. And every time they do, there’s a cognitive cost in doing so.

Monotasking vs. Multitasking

If our brains are not wired for multitasking, then montasking could be the answer to our prayers where it comes to reducing overwork and generally feeling more accomplished in our day to day lives.

In most circumstances and for most people, attempts to multitask often result in a reduction in productivity, as we chug away doing two, three, or even four tasks poorly, as opposed to opting to monotask and do one task to the best of our creative abilities.

This has certainly been true for me. Whenever I’m feeling burned out, I can be all-but certain that the reason for this is an overpacked schedule in which I’m moving from one meeting to the next, snatching ten minutes here and there in which to catch up on my emails or attempt to fit some “real work” into my day. In contrast, my most relaxing days are those in which I sit down to focus on one singular task—in my case this often consists of writing articles such as this one—and seeing it through to completion before moving on to something else.

Multitasking splits your attention between multiple tasks at the same time, whereas monotasking focuses on and fully participates in one.

The Dangers of Context Switching

When we describe multitasking we’re often describing context switching, the act of opening up our email and looking through it for “just” two minutes before returning to our original task. Context switching is inherently bad for us—every time we switch between doing our work and reading an article online, or reading an article online and checking our phones, we experience a “transaction cost” that drains our energy and slows us down.

Context switching is inherently dangerous to our ability to do deep work. Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University and the author of five books, including Deep Work. According to Newport:

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship.

The “dangers” of context switching aren’t just hypothetical. In an article for The New Yorker, Maria Konnikova spoke with University of Utah professor of psychology David Strayer, who through his research into people who drive while on the phone, was able to demonstrate that drivers who talked on the phone were “at just as high a risk of accidents as intoxicated ones.”

Reaction time slowed, attention decreased to the point where they’d miss more than half the things they’d otherwise see—a billboard or a child by the road, it mattered not.

Strayer’s research took place over the course of a decade ending in 2012, and was limited to people taking phone calls while driving. It did not look at the growing trend of people operating their smartphones—that is, looking at their phone screens, instead of the road—when driving their vehicles.

Five Steps to Start Monotasking Today

So, how can you start monotasking right now in a bid to claw back your creativity, energy, and focus, as well as your ability to do deep work?

Here are five steps that you can take to start monotasking today:

1. Embrace the Pomodoro Technique

Developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s, the Pomodoro Technique breaks down work (or studying, or exercising, or whatever it is you need to do) into short chunks of time, with a brief break in between each. Here’s what it looks like in practice:

Set your Pomodoro timer for 25 minutes
Work on your task
After 25 minutes is up, take a 3-5 minute break
After 4 pomodoros, take a longer 25-30 minute break

The beauty of the Pomodoro Technique is it gives you permission to take a break from your work on a fixed schedule. I use the Pomodoro Technique in my own work (as I write this I have 7 minutes and 27 seconds left until my next 3-5 minute break) and I have found it to be invaluable in my efforts to focus on just one task at a time.

If 25 minutes is too long for you to remain focused on one task at the beginning of your monotasking journey, start with just 10 or 15 minutes of focused work, and build up to 25 minutes over the span of several focused weeks.

2. Save for Later

If you work online, there’s a good chance that you come across many articles and videos throughout your day that force you to make a decision: Do you stop what you’re doing to start reading or watching the new, exciting piece of content in front of you, or do you choose to keep working on your current task, either bypassing the new, shiny object completely, or keeping it in an open tab with the intention of coming back to it later?

If you’re anything like me, you often opt for the first option, breaking your momentum with your current task.

Instead, I strongly encourage you to start saving these items for later. Whether you choose to make a special bookmarks folder in your internet browser, or you sign up for a free service such as Instapaper or Pocket which make it easy to “clip” an article or video, opting to save these items for later will block these distractions in the present.

3. Make a To-Do List, Break Down Tasks

I’ve written multiple times on the importance of creating a to-do list. In my book on morning routines I encouraged readers to create a to-do list for the following day and place their most important work at the top.

One caveat I should have noted is that to-do lists only work if you work on one task in the list at a time. Working on your first and second most important tasks for the day at the same time isn’t especially helpful, as the creativity, energy, and focus that you will lose by constantly context switching between the two will far outweigh any mystical multitasking benefits you may believe you’re receiving.

It’s also important to ensure that the tasks you are working on are small enough that it is clear what is expected of you in order to cross it off your list. For example, “Launch website” is extremely esoteric, whereas “Write copy for website homepage” has a clear end point.

4. Reduce Clutter in Your Work Life

Clutter is distracting, especially when you’re trying to monotask. While this is certainly true of physical clutter (unless you’re a creative-type who finds inspiration in the mess), I’m referring here to digital clutter.

When I’m working, I silence my phone and reduce the number of notifications that can make it onto my home screen. While I can’t put my phone in another room entirely—I need to be able to be reached during work hours—I find this to be a good compromise whereby I never miss a call, but I’m not distracted by less-important notifications. Similarly, I encourage you to only open your email inbox at designated periods throughout your day, instead of always having it open in the background.

Lastly, one of my favorite “hacks” to encourage monotasking is putting a limit on how many internet browser tabs you can have open at any one time. While you can go this alone; choosing to only have a maximum of three tabs open at a time, for example, most browsers have extensions that can limit this for you by either not allowing you to open a new tab once you’ve hit your limit, or by deleting your least-used tab.

5. Listen to Productivity Music

If there’s one thing that improves my ability to monotask above all else it’s listening to music to improve my productivity, focus, and concentration.

I’ve written a whole article on productivity music that I encourage you to read, so I won’t go into too much detail about this here, but essentially productivity music is any music that fades into the background, allowing you to focus more heavily on your work.

This can consist of classical music, electronic music, and even white noise. Read the article in full for a list of my favorite productivity music, and where to find it.

I hope I’ve convinced you of the life-changing magic of monotasking over its much-celebrated older brother. Try monotasking for just one week and let me know how you get on. I’d love to hear from you.

How to Increase Your Circle of Influence

2020-07-03T00:00:00-04:00

The concept of a Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern was first introduced by the late Stephen R. Covey in his classic 1989 book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

In the book, Covey explained that we live our lives operating within two circles. The first, our Circle of Concern, consists of things that we care about, or that affect us in some way, but that we essentially have no control over. This can include anything from the debt ceiling, to melting sheet ice in the Arctic, to whether or not your employer is acquired by a larger rival.

Everything outside of your Circle of Concern you are essentially unconcerned about. Some of these things you may not care about either way, such as who wins Wimbledon this year if you have no interest in tennis, while some of these other things you do have an opinion over, such as the morality behind whaling, but it’s not something you think about on a consistent basis, so it does not call into your Circle of Concern.

In contrast, your Circle of Influence consists of things we do have influence or control over, such as our personal financial health, our climate footprint, and whether or not we receive a promotion at work.

Focus on Your Circle of Influence

According to Covey, your Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern are not static; they can both grow or shrink at the other’s expense.

When you choose to focus on your Circle of Influence, the circle expands into your Circle of Concern, rewarding you with greater control over the things that matter the most to you. Conversely, when you choose to focus on your Circle of Concern, your Circle of Influence shrinks, as you are spending less time on things that you have influence over.

In Covey’s own words:

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase. Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control.

Here’s a video from FranklinCovey, Covey’s training company (the “Franklin” is named after Benjamin Franklin), on the Circle of Influence:

How to Grow Your Circle of Influence

The number one way to increase your Circle of Influence is by being proactive within this circle, and largely ignoring anything outside of it. To put this another way, focus on the things you can influence, control, or change, rather than the things you have no say over.

In Covey’s own words:

The problems we face fall in one of three areas: direct control (problems involving our own behavior); indirect control (problems involving other people’s behavior); or no control (problems we can do nothing about, such as our past or situational realities). The proactive approach puts the first step in the solution of all three kinds of problems within our present Circle of Influence.

You can do this by focusing on your priorities within your Circle of Influence. For example, if one of your priorities is to reduce your carbon footprint as you are worried about how climate change will change the face of the planet by 2030 and beyond, you could decide to travel by air less frequently (and when you do, to purchase carbon offsets), you could install solar panels on your property or move into an eco-friendly apartment building, and you could cut down on portion sizes at dinner to reduce food waste.

As you proactively make these changes within your Circle of Influence, people will notice. Maybe you mentioned these changes to a friend or colleague who—little did you know—is friends with the head of a major climate group. Or maybe you were writing about these changes on social media or a personal blog, and a climate activist with a large following reaches out asking how you can work together.

By proactively working within your Circle of Influence instead of reactively focusing on your Circle of Concern, you have expanded your Circle of Influence into your Circle of Concern, and you now have influence over areas in which you couldn’t have dreamed of before.

If you’re not sure what your priorities are, take some time to look through this core values list and notice which of the values jump out at you. Then, hold this list up against your Circle of Influence to see which areas line up.

Your Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern are not static; they can both grow or shrink at the other’s expense. Increase your Circle of Influence by being proactive in the areas that matter to you most.

The Opposite of Racist Isn’t Not Racist

2020-06-04T00:00:00-04:00

“The opposite of racist isn’t not racist,” writes author and historian Ibram X. Kendi in his 2019 bestselling memoir, How to Be an Antiracist. “It is anti-racist. What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist.”

It’s been an extremely difficult week for many of us. As a white man who grew up in the south of England, before moving to San Francisco, California and (last year) to New York City where my wife and I settled on the Upper East Side, I can’t begin to comprehend what it means to be a Black man or woman in the United States, the United Kingdom, or, frankly, a vast number of other countries where racism and oppression is simmering just below the surface, whether or not the white citizens of these countries will admit it.

This past week, as I’ve seen peaceful protestors march, and sit, and sing around the world, and as my wife and I participated in one of these protests as it came through our neighborhood, I’ve been extremely moved by this movement, and disappointed by those who try to characterize it as something it’s not.

I am purposely keeping this article short as I want to amplify the voices of those at the other end of it. Read on to learn how to be anti-racist; where to donate, what to read, and how to put your hard-earned dollars to work in supporting black businesses.

How to Be Anti-Racist

The below lists of where to donate, what to read, and what to buy to support the Black community in the United States have, as I noted above, purposely been kept short. Decision fatigue is nobody’s friend.

Where to Donate

Donate to organizations that are making a real, measurable difference for underserved communities across the country. To ensure your money goes as far as it can, use Charity Navigator to dissect each charity’s funding and expenses before donating.

What to Read

Below is a short list of four books that I have found to be extremely helpful in this area. The fifth I will read as soon as it’s back on the shelves. For more anti-racist reading recommedations, cast you eyes on this anti-racist reading list from Goodreads.

Where to Shop

Earlier this week I saw this tweet encouraging black business owners to reply with a link to their website to promote their wares. The replies were quickly filled with a wealth of product photos, and I’ve since discovered a number of online directories that add to this tally.

“One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist,” continues Ibram X. Kendi in How to Be an Antiracist. “One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist. There is no in-between safe space of not racist.”

Pavlovian Conditioning: Ivan Pavlov’s Dogs Experiment

2020-05-29T00:00:00-04:00

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1849-1936) lived during a golden age of scientific discovery.

Born into the Russian Empire, and known within his family for being intellectually curious and unusually energetic from a young age, Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1904 for his work on the physiology of digestion, making him the first Russian Nobel laureate. Despite this, Pavlov’s most well-known contribution to science was through his dogs experiments, which became the basis for Pavlovian conditioning (also known as classical conditioning).

In this article I’m going to look into Pavlov’s dogs experiment, followed by a detailed look at the what, where, and why of Pavlovian conditioning, before moving on to a section on further reading for anyone interested in learning more about where this field has moved to since.

What is Pavlov’s Dogs Experiment?

Ivan Pavlov’s dogs experiment is an experiment that took place in the 1890s in which the Russian physiologist surgically implanted small tubes into the cheeks of dogs to measure the buildup of saliva that took place under a variety of conditions.

Pavlov’s dogs experiment came about as part of an accidental discovery. Pavlov had at the time been conducting research experiments into the dogs’ gastric systems. As part of this research, Pavlov and his assistants would enter the room where the dogs were housed with a variety of edible and non-edible items, with the intention of measuring the amount of saliva that each dog produced when each item was placed in front of them.

Pavlov prediction that the dogs would salivate when presented with edible items was soon proved correct. This represents an unconditioned response in the animals, in which the sight and smell of the food causes them to salivate. Pavlov couldn’t have predicted what happened next.

A Pavlovian Response

While conducting his gastric experiment, Pavlov began to notice something peculiar. He noticed that the dogs would begin salivating not when food was placed in front of them, but when they heard the footsteps of one of Pavlov’s assistants coming down the hall to bring food to them.

Pavlov soon realized that he could teach his dogs to associate almost any sound, item, or event with the reward of food. To put this another way, it became clear that salivation was a learned response. The most famous item used in Pavlov’s dogs experiment was that of a bell—Pavlov or one of his assistants would ring a bell before feeding his dogs. Soon enough, the single act of ringing the bell would be enough for the dogs to associate this seemingly neutral act with the promise of food.

Pavlovian conditioning was born, and Pavlov’s dogs experiment became his life’s work.

Pavlovian Conditioning

With its genesis in Pavlov’s dogs experiment, Pavlovian conditioning is defined as a form of behavioral psychology (or behaviorism) in which an animal, or human, can be conditioned to respond in a certain way to a stimulus that, had it not been conditioned, should in no way be associated with the act in question.

Let me show you what I mean:

An Unconditioned Stimulus Causes an Unconditioned Response

Prior to Pavlov’s experiment and the discovery of Pavlovian conditioning, it was well-known in the scientific world that an unconditioned stimulus causes an unconditioned response.

An example of this in terms of Pavlov’s dogs experiment would be the food being placed directly in front of the dogs, causing them to salivate. The unconditioned stimulus in this example is the food, and the unconditioned response is the salivation. Pavlov’s dogs’ response (to salivate) was unconditioned because they didn’t need to be trained to respond to the food in this way—it simply happened naturally.

A Neutral Stimulus Causes No Response

In the same way that an unconditioned stimulus causes an unconditioned response, Pavlov confirmed the commonly agreed-upon theory that a neutral stimulus causes no response.

An example of this in terms of Pavlov’s dogs experiment would be the act of Pavlov or one of his assistants ringing a bell before feeding the dogs, before they had taken the time to condition the bell as a stimulus to the food. If they were to ring the bell while it was still a neutral stimulus, no response, conditioned or unconditioned, would have occurred. (Depending on how loud the bell was, the dogs may have been startled the first few times it rang, but this is superfluous to the experiment.)

A Conditioned Stimulus Causes a Conditioned Response

Finally, Pavlov discovered through the course of his experiment that a conditioned stimulus causes a conditioned response.

An example of this in terms of Pavlov’s dogs experiment would be the act of Pavlov or one of his assistants ringing a bell before feeding the dogs, after they have already conditioned the sound of the bell to the promise of food. In this case, the sound of the bell has graduated from being a neutral stimulus to a conditioned stimulus, therefore the dogs’ response (to salivate) became a conditioned response.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory

2020-05-22T00:00:00-04:00

Human beings are simple creatures. We like order; we like to create it, we like to follow it, and most of all, we like to organize our lives around it.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory attempts to do just that.

In this article, I’m going to dive into this famous motivational theory, exploring each of the five tiers of Maslow’s pyramid of needs, the three categories of which these needs sit within, the difference between “deficiency needs,” and “growth needs,” as well as looking into common criticisms of Maslow’s hierarchy.

What is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory?

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory was first proposed by American psychologist Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is a motivational theory that states that humans are motivated by a distinct set of needs placed on an upward trajectory.

Maslow placed these needs into five distinct tiers, namely: physiological needs, safety and security needs, love and belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization needs.

I’ll go into more depth on each of these needs later in this article, but for now a key to understanding Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is to look at the below image of Maslow’s pyramid:

Image: Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid, courtesy of Penn State

As you can see, Maslow’s pyramid of needs consists of the five aforementioned needs, as well as three categories in which these needs sit. The two bottom tiers—physiological needs and safety and security needs—are within the “basic needs” category. The next two tiers—love and belonging needs and esteem needs—are within the “psychological needs” category. And finally, the top tier—self-actualization—is in the “self-fulfillment needs” category.

Within the basic needs and psychological needs categories there are “deficiency needs,” which are needs you are deprived of and need to gain in order to move up Maslow’s pyramid of needs. Within the self-fulfillment needs category there are “growth needs,” which, as the name suggests, are needs that allow you to grow as a human being.

This is to say, these needs are hierarchical in nature. While later updates to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory stated that it is not strictly necessary for a person to fulfil all of their physiological needs before moving on to their safety and security needs (this is an area I will look at in more depth later in this article), or even before jumping two tiers to their love and belonging needs, Maslow’s original hierarchy of needs theory, and a generalized reading of the theory nowadays, states that on the whole Maslow’s pyramid must be completed from the bottom up; focusing on fulfilling more basic needs before moving on to your psychological and self-fulfillment needs.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

As we have already discussed, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs consists of needs in five distinct tiers, with these tiers then fitting into three different categories.

When reading about each of these needs below, keep in mind that certain activities can cross hierarchical boundaries. For example, if your family were to move from living in a slum that was open to the elements to a room within an apartment building, this would hit numerous physiological needs (warmth, shelter, and rest), both of the key safety and security needs, and potentially even a love and belonging need (intimate relationships) if it was your partner who made this happen for your family.

Another example of needs crossing hierarchical boundaries is that of a meal spent with friends or family members. In this example you experience the physiological need of having food to eat, while also experiencing love and belonging needs associated with having good relationships and friendships.

Without further ado, here is a brief description of each tier in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, starting from the bottom and working up:

Physiological Needs

According to Maslow, physiological needs include things that we need to survive as human beings. This includes, but is not limited to food, water, shelter, warmth, and sleep.

The definition of “survive” is key here. While the above physiological needs are needed for literal survival, in order for a human being to “survive” in the real world this list needs to be expanded to include needs such as the need for clothing, the need for money in order to trade and barter, and even the need for WiFi.

Safety and Security Needs

Your safety and security needs will likely be different depending on where you live. As noted in one of the examples above, if you are living in an unsafe environment, the need for physical safety and security is primal. If you already live in a physically safe environment, then this need will likely focus on your financial security: do you have a job, are you saving for retirement, do you have adequate insurance, etc.

Of course, just as you move up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid from one tier to the next, you can move up within an individual tier. So in the above examples, if you move from an unsafe environment to a safe environment, you are now in a position to focus less on your physical security, and more on your financial security.

Love and Belonging Needs

Also known as “social” needs, love and belonging needs encompass everything from the need to be in an intimate loving relationship, to the need to have strong friendships, to the need to have close family ties.

Essentially, Maslow’s love and belonging needs boil down to our need to be loved and accepted by the people around us. While this need isn’t as primal as the need for food or shelter, we all need to experience feelings of love and belonging in order to thrive in this world, and to stave off feelings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness.

Esteem Needs

Esteem needs focus on our needs as humans for appreciation, respect, and feelings of accomplishment. The second-from-highest tier in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, esteem needs fall into two distinct categories: feeling good about ourselves, and others feeling good about us.

The first of these categories, feeling good about ourselves, refers to our need for self-confidence (or self-reliance, which I’ve written about in depth in the past) and feelings of personal worth. Put simply, we make it difficult for others to feel good about us unless we first feel good about ourselves. The second of these categories, others feeling good about us, refers to our need to be recognized and valued for our accomplishments; to be praised when praise is due, and to know that others, including friends and family members, are proud of you.

Self-Actualization Needs

Finally, at the top of Maslow’s pyramid of needs is self-actualization needs. In its simplest form, self-actualized people are those who are living up to their fullest potential. What this means for you will likely be entirely different to what this means for someone else, but so long as we’re living our best life, we can say we are fulfilling our self-actualization needs.

It’s likely that your core values are what will determine what your self-actualization needs look like, but in general they necessitate that you use your talents to their fullest. You become who you are; who you’re destined to be.

Common Criticism of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory hasn’t been without criticism. The chief among these Maslow addressed (and agreed with) in later interpretations of his theory; namely that the order in which individuals work their way up the hierarchy is not rigid.

As I noted earlier in this article, certain activities can cross hierarchical boundaries, hitting a need present under the physiological needs tier, while also hitting a need present under the love and belonging needs tier, for example.

Criticisms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory state that, in a similar vein, it is possible for individuals to experience needs from a higher tier without having all their needs in lower tiers met. For example, you esteem needs may be met because you have confidence in yourself and your personal worth, and you know that your friends and family have this same confidence in you, but right now you don’t have enough food on the table, so you don’t have your basic needs met.

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory continues to hold up, with some adjustments, attesting to its strength as a seminal motivation theory.

The Psychology Behind How to Break Bad Habits

2020-05-15T00:00:00-04:00

We all have bad habits. Whether you have a tendency to bite your nails, talk with your mouth full, or you’re a chronic procrastinator, bad habits are harmful to our vision of ourselves and who we want to be.

The problem is, our brains are wired to turn our everyday interactions into habits and routines. When we perform certain actions—such as riding a bike, driving a car, or tying our shoelaces —on autopilot, this frees our brain up to focus on other things.

The creation of habits and routines in itself isn’t a bad thing, far from it. But just as easily as you can form a good habit, a bad habit can be formed. And they can be extremely difficult to break.

In this article, I’m going to dive into the psychology behind how to break bad habits. Starting at their very formation, I’m going to look into what causes bad habits, followed by a clear three-step method for how to break bad habits and replace them with a more positive alternative.

What are Bad Habits?

A bad habit is a frequent behavior pattern that you deem to have a negative impact on a part of your life. A bad habit tends to be performed time and again, and is distinguished from an addiction or mental illness by its relationship to willpower.

As a general rule, if you are able to use willpower to “break” a bad habit, it was just that; a habit. If you are unable to use willpower to break a bad habit, you are likely feeling some form of addition or suffering from a certain level of mental illness.

While there are many activities that are generally agreed upon to be bad habits; such as smoking, excessive drinking, or grinding your teeth, what you consider to be a bad habit may be considered an entirely reasonable activity by someone else, and vice versa.

For example, you may consider “watching too much television” to be a bad habit that you would like to break, but for someone who is just getting started in a television writing course, watching a lot of it comes with the territory. Similarly, you may wish to “spend less time on your phone,” but for someone who runs their business on their phone; whether they’re sending emails and text messages all day, or keeping up their branded social media accounts, this is the exact opposite of what they want to be doing.

How Long Does it Take to Break a Bad Habit?

The common belief that it takes 21 days to make or break a habit has faced constant scrutiny since it was first proposed. In my book on morning routines we noted:

Give each new element you bring into your morning routine a fair shot. Trying something for just a couple of days before giving up isn’t enough. Though opinion varies on how long it takes for something to become a habit, we suggest you give each new element at least a one- or two-week trial to see how you like it.

With that said, I believe 21 days is a reasonable rule to work with, so long as you don’t become despondent if you haven’t managed to break a particular habit in this exact timeframe. Consider the 21 day rule to be a suggestion, rather than an exact scientific calculation.

Why is it So Hard to Break a Bad Habit?

Attempting to break a bad habit can be difficult because performing the habit in question day after day, week after week, and year after year has become your default state. In a way, the bad habit has become a part you.

Refer back to the 21 day “rule” above. Whether the exact number of days it will take you to break a particular habit is 21 days, 42 days, or more, the fact of the matter is the habit you are trying to break has likely been with you for some time; likely many months, years, and possibly even decades.

If the bad habit in question is one that you have repeated daily for many decades, it stands to reason that attempting to break it in a short space of time is going to be difficult. But doing so is not impossible, and that is what the rest of this article is going to tackle.

How to Break Bad Habits

Humans are simple creatures. We want little more out of life than to keep doing the things we enjoy doing, and to do less of the things we don’t enjoy doing. Unfortunately, living in a way in which we never experience discomfort is not only unworkable, doing so would quickly become its own kind of prison.

With that cheery thought in our minds, read on to discover a clear three-step method for how to break bad habits and replace them with a more positive alternative:

1. Define the Habit You Want to Break, and Its Triggers

All habits, good and bad, are formed through repetition. In order to break a bad habit it is necessary for us to first define, then break, this repetition.

I’ve written numerous articles (certain critics may say I’ve done so “repetitively”) over the years on the topic of stacking habits. As I wrote in my book on morning routines, habit stacks are a series of linked actions:

Waking up triggers you to go to the bathroom, which triggers you to brush your teeth, which triggers you to put on your workout clothes, sit down to meditate, or put the kettle on to begin brewing your favorite cup of tea or coffee.

Defining what happens just before you perform the bad habit in question is they key to starting your journey toward breaking it.

But let’s back up for just a moment. In order to truly be able to break a bad habit, you first need to ask yourself why you want to break (or change) this habit in the first place? I’m not talking about surface-level reasons either—I want you to dive deep inside of yourself and really tell yourself why this habit is harmful, and what breaking it will do for you.

For example, if you’re a chronic procrastinator who barely manages to complete anything because your attention is consistently being pulled in another direction, you can tell yourself that if you can break the habit of procrastination you will be more productive, creating more opportunities, more connections, and (likely) more money in the bank over the long term. On a deeper level, if you’re been a smoker your whole life, tell yourself to your face that if you can break this habit you will potentially add years to your life; years that can be spent watching your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren grow up.

Once you have established your reasons for wanting to break this habit, you need to list the aforementioned triggers that happen just before you perform the bad habit in question. Ask yourself, do these triggers act alone or are they a part of a larger pattern of behavior?

Once you have your reasons for wanting to break this habit, the triggers that cause you to perform this habit, and any larger view of how these triggers work together, it’s time to move on to choosing a substitute for your bad habit.

2. Choose a Substitute for Your Bad Habit

Unfortunately, knowing how to break a bad habit means knowing that you often can’t simply “break” a bad habit; more often than not, you need to replace it with something else instead.

The reasoning behind this is simple. Returning again to the idea of triggers and habit stacks; when you stack one habit on top of another, or experience a trigger that tells your brain that it’s time to perform your bad habit, your brain now expects this habit to take place. In this moment you will feel a pull to perform this bad habit, an urge that, with nothing to replace it, will be difficult to ignore.

However, when you substitute out your bad habit for a good one, you are ensuring that the habit stack remains unbroken, and your brain has somewhere to turn when it experiences the trigger that preceded your old habit.

Here’s an example to better illustrate what I’m driving at. Let’s say that you have found yourself going for a drink or two every night after work. This started out as just a casual thing, heading over to a bar with a couple of friends on a Friday night after a long week. Soon you realize that you are performing this ritual every evening, whether or not you have company. You’re still enjoying yourself, but as this casual occurrence has turned into a full-blown habit, you are worried about what may happen if you allow this bad habit to continue.

Recognizing that breaking the bad habit of going to a bar after work and just heading home instead is unlikely to hold up, instead you sign up for a gym membership and start going to the gym after work instead. This way, you get to keep up the ritual of winding down in a third space between work and home, while having a positive, not a negative, effect on your body.

The substitute you choose to replace your bad habit will vary depending on the habit itself, as well as your personal preferences. You may have heard (or experienced) the analogy that smokers need something to do with their hands after quitting smoking; this is the exact same idea. When you can substitute your bad habit for a positive alternative, you’ll be well on your way to breaking the bad habit for good.

3. Aim for Success, Plan for Failure

The last step in knowing how to break a bad habit rests on both your attitude and your level of preparedness.

In order to successfully break a bad habit it is essential that you believe you will be able to break it, even when you believe that the odds are stacked against you. You must be persistent in your quest to break the habit, but at the same time you must be patient with the process, and with yourself. As I noted earlier in this article, you must consider the 21 day “rule” as a suggestion, rather than an exact scientific calculation. The more ingrained a habit is in your life, the longer it will take to break.

This is what I mean by “aim for success, plan for failure.” You must reward yourself at even the slightest of milestones (one day without performing the bad habit, two days, three!). You must visualize yourself shaking off this bad habit for good… but at the same time, you must have a process in place for the slip-ups (or near slip-ups) that would otherwise make you feel that you’re back at square one.

While this won’t be necessary for every bad habit you wish to break, for the larger, sticker habits, I recommend joining a support group, either online or—if your bad habit is a common one—in person, where you can share tips with other people who are struggling to let go of the same bad habit as you, while at the same time working to support each other toward letting go of this habit altogether.

When you aim for success, but plan for failure, you ensure that you’re giving yourself every possible chance to take your bad habit to task.

Knowing how to break bad habits and replace them with more positive alternatives is a skill that will serve you well throughout your entire life. What bad habits have you broken? Reach out to me on Twitter to share your story.

What Is an Introvert? How to Tell If You’re an Introverted Person

2020-05-08T00:00:00-04:00

I’m an introvert. I’ve always been this way.

When I was in school I was often called shy and asked to speak up in class. When I was in university I was consistently being encouraged to participate more in group discussions. And when I entered the workforce, I remember wanting nothing more than to go home after a long day at work, instead of “going for a quick one” at the pub.

This used to get to me. I didn’t think there was something wrong with me, or that it was bad to be an introvert per say, but I did envy my extroverted friends—look at their energy, their movement, their confidence! In the famed words of a Katz’s Deli patron in When Harry Met Sally, “I’ll have what she’s having.”

As time passed, being an introvert mattered to me less and less. In the last decade I have moved from working fast-paced retail jobs in London, to the slow pace of life of a just-getting-by writer in the Andalusian region of Spain, to San Francisco, where I married my wife and published my first book, on to New York City, where I’m working on multiple projects at once, including a corporate writing position.

While my career and physical location has varied dramatically over the last ten years, my personality type has not. I’m an introvert, but unlike throughout my teenage years and into my early twenties, I’m no longer afraid to admit it.

In this article, I’m going to dig into the difference between an introvert and an extrovert, focusing on the core characteristics of an introvert. I’m going to look into what causes someone to be an introverted person in the first place, as well as looking at seven signs that can tell you once and for all if you’re an introvert.

I truly believe that being an introvert is a gift. But before we get deep into specifics surrounding introversion, what is an introvert anyway?

What is an Introvert?

An introvert is someone who enjoys spending time alone, or with a small group of close friends, as opposed to spending their time in a busy social setting. Introverts typically find time spent alone to be rejuvenating, whereas time spent in a large group can be draining.

That’s a basic definition of an introvert. In reality, introverts sit on a spectrum. “There are four different types of introversion: social, thinking, anxious, and restrained,” notes Sarah Newman in an article for PsychCentral. “Nobody likes to be pigeon-holed and it’s a relief to me to see my introversion in a unique light. My combination of traits can’t be all that common.”

The difference between an introvert and an extrovert lies in the word “stimulation.” Introverts typically prefer a less stimulating environment, whereas extroverts tend to favor a more stimulating environment. While introverts often prefer to spend their time reading, practicing a solo hobby, or watching a television show with their significant other, extroverts tend to be more outgoing, enjoying meeting up with friends on the weekend, participating in group sports, and hosting dinner parties.

Introversion is a common personality (or character) trait, but it’s important to remember that very few of us are “extreme” introverts or “extreme” extroverts. Most of us fall somewhere in the middle of a continuum, with extreme introverts and extreme extroverts being on opposite ends.

What is an Introverted Person Like?

For an extrovert, an introverted person may be difficult to get to know at first. I heard an example once of a family who felt there was something wrong with one of their daughters because she was quieter than the rest of the family. It was clear to me that she was an introvert in a family of extroverts, yet this family, baffled as to why their daughter was so different from the rest of them, was considering sending her to a doctor to find out what was “wrong” with her.

When the idea of introversion vs. extroversion was explained to this family, a concept which they hadn’t previously been exposed to, their daughter suddenly made so much more sense to them. Rather than thinking there was something wrong with their child, they embraced her, and read up on everything they could on the difference between introverts and extroverts so they could better respond to their daughter’s needs going forward.

Is it Bad to Be an Introvert?

Absolutely not. While it can be frustrating to be labeled as shy, or anxious, or to generally find yourself having trouble making friends at school or work, it is not bad to be an introvert—far from it.

The characteristics of an introvert mean that we’re perfectly set up to achieve big things, if only we put our mind to it. We have the patience to read book after book to work towards bettering ourselves, or to take the time we need to dedicate ourselves to our goals or to figure out life’s purpose. Far from it being bad to be an introvert, we know that it is what makes us, us.

How to Tell If You’re an Introvert

If you’re not sure if you’re an introvert or extrovert, the below signs should help you figure out how far you are along the introversion vs. extroversion continuum.

Here are seven signs that you are an introvert:

1) You Prefer Staying In to Going Out

This point is somewhat complicated in the face of COVID-19, but in more normal times introverts prefer staying in to going out. While we know that social engagement is important, nothing sounds more exciting to us than staying home and curling up with our current favorite book or television show.

2) You Prefer Writing to Talking

I’m a writer. I have written thousands of articles and other works (including one book) over the years. Writing is my medium of choice; I much prefer writing to talking, and if you’re an introvert, there’s a good chance that this is true for you as well.

3) You’re Rarely Bored

In an article I wrote on what to do when you’re bored, I noted that when I was a kid I was often bored, but nowadays, I rarely suffer from boredom. This is often true of introverts—we can always find something to do in our spare moments, whether we crack open a new book, hit up the gym, or get on the phone with a close friend.

4) You Have a Small Group of Close Friends

Yes, you read that right. It is a common misconception that introverts struggle to make friends. While introverts may take some time to warm up to, many introverts have a small group of close friends that they can keep for life. To put it another way, instead of having a wide, shallow group of friends, introverts develop deep friendships that last a lifetime.

5) You Prefer to Work Alone

This one seems so obvious that it barely deems mentioning, but I can confirm that being an introvert means that you prefer to work alone rather than in a large group. To be honest though, does anyone truly enjoy group work? (I’d bet that extroverts who claim credit during group work projects, despite doing very little work toward them, do, but that’s a discussion for another time.)

6) Your Ideal Weekend is Devoid of Plans

For an introvert, there are few things more exciting than looking out at your weekend on a Friday evening (an evening that, fingers crossed, you’re spending at home), to a weekend entirely devoid of plans. Sure, you may hit up a museum on Saturday afternoon, or wander over to the farmers’ market on Sunday morning, but neither of these activities are set in stone.

7) You (Almost Always) Think Before You Speak

Being an introvert means you spend a lot of time inside your head. Being mindful is an excellent character trait, and it comes in handy when it comes to thinking before you speak. Despite my introversion, this is something I wasn’t always great at, but time changed my ways, and I ow, almost always, fully articulate in my mind what I’m going to say before I say it.

Being an introvert is a gift. If you’re an introverted person, embrace this personality type, and enjoy it for all that it’s worth.

Like Attracts Like: How to Attract People to Your Work

2020-04-29T00:00:00-04:00

While you will often hear the phrase “like attracts like” when it comes to dating, this concept can be just as prominent in other areas of our lives.

There’s a famous Jim Roth quote that goes “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Who do you want these people to be? More importantly, who do you want to be?

In my list of some of the best life-changing books to read, I noted that the books in my list can change the course of your life whether you’re in high school, college, or you’re deep into your twenties, thirties, and beyond. To relate this to the law of “like attracts like,” it can be said that if you want to become the sort of person who reads the types of books on this list, you need to start reading them yourself. (Similarly, if you don’t want to become this type of person, you may wish to skip them.)

In this article, I’m going to explore how you can use the law of “like attracts like” to help draw people to your work, regardless of what you do for a living—whether your craft is sales or sailing, marketing or masquerading, or engineering or astronauting.

What Does Like Attracts Like Mean?

The phrase “like attracts like” means that people who are similar to each other often attract one another. This can be in a romantic sense, with introverts being attracted to other introverts, within friendships, with all members of a friend group generally sharing the same values, or in our professional lives, with people with similar ways of thinking with regard to business, politics, or other factors coming together.

The opposite of the theory that “opposites attract,” the law of “like attracts like,” is the reason why hobbyist groups thrive around the world, why cable news has become so polarized, and why as I am writing this there are over two million subreddits in existence.

To put a finer point on this, in Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, author Richard Bach notes:

Like attracts like. Just be who you are, calm and clear and bright. Automatically, as we shine who we are, asking ourselves every minute is this what I really want to do, doing it only when we answer yes, automatically that turns away those who have nothing to learn from who we are, and attracts those who do, and from whom we have to learn, as well.

The Fastest Way to Attract People to Your Work

The law of “like attracts like” exists at every level of our lives, including with our work. In order to attract the right people to your work, you need to…

…develop your core values
…increase your productivity
…be strategically impatient
…develop a morning routine
…learn to overcome laziness
…get your character in check
…learn to delay gratification
…develop a thick skin
…read the right books
…develop self-reliance
…make your priorities a priority

…and finally, you need to figure out your life purpose. When you do all of this, you will begin to attract likeminded people to your work in droves. Your work will speak for itself.

Attracting people to your work is easy when you recognize that like attracts like at every level of our lives; you just need to know how to leverage it.

The Best Life-Changing Books to Read

2020-04-21T00:00:00-04:00

I wasn’t always a big reader.

While I plowed through the first four Harry Potter books in middle school, and did all the required reading in high school and college, it wasn’t until I left university and was firmly settled into my mid-twenties that I began to take reading seriously.

I’ve written previously about quake books and quake reading. Quake books are books that change your life. They profoundly change your views or open up your mind to something new. The best life-changing books are by their very nature quake books, as they open you up to new possibilities and ways of thinking.

While the books in this list may not be the most entertaining books I’ve ever read (though some of them do fit into this category), they are the most life-changing books I have ever read.

Read on to uncover 34 of the best life-changing books to read, whether you’re in high school, college, or you’re deep into your twenties, thirties, and beyond, and you’re looking to change the course of your life.

Ther Best Life-Changing Books to Read

Here is my list of the best life-changing books to read. I will update this list every year, so be sure to bookmark this page or subscribe to my free email newsletter to get notified whenever I add new books to this list.

Without further ado…

Deep Work: Cal Newport (296 Pages)

Deep Work is one of the most important books of my generation. While the general premise behind the book (“Work hard and you will be successful,”) isn’t new, the way that Newport relates this to the modern day, pointing out that if you do the work, success can come easier today than it ever did, is refreshing.

The Slight Edge: Jeff Olson (280 Pages)

I loved this book. Having read it over eight years ago, it would be an exaggeration to say that I still think about its principles every day; but every week? Quite possibly. The Slight Edge shows how your smallest everyday choices can have a dramatic impact on your life over the long term.

When Breath Becomes Air: Paul Kalanithi (208 Pages)

This is a devastating book. Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon based in Northern California who was struck by a terminal cancer diagnosis. An aspiring novelist, he wrote a memoir of this period of his life, a memoir that, ultimately, his wife has to finish on his behalf.

Why We Sleep: Matthew Walker (368 Pages)

I have been fascinated by sleep for as long as I can remember, reading countless books and studies on the subject. When I found out that Walker, a British scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology (who I had read research papers by in the past), was coming out with this book, I got excited. The book does not disappoint.

The 33 Strategies of War: Robert Greene (496 Pages)

This is a phenomenal book about war, military strategy, and, ultimately, how to make your way in life. Often placing third behind The 48 Laws of Power and Mastery, other works by Greene that receive honorable mentions here, when I interviewed Greene about his morning routine I let him know that this is my favorite of his works; a true unabashed masterpiece.

Grit: Angela Duckworth (368 Pages)

“No matter the domain, the highly successful have a kind of ferocious determination that plays out in two ways. First, they are unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they know in a very, very deep way what it is they want.” If you’re in high-school or just getting started in college, Grit is one of the most life-changing books you can read to help you get ahead.

The Alchemist: Paulo Coelho (197 Pages)

The only work of fiction on this list (while I enjoy reading fiction, I primarily read non-fiction), The Alchemist is the classic tale of a journey toward a better place as the Andalusian shepherd boy, Santiago, embarks on the quest of a lifetime.

Frederick Douglass: David W. Blight (912 Pages)

I have read dozens of biographies about the American presidency (including a book called The American Presidency, which gets an honorable mention here). Rarely do I read about those on the fringes of the presidency, or in Frederick Douglass’s case, the fringes of society. I was sorry when this book came to an end, and you will be too.

Between the World and Me: Ta-Nehisi Coates (152 Pages)

Between the World and Me is one of those books that you will find yourself thinking about long after you finish reading it. This is the book that elevated Coates into the national and international spotlight, and when you read it, you will immediately see why. Coates is a phenomenal writer. Pick up this book.

Principles: Life and Work: Ray Dalio (592 Pages)

Ray Dalio founded his investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City in 1975. Over the years he grew Bridgewater into the “fifth most important private company in the United States,” according to Fortune magazine. In Principles: Life and Work, Dalio shares the principles he has learned over his long career.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Stephen R. Covey (372 Pages)

I love this book. First published in 1989, in this book the late Covey walks you through the seven habits that he has found can make you highly effective in your work, family, and personal life. Everyone who wants to be successful should read this book at least once.

Thinking, Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahneman (499 Pages)

Great, if somewhat dry, book that explores Kahneman’s famed System 1 and System 2 approach to thinking. “System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.”

Meditations: Marcus Aurelius (304 Pages)

I was turned on to Meditations, as were so many in this modern age, by the author Ryan Holiday. Pick up the Gregory Hays translation if you can—Hays is masterful in the way that he makes this former Roman Emperor’s writings to himself seem as approachable and modern today as they would have felt almost 2,000 years ago.

The New Jim Crow: Michelle Alexander (290 Pages)

This book opened my eyes. It is dry, there is no getting around that, but if you persist you are rewarded with knowledge that will help you view the criminal justice system with fresh eyes. An honorable mention goes to Whatever It Takes by Paul Tough, which focuses on those individuals who are trying to keep our kids out of the criminal justice system in the first place.

The Power of Habit: Charles Duhigg (286 Pages)

Whenever I’m asked in interviews what got me into writing about morning routines, and eventually publishing a book on the subject, I tell them that the catalyst was reading The Power of Habit for the first time, over seven years ago. If you want to know how you can form new healthy habits, and break unhealthy ones, pick up this book.

Team of Rivals: Doris Kearns Goodwin (754 Pages)

I read a lot of long historical biographies. While the vast majority of them are a joy to read, few can be called life-changing, which is why I made a conscious choice to only include two in this list. Honestly, you will not regret picking up anything by Kearns Goodwin, with honorable mentions also going out to the work of David McCullough and Walter Isaacson.

The Year of Magical Thinking: Joan Didion (240 Pages)

This is an extremely touching book that follows Didion in the year after her husband’s death. I didn’t expect to like this book as much as I did; Didion’s stunning writing serves as a course in the art in itself, and her ability to find light at the end of the tunnel made for a heartwarming read.

I Will Teach You to Be Rich: Ramit Sethi (352 Pages)

Ramit Sethi has been in the personal finance game for a long time. I first read this book over 11 years ago, and while I enjoyed it, it wasn’t until my wife read the updated re-release last year that I decided to give it another go—and I’m glad I did. While there are many life-changing personal finance books out there, Sethi is unique in his ability to show you what really matters when it comes to building wealth.

Perennial Seller: Ryan Holiday (248 Pages)

Perennial Seller is a practical book more akin to Holiday’s Trust Me, I’m Lying and Growth Hacker Marketing than his works on stoicism. Holiday’s clear gift for writing is as evident here as ever, and I poured through this book twice, once on vacation and once, a year later, while taking copious notes as I was preparing for the launch of my first book.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: Marie Kondo (224 Pages)

Kondo’s breakaway success with this book unfortunately led to much ridicule based on the title alone, which given that Kondo herself spoke very little English at the time of the book’s English-language release, can hardly be placed at her door. The thing about this book is, it’s actually very good, and it will change the way you think about “things” and how many of these “things” you need. Highly recommended.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Maya Angelou (246 Pages)

Angelou’s poetry seeps out of every page of, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. While there’s a chance that you read this during high school, I strongly recommend coming back to it as an adult. Don’t let this book’s popularity put you off; it deserves all the acclaim it gets.

The Checklist Manifesto: Atul Gawande (208 Pages)

I picked this book up at a thrift store after it has been on my “to read” list for well over a year. The Checklist Manifesto is an extremely readable book about the importance of, well, keeping a checklist whenever you need to perform a complex task with absolute perfection. This book changed my thinking on checklists, which I’d imagine is a win in Gawande’s eyes.

Aesop’s Fables: Aesop (306 Pages)

Credited to the enslaved Aesop, who lived in Ancient Greece between 620-560 BC, you already know many of Aesop’s Fables, including The Tortoise and the Hare, The North Wind and the Sun, and The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

The Magic of Thinking Big: David J. Schwartz (238 Pages)

I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did, but I quickly found myself highlighting it within an inch of its life. The book is best summed up by this line “Big ideas and big plans are often easier, certainly no more difficult, than small ideas and small plans.” Read this book if you have big plans.

Talent is Overrated: Geoff Colvin (240 Pages)

“Deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them,” say Colvin in Talent is Overrated. While this is easier said than done, this book shows you exactly what it takes to be great in your chosen field.

Tiny Beautiful Things: Cheryl Strayed (304 Pages)

One of the lines that I highlighted in this book was “Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true,” and this would have been a great title for this book. Tiny Beautiful Things is a collection of letters and replies from Strayed’s famed (though at the time, anonymous) Dear Sugar column. If you think this book is not for you, it almost certainly is.

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work: Alain de Botton (336 Pages)

“When does a job feel meaningful? Whenever it allows us to generate delight or reduce suffering in others.” Full of witticisms, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work attempts to make sense of the modern workplace, while asking why it is that we do the work we do.

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion: Robert B. Cialdini (320 Pages)

How can you get people to say “yes” to whatever it is you ask of them? In Influence, Dr. Cialdini, who worked for thirty-five years in the fields of influence and persuasion, breaks down how you can become more persuasive, and how you can recognize when someone is trying to persuade you.

Spark: John J. Ratey (304 Pages)

“If exercise came in pill form, it would be plastered across the front page, hailed as the blockbuster drug of the century.” We all know that exercise is good for our physical and mental selves, but did you know that exercising can also make you smarter? This book changed my thinking around exercise.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life: Anne Lamott (237 Pages)

I heard about this book five years before I finally picked it up. Bird by Bird is truly a life-changing book. Reading Lamott’s concept of “shitty first drafts” for the first time truly was a life-changing moment. If you’re a writer, or you have aspirations of becoming one, pick up this book. An honorable mention goes to The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

Peace Is Every Step: Thich Nhat Hanh (160 Pages)

“We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living.” In Peace Is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist, explores how we can experience peace within every facet of our daily lives.

Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway: Susan Jeffers (272 Pages)

I first read this book over 12 years ago, yet while looking through my reading list for this article I knew I had to include it in this list. I love books that tell you what they are by their title alone, and this is no exception.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind: Yuval Noah Harari (443 Pages)

In Sapiens, Harari spans the length of human history, looking into everything from how homo sapiens beat out five other human species that were on the planet at the same time as us, 100,000 years ago, to how we moved from foraging communities to becoming the citizens of great kingdoms and cities.

Man’s Search for Meaning: Viktor E. Frankl (192 Pages)

After surviving Nazi death camps, Viktor Frankl went on to write Man’s Search for Meaning, a memoir that “argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose.”

I hope you enjoyed this list of the best life-changing books to read. Even if you pick just five books off this list to read right away, this should keep you busy for some time!

If you’re interested in hearing more from me, or you would like to get a notification whenever I add new books to this list, be sure to subscribe to my free email newsletter. If you enjoyed this article, please share it on social media, link to it from your website, or bookmark it so you can come back to it often. ∎

How to Stick to a Routine During Quarantine

2020-04-15T00:00:00-04:00

The last few months have been scary, overwhelming, and for many of us, full of uncertainty.

I’m not a doctor, a nurse, a paramedic, or any other form of medical professional. I recently wrote after publishing an article on how to feel less anxious about the novel coronavirus that I struggled for weeks to know what I should say on this subject, as I questioned the right that I have to jump in headfirst on a topic that, needless to say, I have little experience in.

I desperately didn’t want to add to the noise, which is why I eventually decided to focus on something that could bring a sliver of hope to this difficult time.

This time around, I’m going to focus on an area that I do know a thing or two about—routines, specifically quarantine routines. As the author of My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired, a book that I wrote in 2018 with my friend and co-author Michael Xander, routines have been at the center of everything I do for close to a decade. And like much of the world at this point, quarantining is a subject in which I have become intimately familiar.

In this article, we’re going to look at how to stick to a healthy routine during quarantine. Whether your state or country has a mandated “stay at home” order, or you’ve taken it upon yourself to self-quarantine for the sake of public health, below you will find five tips to help you keep up a quarantine routine.

How to Build a Quarantine Routine

If you already had a daily routine before this all began, part of your goal in creating a quarantine routine will be to bring as much of your old routine into your new reality as possible. If you didn’t have a routine prior to this, this is the perfect opportunity to create one.

Here is how to build a healthy quarantine routine that works for you:

Remember, You’re Not “Working from Home”

First off, remember that you are not “working from home” in the same way you may have done for a day or two at a time in the past, before any of this happened. In this current COVID-19 situation, you’re “trying your best to work from home during a global pandemic.” There is a difference.

Cut yourself some slack, cut your colleagues some slack, and if you’re a manager of people, cut them some slack as well. We’re all trying to do our best in extremely difficult circumstances.

Set an Alarm Every Day

When I started self-quarantining, I stopped setting alarms, as I recognized that not having to commute to work allowed me to sleep in longer. I soon realized that while this is true, and I very much appreciate being able to start my day that much later, I still need to set an alarm to ensure I’m getting up at a consistent time each day.

We need structure now more than ever. Sticking to a routine during quarantine isn’t easy, but few things that are worth it are. Start your quarantine routine off right every day, by setting an alarm the night before.

Change Up Your Workout Routine

If you used to meditate as part of your morning routine, you can keep this routine up during quarantine just as easily now as before. But what about your workout routine?

Even if the gyms where you are haven’t yet been ordered closed, I would recommend against visiting them. Instead, take up jogging in your local park (wearing a face mask as appropriate), use free weights at home, or, if you’re feeling flush and you have the space, purchase your own exercise equipment, such as a stationary bike or rowing machine.

Create a Dedicated Work Space

If you’re lucky enough to be able to work from a laptop, it’s essential that your new quarantine routine gives you a dedicated space to work from every day. Needless to say, if you have a home office (or a spare bedroom that can serve as one), use it!

I live in a small one-bedroom apartment in New York City, so space is hard to come by. Prior to COVID-19, I made a rule to never work from the bedroom, as I wanted this to be a sacred space. I recently reversed this rule, however, as a part of my quarantine routine, with certain caveats: I place a chair in the bedroom facing a plain white wall, looking away from the bed and window into the outside world. It may not be a “traditional” office, but it allows the seclusion I need to get my work done without outside distractions, while at the same time allowing the “bed” part of the bedroom to stay sacred.

Block Out Distractions

Lastly, if you live with your spouse or a friend who is in your home at the same time as you—potentially also working from home—I recommend wearing your headphones, earbuds, or other noise-cancelling devices as often as possible. It can be difficult to concentrate and truly be in “work mode” if you can hear other people all around you; people who you would normally associate with being at home, not at work.

While these distractions are arguably healthy to have, you want to be having them on your terms, at set times that work for you.

How to Feel Less Anxious About the Coronavirus (COVID-19)

2020-03-27T00:00:00-04:00

This article was published on March 27, 2020.

The novel coronavirus, known in the medical community by its full name of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has fully taken hold in the United States, as has the disease, COVID-19, that it causes.

With the World Health Organization (WHO) declaring COVID-19 a global pandemic in mid-March, many of us have been feeling a level of anxiety that we had previously not considered possible. For those of us who lived through the 2002-2004 SARS outbreak, we remember it as if it were a vague memory; something we know was bad at the time, but which we have since forgotten about.

The novel coronavirus is to be taken deadly seriously. Your life, your parents lives, and especially your grandparents lives depend on it. While I subscribe to the policy of “Hope for the best, prepare for the worse,” there are a million articles, op-eds, and news segments that (rightly) scare the living daylights out of you.

I’m here to offer some relief, without turning your head away from the facts. Your coronavirus anxiety is real, and in some cases it can feel overwhelming. But now isn’t a time to succumb to anxiety or to be overwhelmed; quite the opposite.

Here are seven reasons to feel less anxious about the novel coronavirus, along with suggestions of what you can do in the fight against the spread of COVID-19:

I’ve personally been working from home for a little over two weeks, yet it feels like a lifetime.

When I first started working from home, I assumed I was doing so for just a couple days to test the water, before heading back into the office on the following Monday. Not only did that not turn out to be true, even best case scenarios suggest that I will be working from home for another six, seven, or eight weeks, at a minimum.

The reason for this is because social distancing works. Designed to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus (or any contagious disease), social distancing—the act of staying six feet away from anyone, or at least anyone who doesn’t reside in your household, at all times—works because it physically makes it more difficult for the virus to spread between people. As I write this the proof of the effectiveness of social distancing is playing out in New York State, with Governor Andrew Cuomo noting recently that early signs indicate that the state’s stringent restrictions on social gatherings and other measures may be slowing the spread of the coronavirus, with the state’s projected hospitalizations reducing from a doubling every two days to a doubling every 4.7 days.

This is progress. Social distancing works.

2) More Cases = More Tests

Now, I live in New York City, which resides in a state that, according to the most recent estimates as I write this, has more than seven percent of the nearly 463,000 worldwide cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

This is a staggering number, but it is a number that is in part due to an enormous increase in coronavirus testing in recent weeks, with Governor Cuomo noting himself that this jump in positive cases is due to both rigorous and aggressive testing.

Of course, your takeaway from this shouldn’t be that Wyoming or North Dakota have an enormous number of COVID-19 cases just waiting to be uncovered. More cases does equal more testing, but certain states and countries (and certain urban areas within these states and countries) with higher population densities will, of course, be more susceptible to the spread of the virus than areas with lower population densities. Taking steps to stay safe, such as practicing social distancing and washing your hands frequently, regardless of where you live, will ultimately help to slow the spread of the virus where you are.

3) Limit Your Briefings

Last week, I noticed that I was feeling extremely anxious about the novel coronavirus, despite having not read or otherwise consumed any in-depth information on it for days.

This tactic had been on purpose; I figured that if I distanced myself from the news, something I’ve advocated for in the past, I could get on with my days (albeit from home while practicing social distancing) largely uninterrupted. I knew we were in a watershed moment, that COVID-19, and the social distancing experiment we were all participating in, would go down in history. But I largely wanted to stay away from the drip-drip-drip of news coming out from around the world.

This was the wrong approach. While you should limit how much you’re staying up to date with the hour-by-hour news stories coming out regarding COVID-19, as to consume too much will heighten your anxiety, it’s just as true to say that sticking your head in the sand may prove to make you equally anxious. I like to think of it as staying informed, but not too informed. Find out what you can do to flatten the curve in your community by signing up for text or email alerts, then follow this advice. Do all you can to keep you and your family safe; including your mental health.

4) Dr. Anthony Fauci

At 79 years of age, Dr. Anthony Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a position he has held since 1984. Working directly with the last six presidents, Dr. Fauci has overseen the United States efforts in fights against diseases including HIV/AIDS, Ebola, SARS, and of course now, COVID-19.

Dr. Fauci’s calm presence during the administration’s almost-daily press conferences on the novel coronavirus, as well as his willingness to tell the truth, no matter what, significantly reduces my anxiety around the crisis. While Dr. Fauci himself can’t save us from the coronavirus, it is his recommendations, along with those of Dr. Deborah Birx and others, that are helping to flatten the curve.

When asked by The Atlantic if he has felt pressure from the current administration to deliver a particular message about the coronavirus, Dr. Fauci replied:

I made up my mind a long time ago […] and this goes back to the first time I had to speak the truth to Ronald Reagan about the seriousness of HIV/AIDS, when people were not paying attention to it. I was, like, the lone wolf out there: “This is going to be big. We’ve got to do something about it.” I’m doing the same thing now. And my attitude is: I’m going to keep doing that.

Dr. Fauci is the real deal. We are lucky to have him.

5) Doctors, Nurses, and Other Medical Professionals are Superheroes

The novel coronavirus has caused feelings of uncertainty, powerlessness, and of course, anxiety to flourish like never before.

When you’re feeling anxious about the coronavirus, spare a thought for the doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals who are risking their lives each and every day to help care for us and keep us safe. This includes thousands of retired doctors and nurses, who have stepped up and back into scrubs in enormous numbers (52,000 in New York State alone) to help add numbers to the fight against the virus, despite very real risks to their own health.

These professionals deserve our help, support, and praise now more than ever. In the United Kingdom, where I am from, the country recently joined in a mass round of applause from their doorsteps and balconies to give thanks to the men and women of the National Health Service (NHS) for all they are doing during this COVID-19 crisis. Known as the national “Clap for our Carers” event, the organizers “asked people to clap either on their doorsteps or through open windows at 8:00 p.m. to thank NHS staff, including doctors, nurses, GPs, pharmacists, and emergency workers.”

In these times of uncertainty, one thing we can be certain of is the unwavering commitment of our medical professionals to get us through this crisis.

6) The Long-Term Global Outlook

While I can’t honestly say that this helps with my anxiety over the current coronavirus, the long-term global outlook for our ability to deal with a global pandemic of this scale makes me considerably less anxious the more I think about it.

When Dr. Fauci was asked in a recent interview if the United States was adequately prepared for the current pandemic, he noted:

Take the clock back a decade or so. [You could have said] “We have 12,700 ventilators in the strategic national stockpile. Why not put 100,000 in there?” There would not have been any enthusiasm on anybody’s part to spend that much money to do that. Now, retrospectively, when you look back, you say, “Oh my God, why didn’t we put 100,000 ventilators in there?”

After this current global pandemic is over, there is going to be significant enthusiasm on the parts of governments and private businesses around the world to ensure not only that our supplies of ventilators are dramatically increased, but so are our supplies of personal protection equipment (PPE) for doctors and nurses, N95 masks, and more. Some of this production is happening right now, and it’s difficult to believe that this production won’t continue on a global scale after the worst of the virus is over.

7) You

Finally, one thing that helps me feel less anxious about the novel coronavirus above all else is the powers that each of us have to help in this fight in some small (or large) way.

As I touched upon above, if you are a retired doctor, nurse, or other medical professional, and you have no underlying medical conditions, you can volunteer to go back to work to aid in the fight against COVID-19 on the ground. Can you make masks, personal protection equipment (PPE) for doctors and nurses, or ventilators? If you can, contact your state to find out what you need to do to coordinate these efforts.

And let’s not forget the result of social distancing measures themselves; the self-isolation that so many people are feeling around the world and at home in your community due to staying inside to help flatten the curve. I implore you to frequently reach out to elderly family members, both to check in on them (and ensure they’re staying home) and to brighten up their days. I recently switched from speaking with my Nanna on the phone to FaceTiming her every couple of days to check in. She loves it.

Also look out for your own mental health and wellbeing during this time. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep. If you’re working from home, try to get fully dressed every day (the pain is real, I know) even if, just like yesterday and the day before, nobody will be seeing you again today. If you had a morning routine prior to working from home, establish a new quarantine routine that will serve you throughout this time; albeit replacing your morning gym session with some free weights at home.

I hope that the above seven points have helped you to feel less anxious about the novel coronavirus. While it’s important to reduce our anxiety (hope for the best), it’s just as important for us to prepare for the worse. Practice social distancing. Wash your hands frequently, especially after coming back from the grocery store or other essential business. And if you’re lucky enough to still have them, call your grandparents.

How to Deal with Passive-Aggressive People

2020-03-06T00:00:00-05:00

Do you experience passive-aggression in your day-to-day life? Is there someone, such as your spouse, a sibling, parent, colleague, or boss that regularly displays passive-aggressive behavior when speaking (or not speaking, as is often the case for passive-aggressive people) with you?

Learning how to deal with passive-aggressive people will open up a whole new world to you, as when you allow this manipulative behavior to persist unchecked you are telling them that it is okay to treat you this way. It can be destructive to your relationship with this individual; something I’m sure neither you nor them want to continue.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to deal with passive-aggressive people by going all the way back to the beginning. What is passive-aggressive behavior? What are signs of a passive-aggressive person? And how can you deal with passive-aggressive people to ensure that they learn that such behavior will not be tolerated by you?

Read on to discover all of the above, including passive-aggressive examples, and some tips on how to stop being passive-aggressive if you begin to recognize this behavior in yourself.

What is Passive-Aggressive Behavior?

Passive-aggressive behavior is a form of anger that is hidden from plain sight. Used to avoid direct communication, passive-aggression is manipulation by any other name, as the passive-aggressive individual leverages their behavior (be it inaction, avoidance, withdrawal, and more) for their own means.

What Causes Passive-Aggressive Behavior?

There are two key causes of passive-aggressive behavior: an individual’s upbringing, and the situation at hand.

If you have a passive-aggressive spouse, for example, consider the environment they grew up in. What were their parents core values at home? Did they encourage emotional expression, or were such expressions considered weak and actively discouraged? In terms of the situations in which they act out, passive-aggressive people are at their worst at family events, business functions, or anywhere where overt signs of aggression would be considered inappropriate. Do you have an aunt, uncle, cousin, or other family member who consistently walks out halfway through Thanksgiving dinner? This is a sign of passive-aggressive behavior in action.

Passive-Aggressive Examples

Examples of passive-aggressive behavior fall into five main buckets:

Sarcasm: Not commonly associated with passive-aggression, sarcasm is an example of a passive-aggressive behavior because it is aggression in another form. Instead of outright insulting a friend, colleague, or loved one, they are doing so under the guise of sarcasm.
Backhanded compliments: Even more subtle than sarcasm, as the person being insulted may not always realize it in the moment, when passive-aggressive people give backhanded compliments they’re made to feel in control of their situation—something they crave more than anything in the world.
Avoidance: Has your child, sibling, or spouse ever refused to speak to you for a period of time; in some cases avoiding being in the same room as you altogether? This is avoidance, and it’s an example of passive-aggression because it uses silence to rile you up and, ultimately, give the perpetrator the upper hand.
Deliberate procrastination: Deliberately procrastinating on a task at work, or purposely missing appointments they do not wish to keep are two forms of passive-aggressive behaviors. To be clear, procrastinating or missing appointments on their own does not fall into this bucket, but when done with intention; often with the understanding that your actions will hurt someone else, these are labelled passive-aggressive behaviors.
Withdrawal and sulking: Withdrawing from your company and sulking is similar to avoidance in that it gives the perpetrator the upper hand. Most of us are poorly adept at handling a situation whereby the perpetrator claims to be “fine” then it’s clear they are far from it. Learning how to deal with passive-aggressive people when they refuse to communicate with you is its own special skill.

How to Deal with Passive-Aggressive People

Dealing with a passive-aggressive spouse, sibling, parent, colleague, or even a passive-aggressive boss requires you to develop a thick skin and follow three key steps:

Hold them accountable for their actions
Stand your ground
Confront the issue (their actions) head on

Let’s look at each of these in depth:

1. Hold Them Accountable for Their Actions

When you were a child, did you ever used to act out if you weren’t getting your way? If this behavior seemed to result in you getting what you wanted, did you continue down this path, again and again, until your luck eventually wore out?

The same is true of passive-aggressive people. If you let them they will keep up the same tricks (see the above list of passive-aggressive examples) over and over again. If the only way to get them to even begin to be living in the same reality as you, it’s necessary to hold them accountable for their actions by treating them like a child.

Of course, doing this with anger in our voice is never the way forward. When you hold them accountable for their actions, do so with kindness; ask them why they appear to be angry, or upset, or otherwise disengaged. You may not get the answer you want, but doing so will break their spell over the room.

2. Stand Your Ground

Passive-aggressive people know how to get under your skin. They know that if they act out enough, you will leave them to it and they will have “won.”

As simple as it sounds, you need to stand your ground in these situations. When you respond to passive-aggressive behavior by responding to their every whim, you’re telling them that their behavior is justified; and even worse, you’re telling them that when they behave this way, they get what they want.

Your passive-aggressive spouse, sibling, parent, colleague, or boss use their behavior to control you, and the situation you both find yourselves in. Stand your ground whenever this happens—don’t take any of their nonsense any longer, and confront the issue head on.

3. Confront the Issue (Their Actions) Head On

Knowing how to stop passive-aggressive behavior in others requires you to recognize one unassailable truth; as the idiom goes, “It takes two to tango.”

While you are not at fault for the passive-aggression hurled at you, if you don’t confront it head on, instead choosing to always dance around the issue as doing so is more comfortable, passive-aggressive people will become emboldened to continue to act this way for as long as it benefits them.

Conflict resolution is rarely easy (here’s a helpful guide on how to approach it), but it’s essential. Instead of falling into a pattern of weathering the storm of your relationship with this individual over and over again, when you confront their actions head on—not by being angry at them, but by offering an olive branch, asking them why they’re upset, and letting them know how their behavior is making you feel—you begin the process of healing.

How to Stop Being Passive-Aggressive Yourself

Don’t be discouraged if you recognize passive-aggressive tendencies in yourself, but do take the time to think whether any recent changes in your lifestyle could be the cause of such behavior.

Have you recently been more overworked than usual? Do you find yourself making rash decisions that you usually wouldn’t make? Human beings are fallible, and knowing how to respond to a passive-aggressive person is only half of the battle. Learning how to stop being passive-aggressive yourself is equally as important for the sake of those around you.

Sticking with the same passive-aggressive examples (sarcasm, backhanded compliments, avoidance, etc.) above, try to see if you recognize any of the below in your own behavior:

Instead of using sarcasm as a defense mechanism, be curious; you can learn something from everyone you encounter, and they can learn something from you.
Instead of giving backhanded compliments, give real compliments. (As the saying goes, “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”)
Instead of avoiding people you are upset or angry with, tell them why you feel the way you do, while being careful to avoid blaming them for the situation.
Instead of procrastinating on something you don’t want to do, choose to get your most difficult work (including difficult conversations) out of the way first thing in the morning.
Instead of withdrawing from the world when things aren’t going your way, stick around and talk out how you feel. You’ll feel better for it.

Knowing how to deal with passive-aggressive people and the behaviors they exhibit will dramatically improve your relationships with these individuals as you break down communication barriers and get to the core of their issues.

Core Values List: Examples of Common Personal Values

2020-02-21T00:00:00-05:00

What are your core values? Your core values (also known as your personal values) are what guide life’s most important decisions, including everything from the career path you choose to go down, to how you spend your free time.

Similar to my character traits list, this core values list is designed to serve as a collection of core values examples that you can come back to again and again to help you discover what your core values and beliefs are, and how you can better live up to them. None of us are perfect, which is why keeping a list of values, such as this one, is a good way to help keep ourselves honest about what we’re doing well, and where we’re falling short.

Below you will find the all-important core values list, as well as a look into organizational values (that is, the values that a company lives by), and other core values examples from a number of specific institutions, including the United States Air Force, Army, and Navy.

What Are Core Values?

Core values are the beliefs that guide your behavior both on a day-to-day basis, and over the long term. They help to guide your decisions unconsciously, why consciously giving you something to believe in. Put simply, your core values are what make you, you.

Values in Action Are Virtues

In The Power of Full Engagement, Tony Schwartz holds that “A value in action is a virtue,” giving the example that while generosity may be a value, the virtue that goes along with it is that of behaving generously. As Schwartz notes:

Alignment occurs when we transform our values into virtues. Simply identifying our primary values is not sufficient. The next step is to define more precisely how we intend to embody the values in our daily lives, regardless of external pressures.

To stick with the example of the value of generosity, Schwartz highlights the point that when we behave generously we must do so without the expectation of receiving anything in return; we must put others’ agendas ahead of our own, even if it means inconveniencing ourselves at times.

Core Values List

The core values list below includes 50 examples of values that, for the most part, have been admired across different cultures and religions for generations. As you read through the list, note down the values that stand out to you, and come back to them afterwards for further exploration.

Acceptance
Authenticity
Balance
Bravery
Calm
Commitment
Compassion
Concern for others
Courage
Creativity
Curiosity
Dedication
Empathy
Ethics
Excellence
Fairness
Faith
Family
Freedom
Friendships
Generosity
Happiness
Hardworking
Harmony
Health
Honesty
Humility
Humor
Integrity
Kindness
Knowledge
Loyalty
Morality
Openness
Optimism
Perseverance
Poise
Positivity
Respect for others
Respect for self
Responsibility
Security
Self-reliance
Selflessness
Serenity
Service to others
Spirituality
Stability
Status
Trustworthiness

Core Organizational Values

Values are common across many organizations, with these core values and beliefs being placed in prominent places around an organization’s headquarters, or pride of place on the company intranet. Organizational values are designed for two reasons:

To attract the right people: Making your organization’s values front and center in the hiring process is an easy way to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of who you believe will be a good fit at your organization.
To ensure that current employees remember what’s expected of them: It’s natural for employees at any organization to have good days and bad days. When they’re constantly reminded of your organization’s core values, getting back to good becomes that much easier.

Core Values Examples

While the above core values list is designed to give you a starting point from which to recognize some of these values in yourself, and discover some new values that you may wish to look into further, the below core values examples come from specific institutions with their own predefined values.

Core Values of the Air Force

Whether you’re a student of history, a military buff, or you simply appreciate the value of gaining insights and understanding from areas in which you may not be personally familiar, studying the core values of the Air Force is a great way to honor the men and women who put their lives on the line every day in order to keep us safe.

Core Values of the Army

First taught to incoming soldiers during Basic Combat Training (BCT), from which point onwards, they are expected to live up to them in all that they do, studying the core values of the Army is a great way to gain an understanding of what it means to be a modern-day soldier.

Core Values of the Navy

According to the Department of the Navy Core Values Charter, the core values of the Navy, “build the foundation of trust and leadership upon which our strength is based and victory is achieved.” Study them to gain an understanding of this foundation.

This core values list is designed to be a starting point from which you can learn more about the values that you recognize in yourself, and discover some new values that you may wish to look into further.

What Is My Life’s Purpose: How to Find Your Life’s Purpose

2020-02-01T00:00:00-05:00

Have you ever asked yourself “What is my life’s purpose?” I’m being serious. Knowing how to find your life’s purpose is essential if you’re going to make the most of your life, not just in the short term while you’re still around, but for generations to come.

We’re always being told that passion is key; that we need to be passionate about what we do to make it work. But what if you don’t know what you’re passionate about? Sure, you know you’re passionate about playing video games and refreshing your phone ad nauseam, but finding your life’s purpose requires you to uncover what you are passionate about that can actually be turned into a career, or rather, your life’s purpose.

Remember, your life’s purpose is more than just how you like to spend your time. It’s how your time can be best spent. After you’re gone, how do you want your friends, your family, and even your children to remember you? What would people say at your funeral, or write in your obituary?

Read on to uncover how to find your life’s purpose using five simple strategies that you can apply today, whether you’re still in school, fresh out of college, or you’ve been struggling with this question all of your life.

What is My Life’s Purpose?

Life’s purpose is different for all of us, which is why in this article, instead of focusing on how to find the purpose of life, I’m going to focus on how to find meaning in your life; how to find your life’s purpose.

Your life’s purpose is exactly that; yours. It doesn’t have to be your full-time occupation, but it does have to be something that you’re passionate about, and that you donate your time (and potentially even your money) towards. While many of us would agree that engaging in our life’s purpose every single day is the goal, in reality finding your meaning in life may involve working in a different field throughout the working week in order to truly engage in your passion on evenings and weekends.

Five Strategies for Finding Your Life’s Purpose

Here are five strategies that show you how to find your life’s purpose:

1) Figure Out What You Truly Love to Do

What do you truly love to do? Maybe you love to cook, dance, or fix cars. Maybe you love to move numbers around in spreadsheets, write long essays, or code. Whatever it is that you truly love to do, realize that there are many different career paths that spin off of that passion. Your life’s purpose may be to work with animals; from this you can have a successful career as a veterinarian, as a dog-walker, or even as a zookeeper!

When you’re looking to find your path in life, remember that “what you truly love to do” leaves you with a vast array of options.

Remember, what you love to do may not be the things you currently procrastinate on, but rather a part of that. Say you procrastinate by scrolling Instagram for hours at a time. What are you looking at? Clothes? Architecture? Hand-crafted canoes? Your passion isn’t scrolling Instagram; that is just the vehicle to get you to your canoes! In fact, maybe the canoes themselves are simply your way of telling yourself that you’d like to get into woodworking, and eventually become a carpenter.

Keep in mind that if you discover that your life’s purpose is something that most people don’t enjoy doing, you’re golden. Returning to the example of spreadsheets; most people hate them. But some people love them. Are you in this second group? If you are, your skills are in demand, and you will be compensated accordingly.

2) Question What You’re Told You’re “Supposed” to Do

Did your parents drill into you from a young age that you were going to grow up, go to medical school, and become a doctor? Or did they want you to become a lawyer, teacher, or law enforcement officer?

These were their dreams for you, but are they your dreams? Questioning what you’ve been told you’re “supposed” to do with your life is a great exercise as it helps you to truly get to the core of what you’re passionate about. While finding your life’s purpose is an easy exercise for some, for others it can be a real struggle to separate your own thoughts from those of your parents. After questioning what you’ve been told you’re “supposed” to do with your life there’s a chance that you will decide that the path that was chosen for you is the path you continue down on, and that’s okay. Reframing this decision as yours and yours alone will dramatically increase your happiness as you continue down this path.

If after doing this exercise you discover that the path that was laid out for you isn’t your life’s purpose, read on to the next strategy to uncover what to do next…

3) Listen to Your Gut

I cannot overstate how important it is for you to listen to your gut when you’re trying to find your life’s purpose.

Over ten years ago, when I worked in the book department of a prominent store in Central London, I was offered the chance to be put on the manager track at my company. While many may have been thrilled by this chance, and grateful to have had it presented to them, I immediately felt a pain in my gut. It was clear at that moment that not only did I not want to become a manager at that company, I didn’t want to continue in my job at all.

Have you ever had this experience before? Listening to your gut is one of the smartest strategies you can employ to help you find your purpose in life. Referring back to strategy two, when you question what you’ve been told you’re “supposed” to do with your life, how does your gut react? If it drops to the floor, you need to go back to the drawing board.

4) Focus on Helping Others

While strategy one is the key to finding your meaning in life, another way to get there is to focus on helping others.

You can do this in major or minor ways. For example, going online and finding volunteer opportunities across your city is a great way to find out what organiations are most in need, and which of them could most use your help. Similarly, you can do something minor, like helping someone you already know.

Benjamin Franklin, perhaps the most well-named founding father of the United States, noted an effect where rather than somebody being more likely to do us a favor if we’ve done one for them in the past, they’re actually more likely to do us a favor if they’ve previously done one for us before. As Franklin put it:

He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.

Franklin wrote in his autobiography of how he dealt with the animosity of a rival legislator when he served in the Pennsylvania legislature in the eighteenth century. This has since become known as the Benjamin Franklin Effect:

Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favor of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favor. When we next met in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends, and our friendship continued to his death.

5) Prioritize Action

Lastly, when trying to find your life’s purpose you need to recognize that you are already pointing yourself in this direction every single day with your actions.

You want to be a famous writer or novelist? What have you written in the last month? How do you feel about it? Did you publish it online, or have you kept it to yourself? Similarly, if you want to be a football player, what did your gym session look like yesterday? What muscles are you currently working on? Come to think of it, how often are you training?

Your actions uncover your true priorities. These can change, of course, but you have to be in the driver’s seat in order to make this change. The good news is, if you currently feel that you’re too lazy to prioritize action, know that if you cultivate a healthy sense of impatience you will realize that passion comes after action. The more you work at something, the more passionate you become about it, and the closer you move towards uncovering your life’s purpose.

When you uncover how to find your life’s purpose your whole life can change in an instant and you will (with time) find the meaning of life.

Music to Increase Your Productivity, Focus, and Concentration

2020-01-29T00:00:00-05:00

We all want to be more productive, whether at work, while studying, or generally throughout our day. The ability to boost our concentration and focus on the task at hand (otherwise known as monotasking) is what separates the productive from the unproductive; the successful from the unsuccessful.

I’ve written extensively on productivity in the past, including in my first book, which has a chapter devoted entirely to early morning productivity and focus. One thing that I found time and again while interviewing people about how they keep up high levels of productivity, not just in the morning, but throughout the day, is that they do so by listening to music.

Listening to music at work increases productivity by blocking out inconsistent external noise (such as in an open office plan in your workplace) and replaces this noise with music that fades into the background; allowing you to focus on your work. In fact, studies have shown that listening to music while working improves job satisfaction and productivity, as well as your overall ability to concentrate on the job at hand.

In this article, I’m going to dig into why listening to work productivity music increases your productivity, focus, and concentration, as well as looking at where to listen to productivity music, and what music genres, artists, and playlists I recommend to help you stay productive. From the best concentration music for studying, to the best upbeat artists to put you in a creative groove, to my favorite white noise playlists, keep reading to find the best music for work productivity.

Listening to Music at Work Increases Productivity

If you work in an office with an open floor plan, there’s a good chance that you’ve already discovered that working in this environment can be detrimental to your productivity.

While designed to encourage spontaneous collaboration and communication between employees at different levels within a company, in reality open office plans have made it difficult for any of us to get any work done. Writes Maria Konnikova in The New Yorker, “The most problematic aspect of the open office may be physical rather than psychological: simple noise.” As our desks grow closer and the walls peel away, the decibels slowly begin to ratchet up a notch.

Illustration by Liz Fosslien, for My Morning Routine

While many (though not all) of us are at our most productive when we’re working or studying in silence, productivity music fills a gap that we all need filled when we’re trying to concentrate in a loud environment.

Listening to music while working improves job satisfaction and productivity not just because it allows you to focus on your work (and actually get it done in the timeframe you allocated for it), but because working in a noisy environment has been “repeatedly tied to reduced cognitive performance,” per Konnikova.

Where to Listen to Productivity Music

So, I’ve convinced you of the benefits of listening to productivity music for studying and concentration. But where can you listen to it?

There are some obvious options here, including Spotify, Pandora, Jango, and more. Most of these sites have a free tier, meaning you can listen to productivity music for work and study for free if you’re willing to listen to an advertisement very few songs. Or you can pay a nominal monthly fee to not listen to the ads. YouTube is another good option, especially if you can’t find a particular artist or playlist on a streaming site, though YouTube isn’t as convenient for streaming music from your phone, as it requires you to keep your phone screen on in order to play the associated video.

If you’re not looking for specific artists, albums, or playlists, and if you’re serious about taking your productivity to the next level, Focus@Will and Brain.fm are great subscription-based options that, per Brain.fm, “affects your brain differently than any other music.”

Examples of Productivity Music

Below I have compiled some of the best examples of productivity music and concentration music for studying that can be found online. For the most part, these are my own personal favorites and recommendations:

Classical Music

I’m a huge fan of listening to classical music while I’m trying to focus. While I sometimes dip into some Opera (the Opera Classics playlist being a person favorite), for the most part I prefer to listen to pure classical music, as the lack of lyrics makes it easier for me to concentrate while listening.

Some of the best classical music to study to (and work to), in my opinion, include:

Max Richter: Recomposed by Max Richter: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons in particular.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Decca Sound in particular right now.
Abel Korzeniowski: Nocturnal Animals, Romeo and Juliet, Escape from Tomorrow, Music for Drama, and An Angel in Cracow in particular (thanks to Jason Vo for this recommendation).
Philip Glass: The Hours soundtrack in particular right now.

Electronic Music

Similar to classical music, electronic music with no or limited lyrics makes great productivity music because it can, for the most part, fade into the background and allow you to fully concentrate on the task at hand, while at the same time blocking out all external noise.

Some of my favorite electronic music to work to include:

Justice: Their self-titled Justice album in particular.
Daft Punk: Discovery, Human After All, and Random Access Memories in particular.
Hot Chip: One Life Stand and The Warning in particular.

White Noise

When all else fails for me, or if I really need to put my head down and concentrate on the work at hand, I always fall back on listening to white noise.

While not technically productivity “music,” white, pink, and brown noise are repetitive sounds of a consistent frequency. This frequency makes it easy to block out external sounds and tones. White noise is of the highest frequency, followed by pink noise, which is of a lower frequency, followed by brown noise which has the deepest frequency of the three.

There are a number of websites that play white, pink, and brown noise for free, including SimplyNoise. If you want more choice in what you listen to, Spotify has curated a white noise playlist, a pink noise playlist, and a binaural beats playlist, all of which feature dozens of sounds that are designed to keep you at your most productive.

What have I missed? What is your favorite productivity music for studying, working, or generally staying productive? Reach out to me at this address or on Twitter and I’ll be sure to update this article with the best suggestions.

Feeling Overworked? You’re Not Alone

2020-01-26T00:00:00-05:00

How are you feeling today? If your answer is anything along the lines of tired, anxious, or generally stressed out, there’s a good chance you may be overworked.

Feeling overworked and underpaid has become more and more common across the developed world in recent years. While the oft-quoted phrase “Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life,” is motivating to many of us, in reality how much you love your job will have little effect on feelings of being overworked and overwhelmed, and generally needing to step back from your work to catch your breath.

The American Institute of Stress (AIS) conducted a survey that found that 40% of respondents agreed that their job was “very or extremely stressful,” and 25% of respondents said their job was “the number one stressor in their lives.” Going deeper, 34% admitted to difficulty sleeping due to workplace stress, and 29% said they had “yelled at co-workers because of workplace stress” in the past year.

In this article, I’m going to dig into what it means to be overworked, looking in particular at signs of being overworked in the workplace (overworked employees are at risk of exhaustion, burnout, and serious mental and physical issues), as well as how to reduce stress at work using seven easy techniques.

What is Overwork?

Overwork is defined as a state that occurs when an individual (or individuals) has worked too long or at too high an intensity for a certain length of time without a break. The feeling of being overworked typically manifests as feelings of tiredness, anxiety, or physical and emotional distress.

In most countries, hourly workers are paid “overtime” if they work for longer than their designated hours for the week (typically forty hours per week in the United States)—recognition that this work is on top of their defined work hours.

Negative Effects of Overwork

Overworked employees are at risk of exhaustion, burnout, and serious mental and physical deterioration, including but not limited to gaining or losing weight, a higher resting heart rate, and outsized aches and pains.

Whether because we believe our boss expects it of us, or we tell ourselves we need to “hustle” if we’re going to get anywhere in life, we’re all working harder and longer than we did in the past. While doing a certain amount of extra work comes with the territory of living in our always-on connected times, it’s important for us to recognize when our overwork (self-inflicted or not) begins to present a danger to ourselves and others.

While the key negative effects of overwork are both mental and physical, a key result of overworked and underpaid employees is a drop in their performance at work. This can take place both in the short term—overworked employees that work eight or more hours without a break will see a sharp drop in their productivity at hour eight compared to hour one—and in the long term—employees that work for a year or more without taking a day off (except for weekends and national holidays) will struggle to perform at the same level as an equally productive employee that schedules regular vacations.

Can You Die from Overwork?

Yes. In fact, the Japanese (Japan is the second-most overworked country in the world, after the United States) have a word for this. Karoshi, or “death by overwork,” refers to deaths that occur, often to otherwise healthy individuals, as a result of being overworked on the job.

While the cause of death in cases of karoshi are typically that of a heart attack or stroke due to stress and/or a lack of proper nutrition due to the individual eating less frequently, or eating a significant amount of fast food so to spend less time away from their job, the Japanese make clear that while a heart attack or stroke may have been the final nail in the coffin, overwork was the cause of death.

In The Power of Full Engagement, Tony Schwartz tells the story of Libby Zion, who died in 1984 after a visit to the emergency room in New York Hospital. A highly-publicized lawsuit followed, during which it was argued that Libby’s death could have been avoided had the residents and interns on duty that night been fully-slept. The conclusion of the trial cited that Libby has received “woefully inadequate” care from residents and interns that we operating on “little or no sleep.”

Libby Zion didn’t die from overwork. Instead, her death was caused by overworked hospital employees who were unable to offer her the care she needed. As a result of Libby’s case, New York State passed “New York State Department of Health Code, Section 405,” otherwise known as the Libby Zion Law, which limited the number of hours residents can work in New York State hospitals to approximately 80 hours per week.

Five Signs of Being Overworked

With all of this in mind, how do you know if you are being overworked? Here are five key signs of being overworked in the workplace. Look out for these signs in yourself and in your employees:

1) You Find it Difficult to Relax Outside of Work

If you consistency find yourself unable to ‘turn off’ from work in the evening, over the weekend, or when you’re on vacation, there’s a good chance that you’re suffering from overwork. If your job requires you to check your work email and pick up work-related phone calls during this time, this situation can be exacerbated.

2) Your Health is Beginning to Deteriorate

Have you lost or gained a noticeable amount of weight in the last year? Could this be caused by you eating less frequently, or eating an increasing amount of fast food? How about your resting heart rate or blood pressure—have they increased? If you’re a woman, have you missed any periods within the last few months? If you can answer “yes” to any of these questions, there’s a good chance you are being overworked.

3) You Find it Difficult to Concentrate at Work

One of the easiest ways to spot overworked employees is by looking for those that are clearly finding it difficult to concentrate in meetings, at their desk, or during long phone calls. Have you spotted any of these behaviors in yourself? If you find yourself daydreaming or otherwise unable to pay attention at work, this is a high sign that you’re suffering from overwork.

4) You Frequently Feel Weak and Tired

How well do you sleep at night? This isn’t a moral question, but rather a way of understanding why you may be feeling weak and tired, both on and off the job. If you’re feeling tired at work, you’re likely not sleeping the recommended between seven and nine hours of sleep per night. With this said, make sure you don’t confuse tiredness for laziness; though if you are feeling lazy, this is easy to overcome.

5) You Feel Like There’s Not Enough Time in the Day

One of the most common complaints from overworked employees is a feeling that there isn’t enough time in the day to get all of their work done. This is potentially one of the most clear cut signs of being overworked, and it can be the result of you being required to attend a large number of meetings per week—meetings which take away from your productive work time—as well as you being saddled with extra work from your colleagues.

How to Reduce Stress at Work

So, if those were the signs of being overworked, how can you reduce stress at work so you no longer feel overworked and overwhelmed? Here is how to reduce stress at work using seven easy techniques:

1) Start Your Day with a Morning Routine

You know by now that morning routines are my thing. If I were to recommend just one tip to help you reduce stress at work, having a healthy and positive morning routine with which to start your day would be it. If possible, design your morning routine so it moves from your home to your workplace—for example, you meditate at home, hit the gym on the way to work, then pick up your favorite cup of coffee or tea and sit down at your desk ready to take on the world.

2) Be Honest with Yourself About Your Workload

We’re all taking on more work than ever, but that doesn’t mean it’s not up to us to figure out how to best manage this workload. One of the easiest ways to reduce stress at work is to be honest with ourselves and our colleagues about what work can be achieved in a certain timeframe; then going ahead and achieving it. Without this in place, we can make rash decisions in our prioritization, which can push more important projects back. In short, underpromise and overdeliver.

3) Avoid Workplace Conflict

This technique is self-explanatory. No good can come from getting involved in conflicts in the workplace. In fact, the American Institute of Stress (AIS) survey that I mentioned at the top of this article noted that 42% of respondents said that “yelling and other verbal abuse is common” in their workplace, and 10% said they “work in an atmosphere where physical violence has occurred because of job stress.” For your own sake, steer clear of all and any workplace conflict.

4) Keep a To-Do List, Avoid Multitasking

When you finish work each day, create a to-do list for the following day and place your most important work at the top—and aside from urgent events that genuinely can’t be helped, try to stick to it. Not only is having a to-do list and sticking to it the number one thing you can do to increase your overall focus and productivity, it will help you to reduce stress at work and feelings of being overworked over the long term.

5) Avoid Eating Lunch at Your Desk

In recent years it has become more and more common for employees to eat lunch at their desks—even though they’re not being asked to by their employers! While you may argue that eating lunch at your desk is an underlying expectation in your workplace, and not doing so would reflect badly on you, know that your overall performance reflects much more strongly on you than whether or not there are crumbs wedged between the keys on your computer keyboard at the end of the day. Get outside, eat lunch in the park, and see what some fresh air and time away from your desk in the middle of the day can do for your productivity.

6) Take a Nap

I’ll caveat this technique by saying that I know it isn’t available to all of us. If you do have the ability to take a short power nap in the middle of your work day, either because you work from home or at a workplace that has a dedicated nap room (or “pod”), this is a great way to melt away the stresses of your morning and prime yourself for the afternoon ahead. If you need help learning how to nap in increments as short as just ten or twenty minutes, read my article on how to nap. Whether you are able to nap during the middle of the day or not, remember that going to bed earlier and getting the recommended between seven and nine hours of sleep per night, as noted above, is always an option.

7) Leave Work at the Front Door

When you leave work for the day, or for a longer period of time in the case of weekends and vacations, leaving work at the front door is one of the most important things you can do to reduce stress at work. You work to live, you don’t live to work. While your work may hold your attention for eight or nine hours of the day, make sure that when you step through your front door your attention turns immediately the people behind that door—the people who you’re doing all of this for in the first place.

Feeling overworked in your job is not uncommon, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. When you learn how to reduce stress at work you can better manage your day-to-day and reduce feelings of tiredness, anxiety, and stress.

A Brief Introduction to Consequentialism Ethics

2020-01-19T00:00:00-05:00

In my article exploring when the end justifies the means, I noted that the origins of this phrase go back to consequentialism, with consequentialism theory holding that the moral quality of an action is completely determined by its consequences; thus the end justifies the means in all circumstances.

This definition of consequentialism theory, while by no means incorrect, doesn’t allow for a full picture of consequentialism ethics.

In this article, I’m going to give you a brief introduction to consequentialism ethics, diving first into a definition of consequentialism (including a definition of non-consequentialism, and the arguments against consequentialism ethics as a whole), before looking at examples of consequentialism in everyday life, and the difference between consequentialism and other popular types of moral philosophy, including utilitarianism, hedonism, and deontology.

Let’s get started.

What is Consequentialism?

Consequentialism is a type of normative ethical theory which states that the moral quality of an action is completely determined by its consequences, and nothing else. In this way, consequentialism ethics provide criteria for the moral evaluation of actions, while also recommending rules or decision-making criteria for future actions.

While this definition of consequentialism brings this ethical theory to light in its purest form, many students of consequentialism practice it in a watered-down form, a term that has been coined “satisficing consequentialism.”

This way of thinking has been developed in order to allow practitioners of consequentialism theory to follow consequentialism ethics under a less stringent umbrella. For “satisficers,” rather than the right action always being the action that produces the most good, the right action(s) are those that produce enough good. For example, a strict student of consequentialism theory could only donate to the charity that they believe is producing the most good in the world. Satisficers, on the other hand, would recognize that most charities produce enough good, and donating to any of them (assuming you do some basic homework) is better than not donating to any.

Non-Consequentialism

While consequentialism theory would argue that the only goal of consequentialism ethics is to make the world a better place, this definition of consequentialism doesn’t always hold up to much scrutiny.

The opposite of consequentialism, known as non-consequentialism, argues that the potential consequences of a given action should not be taken into consideration when determining the moral quality of an action. Certain readings of non-consequentialism state that the consequences of an action can partly be taken into consideration, but they shouldn’t be the driving force of any decision.

Examples of Consequentialism Ethics

Consequentialism ethics give consequentialists guidance whenever they are faced with a moral decision; with this guidance coming in many forms.

It should be noted that in the below examples of consequentialism, and throughout this article as a whole, I am looking at this philosophy from the point of view of “rule consequentialism” rather than “act consequentialism.” A consequentialist who follows rule consequentialism uses a set of ethical rules, such as the aforementioned “the moral quality of an action is completely determined by its consequences,” as the rule they apply to many different, if not all, actions. A consequentialist who follows act consequentialism, on the other hand, assess each moral action or decision on a case-by-case basis.

Here are three examples of consequentialism ethics playing out in three very different areas:

Baby Hitler

If you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?

This question has been posed to many years, and it is a classic example of consequentialism philosophy in action. Consequentialists would answer that yes, they would absolutely kill Hitler as a baby, as they know that while murder is generally frowned upon, by killing baby Hitler they will be saving the lives of millions upon millions of people; thus killing baby Hitler is morally justified.

Non-consequentialists, on the other hand, would argue that murder is wrong under all circumsrances, and therefore despite their knowledge of what not killing baby Hitler will bring, they cannot morally allow themselves to kill Hitler as a baby.

Healthcare

Another example of consequentialism philosophy in action is that of consequentialism in healthcare. If you worked in a hospital and only had enough dosage of a particular drug to either keep one patient who is severely sick from dying, or five patients who are less sick and could share the dosage from dying, which would you choose?

A consequentialist would choose the five patients who require less of a dosage to receive the medicine, allowing the sixth patient to die, as this produces the most moral good. A non-consequentialist, on the other hand, would infer no judgement over who is more worthy of the medicine, and would simply administer the necessary medicine on a first come, first serve basis, until it runs out.

Self-Driving Cars

Finally, a modern-day example of consequentialism philosophy in action would be the ethics associated with self-driving cars.

The algorithms that power self-driving cars have to make constant choices. Does the car need to slow down? Is it safe to merge into the next lane? Should it swerve and hit one child, or stay its course and hit two seniors? The tragedy of the consequences that self-driving car algorithms have to contend with on a daily basis are no different from the choices that human drivers have to make in a fraction of a second, but the fact that these algorithms must be programed by humans with time on their hands to ponder these questions would give any consequentialist pause.

Alternatives to Consequentialism Ethics

Alternatives to consequentialism differ over what the good, most moral thing is that should be maximized. Here are three alternatives to consequentialism ethics:

Consequentialism vs. Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism argues that all decisions or actions should maximize human well-being above all else. Or to put it another way, utilitarianism philosophy states that the most moral decision or action is that which produces the most happiness, or the least unhappiness, for the largest amount of people.

While this is similar to consequentialism in that for most consequentialists, the most moral consequences of an action is likely centered around human happiness, utilitarianism spells out this result.

Consequentialism vs. Hedonism

Hedonism argues that people should maximise human pleasure above all else. When making determinations of an action’s moral qualities, a hedonist considers only if the action is likely to produce human pleasure. When deciding between two or more actions, a hedonist considers only which action will produce the most human pleasure.

Similar to utilitarianism, consequentialism and hedonism (also known as hedonistic act utilitarianism) contrast in how they define consequences. While hedonists consider only the maximization of human pleasure, consequentialists take a much broader view.

Consequentialism vs. Deontology

Deontological ethics state that an action’s morality is based entirely on whether the action would be considered “right” or “wrong” according to a certain set of pre-determined rules. (Think bad to the baby Hitler example above; the non-consequentialists in that example could also be called deontologists.)

In violent contrast to consequentialism, deontological ethics determine that the consequences of an action hold no value in determining an action’s moral value.

I hope this brief introduction to consequentialism ethics has been helpful in increasing your understanding of this fascinating moral philosophy.

Why Impatience Is a Virtue

2020-01-08T00:00:00-05:00

Have you ever been told that patience is a virtue, that “Good things come to those who wait,” or that you need to slow down if you are going to get anywhere in life?

Impatience has been sold to us as a negative force; something that needs to be overcome. In reality, I have found that impatience is a virtue.

This isn’t true in all situations, of course. Being impatient as a senior citizen unloads her groceries in front of you in line at the supermarket isn’t helpful, neither is yawning and complaining while waiting for your child to appear on stage at their school play, then leaving the moment they’re off stage. But these negative effects of impatience are quickly overshadowed by the positive effects of this passionate way of living—and the idea of overcoming impatience quickly falls away when you realize just how much good an impatient mindset can bring you.

Keep reading to find out why impatience is a virtue, and why you should consider bringing a little more impatience into your life.

What is Impatience?

Impatience is a form of haste whereby you are unable to sit tight and wait your turn; instead favoring a more active approach. While impatience is often seen as a negative character trait, people who are considered driven, gritty, or otherwise motivated to achieve their goals often share an impatient streak.

In this article, I am going to focus on this latter meaning of the word; impatience as a form of persistence in the pursuit of greater human achievement.

What Causes Impatience

Impatience can be caused by a number of factors.

In the case of a desire for increased self-improvement, impatience is caused by an inborn need to not simply wait around for life to happen to you, but to, in the words of Maya Angelou, go out and grab the world by the lapels.

When you’re impatient, you reject the notion that patience is a virtue, as without impatience you feel that you will never get anything done—at least at the pace that you expect of yourself.

Reframing Impatience as a Positive Character Trait

I believe that this form of impatience is a positive character trait, a trait that should be encouraged in all of our kids and young adults as they begin to make their way in this world. Instead of looking into how to deal with impatience, whether our own or that of a young child or someone we care about, we should be looking into how to nurture this trait so it can be used for good.

Here are three ways in which you can reframe impatience as a positive character trait:

Impatient People Are Motivated

In my article about dedication I wrote about how reverse-engineering the steps to achieving your goals is the most effective way to prioritize the steps you need to take to achieve anything. As I noted at the time, “When you reverse-engineer the steps to achieving your goals, you feel like you’ve finally been put in the driving seat.”

Impatient people are motivated people, and motivated people (with few exceptions) know how to prioritize. Think of your impatience as you being ready and raring to go in one area or another, whether this refers to starting a new business, beginning a new workout plan, or even something a little more personal, like starting a family. You want to begin this journey now, so you’re prioritizing it above all else.

Impatient People Take Action

Being motivated is all well and good, but not much can come out of motivation unless you actually take the actions that you have ascribed for yourself.

Patient people can slip into laziness, whereas impatient people take their energy and motivation to be where they want to be and give it everything they’ve got, day in and day out. They plan their route, they know where they’re going, and they do all of this in the name of getting to where they know they deserve to be.

Impatient People Are Persistent

Impatience, in the meaning of the word that I am focusing on in this article, is another word for persistence. As I noted at the beginning of this article, the saying “Good things come to those who wait,” couldn’t feel more alien to impatient people, as to them persistence is the key to getting what they want out of life.

Impatience is a virtue in that impatient people persist in the sign of obstacles and other setbacks. For better and worse all they care about is results, and they make it their mission to persist in the pursuit of their goals. While persistence is an admirable character trait, it can be taken to extremes; recognizing the point when persistence turns into annoyance is key to staying on the right side of this line.

Instead of spending your time figuring out how to deal with impatience, recognize that impatience is a virtue, and that reframing impatience as a positive character trait will help us get to where we want to be in life.

How to Get Your New Year’s Resolutions Back on Track

2020-01-03T00:00:00-05:00

While some may scoff at the idea of setting New Year’s resolutions, I see huge benefits in the practice. Few things excite me more than seeing friends, family members, and my readers motivated to make changes in their lives when the new year rolls around.

But you know what? January 1 is just another day. If you’ve yet to make your New Year’s resolutions this year and you feel like you’ve been left behind, or if you’re feeling bad because you’ve already slipped up on some of yours, read on to learn how to change your thinking about your New Year’s resolutions—and get back on track.

Perform a Mindset Shift

Whether your New Year’s resolutions included starting a brand new morning routine or not, every day can be the day that you start again with your resolutions. In every one of our interviews with successful individuals about their morning routines, including in our book, we ask a simple question: “What do you do if you fail to follow your morning routine?”

The most common answer to this question is beautifully summed up by three-time U.S. Olympic gold medalist in swimming, Rebecca Soni:

“I don’t consider it failing, I just try to do the best I can every morning. I might end up feeling a bit more scattered throughout the day, but it motivates me to get it done tomorrow.”

While some of the people we interview do occasionally deviate from this answer—the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), L. Rafael Reif, amusingly noted that if he misses his breakfast he becomes grumpy—this is the general theme from the people we speak with across a wide range of disciplines. Senior editor of Fortune magazine, Geoff Colvin, for instance, noted that if he fails to follow his morning routine one morning he just carries on with it the next day. “If I miss the routine for only one day, it’s no problem.”

Similarly, the CEO of Clif Bar & Company, Kevin Cleary, noted:

“I give myself a break and take the longer view of what’s happening. If I can’t do my workout later in the day, I’ll tell myself I’ll just pick it up tomorrow or the next day. Six months from now, my body and I won’t know that I missed a day.”

Forgive Yourself

Starting again, whether on your morning routine or on your New Year’s resolutions as a whole, cannot happen unless you forgive yourself. Tomorrow is a new day. If you failed to follow your morning routine today, that’s okay. In the words of author and speaker Crystal Paine:

“I have a choice: I can choose to beat myself up over the fact that I am not following my usual routine, or I can give myself grace. I’m working on doing a better job of giving myself grace—because life happens and it’s okay if we don’t always do everything we’d hoped or planned to do. The best thing I can do on those days is to remind myself to just do what I can.”

And remember, sometimes this supposed failure is a blessing in disguise. Your New Year’s resolutions aren’t a do-or-die situation. Like most skills you pursue in life, or challenges you wish to undertake, it takes time to get good—or to even grasp what you’re supposed to be doing. The important thing is that you decided that this is something you’d like to work on; and in this regard, it deserves a fair shot. Remember this when roadblocks occurs.

When we asked the author Austin Kleon what he does if he fails to follow his morning routine, he put it this way:

“I try to forgive myself and move on. (Sun comes up, sun goes down. Always another chance tomorrow.) One thing about a routine is that the days when you break it can be some of the most interesting days. The routine days make the off-routine days even sweeter (like having a donut on a sugar-free diet), but they wouldn’t unless you had a routine to break.”

For more tips on how to create a brand new morning routine, pick up My Morning Routine (Portfolio/Penguin) today! This article was first published on the My Morning Routine website.

What to Do When You’re Bored

2019-12-11T00:00:00-05:00

When you’re bored, even thinking of what to do can be difficult. Whether we’re at home, work, in class, or out with friends, when we’re bored our mind begins to draw a blank, and we start to feel lazy for not knowing what we should be doing.

Feeling lazy and feeling bored go hand in hand. Learning how to overcome laziness is one of the best things you can do to stop being bored, as once you no longer enjoy being lazy you realize just how many things there are out there for you to do, and your time starts to become much more precious to you.

When I was a kid I was often bored. This was no fault of my parents, who took me and my brothers out to enjoy different activities often—but kids get bored more easily than adults if they’re not being entertained 24/7.

Nowadays, I rarely suffer from boredom. While there shouldn’t be prizes for being busy all of the time (humans need rest and downtime in order to function at the height of their potential, after all), it’s been a long time since I can honestly claim I’ve been bored.

There are many articles online that are designed to give you ideas of things to do when you’re bored, but many of these articles spout the same ideas without considering why we’re feeling bored in the first place. In this article, by contrast, instead of looking into what to do when you’re bored, I’m going to look at the root cause of your boredom, and discover how working to overcome boredom is essential to have a long and fulfilled life.

What is Boredom?

Boredom is as a feeling of restlessness that has a number of causes, most notably a feeling that we have nothing of note to do in the moment, or a feeling of disinterest in what we’re currently doing.

It’s common to feel bored at times, especially when you’re young. According to the Mayo Clinic, “boredom can be normal, and is only an indicator of underlying disease when feelings become excessive, all-consuming, and interfere with daily living.”

Despite this, Scientific American note that there is no universally accepted definition of boredom:

Whatever [boredom] is, researchers argue, it is not simply another name for depression or apathy. It seems to be a specific mental state that people find unpleasant—a lack of stimulation that leaves them craving relief, with a host of behavioural, medical and social consequences.

How to Overcome Boredom for Good

While I can’t help you overcome boredom when you’re sat in a long lecture at school or company meeting at work, I can show you how you can overcome boredom outside of work and school, in your day-to-day life.

You see, knowing what to do when you’re bored is less about looking toward a list of ideas for inspiration, and more about knowing deep down inside how you want to spend your time.

Reading one list after another telling you what to do when you’re bored won’t help you if they don’t get down to the root cause of why you’re feeling bored in the first place. Rather than researching things to do when you’re bored, you should research what it is you really want to do.

Mark Twain famously wrote “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” This is as true of our full-time professions than it is of our hobbies and anything else we choose to do outside of work. In other words, “Find something you enjoy doing, and you will never be bored again.”

What to Do When You’re Bored to Overcome Boredom

So, how do you do this? How can you overcome boredom not by looking at a list of things to do when you’re bored, but by, in the words of author and speaker Simon Sinek, finding your “Why.”

Here’s what you need to know:

Find out why you do what you do: Simon Sinek’s 2009 mega-hit book Start With Why is my inspiration here. In the book, and in his accompanying TED talk which has been viewed by almost 50 million people to date, Sinek speaks of the importance of having a “Why” for all that you do in life. This “Why” will tell you what you really want to do; what you are most passionate about. Similar to Mark Twain’s ideal, when you find your “Why” life becomes that much easier, and boredom doesn’t get a look in.
Practice positive procrastination: I’ve written about the idea of procrastinating smart in the past. When you’re bored, consider practicing positive procrastination by procrastinating on the work you’re supposed to be doing with other work that doesn’t need to be worked on at that moment, but that does need to get done. While it’s always preferable to overcome boredom with your most important work, if you’re not feeling it in the moment, procrastinate smart by working on your next most important thing.
Create a to-do list; include fun items: I know what you’re thinking—to-do lists are not the most exciting motivational tool in the world—but they do work. If you’re looking to know what to do when you’re bored, look no further than making a to-do list, but on this list ensure that you add things that you believe you should do, such as any work you need to be getting on with, as well as anything fun that you want to do. Adding these fun items in will make the list seem much more manageable and exciting.
Monotask so you’re not distracted: This one took me a while to figure out. We live in a world that prizes one’s ability to multitask, as doing so makes us look more productive and efficient. In reality, our attempts at multitasking are often a disaster, as instead of doing two (or more) things well, we end up doing everything poorly. Instead, when you monotask not only do you do a better job of each individual task at hand, you’ll quickly begin to overcome boredom, as the more time and thoughtful effort you put into something, the more you’ll start to respect and enjoy the process.
Don’t overthink it: Finally, don’t overthink any of this. Boredom isn’t caused by a lack of things to do, but rather a lack of directional input; a lack of an idea of how to spend your precious time and energy. Not everyone has the luxury of ever feeling bored, so don’t overthink the problem ahead of you, and by all means enjoy your boredom from time to time. But don’t take it too far. In the words of the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, “Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”

Knowing what to do when you’re bored is easy when you know why you do what you do. While you’re not going to overcome boredom overnight, taking this approach will dramatically reduce moments of boredom in your life.

How to Delay Gratification and Control Your Impulses

2019-11-23T00:00:00-05:00

The ability to delay or defer gratification is one of the most useful character traits that a person can hold, as it allows you to stop, think, and truly decide what is in your best interest in a given situation.

When you learn how to delay gratification you’ll have a better grasp of impulse control, the means by which we stop ourselves from doing exactly what we want to do in the moment, in favor of stepping back and asking if that is really what we want to do.

In this article I’m going to look into the benefits of delayed gratification, including what learning to delay gratification promotes, as well as how having good impulse control will see you right throughout your life.

What is Delayed Gratification?

Delayed gratification is the act of delaying your need for satisfaction in the moment in order to receive that satisfaction at a later date. Typically, the rewards of delaying gratification are larger than if you give into temptation right away.

Studies have shown that the ability to delay gratification promotes success in many areas of life, including in your career, relationships, and finances. If you currently have an inability to delay gratification (or feel that you do), this is something that you can work to overcome with time.

Delayed Gratification vs. Instant Gratification

An easy, if simplistic, way of looking at the differences between instant gratification and delayed gratification is that with instant gratification you avoid pain right now, while with delayed gratification you avoid pain in the future.

This “pain,” can be a physical pain, but it’s just as likely to be an emotional pain, such as the pain of not allowing yourself to eat that extra slice of pizza, or pushing yourself to go for one minute longer on the treadmill. In both examples, instant gratification (the extra slice of pizza, stopping your run on time) are what you want in the moment, but what you’re pushing yourself to do—to not eat that extra slice, and to go that extra minute—represents delayed gratification, and what you know will be most beneficial to you over the long term.

Examples of Delayed Gratification

Here are some examples of ways in which we can delay gratification, including a look at the most famous example out there.

The Marshmallow Test

The Stanford marshmallow experiment is a famous study on delayed gratification that took place under the lead of Walter Mischel at Stanford University, Palo Alto, in 1972.

The basis of the study was offering a child one small reward that they could have immediately, or two small rewards that they could have if they were willing to wait for it. After being told of their choices, each child was left alone in a room with their desired reward (a marshmallow or pretzel stick) for 15 minutes.

The experiment concluded that the children who were able to delay gratification by holding out from eating their desired reward for the period in which they were left alone in a room with it are more likely to have “better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index (BMI), and other life measures.” (When the experiment was replicated at ten times the scale and with a more diverse sample population, the results were only half as conclusive as to the benefits of delayed gratification. It has been suggested that economic background, rather than a need for greater impulse control, was the cause of this difference.)

Everyday Examples of Delaying Gratification

Of course, examples of delayed gratification come up throughout our lives, some of which we are aware of in the moment, others not so much. Here are some everyday examples of delayed gratification:

When you’re cooking dinner, choosing to not snack (even if you really want to) as you know your meal will be that much more gratifying if you wait;
If you’re studying for an exam but really want to check your phone or watch television, tell yourself you can do those things as much as you like, once you’re done studying;
When you’re at the gym, if there’s one piece of exercise equipment that you prefer to use over the others, wait until just before the end of your workout to use it;
If you enjoy a special coffee drink from your favorite coffee shop, tell yourself you can get one only after you have worked hard for the first hour or two of the day;
When you enter (or re-enter) the job market, tell yourself you can have the rest of the day off, guilt-free, only after you have applied to 5-10 jobs that day.

Improve Your Ability to Delay Gratification

Learning how to delay gratification and control your impulses is easier said than done, but when you follow the below tips you will start to see some immediate improvements:

Give yourself a precise timeframe: When working on your ability to delay gratification, give yourself a precise countdown until the time at which you can be gratified (eat a snack, stop working out, check your phone, etc.) so you can work toward it.
Reward yourself for small wins: While not snacking while making dinner may not feel like something you should be rewarded for doing, doing so in the beginning can be a great way to make delaying gratification seem more palatable.
Make promises to yourself, and never break them: The reason some of us struggle with delayed vs. instant gratification is because with instant gratification you can be sure of what you’re going to get, whereas with delayed gratification you need to trust that the gratification will come eventually. For this reason, never break promises to yourself.

Learning to delay gratification promotes a host of healthy behaviors in children and adults that we can take forward with us for the rest of our lives. Delayed gratification may not have the same aura or appeal as instant gratification, but it will set you up for a happy and healthy life.

Abraham Lincoln’s Most Inspirational Quotes

2019-11-17T00:00:00-05:00

Abraham Lincoln was an exceptional orator. In compiling the below collection of famous Abraham Lincoln quotes I spent weeks scouring the internet, as well as my own collection of Lincoln biographies, to find the most inspirational quotes that ever left old Abe’s lips.

What emerged is a collection of quotes that have been broken down into categories that look specifically at Lincoln’s thoughts on slavery, leadership, democracy, education, success, and the great freedoms of life, love, and friendship.

In my article on Abraham Lincoln’s speeches I noted how speeches by the sixteenth president of the United States are as quotable as they are important.

The reason for this is that Lincoln had a certain way with words—a wit—that made it impossible to not gain insight, wisdom, or in the case of a number of his quotes (“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”) a good chuckle every time he opened his mouth.

Famous Abraham Lincoln Quotes

I’ve broken the below quotes by Abraham Lincoln into six sections which represent key areas in which Lincoln spoke on frequently. Click any of the links below to be taken to that section, or simply scroll down this page to read each quote one-by-one.

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Slavery
Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Leadership
Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Democracy
Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Education
Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Success
Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Life

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Slavery

The Civil War was a time that produced some of Abraham Lincoln’s most famous writings, including Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address, in which the newly sworn-in president noted that “We are not enemies, but friends,” of his southern rivals, as well as his speech at Gettysburg.

The below Abraham Lincoln quotes on slavery give some of his most famous views on the issue:

Collection of Abraham Lincoln’s Quotes on Slavery

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free — honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

“No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle–the sheet anchor of American republicanism.”

“You think slavery is right and should be extended; while we think slavery is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.”

“This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.”

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”

“I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.”

“The one victory we can ever call complete will be that one which proclaims that there is not one slave or one drunkard on the face of God’s green earth.”

“All I ask for the negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.”

“Let us remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.”

“If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Leadership

Few presidents are hailed for their leadership skills as much and as often as Abraham Lincoln. The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin even wrote a book (aptly titled Team of Rivals) about Lincoln’s ability to lead a team of strong characters who were all vying for his position.

The below Abraham Lincoln quotes on leadership are as relevant today as they were over 150 years ago:

Collection of Abraham Lincoln’s Quotes on Leadership

“I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.”

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

“Tact: the ability to describe others as they see themselves.”

“Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but leave him when he is wrong.”

“You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry.”

“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”

“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

“I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

“Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.”

“When I’m getting ready to reason with a man I spend one third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say—and two thirds thinking about him and what he is going to say.”

“You can’t make a weak man strong by making a strong man weak.”

“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

“I am a slow walker, but I never walk back.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Democracy

Lincoln had strong views on the virtues of democracy (“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves”).

The below Abraham Lincoln quotes on democracy show his thinking in this area, as do many of his earlier speeches prior to him occupying the office of the presidency:

Collection of Abraham Lincoln’s Quotes on Democracy

“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

“I happen temporarily to occupy this big White House. I am living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.”

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”

“I desire to so conduct the affairs of the administration that if, at the end, when I come to lay down the reins of power, I have lost every other friend on earth, I shall have at least one friend left—and that friend shall be down inside of me.”

“Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.”

“The legitimate object of government is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, for at all, or do so well, for themselves.”

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.”

“The ballot is stronger than the bullet.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Education

Education was an area of great intrigue for the sixteenth president of the United States. Friends and rivals alike often referred to him as the Railsplitter, a mocking phrase making reference to his growing up poor—Lincoln was famously born in a one-room log cabin in Kentucky.

Despite this, Lincoln prevailed, arguably due to his personal love of learning, an admirable character trait to work toward.

The below Abraham Lincoln quotes on education show just how important lifelong learning was to him:

Collection of Abraham Lincoln’s Quotes on Education

“Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.”

“Every head should be cultivated.”

“You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence.”

“Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.”

“Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.”

“My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch anything on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.”

“I will prepare and some day my chance will come.”

“A capacity, and taste, for reading, gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.”

“Get books, sit yourself down anywhere, and go to reading them yourself.”

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”

“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.”

“I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”

“All I have learned, I learned from books.”

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

“My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.”

“I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Success

Following on from his views on education, Lincoln was a true believer in the power of self-reliance to get ahead in this world, with hard work and dedication viewed as the key to success in almost all walks of life.

The below Abraham Lincoln quotes on success give a view into Lincoln’s thought process where it comes to getting ahead:

Collection of Abraham Lincoln’s Quotes on Success

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”

“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”

“That some achieve great success is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.”

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

“I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.”

“The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.”

“If you would win a man to your cause first convince him that you are his sincere friend.”

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other thing.”

“I have a congenital aversion to failure.”

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”

“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”

Abraham Lincoln Quotes on Life

Like all of us, presidents have a life outside of work. Abraham Lincoln was no exception (his daily routine is testament to the quiet time he allowed himself in the mornings). For this reason, throughout his life Lincoln amassed quite a collection of pithy quotes and sayings on topics far and wide.

The below Abraham Lincoln quotes on life show us that despite how far removed his job must have felt from that of his fellow countrymen and women, Lincoln was as human as the rest of us:

Collection of Abraham Lincoln’s Quotes on Life

“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

“Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.”

“I laugh because I must not cry, that is all, that is all.”

“The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.”

“It’s not me who can’t keep a secret. It’s the people I tell that can’t.”

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

“If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”

“Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.”

“Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.”

“What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.”

“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”

“To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.”

“I am rather inclined to silence, and whether that be wise or not, it is at least more unusual nowadays to find a man who can hold his tongue than to find one who cannot.”

“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.”

“Whatever you are, be a good one.”

I hope you enjoyed this collection of famous Abraham Lincoln quotes on the internet. If I’ve missed any of your favorite Lincoln quotes, reach out to me here and I’ll be sure to add it in.

How to Develop a Thick Skin

2019-11-14T00:00:00-05:00

Wouldn’t it be great if you could hear criticism on an almost daily-basis, and simply brush it off? Having a thick skin allows you to continue on with your work and life without worrying what other people have to say, as you are comfortable in your own skin.

Having a thick skin is a positive character trait. There is a measure of self-reliance around people who have developed a thick skinned personality; they’re not put off by the ups and downs of life, as they know that your words or actions can’t touch them.

In this post I’m going to look at what it means to have a thick skin, the difference between a thick skin vs. thin skin, and I’ll end on my seven tips on how to grow a thick skin so you can increase your mental toughness and generally become more successful in work and life.

Definition of Thick Skin

If someone is said to have a thick skin this means that they are able to keep themselves from getting upset, offended, or disturbed by any criticisms about or ill behavior toward themselves or those they care about.

While some people are born with a thick skinned personality, most of us have to learn how to develop one over time. If you’ve ever been the victim of a character assassination you’ll know how important it is that you don’t let every little criticism affect you.

Thick Skin vs. Thin Skin

Having a thick skin vs. thin skin is essential if you work in a field in which criticism is a common occurrence.

Some fields here are obvious. When I wrote my first story for HuffPost the comments on the article itself and, to a greater extent, the Facebook posts accompanying it, were extremely negative. Having a thick skin vs. thin skin in this situation was crucial, and while I can’t say I took none of the comments to heart, reading them certainly toughened me up when, a few years later, my first piece in the New York Times came out to positive reviews except, again, in the comments on the Facebook posts accompanying it.

If you work in a service jobs such as waiting tables and other customer-facing professions in which you have to deal with people—some of whom may not be in the best frame of mind—on a daily basis, you will also need to develop a thick skin vs. thin skin.

How to Grow a Thick Skin

Learning how to grow a thick skin is one of the most important things you can do for your career if you want to (or already do) work in a field that, as discussed above, is ripe for providing criticism at every turn.

While being thin skinned isn’t the end of the world, it does mean that experiencing criticism is harder for you than for those who have developed a thicker skin. Have you ever put yourself out there, at school, work, or even at a family gathering, and, having felt an air of disapproval at the end of the experience, dwelled on this feeling for many days afterwards? If you have, you could benefit from growing a thicker skin.

Here are seven tips on how to grow a thick skin:

Don’t take criticism to heart. Whether you’re being criticised in the workplace or at home, don’t take it to heart. While some people enjoy criticising others just “because,” remember that in most cases the criticism is an opportunity for you to learn from what is being said, and grow as a result of it.
Assume that other people are having a bad day. I read once that whenever a baby cries we instinctively assume that they’re feeling a certain emotion (often hunger or tiredness). One way to build a thick skin is to assume that anyone you’re interacting with is having a bad day, and taking their words with a grain of salt.
Don’t take rejection personally. You didn’t get through to the next round in a job interview? Oh well. Someone “ghosts” you after one date? It’s their loss. Learning how to toughen up and not take rejection personally will change your whole outlook on life for the better.
Whenever you hear no, imagine you heard “No, but…” Following on from the last tip, whenever you’re rejected from a job interview, project request, or anything else in which you were excited to potentially be a part of, consider the rejection as a way to pivot and move forward in another direction.
Put it all into perspective. Life is too short to feel slighted at every turn. When you grow a thick skin you quickly realize how much stuff you were taking to heart before, and how much of it was entirely unnecessary. Don’t worry, be happy, and the rest will take care of itself.

When you develop a thick skin you can finally view life through an unobstructed lens, and react to those around you accordingly. I hope my tips on how to grow a thick skin have been helpful to you.

How to Overcome Laziness and Stop Being Lazy

2019-11-10T00:00:00-05:00

Learning how to stop being lazy is essential to having a successful life. Whether you’re in college, high school, or you simply feel lazy at work or at home as you go about your day-to-day life, overcoming laziness is one of the most important things you can do to get ahead.

I’ve gone through bouts of laziness in my own life. When I was in middle and high school I wasn’t the most motivated of students, and this was reflected, time and again, in the grades I received at the end of the school year. When I entered college my laziness decreased year by year as I slowly began to recognize the importance of what I was working toward. When I entered the working world I had learned how to stop being lazy for good; and it’s this look at how to overcome laziness that I’m going to share with you today.

In this post I’m going to look at what laziness is, including basic definitions and how it is viewed by other people. I’ll then move on to a section on how to overcome laziness, looking specifically at ways to get motivated to move forward with your life. Finally, I’ll look at how to stop being lazy over the long-term.

Let’s get started.

What is Laziness?

Laziness is the feeling of not wanting or being able to do a task in which you are perfectly capable of doing due to the negative feelings associated with making the effort to do so. To be called lazy is universally seen as a negative charge.

Sometimes misspelled as “lazyness,” bouts of laziness can come and go in your life. Laziness is caused by a number of factors, including tiredness, boredom, and depression, and while learning how to stop being lazy will help you get over the worst of these bouts, feelings of laziness will never entirely go away—and that’s okay, so long as you learn to overcome them when you need to.

Laziness vs. Tiredness

Sometimes you may find yourself feeling lazy at home, work, or school, whereas you are in fact simply tired and in need of a good night’s sleep.

Tiredness can cause laziness, for sure, but in this situation you can stop being lazy simply by getting the right amount of rest you need. In researching and writing my first book, My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired, I found that most people need between seven and nine hours of sleep per night. You could be on the upper end of this, meaning that even though you consistently get seven hours per night, your body in fact needs nine. (Here is a wide selection of answers to the question “Do you do anything before going to bed to make your morning easier?”)

Laziness vs. Boredom

When you’re feeling lazy there’s also a good chance you are in fact just bored. This is especially true in the home, but it can be the case at work and in school as well. We all remember the disruptive kid in school who we were told only acts out because he is “smart, and therefore bored by class.” While always feeling like something of a dig at our own intelligence, this boredom manifested itself as laziness.

If you feel that your laziness could be caused by boredom, skip below to the How to Overcome Laziness section.

Laziness vs. Depression

It’s really important that you don’t confuse laziness with depression. If you’re unsure whether you’re exhibiting signs of laziness or depression, get in touch with your doctor right away.

It’s okay to procrastinate from time to time, and it’s okay to feel depressed. We all do at certain times in our lives, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. That said, if you feel that your laziness or depression is manifesting into chronic depression, it’s important to reach out to someone, such as a doctor, friend, or family member who can help. Don’t suffer depression in silence.

How to Overcome Laziness

Learning how to overcome laziness requires you to actually want to overcome it. Sure, we can all say that we don’t enjoy lazing around the house and not doing much of anything, but in order for you to truly learn how to stop being lazy for good you have to mean it.

If you’re on board, here are seven simple steps to help you overcome laziness:

1. Get a Morning Routine

In my book on morning routines I wrote in the introduction that:

The way you spend your morning has an outsized effect on the rest of your day. The choices we make during the first hour or so of our morning determines whether we have productivity and peace of mind for the rest of the day, or whether it will clobber us over the head.

Your mornings are a blank slate, an opportunity to start again. Sure, you may have been lazy yesterday, but that doesn’t mean that today has to be one and the same. Choosing a morning routine that works for you, one that makes you feel awake, alert, physically and mentally healthy, and psyched up to have a great day, will help you get motivated to study, to exercise, and to generally overcome laziness over the long term.

2. Get Organized

Organizing your home, workplace, study areas (or home office), and even your computer desktop and the number of apps on your phone is a great way to get out of the funk of laziness and come back into the real world.

This is especially important if you’re a high school or college student, as laziness in school is particularly harmful as it can lead to a lifetime of lazy habits. I was lucky as it was during my time at college that I began to overcome my laziness; and much of that was due to being extremely organized in my physical space, and wanting to keep up this level of organization in my day-to-day life.

Remember the days of old when you were feeling bored and lazy and, as a result, you would read a book, go for a walk, or do something else that was generally seen as productive with your time?

While those days aren’t entirely behind us, they are for some, and social media is at the heart of much of this decline. I truly believe that one of the best things you can do to overcome laziness is to quit—or at least dramatically reduce your usage of—social media.

I have a love-hate relationship with social media, especially Twitter, of which I’ve been a user for over ten years. Some days Twitter provides a wealth of information, giving me everything from the latest news and op-eds of the day to hilarious videos that I immediately text to my wife. Other days, however, Twitter can feel like a black hole, something that I find myself mindlessly scrolling through without any real plan of what to do when I stop.

In short, it’s a lazy person’s dream.

Whether you choose to quit social media entirely or simply limit your usage of it, if you want to know how to stop being lazy, I’d recommend cutting out social media and replacing it with watching inspirational videos or reading motivational books or quotes as one of the best things you can do.

4. Use Tried-and-Tested Techniques

One of the easiest ways you can get motivated to study or exercise, or do anything else you know you should (but can never find the motivation) do is try using a tried-and-tested technique to overcome laziness and procrastination.

There are a number of techniques that can help you in this area (search for “how to overcome procrastination” and you’ll come away with a handful), but one I want to highlight in particular is the Pomodoro Technique.

Set your Pomodoro timer for 25 minutes
Work on your task
After 25 minutes is up, take a 3-5 minute break
After 4 pomodoros, take a longer 25-30 minute break

5. Only Five Minutes

While working on a task for 25 minutes followed by a 3-5 minute break is a great way to break the spell of laziness and be more productive, in reality working for a full 25 minutes on a single task may be difficult for you as you’re initially working to stop being lazy.

With this in mind, try the “only five minutes” approach. Knowing how to overcome laziness requires you to truly think about what it is you want (or need) to do instead of being lazy, then go do that thing.

Ask yourself, what could I do in the next five minutes that would bring me the biggest results in my personal life, in school, or at work? Once you have an answer to this question, go do that thing.

6. Start Small

Whenever an interviewer asks me how to keep up a morning routine, I tell them the same thing every time:

Keeping your routine short and easy to accomplish, especially in the beginning, will greatly increase the chances of you sticking to it.

Luckily for you, learning how to be less lazy works in exactly the same way. Would you describe yourself as a couch potato? If so, you won’t want to try all the techniques to stop being lazy in this list all at once. Instead, you should choose one of them and try it out for a week. After the week is over, assess how helpful this technique has been (avoid making a rash decision about its effectiveness after just a few days—give it the full week to be sure), and choose to keep it or ditch it based on this assessment. Then, try another technique the next week.

7. Be Kind to Yourself

The thing about learning how to be less lazy is you’re going to have setbacks along the way—they’re inevitable. Sometimes it’s hard to crawl ourselves out of bed in the morning. I get it. In my book on morning routines I wrote the following, which I believe applies here:

Don’t see one solitary missed day as a setback. Embrace non-routine moments and adapt to them. Remember the bigger picture, and get back to your new routine tomorrow.

The second part of that quote is key. If you truly want to know how to stop being lazy this is how. While you shouldn’t beat yourself up if you fall back into your lazy ways, make sure it doesn’t happen twice.

Always remember that tomorrow is a new day.

Learning how to overcome laziness takes time, but it is one of the most important things you can do to get ahead and have a successful life. You only have one life to lead—it’s up to you what you make of it.

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

2019-11-03T00:00:00-04:00

You have no doubt heard the phrase “Rome wasn’t built in a day” many times throughout the course of your life.

Teachers in school are often heard saying it in an attempt to instill patience in their students. Carpenters say it to their clients as they’re pushed toward perfection at an unworkable speed. And it’s hard to imagine that the contractors working on La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, a project that has been ongoing since 1882, haven’t muttered the idiom under their breath many times over the last 137 years.

What Does “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day” Mean?

The quote “Rome wasn’t built in a day” means that it takes time to create great work, and that while you cannot expect success to come right away, it will be achieved with continued persistence.

Who Said “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day”

The origin of the full quote “Rome wasn’t built in a day” comes from medieval France, and the phrase “Rome ne fu[t] pas faite toute en un jour,” which was published in a book of poetry called Li Proverbe au Vilain in the year 1190.

This medieval phrase has since been translated into “Rome ne s’est pas faite en un jour.”

It was the English writer John Heywood who first said “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” or rather, “Rome was not built in one day,” a translation which was soon changed to the version we know today, in his 1538 book A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue. Through the years the idiom was also translated into Latin, as “Roma uno die non est condita.”

How to Use the Phrase in Your Life

“Rome wasn’t built in a day” is a call-to-arms for patience, a character trait described as “Acting without complaint while experiencing long waits or monologues. Having an inner calm.”

If you work in a creative field it’s especially relevant, as it reminds us that sometimes—often—it takes time to achieve great work. I love this video by Daniel Sax and featuring the voice of This American Life host Ira Glass in which Glass talks above the “creativity gap” that exists at the beginning of one’s career:

Nobody tells people who are beginners—and I really wish somebody had told this to me—is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.

Glass continues:

The most important thing you can do is do a lot of work—do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap.

That said, don’t dawdle in your work. Rome may not have been built in a day, but the hard work of building the citadel continued on all the same.

As I wrote in my post about rash decisions, there is little difference in outcomes between making a rash decision and spending too long on a decision and eventually hitting a point of diminishing returns in the form of analysis paralysis, when you “overthink (or overanalyze) a certain task or decision, and as a result you fail to move forward, or make a decision, in any meaningful way.”

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” so slow down, have patience, and persist in your work. Success, after all, may be just around the corner.

What Is an Op-Ed Article? Op-Ed Examples, Guidelines, and More

2019-11-02T00:00:00-04:00

Have you ever wondered what those articles in newspapers or online that seem to be more conversational in style than standard news stories are? These are called op-ed articles, and they are an entirely different style and format of writing that is typically found in the opinion section of a newspaper, magazine, or website.

In this article, I’m going to answer the question what is an op-ed article by digging into exactly what an op-ed article is as well as look at some op-ed examples, how to write an op-ed, and how (and where) to submit an op-ed after you’ve written one.

Let’s dive right in.

What Is an Op-Ed Article?

Op-ed stands for “opposite the editorial page,” and an op-ed article is an article in which the author states their opinion about a given topic, often with a view to persuade the reader toward their way of thinking.

Despite the “op” in “op-ed” not standing for “opinion,” op-eds are often called opinion pieces because, unlike standard news articles, the authors of op-eds are encouraged to give their opinions on a certain topic, as opposed to simply reporting the news.

Op-eds are sometimes written by a ghostwriter, which means somebody writes the op-ed on behalf of someone else (such as a businessperson or politician), then the intended author makes some tweaks, with the final version being attributed—bylined—to the intended bylined author instead of the ghostwriter.

Anonymous Op-Eds

Op-eds can also be anonymous, although for larger publications, such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, an anonymous op-ed is typically only allowed when the writer’s job (or in extreme cases, their life) would be jeopardized if their name or other distinguishing details were disclosed. In cases when an anonymous op-ed is allowed to go ahead, the author’s true identity is known by the publisher.

Whether or not anonymous op-eds should be allowed to be published comes up for frequent scrutiny, the most recent episode of which being in September 2018 after the New York Times published an anonymous opinion piece by a senior official working in the Trump administration.

Op-Ed Responses

Often, op-ed articles are written in response to something that is happening in the news at a particular time; such as during a climate change summit or election cycle, or they are written as a response to another op-ed, whether the first opinion piece was published in the same newspaper or, for example, somebody decided to write an op-ed in the New York Times in response to an op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

While there is no generalized word limit for an op-ed, most published op-eds run under 1,000 words. The New York Times notes that:

Written essays typically run from 800 to 1,200 words, although we sometimes publish essays that are shorter or longer.

Op-Ed Examples

For an article to be an op-ed it must, as noted above, appear in an opinion column. As many people find themselves reading op-eds after clicking a link online, op-ed columns typically also have the words ‘Opinion’ or ‘Guest Essay’ displayed above or close to the column’s headline.

If you’re looking for op-ed examples, look no further than the opinion pages of three of the largest newspapers in the United States, namely the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post opinion pages (for a longer list, see the How (and Where) to Submit an Op-Ed section below).

The Difference Between Op-Eds and Regular Articles

Keep in mind that some columns that look like a good op-ed article example are in fact lifestyle articles that, while not being timely in relation to the news of the day, aren’t defined as op-ed articles because they are purely factual, with no opinion being given.

Articles I have personally written for the New York Times, New York Observer, Quartz, and similar publications had to be meticulously sourced and fact-checked before publication; and my opinion surrounding any of the topics in question was not taken into consideration, unlike for an op-ed.

That’s not to say you can simply make up facts when writing an op-ed. You can’t have your own opinion about the year Queen Elizabeth II was born (1926), the height of the Empire State Building (1,454’), or the length of the Great Wall of China (21,196km). Depending on what your op-ed is discussing, you can sprinkle your opinion in around facts, but those facts must be deep-rooted in order for your audience to get on board with your argument—and for a reputable source to choose to print your article.

How to Write an Op-Ed

Of course, knowing what an op-ed is and knowing how to write an op-ed are two different things entirely.

Here are my top five tips on how to write an op-ed:

Get to the point: The moment a reader (or your potential editor) starts reading your op-ed article they need to know what it is about, and why it matters to them.
Have a clear thesis: Submitting a meandering opinion column is a surefire way to ensure you do not hear back from the editor. Outline your entire op-ed before sitting down to write, and keep a clear thesis in mind.
Write what you know: While many factors go into the op-ed selection process, having authority in the topic you’re writing about, as well as a persuasive argument, is required above all else.
Write for the publication you’re pitching: Don’t use technical phrases if it is a non-technical publication. Look into what they have published on your topic in the past. How can you advance this discussion?
Stick to the rules: Most op-ed sections list their rules for publication. These often include information on how to source your facts, a well as the house style.

How (and Where) to Submit an Op-Ed

It’s easy to submit an op-ed to either a national or local newspaper, or to a trade publication in your field. Assuming you’ve read my advice on how to write an op-ed above, here are the links you’ll need to submit an op-ed to the following newspapers:

If you want to submit an op-ed to your local newspaper or a trade publication, look in their opinion columns for information on how to send in your submission, or search for their name alongside the word “submissions” online.

I hope this article on what an op-ed article is will help you on your journey toward writing and submitting your first op-ed to a major newspaper or publication.

Dedication: How to Dedicate Yourself to Your Goals

2019-10-22T00:00:00-04:00

We’ve all heard the quip that hard work and dedication go hand in hand, or that, in the words of legendary American football player and coach, Vince Lombardi, the price of success is “hard work and dedication to the job at hand.”

Dedication is all of this, and then some. Hard work and dedication leads to a successful life, and dedication and commitment to a desired outcome, a goal you just can’t shake, is what life is all about.

Dedicating yourself to your work is one thing, but what does it mean to dedicate yourself to something so fully that it’s all you think about each and every day? How do you dedicate yourself to your goals to achieve the ultimate success—when you don’t even know where to start?

What Does Dedication Mean?

Dedication is the act of being fully devoted to something, whether this is something intangible, such as a task, goal, or desired outcome, or something that you can feel yourself physically being a part of, such as such as a cause, religion, sports teams, or another person.

While there are many different types of dedication, in this article I’m going to focus on what it means to dedicate yourself to a goal; your true calling, as it were. Dedication is a positive character trait, and a trait that is most likely to lead to your success in life.

Synonyms for Dedication

There are a number of other words (synonyms) for dedication, including commitment, devotion, adherence, allegiance, single-mindedness, purposefulness, and doggedness, to name but a few.

Despite being synonyms, these words can’t be swapped out in all instances, and it’s for this reason that I have decided to stick with the word “dedication” throughout this article.

How Hard Work and Dedication Leads to Success

In my recent post on weathering the storm, I spoke of the late Stephen R. Covey’s classic book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, in which Covey implores us to “Begin with the end in mind.” From the first time I read Covey’s book until the present day, this concept has been one of the most practical frameworks for working toward a desired outcome that I have ever come across. In Covey’s own words:

To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.

In order to truly dedicate yourself to your goals you must think backward to begin with the end in mind. This level of dedication requires you to look forward and imagine that you have achieved your goals; and from there, you must schedule your most important tasks to make it there, at the expense of all other, less important tasks.

Let’s take a look at what this level of dedication looks like.

Reverse-Engineer the Steps to Achieving Your Goals

Instead of starting at the very beginning of the journey toward realizing your goals, start at the finish line. What was the final step you made just before achieving the goal? What was the step before that one, and the step before that one, and the step before…

When you reverse-engineer the steps to achieving your goals, you feel like you’ve finally been put in the driving seat—except the only way to get back to where you are is by reversing all the way home, and amping up the acceleration when you get there. That brings us to…

Schedule Your Priorities

As Covey artfully notes in his book, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” Isn’t that a profound thought? Similarly, the founder of Farnam Street, Shane Parrish, recently noted, “Don’t tell me your priorities. Show me your calendar.”

When you schedule your priorities there is no way for them to slip through the cracks. You may have the best of intentions to work on your goals during the upcoming week, but we both know that if you don’t carve out the time in which to do just that, it’s unlikely to happen.

Focus Only on Important, Non-Urgent Tasks

While scheduling your priorities is one way to dedicate yourself to achieving success, it’s just as important to make sure that you’re dedicating your time to working on the most essential parts of your goals at any given time.

Image: Stephen R. Covey’s Time-Management Matrix from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, courtesy of Forbes

The above graph is the Time-Management Matrix from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In the matrix, Covey shows that the only way to have forward-momentum in your goals is to dedicate yourself to Quadrant II: Important, Non-Urgent tasks. In Covey’s own words:

The only way to make Quadrant I manageable is to give considerable attention to Quadrant II, primarily by working on prevention and opportunity and by having the courage to say no to Quadrants III and IV.

If your goal is to become better in a discipline, such as at a specific sport, musical instrument, or skill such as writing or coding, the act of deliberate practice would fit firmy into Quadrant II. Applying hard work and dedication to Quadrant II tasks will pay off tenfold in the long term.

Dedication is one of the most powerful forces we possess with which to shape our lives and realize our goals. How are you dedicating yourself to your goals?

When Does the End Justify the Means?

2019-10-16T00:00:00-04:00

When does the end justify the means? This question has been asked for millennia, with the resulting answers rarely perfect in their finite form.

When we were young it was easy to think that the end justifies the means. If you wanted a cookie, you were more than happy to steal a cookie out of your younger sibling’s hands. The end justified the means because you wanted a cookie and you got one. The equation was absolute.

As we got older, most of us began to realize that in order to be kind and loving members of our community and society as a whole, we needed to consider other people’s feelings. We realized that it’s not socially acceptable to take what we want, when we want it, and that in fact we need to recognize that sometimes the ends don’t justify the means.

While you may consider yourself to be a person of character, how can you reconcile this belief with the fact that, when it comes down to it, you believe you must do whatever you can in order to get the results you believe will ultimately bring about the most good, even if other people may get hurt along the way?

This is where the idea of the ends justifying the means get tricky.

In this article, I’m going to look into what the end justifies the means actually means, I’m going to give you a deeper understanding of this philosophy and its origins, and I’m going to provide examples of how we continue to rationalize this thinking in the modern world.

What Does the End Justifies the Means Mean?

The phrase “the end justifies the means” is used to suggest that any activity, whether or not that activity could be considered ethically or morally bad, is worth doing so long as a desired end result is achieved.

The origins of the phrase go back to consequentialism. Consequentialism is a type of normative ethical theory. In its purest form, consequentialism holds that the moral quality of an action is completely determined by its consequences. Therefore, according to consequentialist theory, the end justifies the means in all circumstances.

Of course, for most of us this theory is difficult to square with our desire to get along with, and care for, other people; especially those within our immediate family, community, or friend group. Most of us feel that in many situations the end does not justify the means. That said, there are plenty of modern-day and historical examples, several of which we will touch upon below, in which this moral pull is ignored, and the ends of bad behavior win out.

Examples of the End Justifying the Means

Whether you agree or disagree with the below examples, they all represent how “the end justifies the means” thinking can drive human nature, for better or worse:

Lying on a resume to get a job: In your mind, lying (or exaggerating the truth) on your resume may be justified if it helps you land the job of your dreams.
Lying on a first date: First dates can be awkward, and if you want a first date to turn into a second, the idea of lying to impress the person across the table from you may seem to be a small price to pay to get a second chance to impress.
Cheating in sports: From diving for an undeserved penalty, to the persistent problem of doping in sports, the end of placing a point ahead of your rivals or scoring the deciding goal can, in some athletes’ minds, justify the means.
Lying during an election cycle: Whether you’re running for City Council or President of the United States, lying during an election cycle to deliver a blow to your opponent’s record (or to overstate your own) is a classic tactic. The line between outright lying and inflation of the truth is thin, and with so much at stake, it’s no surprise that “the end justifies the means” thinking rears its head.
Going along with a false narrative: Whether you created the narrative or it was crafted for you, going along with a narrative that you know to be false—such as being hailed a hero for pulling someone from a burning building, where in reality you were only focused on getting yourself out—may justify the means of helping you achieve hero status, but it will gnaw away at you over time.

I should acknowledge that each of the above examples are different to the “fake it ‘til you make it” ideal, in which we are encouraged to work towards what we want by imitating a confident, competent, and optimistic mindset. Similarly, telling white lies to preserve someone’s feelings, so long as the lies doesn’t misinform them on an important topic, are an example of the end justifying the means for good.

There have been other examples of this phrase in action throughout history, both in literature and in non-fiction accounts.

In Heroides, a poem by Ovid that was written between 25-2 BC, Ovid writes “Exitus ācta probat,” or “The outcome justifies the deeds.” In Discourses: I, 9 of The Prince by Italian political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli, the author notes that “For although the act condemns the doer, the end may justify him.” And in the 1937 book of essays Ends and Means (an Enquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization) by Aldous Huxley, which was first published in 1937, the famed author of Brave New World, spoke of war, religion, ethics, and nationalism, topics of which he believed end justifies the means thinking had permeated.

Don’t ask whether you are proud of what you have achieved. Ask whether you are proud of how you achieved it. Do you agree or disagree that the end justifies the means? Let me know what you think on Twitter, or by sending me an email.

Here is what William said:

This concept is what separates us from the animal kingdom! So my answer is almost never. If you’re walking by a lake and you see someone drowning (and you can swim) but see a sign at the shore saying “No Swimming,” are you under no obligation to save that person? Certainly you are!

And here is what Yifen said:

Does the end justify the means… I think there is a big “if” at the end of that sentence. It would have to be “The ends justifies the means if…”

Most people probably don’t think of it this way. I am guessing most people make a mental pros and cons list, and go from there. For instance, “The end justifies the means if nobody is hurt,” or “The end justifies the means if it makes me happy.”

How to Develop Self-Reliance

2019-10-02T00:00:00-04:00

While the idea of becoming a more self-reliant man or woman isn’t as mainstream as it once was, I believe that learning how to develop self-reliance in your own life continues to be the key to getting ahead in life.

I’ve been interested in the topic of self-reliance for well over a decade. The feeling of being able to do something for or by yourself that you previously couldn’t do simply cannot be overstated.

But what is self-reliance, and how can we develop and build upon it in our own lives?

What is Self-Reliance?

Self-reliance is trusting your abilities to get through the challenges of life on the back of your own resourcefulness. It refers to your ability to provide for yourself (and oftentimes, defend against your enemies) without the need for outside help.

Of course, this definition of self-reliance is broad, with the meaning varying from person to person. While the above definition of self-reliance refers to it as a form of individualism, in reality the term has vast meanings, and the importance of self-reliance will vary dramatically from one person to the next.

Examples of Self-Reliance

Self-reliance means different things to different people. The character traits most readily associated with self-reliance are, in no order:

Reliability: You can be depended on to be consistent in everything you do.
Perseverance: You keep going, weathering the storm through thick and thin.
Dependability: You can be trusted to do what you say you’re going to do.
Hardworking: You believe in the value of hard work and dedication.
Self-discipline: You control your behaviors in order to improve your actions.

Being self-reliant allows you to survive the harshest of winters and the most brutal of summers. It gives you a sense of agency over yourself and your decisions. And while it isn’t an excuse to never seek help from others, it means you are no longer at the whim and mercy of those who may have other plans for you.

In practice, self-reliance can look like any number of things. Being able to depend on yourself to meet your basic needs (and the needs of your spouse, children, and other family members, if this falls on you) is one of the greatest feelings in the world, and doing so ethically is even more essential.

Here are some self-reliant examples in practice:

Learning to tie your shoelaces: You don’t think twice about it now, but once you learned to tie your own shoelaces you open up a whole world of possibilities for yourself (including, but not limited to, wearing better shoes).
Getting a driver’s license: The day you passed (or will pass) your driver’s test was likely a day for celebration, and rightly so! Getting a driver’s license is one of the most clearcut examples of self-reliance in the modern world, as the possibilities it allows for are endless.
Choosing to live within your means: I’ll touch upon the role of living within your means as a form of a self-reliant lifestyle in more detail below, but needless to say, if you owe large sums of money it’s difficult to become self-reliant.
Learning how to make a fire without matches or a lighter: Moving into more primal examples, learning how to make a fire without matches or a lighter is essential if you’re ever in a position where you need to survive in the wilderness for any length of time.
Getting comfortable sleeping outside: While sleeping under the stars requires planning and preparation, it isn’t nearly as difficult as it can sometimes be made out to be, so long as you have enough warm clothing and you’re aware of any potential predators.
Learning how to build a simple shelter: Of course, sleeping outside isn’t for everyone, and if you know how to build a simple shelter out of the materials available to you, this is often preferable, especially if you’re intending on staying in one location for more than one night.
Growing, hunting, and fishing your food: Learning how to grow, hunt, and fish your own food are three core skills of self-reliance. These essential skills have fallen away over the generations, but they are as core to our being in the modern world as ever.

Self-Reliance in Popular Culture

The principles of self-reliance come up consistently in popular culture. While I may be using the term ‘popular culture’ loosely with at least one of the below examples (I’m looking at you, Epictetus), here is a look at how the examples of self-reliance have translated through the years.

The Enchiridion by Epictetus

Epictetus (55-135 AD) was born a slave in Hierapolis, Phrygia (present day Pamukkale, Turkey). Known today as one of the foremost Stoic philosophers alongside the likes of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca the Younger, Epictetus’s thinking would have been lost if not for his pupil, Arrian, who wrote down his lectures and published them as the Enchiridion and Discourses.

Epictetus first learned of philosophy after he was given permission by his owner to pursue liberal studies. Gaining his freedom after the death of emperor Nero, Epictetus went on to teach philosophy in Rome for almost 25 years, eventually leaving the city after emperor Domitian banished all philosophers from its walls. Arriving in Nicopolis, Greece, Epictetus went on to found a school of philosophy, from which he taught until his death.

While Epictetus doesn’t speak outright of self-reliance in his teachings, he does circle around the subject often as he speaks of the need for a man to stick to his principles and not be swayed by the whims of yourself or others. In one famous quip, Epictetus notes:

Don’t demand that things happen as you wish, but wish that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.

Similarly, on only concerning ourselves with what we truly need, Epictetus noted:

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

There are times in Epictetus’s work that it’s clear that he is disappointed with himself or someone else in his life, potentially a student. Lashing out as only Epictetus could, he unleashes his feelings about the lacking self-reliance:

You are no longer a boy, but a grown man. If, therefore, you will be negligent and slothful, and always add procrastination to procrastination, purpose to purpose, and fix day after day in which you will attend to yourself, you will insensibly continue without proficiency, and, living and dying, persevere in being one of the vulgar.

Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The book Self-Reliance and Other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which was published in 1841, is a collection of six essays (History, Friendship, The Over-Soul, The Poet, Experience, and, of course, Self-Reliance) alongside Emerson’s Harvard Divinity School Address.

In the title essay, Emerson (1803-1882) speaks of the need to avoid consistency and conformity at any cost. In Emerson’s view, a man must follow his own path, wherever that may lead. The most famous line from the essay, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines,” is perhaps its most powerful for this very reason.

In Self-Reliance, Emerson rails against the trusting of one’s assets (and with this, one’s fortune) to anyone but yourself, noting:

The reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is.

Emerson continues in the next breath:

A cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away.

While the ideals that Emerson brings forth throughout his essay are, for the most part, to be aspired to, the ways in which he espouses on them are, in my opinion, at times over the top. Consider this passage from Self-Reliance in which he refers to the “joint-stock company” that is society:

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

This aside, it is no secret why Self-Reliance has enjoyed the popularity it has gained since its publication almost 180 years ago. Emerson offers the modern reader a glimpse into his own soul, and that, for any young man or woman looking to build self-reliance, is an offer too tempting to let aside.

My Self Reliance by Shaun James

Shaun James, a Canadian outdoorsman, photographer, and self-reliance educator, uploaded his first video to the My Self Reliance YouTube channel in May 2015. Since then he’s racked up over 450 videos across his two channels (Shaun James being his second), and amassed a base of over one million loyal subscribers—including myself.

Describing himself as “a passionate outdoorsman living the life of my dreams in a log cabin that I built by myself in the Canadian wilderness,” James’ videos primarily focus on him working on building up his homestead to make it livable enough for his wife to live with him at it full time.

While I’m going to struggle to make this section unbiased (I love James’ videos—watching them for the past eighteen months served as my inspiration to write this post), it’s James’ view on modern day self-reliance that I find most interesting. While the ability to build a shelter, grow, hunt, and fish his own food, and generally live off the land around his homestead are all as important to him as you would expect, in one of his videos James states the following:

The number one core principle of self-reliance is to live within your means. There are two ways to live within your means, one is to increase your income, and the second is to reduce your expenses so whatever income you make exceeds what you spend.

Later in the video James continues on the same theme, noting that self-reliance in the twenty-first century doesn’t mean trying to do everything by yourself:

Survival skills like lighting a fire and building a shelter come secondary to getting control of your expenses and spending habits and making yourself more valuable so you can earn enough income to cover for your expenses no matter what they are.

In fact, while the content of the majority of James’ videos focuses on the work he is putting in at his homestead (he’s currently finishing off a porch on his cabin, and putting the finishing touches to a bathhouse-come-sauna), while going through his videos for this post I noticed that time and again James keeps coming back to the importance of frugality, and how if you don’t live within your means you will never be truly self-reliant:

One of the biggest mistakes we make when we’re young, [in fact] most people struggle with it, including myself, is learning not to spend money casually. We’ve got a few extra bucks in our pocket, we go out and we buy something a little bit more expensive or buy something we don’t really need, or eat out more often, or do just foolish things with our money that we don’t really think of as foolish or that they’re big enough to have an impact on our lives. But over time those things add up, and every penny that you spend is something you never get back, and you have to work that much harder for. So if you’re looking to become more self reliant […] you need to get control of your spending habits, reduce your expenses, and learn how to make money more efficiently so the net of these two things give you the life that you want.

When you learn to develop self-reliance in the modern world you put yourself that much closer to becoming a more resourceful individual, while gaining a true sense of agency over yourself and your decisions.

On Weathering the Storm

2019-09-28T00:00:00-04:00

In my recent research on character and the character traits that make us, I came across the phrase “weathering the storm” (also known as “riding out the storm”).

I’d heard of this phrase before, of course, but prior to my interest in character I hadn’t thought much of it. This simple idea, to hunker down and get through the hardships of our times; weathering the storms of life, as it were, is a uniquely stoic trait. Abraham Lincoln had it. Viktor Frankl had it. And as the author Ryan Holiday has highlighted in a number of his books, including the aptly-titled The Obstacle is the Way, Marcus Aurelius, who ruled the Roman Empire from 161 to 180, also had it.

Being British, I also feel a certain affinity to this phrase. What could the slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On,” displayed across motivational posters produced by the British government in the lead up to the Second World War, possibly be if not a plea for the British public to ride out the storms ahead? British stoicism, a largely Victorian ideal in which we are encouraged to “keep a stiff upper lip” sees weathering the storm as obvious. It’s just what you do; of course it is.

With this in mind, what does it actually mean to weather the storm; and where did the phrase come from originally?

What Does Weathering the Storm Mean?

The phrase “weathering the storm” means to survive hardships and come out alive, with minimal physical or emotional pain, on the other side. The literal version of this phrase refers to ships safely navigating poor weather.

Used metaphorically, there was a spike in usage of the phrase between 1878-1893, and again between 1926-1935, with the phrase appearing more consistently in popular usage from 1950 onwards. “Weathering the storm” and “ride out the storm” are two phrases which have enjoyed popularity over wide time spans due to their deep visuals; it’s obvious from the moment you hear them what they imply, and how they can be used in future scenarios.

Bible Verses on Weathering the Storm

There are numerous Bible verses about weathering the storm. Storms in both the literal and metaphorical sense come up consistently in the Bible, with their inclusion being used to illustrate the ever-changing complexities of life.

Here are some of my favorite Bible verses about weathering the storm:

“It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.” (Isaiah 4:6)
“You rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up, you still them.” (Psalm 89:9)
“Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind.” (Psalm 107:28-31)

How to Weather the Storm

Weathering a metaphorical storm requires patience, preparedness, and the discipline to see it through. While each storm you encounter will be different, here are three key overarching steps to weathering a storm:

Focus on Solutions

In Stephen R. Covey’s classic tome The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey implores us to “Begin with the end in mind.” What this means when it comes to weathering the storm, is to not focus on problems, but to focus on solutions. (Of course, this doesn’t necessary mean that the end justifies the means.)

Let’s look at the example of the breadwinner in your family, whether you or your spouse, losing a job. While it is important to focus briefly on the problem—the loss of the job—in order to file for unemployment and ensure you can pay your upcoming rent bill or mortgage payment, once these have been taken care of, you or your spouse should start to focus on solutions; that is getting another job.

Hunker Down

During the period in which you are focusing on solutions, you should do your best to hunker down and not open you or your family up as a target.

Returning to the above example, let’s say that you or your spouse, the breadwinner in your family, not only lost a job, but it happened due to inappropriate conduct on your or your spouse’s part. For the sake of this example, it doesn’t matter what this conduct was, but it can range from low-level theft, to embezzlement, to personal misconduct. Weathering the storm in this situation will require you to hunker down, think before you speak, and generally keep yourself out of the spotlight so you can do what you need to do to come out on the other side.

Avoid Blame

While you are weathering the storm by hunkering down and focusing on the solutions to your problem, be sure to avoid blaming others for the situation you find yourself in.

Again returning to the above example, in this step it’s important not to make any rash decisions with regard to your and your family’s future. If you believe your bad fortune is due in full or part to a character assassination against you this will likely be an exercise in frustration. If you want to weather the storm and come out on the other side, it is essential that you (or your spouse) blame nobody but yourself for the situation you have found yourself in, and you work to productively ride out the storm of your making.

Weathering the storm is less a one-time act than a consistent state of mind. To become a person of character, apply the trait of successfully riding out the storm whenever one may land.

Getting Over a Character Assassination

2019-09-20T00:00:00-04:00

Have you ever felt like your character was being attacked for no good reason? Like your reputation was purposely being tarnished from all directions, and you could do little more than placidly deny the accusations being thrown at you; often with little effect?

If so, you may have been victim of a character assassination.

Our character is what makes us. The character traits that we have developed and nurtured from the moment we were born are both precious and innate to us; which is why being the victim of a character assassination, whether in the workplace, by a former partner, or at the hands of a seasoned narcissist (or in certain cases, by all three) can feel like the end.

But it needn’t be. Getting over a character assassination is entirely possible, but it takes guts, willing, and an overall strength of character to push through the mud and come out alive, and fighting, on the other side.

What is Character Assassination?

Character assassination is a deliberate effort to damage the reputation, credibility, or good standing of an individual person. It typically takes places when a rival, whether in love, business, or even within a family, decides they wish to take the other person down.

Examples of character assassinations have taken place throughout history. In the Bible (Proverbs 11:9) we’re told that “With their mouths the godless destroy their neighbors,” a clear example of this force being wielded.

More recently, during the 1988 United States presidential election, Roger Ailes (who would go on to become the disgraced president of Fox News) produced a campaign advertisement that was designed to serve as a character assassination of Republican candidate for president George H. W. Bush’s opponent, Democratic Presidential candidate and former governor of Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis.

The ad hit out at the Massachusetts furlough program, a program which allowed certain prisoners, including, in some cases, first-degree murderers, to receive weekend passes out of jail. While Dukakis in his capacity of governor did not start the program, he had supported it. During Ailes’ famous Weekend Passes ad, Dukakis is mentioned by name numerous times, as he is during the later Revolving Door ad, which depicted prisoners entering and exiting prison using a revolving door. This ad concluded with the phrase “Now Michael Dukakis says he wants to do for America what he’s done for Massachusetts. America can’t afford that risk.”

Posthumous Character Assassination

Character assassinations can also take place posthumously, as has been the case throughout history. This often takes place in memoirs or other forms of non-fiction in which the author either knew the individual they’re taking down personally, or they have never been a fan of this individual who they believe has been held to too high of a standard; and wanted to bring them down a peg or two after they are no longer able to respond.

Needless to say, this is the worst kind of character assassination. While not everybody deserves to be praised in death, purposely waiting until your target is no longer with us to pick apart their character is in itself a character trait of a weak individual indeed.

How to Survive a Character Assassination

If you fall victim to a character assassination it’s can sometimes be difficult if not impossible to come back from it.

Returning to the story of Michael Dukakis, he was soundly beaten in the 1988 United States presidential election, winning just eleven states (including the District of Columbia). While many factors play into the results of an election of this magnitude, the manner in which Dukakis’s character was picked apart at the hand of Ailes and Bush is said to have played a significant role in Dukakis’s defeat.

To survive a character assassination, keep in mind that there are typically two types of people who sink to this level of operation:

The narcissist to whom this type of behavior is normal
The individual who is desperate, and has gotten in too deep

There is no dealing with the narcissist. Don’t fight back by attempting to diminish their character as they do the same to you; this is a race to the bottom in which neither of you will come out victorious. For them, the end justifies the means above all else. Instead, defend against the accusations being slung your way by ignoring their claims and holding your head high. Show the world that you are a man or woman of integrity, and that you are proud of who you are and what you stand for.

When fielding an assault on your character from the second individual, someone who does not do this regularly, instead of ignoring their accusations, try to engage with them to find out why they felt the need to attack your character. (This is especially important if you know the individual personally, such as a work colleague.)

While the damage may already be done, turning your assailant into someone who instead appreciates you reaching out, and who will look out for your needs in the future, will always be time well spent.

Getting over a character assassination can take time, but if you follow the above advice you will get over this vicious assault on your character without breaking a sweat.

How to Avoid Making Rash Decisions

2019-09-12T00:00:00-04:00

Have you ever made a decision that you later regretted? A decision that when you look back on it, you realize you didn’t give yourself enough time to think it through and really get to grips with it before you made your choice?

If you have, chances are this was a rash decision. While we often make rash decisions when we’re stressed or we have just come out of a bad situation, such as a relationship breakup, a death in the family, or a difficult period at work, we can fall victim to making rash decisions at any time, which is why learning how to avoid and overcome them is essential to getting ahead.

What are Rash Decisions?

Rash decisions are decisions that we make in the spur of the moment, often without being in possession of all of the facts. They are the opposite of balanced decisions, and they are often made without considering the consequences of our choices, and any long-term outcomes.

While making rash decisions may be within a person’s character, this can change over time if we allow ourselves to start giving each decision the time and attention it deserves.

Rash Decisions vs. Analysis Paralysis

With that said, there is a difference between making a rash decision and making a quick choice, when this choice won’t have an especially great impact on your life.

Analysis paralysis is the state that can sometimes occur when you overthink (or overanalyze) a certain task or decision, and as a result you fail to move forward, or make a decision, in any meaningful way. You essentially become paralyzed by the task ahead of you; the exact opposite of making a “rash” decision.

While making a rash decision implies that you’re not putting enough thought into your decision, choosing quickly, and in turn avoiding analysis paralysis, should be encouraged in certain situations.

Don’t get me wrong; many decisions deserve your time and full attention—such as whether to move in with your partner, start a family, or take a job offer, for example. You should sleep on these decisions (many nights over) if possible. Others decisions don’t require this level of commitment—such as what toothpaste brand to purchase, what to wear on the weekend, or what to order as you wait in line at Starbucks. Making fast decisions in these situations, far from being rash, is completely appropriate.

Avoid Rash Decisions to Protect the Downside

The popular British entrepreneur Richard Branson often talks of “protecting the downside.” What this means for him is that in all of his business dealings, he ensures that the downside of any decision he makes isn’t so bad—it will never bankrupt him, or cause severe financial distress.

Richard is a risk taker; he makes bets on financial outcomes based on the businesses that he buys and sells. But he always protects the downside. He never makes rash decisions based on fear. If he ever felt that he was being pressured into making a quick decision by signing on the dotted line, I have no doubt that he would walk away from the deal.

The easiest way for us to avoid making rash decisions in the future is to protect the downside. Does making this decision right now, while you may not be in possession of all of the facts, or you may be stressed out from work, or you’re feeling a disproportionate emotional connection to something or someone—does this decision serve your long-term goals? Because if it does not, you should hold off from making a decision right now.

Avoid making rash decisions by protecting the downside. Over the long term, you’ll thank yourself. ∎

The Difference Between Ethics and Morals

2019-09-09T00:00:00-04:00

Getting your head around the difference between ethics and morals can be tricky. Often viewed as interchangeable synonyms, ethics and morals are in reality two sides of the same coin.

In ancient Greek the word “ethos” (ethics) means character, whereas “mos” (morals) means custom. Unfortunately, these translations are largely unhelpful when it comes to a modern day interpretation of the guiding principles that relate to the difference between ethics and morals, right and wrong, and being a good person.

If you’ve read my article on character traits then you know that understanding what goes into making our character—that is, our underlying values, beliefs, and identity—is an area near and dear to my heart.

In this article, I’m going to dig into the differences (and similarities) between ethics and morals, ethics and law, ethics and values, and finally, ethics and social responsibility. Let’s dive in.

What is the Difference Between Ethics and Morals?

While both ethics and morality deal with distinguishing right from wrong, ethics are usually associated with a practical set of rules that are to be followed in a professional setting, such as a code of ethics in medicine, law, and business, whereas morals refer to an individual’s personal principles.

Ethics are the rules you abide by in order to remain within a community or profession. Morals are your personal values that run to the core of your very being. Depending on your profession, it’s possible for your morals regarding a certain matter to be stricter than the code of ethics for the same issue.

Morals are service roads running parallel to the ethics highway. While your personal conduct will, for the most part, be guided by the professional rules and regulations of the highway, every now and then (for better and worse) your morals will lead you back onto the service road as you are unable or unwilling to continue down the ethics highway without first questioning the direction you are going.

While having morals is generally viewed as a means to be and do good (and sometimes, to hold the “moral high ground”), if your morals fall below those of generally agreed-upon ethics, your behavior may be seen as falling out of line with what is seen as appropriate in your community or profession, and you may suffer consequences as a result.

What is the Difference Between Ethics and Law?

Ethics can be used to help dictate the law, but individual ethics most often found in an organization’s code of ethics are not law. The rule of law dictates the clear difference between ethical and legal issues, and what they mean in terms of a country’s judicial power.

The difference between ethics and law is quite stark, though as with all rules and regulations, they can (and do) overlap. Professional organisations, such as the American Bar Association, will disbar—revoke the law license of, and thus the ability to practice law—any lawyer who they believe has broken their code of ethics. Sometimes, though not always, the violation will be so great that the individual in question also breaks the law.

The difference between ethics and justice is even more stark. Sometimes, for a lawyer to work within the ethics in which they have vowed to uphold, they may not deliver justice. This can occur when a lawyer believes their client is guilty of the crime of which they are obliged to defend them. In this example, the difference between ethics and morals is clear, but in order to perform your duty as a defense lawyer you must defend your client despite your reservations.

That said, ethics are generally not the law, and in most professions if you feel that you have a moral obligation to speak up about ethical or legal violations in the workplace, you should. In these situations, it’s up to you to speak out to your boss or another superior within your organization so as to make them aware of the situation.

What is the Difference Between Ethics and Values?

The difference between ethics and values is much the same as the difference between ethics and moral values. Ethics are the code in which an organization or community expects you to live by. Your values are what you believe to be true above all else; they represent your fundamental beliefs.

While your values, sometimes called your core values, can change over time as you learn more information about the subjects in which they represent, they cannot change overnight.

When looking at the difference between ethics and values, a good example to look toward is the issue of slavery. Throughout the nineteenth century slavery was an ethical issue, but for many on the side of secession, including Abraham Lincoln, it was a deeply moral issue above all else.

During his lifetime Lincoln penned numerous speeches in which he addressed the morality of slavery directly, basing his moral feeling on his deeply-held values. In his Cooper Union Address, Lincoln called out the positive moral behaviors of a number of men, including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, as having expressed moral leanings in the direction of not allowing states to decide for themselves if they were to become slave states or not:

“If we should look into their acts and declarations on those other phases, as the foreign slave trade, and the morality and policy of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct question of federal control of slavery in federal territories, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several of the most noted anti-slavery men of those times, [including] Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and Gouverneur Morris.”

Our sixteenth president knew the difference between ethics and morals, as well as how his own core values and principles fit into this system. Lincoln’s morals provided the guiding light behind his values; as they should for all of us.

The main difference between ethics and social responsibility is that while a code of ethics is a collection of rules that dictate what you can and can’t do or say within a professional organization, your social responsibility tends to be more fluid and open to interpretation.

Have you heard the phrase social justice warrior? Though sometimes used as a pejorative term, a social justice warrior is someone who strongly promotes socially progressive views in a manner which often causes them to find fans and followers on one side of the political aisle, while finding scorn and threats on the other side.

While the promotion of social justice issues isn’t the only difference between ethics and social responsibility, there are many similarities between them. If you live in a society in which you believe the ethics of the society don’t match up with your own, such as a country which decries the advancement of women, or criminalizes homosexuality, you may see it as your social responsibility to speak out. In this example, the difference between ethics and morals is clear; your morals do not match up with the code of ethics in which you are being asked to live, so your sense of social responsibility takes over.

Now you know the difference between ethics and morals, take some time to think about your own morals, values, and the codes of ethics in which you live and work by on a daily basis. Should the end justify the means at all times, or should we be more thoughtful in how we conduct ourselves?

Abraham Lincoln’s Daily Routine

2019-08-30T00:00:00-04:00

Abraham Lincoln has long been regarded for his strength of character, his fair judgement, and his singular commitment to his work.

These character traits are underscored by Lincoln’s daily routine; a topic that is close to my heart. From Lincoln’s typical breakfast (“little more than a single egg and a cup of coffee,”) to his speechwriting methodology (picking out little thoughts from scraps), read on to uncover Abraham Lincoln’s daily routine in the White House.

Lincoln’s Morning Routine

Here’s what historian and famed Lincoln biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin had to say of Abraham Lincoln’s daily routine in her biography of the sixteenth president: “A ‘light and capricious’ sleeper, Lincoln generally awakened early in the morning. Before breakfast he liked to exercise, often by walking around the spacious White House grounds. After a simple meal, usually a single egg and a cup of coffee, he made his way down the corridor to his office, where on cool days a fire blazed in the white marble fireplace with a big brass fender.”

According to John Hay, one of Lincoln’s private secretaries and closest confidants, Lincoln’s tendency to have little more than a single egg and a cup of coffee for breakfast was a mainstay of his time at the White House. In the words of Hay, “The pleasures of the table had few attractions for him. His breakfast was an egg and a cup of coffee; at luncheon, he rarely took more than a biscuit and a glass of milk, a plate of fruit in its season; at dinner, he ate sparingly of one or two courses.”

The Lincoln Bedroom

Continuing back through Abraham Lincoln’s daily routine in the White House, Goodwin notes, “[Lincoln’s] worktable stood between two tall windows that faced the south lawn, affording a panorama of the incomplete Washington Monument, the red-roofed Smithsonian, and the Potomac River. An armchair nearby allowed him to read in comfort, his long legs stretched before him or crossed one over the other.”

As it happens, Lincoln did not sleep in what is currently known as the Lincoln Bedroom. Located on the second floor of the White House, Abraham Lincoln and numerous presidents before and after him used this room as both their office and the Cabinet Room.

Between 1903-1904, President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the room being turned into a bedroom, with it quickly being turned back into an office-study during the Hoover administration of 1929-1933. In 1945, President Harry S. Truman, upon learning that the room had once been used by Lincoln, moved several pieces of furniture used during the Lincoln administration into the room, including a rosewood bed that was purchased by Mary Todd Lincoln for use in a nearby guest room. This bed has since become known as the Lincoln Bed, though much like the Lincoln Bedroom itself, historians agree that it is unlikely that the Lincolns ever slept in it.

Goodwin notes of the room, “Old maps hung on the wall, and over the mantel, [was hung] a portrait of President Andrew Jackson.” Describing the senses in which the scene evolked, Goodwin noted that “The musty smell of tobacco, lodged in the draperies from the heavy cigar smoke of the previous president [James Buchanan] and the new secretary of state [William Henry Seward], conveyed the atmosphere of the traditional men’s club.”

Lincoln’s Daily “Routine”

Mornings aside, Abraham Lincoln’s daily routine was rarely as “routine” as it’s fair for one to assume he might have liked.

From meeting with his administration, to listening to the daily concerns of American citizens, to sailing to meet with Ulysses S. Grant, the commander of the Union army, on the front lines of the Civil War, once Lincoln’s days in the White House got going he was always kept busy.

If Lincoln was due to give a speech as part of an upcoming public appearance, he would spend a good chunk of his day actively thinking about what he wanted to say to his audience. In an article for Fast Company, Goodwin wrote that “Lincoln had this rolltop desk, and he would scratch thoughts out for speeches and then put them in this desk. When the time came for the speech, he’d just pick these little thoughts out. Somehow he managed to get the Gettysburg Address from those scraps.”

While Abraham Lincoln’s daily routine in the White House was, of course, starkly different to his routine prior to reaching the highest office in the land (see Lincoln’s quotes on life), we can learn a lot from the way in which he worked and conducted himself during this time.

Abraham Lincoln’s Most Influential Speeches

2019-08-23T00:00:00-04:00

Abraham Lincoln lived at a time when, according to historian and famed Lincoln biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, speech-making prowess was central to political success, and the spoken word filled the air “from sun-up til sun-down.”

The following speeches by Abraham Lincoln represent a timespan of 27 years, during which Lincoln went from a relative unknown in Springfield, Illinois, to President of the United States.

Some of these speeches are famous; the Gettysburg Address and House Divided speech are famous Lincoln speeches of particular note. Some of them were delivered during the American Civil War; the First Inaugural Address and Last Public Address, among others, take these honors. And some of them speak of freedom and Lincoln’s views on American’s original sin, slavery; the Peoria Speech and Cooper Union Address draw heavy influence from these areas.

During the course of his life Abraham Lincoln is said to have given hundreds of speeches; a product of having started young and, of course, winning the American presidency. As Goodwin notes of Lincoln’s early speeches, “Lincoln’s stirring oratory had earned the admiration of a far-flung audience who had either heard him speak or read his speeches in the paper. As his reputation grew, the invitations to speak multiplied.”

Arguably one of, if not the, greatest ever president of the United States (much of which is attributed to the quality of his character), Abraham Lincoln’s speeches are as quotable as they are important. (If you’re interested in reading a collection of famous Abraham Lincoln quotes I have you covered.)

The below speeches by Abraham Lincoln are ten on his most influential.

Abraham Lincoln Speeches

Click on a speech below to read the background to it; where and when it was delivered, and how it was received by those who were in the audience, or simply scroll down this page to read each speech one-by-one.

Lyceum Address (1938)
Temperance Address (1842)
Peoria Speech (1854)
House Divided (1858)
Cooper Union Address (1860)
Farewell Address (1861)
Address in Independence Hall (1861)
First Inaugural Address (1861)
The Gettysburg Address (1863)
Last Public Address (1865)

Lyceum Address (1938)

Given when he was only twenty-eight years old, Abraham Lincoln’s speech at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois on January 27, 1838, is notable for being one of Lincoln’s first published speeches, as well as the speech that highlighted some of the ideas that he would bring to light in future speeches and, later, policy decisions.

Entitled The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions, Lincoln’s Lyceum Address centered on the threat posed by social disorder. “This topic was a conventional one for these lyceum meetings, where aspiring young men of the town tested their rhetorical skill and improved their elocution before their peers,” notes historian and biographer of Abraham Lincoln David Herbert Donald. “But Lincoln developed [his speech] in a highly personal way.”

While it’s been argued that the first half of Lincoln’s Lyceum Address employed standard Whig rhetoric of the day, the second half looked more toward the future; a future in which less stead is given to emotion in favor of cold-hard reasoning, or as Lincoln put it, carved “from the solid quarry of sober reason.”

Lyceum Address Excerpt

If the laws be continually despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons and property, are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their affections from the Government is the natural consequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must come.

Here then, is one point at which danger may be expected.

The question recurs, “how shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;–let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap–let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;–let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars.

Temperance Address (1842)

Abraham Lincoln’s Temperance Address was given to the Springfield Washington Temperance Society in the Second Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Illinois on February 22, 1842.

While the Springfield Washington Temperance Society was not a religious organization, the location for Lincoln’s address meant that when the thirty-three-year-old started to advocate reason and kindness as a solution to alcoholism, he caused quite a stir with his audience. This aside, the speech showed a great early grasp from the future president of how to use rhetorical techniques in order to properly move listeners to his cause.

Temperance Address Excerpt

Although the Temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty years, it is apparent to all, that it is, just now, being crowned with a degree of success, hitherto unparalleled.

The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed from a cold abstract theory, to a living, breathing, active, and powerful chieftain, going forth “conquering and to conquer.” The citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temple and his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made, are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of the conqueror’s fame is sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and calling millions to his standard at a blast.

For this new and splendid success, we heartily rejoice…

Peoria Speech (1854)

Perhaps the greatest antislavery speech of his career (or at the very least, the greatest antislavery speech of his pre-presidential career), Lincoln delivered the contents of his famed Peoria Speech twice; once on October 4, 1954 at the annual State Fair in Springfield, Illinois, and again on October 16 of the same year in Peoria, Illinois.

Presenting for more than three hours, in the Peoria speech Lincoln spoke of his objections to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Unlike those in favor, Lincoln did not believe that climate and geography would keep slavery out of the Territory of Nebraska, an area of land that consisted of the present-day states of Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, and the Dakotas.

During the Peoria speech Lincoln also “attacked the morality of slavery itself.” He argued that as slaves were people, rather than animals, they possess the same natural rights as all others. As Lincoln notes during the speech, “If the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that all men are created equal; and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.”

Peoria Speech Excerpt

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the propriety of its restoration, constitute the subject of what I am about to say.

As I desire to present my own connected view of this subject, my remarks will not be, specifically, an answer to Judge Douglas; yet, as I proceed, the main points he has presented will arise, and will receive such respectful attention as I may be able to give them.

I wish further to say, that I do not propose to question the patriotism, or to assail the motives of any man, or class of men; but rather to strictly confine myself to the naked merits of the question…

House Divided Speech (1858)

Four years after his Peoria Speech, Lincoln found himself running against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas as the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in the state of Illinois; the same Stephen A. Douglas who had presented the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the senate four years earlier.

Delivered on June 16, 1858 to more than 1,000 delegates in the Hall of Representatives of the Springfield, Illinois, statehouse, Abraham Lincoln’s House Divided speech was immediately considered too radical for a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Containing the famed “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” quote which Lincoln plucked from the Gospel of Mark 3:25, in which Jesus states, “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand,” the speech ultimately did Lincoln no favors in the short term, with friends, including Lincoln’s law partner, William H. Herndon, noting that while the speech showed great morality, it was politically incorrect. (Years later, Herndon is quoted as saying that despite Lincoln’s defeat in his race for the Senate, be believed the House Divided speech helped to make Lincoln president.)

House Divided Excerpt

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation.

Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented.

In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other…

Cooper Union Address (1860)

Originally slated to take place at Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, but quickly moved, thanks to a sponsorship by the Young Men’s Central Republican Union, to the newly-built Cooper Union in Manhattan, Lincoln famously did not make much of a first impression on his audience upon getting up on stage.

“The long, ungainly figure, upon which hung clothes that while new for the trip, were evidently the work of an unskilled tailor; the large feet; the clumsy hands, of which… the orator seemed to be unduly conscious; the long, gaunt head capped by a shock of hair that seemed not to have been thoroughly brushed out,” noted publisher George Haven Putnam, of Lincoln’s appearance.

Abraham Lincoln’s speech, on the contrary, made all the difference. Given on February 27, 1860, Lincoln spent a good portion of his Cooper Union Address taking shots at Stephen A. Douglas and his 1857 Kansas-Nebraska Act, nothing that he [Lincoln] had gone through the records of the Constitution Convention and early debates in Congress and it was clear that of the thirty-nine signers of the United States Constitution, twenty-one took votes demonstrating that the federal government had the power to control slavery within its territories, with a number of other men, including Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton, having also expressed leanings in this direction, though having not voted on it. (The Kansas-Nebraska Act argued that the territories of Kansas and Nebraska should be allowed to decide for themselves if they were to become slave states or not; a repeal of the Missouri Compromise of 1820.)

Further examining the Southern position on slavery, David Herbert Donald described Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address as “A masterful exploration of the political paths open to the nation,” and the journalist Noah Brooks exclaimed that Lincoln was “the greatest man since St. Paul.”

Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address was quickly published as a pamphlet after the fact, with the speech being printed in a number of newspapers.

Cooper Union Address Excerpt

The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation.

In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in “The New-York Times,” Senator Douglas said:

“Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.”

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: “What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?”

Farewell Address (1861)

Praised for its humility, Abraham Lincoln’s Farewell Address was given as he was boarding a presidential train at the Great Western Railroad station, in Springfield, Illinois on February 11, 1861, to start his inaugural journey to Washington, D.C.

Along the course of his inaugural journey Lincoln’s train would make numerous stops, and he would speak at many of them, including at Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Farewell Address Excerpt

My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail…

Address in Independence Hall (1861)

Abraham Lincoln’s Address in Independence Hall was given on February 22, 1861 as Lincoln passed through Philadelphia on his inaugural journey to Washington, D.C.

Independence Hall, famous as the site in which the Declaration of Independence had been signed some 85 years before, was also one of several locations in which Lincoln’s body lay in state after his 1865 assassination.

Address in Independence Hall Excerpt

I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the Colonies from the motherland; but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time.

First Inaugural Address (1861)

On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln and James Buchanan, the outgoing fifteenth president of the United States, began the drive down Pennsylvania Avenue to the United States Capitol under the watch of sharpshooters and numerous companies of soldiers lining the blocked-off streets.

After attending the swearing in of his Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin, Lincoln was introduced to the stage to deliver his inaugural and be delivered the oath of office by the eighty-three year old Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.

While some speeches of Lincoln’s are famed for their opening, Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address is more famous for its closing, which incorporated ideas from Lincoln’s one-time political rival, and soon to become his two-term Secretary of State, William H. Seward. Like much of the speech, which was written in Springfield, Illinois and shown to several of Lincoln’s friends and associates prior to its reading, Seward believed the closing of the speech to be too too strong. Despite making Seward’s, and others’, changes, reaction to the speech in the Confederacy was fierce, with the Richmond Dispatch saying that Lincoln’s speech had “inaugurat[ed] civil war.”

First Inaugural Excerpt

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect and defend” it.

I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and heath-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The Gettysburg Address (1863)

On November 19, 1863, Lincoln travelled to Gettysburg to dedicate the new Union cemetery. While Edward Everett of Massachusetts was the featured speaker, Lincoln was invited almost as an afterthought to give a few remarks. Everett spoke for almost two hours, then it was Lincoln’s turn.

At just 269 words, Abraham Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg is famous for being one of the shortest, yet most powerful, speeches given during the American Civil War. Former congressman from Missouri James W. Symington noted of Lincoln during a Ken Burns documentary for the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS): “If I had my choice of all the moments to be present in that war period it would have been at Gettysburg during Lincoln’s delivery of his speech… to have seen him craft those beautiful words; those enormous, healing words, and then deliver them. They were for everyone, for all time. They subsumed the entire war and all in it; it showed his compassion for everyone; his love for his people. That’s where I’d like to be.”

Gettysburg Address Excerpt

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this…

Last Public Address (1865)

Abraham Lincoln’s Last Public Address would have been considered significant even if it had not been his last. Taking place just two days after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army, Lincoln’s speech on April 11, 1865 was given from the second-floor balcony of the North Portico of the White House to a cheering, jubilant crowd down below.

While it’s been argued that the majority of the speech wasn’t especially inspired—Lincoln himself was feeling more somber and aware of the task ahead, that of reconstruction, than his audience—the second half of the speech, in which Lincoln for the first time expressed his public support for black suffrage, ultimately sealed his fate.

After speaking the words, “It is unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers,” John Wilkes Booth, the brother of famed actor Edwin Booth (of whom Lincoln had seen perform on numerous occasions), watching from the crowd outside the White House, is said to have vowed to his companion, “That means n— citizenship! Now, by God, I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.” Three days later, Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln.

Last Public Address Excerpt

We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten. A call for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose harder part gives us the cause of rejoicing, be overlooked. Their honors must not be parcelled out with others. I myself was near the front, and had the high pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to you; but no part of the honor, for plan or execution, is mine. To Gen. Grant, his skilful officers, and brave men, all belongs. The gallant Navy stood ready, but was not in reach to take active part.

By these recent successes the re-inauguration of the national authority – reconstruction – which has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed much more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case of a war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to treat with…

If you enjoyed this collection of the ten most influential speeches by Abraham Lincoln, please be sure to share it on social media, link to it from your website, or bookmark it so you can come back to it often.

If you’re interested in hearing more from me, be sure to subscribe to my free email newsletter, of which Abraham Lincoln (and the character traits and values in which he embodied) are a frequent topic of conversation. ∎

On Endings

2019-08-01T00:00:00-04:00

Last week, Michael Xander and I announced that after six and a half years, we have decided to stop publishing new interviews on our joint project, My Morning Routine.

One thing that surprised us after we sent out our final email containing the announcement was all the nice messages we received from subscribers in the minutes, hours, and days that followed. From someone telling us that they started their company after a conversation with an entrepreneur that they had contacted after seeing them featured on the site, to someone reaching out to say that we had inspired them to create a project in which they interview people with Parkinson’s disease, to someone simply saying, “Nice work y’all.”

Another type of message that we received came from people, many of whom we had interviewed or worked with in some capacity over the last six and a half years, who got in touch to congratulate us on our long run, and, equally, applaud us for ending the project while we were still “on top of our game.”

Everything Ends

While we were aware that the decision to stop publishing was not one that we had to make (we regularly had a queue of routines and sponsors several months deep), at the same time we hadn’t thought about the decision in those terms.

Sometimes it’s harder to stop than to go on. But everything must come to an end eventually; and making that call, the call to shut something down, is a difficult one. As Michael and I noted in our announcement, our decision to stop publishing new interviews on My Morning Routine came down to a simple realization that our project is complete. When you combine our book and online archive, it is clear that we have collected together all the tools you need to create a morning routine that works for you over the long term.

Humans Behind Emails

Perhaps my favorite message of support came from someone who wrote, kindly:

I’ve really enjoyed reading these! So easy to forget that there are real humans behind the emails! Sorry to see them stop but best wishes for the future.

I love this reminder.

The work that went into publishing a new interview every week for six and a half years felt like an extremely human process, but to most people who received it it was just another pleasant email in their inbox. I gain great joy from this insight, as sometimes, being just another pleasant email in somebody’s inbox is just enough, and all we ever need to be.

Goodbye, My Morning Routine. Thank you for everything. ∎

The Ultimate Character Traits List

2019-06-15T00:00:00-04:00

The character traits list below is broken up into positive and negative character traits, with definitions of each included.

On the positive side we have values-based traits such as honesty, integrity, and morality; traits that, I’m sure you will agree, are universally good. On the negative side we have traits such as dishonesty, untrustworthiness, and disloyalty; traits that, again I’m sure you will agree, are to be avoided at all costs.

In this post, I’m going to dig into exactly what character traits are, as well as provide a list of positive and negative character traits in a person, with definitions of each.

What are Character Traits?

Character traits represent the way in which we behave on a consistent basis. They are a core feature of our underlying values, beliefs, and identity. Many of us possess positive and negative character traits, with the list of character traits that it’s possible for a person to have being seemingly limitless.

The Difference Between Character Traits and Personality Traits

While personality traits are often immediately obvious when we meet someone new, a specific character trait of a person may take a while longer to become apparent. This is because while our character isn’t set at birth, it represents something much deeper than the quirks of personality and mannerisms alone, which can change over time.

Similarly, character traits are not habits. In the words of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in her excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln, “Why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skilful statesman like Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.”

Character Traits for Kids

Whether your child is in the second, third, or fourth grade, or well into middle school, high school, and beyond, it is important for kids and students of all ages to understand the value of living a life of good character.

Alongside having a solid morning routine, highly successful people often attribute their success to the strength of their character. For children to possess such character and be a success both now and in the future, it’s essential that they understand the underlying qualities of the below positive character traits, while rejecting the malice of their negative alternatives.

To help with this, I have put together a printable list of positive and negative character traits PDF worksheet which you can download for free here. If you’re a school teacher you are welcome to use this in class with your students. If you’re a parent or student yourself, you are of course welcome to print out the list and keep it as a reference.

Now, read on for the ultimate character traits list, with definitions of each.

Positive Character Traits

Positive character traits are any character traits in a person that, one may argue, are overall “good” over the long term. Deep within all of us we want to be men and women of character. Underlying or not, we want our name to go hand in hand with the below positive character traits.

While it may be true that, as a whole, society doesn’t appear to outwardly value positive character traits as much as it used to, there is still endless personal value to be had in developing any number of the below common (and not-so-common) positive character traits, and the self-reliance that comes from possessing them.

When you define the way you want to act in this world, without the influence of any outside forces pushing you in one direction or another, you can be sure that the positive character traits you are developing will come to you, over time, for all the right reasons.

Here is the ultimate positive character traits list, alongside a brief definition of each:

Honesty: Doing what you say you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it. Laying out all the facts.
Integrity: Acting the same in private as you do in public. Being complete and incorruptible.
Morality: Displaying moral actions, speaking moral sentiments, and believing in moral justices. Today and always.
Loyalty: Your allegiances do not change. You are faithful to those you pledge your loyalty to, including your spouse, your country, your church, and even your local sports team.
Generosity: Giving unconditionally while respecting nothing in return. Being generous with your wealth, your love, and your time.
Humility: Feeling no pride or arrogance. Lacking ego in all its forms. Not caring for status or one-upmanship.
Responsibility: The state of being accountable to someone else. You can be responsible for the wellbeing of your spouse, your children, your parents, a core component of your job, and your employees.
Respectfulness: Giving attention. Listening when someone is speaking to you. Paying deference to your elders, considering others’ feelings.
Tolerance: Enduring a deviation from a standard, often toward a higher level of pain. Having sympathy toward those with beliefs or practices other than your own.
Reliability: You can be depended on to be consistent in anything you do, from turning up on time to completing the work you said you were going to complete.
Perseverance: Keeping going through thick and thin, weathering the storms of life. Moving forward despite consistent failures, difficulties, and obstacles.
Compassion: An awareness of the distress of others coupled with a desire to alleviate it that is quickly acted upon.
Fairness: Lacking favoritism toward one side, being impartial and allowing a result to play out that all sides can agree on.
Patience: Acting without complaint while experiencing long waits or monologues. Occasionally considered a negative character trait.
Focus: An ability to direct your attention to one key task and stick to it over the long term. Occasionally considered a negative character trait when taken to its extremes.
Dependability: Your family and friends trust you to do what you say you’re going to do. Similar to honesty, integrity, and reliability.
Conscientiousness: Being meticulous and careful in all that you do, from building something to listening to someone.
Authenticity: Being true to who you are. Not putting on a show. Similar to integrity.
Optimism: Seeing the world and events under which you are placed favorably. Always believing in and working toward a better future.
Thoughtfulness: Being guided by thoughtful reasoning. Your beliefs, decisions, and actions are made after deep introspectives.
Hardworking: Believing in the value of work, and in its essential quality when performed on a consistent basis.
Kindheartedness: Being sympathetic to those in need. Giving the shirt off your back to anyone who asks for it.
Forgivingness: Being able to cease feelings of anger and resentment toward another person or yourself.
Self-discipline: The ability to control and regulate your behaviors in order to improve in a certain direction. Also referred to as self-control.
Sincerity: Displaying honest feelings directly from the heart. Similar to honesty, integrity, and reliability.
Politeness: Showing disrespect to no persons. Displaying consideration, tact, and courtesy at all times.
Courageousness: Displaying bravery when it is needed most. Keeping going despite the obstacles. Similar to perseverance.

Negative Character Traits

Negative character traits are any character traits in a person that, for the most part, we can all agree, are overall “bad” over the long term. While we may display some of the less cruel traits from time to time (cruelty in itself is one of the negative character traits listed below), we should want to avoid having any of the below traits seep into our character at any cost.

As with the list of positive character traits above, the negative character traits below represent the worst of the worst, save a couple of instances that have been highlighted.

Ensuring we do not develop these common (and not-so-common) traits is key to living a happy and fulfilling life.

Here is the ultimate negative character traits list, alongside a brief definition of each:

Dishonesty: Being predisposed to lying, deceit, and doing the opposite of what you say you’re going to do. The opposite of honesty.
Untrustworthiness: Consistently showing signs of being not dependable. A less malicious version of dishonesty.
Disloyalty: You change your allegiances whenever doing so suits you. You cannot be counted on. The opposite of loyalty.
Deceitfulness: Giving false impressions on purpose. The key phrase here is “on purpose.” Deceitful people choose to be deceitful.
Immorality: Displaying immoral actions, speaking immoral sentiments, and believing in immoral justices (the end justifies the means). The opposite of morality.
Cruelty: Inflicting pain or suffering on others because you can. “Cruelty is the point.” The opposite of kindheartedness.
Maliciousness: Choosing to do harm to someone for the sake of it. Similar to cruelty.
Vengefulness: Wanting to seek revenge by inflicting a punishment on someone for a prior injury, injustice, or offense.
Selfishness: Caring for your own welfare only, or caring for your own welfare above that of other people. Occasionally considered a positive character trait when in pursuit of a higher cause.
Greed: You continue to desire more, regardless of how much you have already accumulated. This desire can be temporary or long-term.
Disrespectfulness: Not giving someone your attention. Not listening when someone is speaking to you. The opposite of respectfulness.
Impatience: A form of haste whereby you are unable to sit tight and wait your turn; instead favoring a more active approach. Occasionally considered a positive character trait. The opposite of patience.
Pessimism: Always expecting the worst possible outcome. Bringing people down. Not working toward a better future, because you don’t believe one can exist. The opposite of optimism.
Unforgivingness: Not being able to cease feelings of anger and resentment toward another person or yourself. The opposite of forgivingness.
Pettiness: Acting with cruelty regarding matters that are perceived to be unimportant. Also known as small-mindedness or passive-aggression.
Narcissism: Basking in ego. You can only believe good things about yourself, taking anything negative as a false attack.
Impoliteness: Showing disrespect to all persons, or to persons who you believe to be beneath you. The opposite of politeness.
Thoughtlessness: You do without thinking of the consequences for others. Your reasoning only considers your own wants. You are not introspective. The opposite of thoughtfulness.

I put together this ultimate character traits list to make it easy for you to recognize these traits in yourself, in others, and to figure out how you should go about gaining more positive traits while losing some negative ones.

If you’re interested in hearing more from me, be sure to subscribe to my free email newsletter, and if this list of character traits has been helpful, be sure to bookmark it, or download the printable list of positive and negative character traits PDF, so you can come back to it often. ∎

Making Your Priorities a Priority

2019-01-23T00:00:00-05:00

We choose what to make a priority. While it may sometimes feel like we don’t have time for the things we really want to do, in reality we’re simply not making these things a priority in our day-to-day life.

We may tell ourselves, for example, that we want to become a top one-percent public speaker. This is a lofty goal, for sure, but it’s an attainable one—if we put in the work. But instead we decide that we don’t have the time to work toward this goal—we don’t have the time to attend public speaking classes, workshops, seminars, and the like.

Except, this isn’t true. We do have the time to do all of these things; we’re just not making them a priority. If we made our public speaking goal a priority, we could easily take the time to look up when and where public speaking classes near us meet every week. We could then configure our schedule so we can go to these classes on the way home from work—or we could even take a day off to attend an all-day workshop.

I’m not going to pretend that making our priorities a priority isn’t easier for some than it is for others. If you’re a single parent, or the sole caregiver of a young or disabled child (or an elderly relative), your priorities and theirs will have to be, for the most part, one and the same.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t try. Make your priorities a priority, and prioritize your time accordingly. If you don’t, others will be sure to prioritize it for you. ∎

Leonardo da Vinci, the Greatest Dentist of All Time

2019-01-09T00:00:00-05:00

I’m currently making my way through Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci, as I noted back in November.

In a section titled The Skull Drawings, Isaacson touched upon a point that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about since. The drawings, which Leonardo did in 1489, show a human in various cross-sectioned forms. In one of the drawings, Leonardo worked with a skull that had been sawed in half, top to bottom, then the front of the left half was sawed off, making it easy, Isaacson notes, to see how the inner cavities were positioned relative to the face:

To the left of the face Leonardo drew each of the four types of human teeth, with a note saying that a human typically has thirty-two, including the wisdom teeth. With this, as far as is now known, he became the first person in history to describe fully the human dental elements, including a depiction of the roots that is almost perfect.

The point Isaacson then made was that if there were not so much else to remember him for, Leonardo could have been celebrated as a pioneer of dentistry. Just think of that! Here is one of the most famous painters, architects, and—many could reasonably argue—scientists of all time, yet if all that was stripped away, he still would have likely been celebrated within another field.

Now that I’m feeling suitably under-accomplished, I’ll get back to the book. ∎

All or Something

2018-12-18T00:00:00-05:00

Yesterday, a tweet by Inc. Magazine claiming that “The world’s most successful people start their day at 4 a.m.” was being retweeted in droves by people looking to vent their frustration at the claim. (J.K. Rowling told the author to “piss off.”)

And honestly, I can’t blame them. After clicking through to the article accompanying the tweet and, thankfully, confirming that me and my book were not referenced in the piece, I gave it a quick read and noticed just how unnecessary the tweet’s claim was.

While the author shouldn’t be the only one placed at fault for this—at many magazines and media organizations, including ones I’ve written for, article authors are unlikely to be writing their own headlines—they continued to push the 4:00 a.m. idea throughout the piece and, assuming they didn’t write the headline themselves, the article’s content was all the ammunition the headline writer needed to create it.

The reality, of course, is much different. If you’ve read my book you’ll know that while we do interview some people that get up at 4:00 a.m., with General Stanley McChrystal being the first example that jumps to my mind, this is far from the norm.

The average wake-up time of everyone we interviewed for the book, and on our website is 06:23 a.m., with our participants sleeping an average of seven hours and 29 minutes a night. So sure, some successful people wake up at 4:00 a.m., but many wake up much later.

Many people are put off creating a brand new morning routine, with tweets and articles like the above not helping, because they think of it as an “all or nothing” proposition. They feel that they can either stick to what they have right now—a routine they’ve grown comfortable with, even if it’s not ideal for them—or they have to do a whole lot of work to completely change their way of living.

This couldn’t be further from the truth (and to this idea, I repeat Ms. Rowling’s remark). If you want to start getting up earlier, making the jump from your current wake-up time to a 4:00 a.m. alarm would be a terrible idea. Similarly, if you want to start working out, meditating, or practicing yoga as a part of your morning routine, going from a standing start to spending an hour on any one of these each morning is very quickly going to become too difficult to keep up.

Forget “all or nothing.” Take an all or something approach to your mornings. Sure, one day you’ll be all-in on a brand new morning routine, but right now you’re just trying something out. Instead of waking up at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow, consider getting up just five minutes earlier than usual. If you usually wake up at 7:00 a.m., set your alarm for 6:55 instead. Then get up at this new time every day for the rest of the week. This may sound like a slow exercise, but adding in small changes like this makes it easier to form a new habit. Once you’ve been waking up five minutes earlier for a week, add another five minutes to your experiment, so you’re now getting up ten minutes earlier.

The same is true of a future morning exercise, meditation, or yoga routine. Start out by exercising for just fifteen minutes, and meditating and performing yoga for just five minutes each. You’ll soon recognize which of these routines you want to keep up—and increase the length of—and which you want to drop.

After all, our research found that the most successful people don’t start their day at 4:00 a.m.—they take an all or something approach to their mornings, and they’re still experimenting with tweaking, changing, and optimizing their routines in an attempt to bring greater results still. ∎

Resist the Candy

2018-11-27T00:00:00-05:00

Last week, while my wife and I were packing to stay with her parents over the Thanksgiving break, I decided to leave home the book I was currently reading, a three-pound hardcover edition of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Abraham Lincoln biography Team of Rivals, so as to save space in my bag. Besides, my mother-in-law had recently mentioned that she has a copy of the same book, so I knew I could pick up where I left off when we arrived.

Unfortunately, my mother-in-law’s copy was nowhere to be found, so she kindly routed around in her library to find me a couple of books I might be interested in reading instead.

She came up with Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci, and Bob Woodward’s newest presidential biography, Fear: Trump in the White House.

I had heard great things of Isaacson’s latest work. Ryan Holiday had recently praised it with as much passion as I’ve seen him give any book in recent years in his reading newsletter. My mother-in-law was equally enthusiastic in her praise.

The thing is, Isaacson’s book was the broccoli, the green beans, and the carrots all in one. It was the vegetables that I knew were good for me, but that were hard to get excited about. Woodward’s book was the candy. While I have no doubt there are lessons to learn from it, its nutritional content just wasn’t there compared to Isaacson’s vitamin-rich alternative.

Despite this, it took everything in me not to choose the candy. I’ve probably read hundreds of articles about the Trump presidency (and the prelude to it), all of them satisfying some need in me—a desire to feel anger, pity, superiority, or all of the above. I knew Woodward’s book would be more of the same, it would delight me in the most unhealthy of ways, after which I would feel exhausted and stressed for having spent so much time with it.

And so, I resisted the candy. I picked up Isaacson’s book and started reading. And just a few pages in (Leonardo’s a fascinating fella), I knew I’d made the right decision. ∎

Thanksgiving Every Morning

2018-11-20T00:00:00-05:00

One of the criticisms I sometimes hear of my book is of what they (often people commenting on social media about an article I’ve written) believe to be a chosen lack of responsibilities surrounding some of the people we interviewed in the book. It’s all very well, they say, spending your mornings working out, meditating, and doing what’s most important to you, but where do your kids fit into all of this? Or your partner? Or even your own down time?

The truth is that this couldn’t be further from the truth. The vast majority of the people we spoke to for the book place a lot of weight on the importance of spending time with their loved ones in the morning; especially if they have kids.

As an example, the attorney general of Washington State, Bob Ferguson, noted of his morning routine, “First, I have a little personal time—breakfast, coffee, the morning news… Then I wake up our nine-year-old twins, Jack and Katie—and my wife, Colleen—and I get them ready and out the door for school.” Ferguson continued, “I’m a big believer that how your day starts is really important. It’s easy for meetings to go late at work, or for other events to come up, and I’m not always guaranteed much time with them later in the day, so I like to lock in that morning time.”

He isn’t alone. Behavioral designer and author Nir Eyal told us regarding his family’s joint morning routine, “We’re big fans of the habit of showing appreciation to each other throughout the day, so we have a routine of every morning giving each other a big hug, kiss, and saying good morning and that we love each other.”

When I’m asked about my own morning routine during interviews I always relay the importance I place on keeping my mind uncluttered from the upcoming stresses of the day (this generally means not checking email or my social media feeds first thing, if I can help it) so I can have a relaxing breakfast with my wife in which we discuss our plans and challenges for the day ahead, without having a worrying email in the back of my mind that I know I’ll need to deal with as soon as I get to work.

None of us are without our flaws, of course. I fall down in this regard as often as anyone. But giving thanks for the ones we love should be a part of all of our mornings, bringing thanksgiving into our day, every day. ∎

Follow Up

2018-11-13T00:00:00-05:00

Earlier today I was speaking with someone about the importance of following up. How often have you sent an email, made a call, or physically knocked on someone’s door, only to receive nothing in return, and then decided to give up altogether?

I discovered the power of following up a few years ago, when My Morning Routine first started accepting sponsorships. Whether I was reaching out to potential sponsors directly, or they had initially reached out to me and I was supplying them with further details, I was often shocked at how effective following up on an otherwise dead-looking email chain could be.

And this has continued to be true. When Michael and I were approaching people to be in our book, we would sometimes have to follow up a couple times (three total emails) before we got a response—often in the affirmative. This consistently surprised me; why—I thought—would they reply enthusiastically to my third email asking them to take part, instead of the first or second? If they were interested in being interviewed, why didn’t they get back to me right away?

There are many reasons for this, but they all ultimately come down to being busy. Maybe the person you were reaching out to receives so many emails that they archive as many as they can every morning, and yours accidentally (or accidentally on purpose) was filed away before being read. Maybe they have an assistant take care of their emails and their assistant didn’t believe your request to be a good use of their employer’s time. Or maybe they just wanted to see how important a response from them really was to you. After all, if you give up without following up, you couldn’t have been that desperate to speak with them in the first place.

There is, of course, a difference between following up and harassing someone. Feel out those boundaries and, when in doubt, put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Whatever you do, make sure you follow-up at least once. Your message deserves it. ∎

On Thinking Before You Speak

2018-11-09T00:00:00-05:00

One of the criticisms Secretary Clinton received throughout her last presidential campaign was that she was too cagey. She didn’t come across as honest, trustworthy, and like a real person. Whenever she was asked a question during a debate or town hall meeting you could almost see the cogs whirring in her brain as she decided how best to answer.

The same was true of President Obama throughout his presidency. He could hardly be accused of being someone who said anything “off the cuff.” In fact, he was frequently known for over-explaining his answers; giving much more information than the interviewer could possibly want, which in turn hampered their ability to ask further questions.

This is not, however, a rebuttal of Clinton or Obama. Quite the opposite; Secretary Clinton and President Obama have both mastered the ability to think before they speak—that old chestnut that was repeated ad nauseam to us as children. While they, Clinton in particular, were sometimes criticized for this, it’s worth noting that they were criticized for their rare slip-ups—those moments in which they spoke without first thinking through their answer—even more. (Clinton’s “basket full of deplorables,” comment being a particularly well-circulated example.)

In Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin notes that James Russell Lowell described Abraham Lincoln’s ability to speak “as if the people were listening to their own thinking out loud.” I love this idea, but in reality, as I’m sure Lincoln was well aware, in order to get to this stage you need to have already put in the heavy lifting—your own thinking—before you speak.

This is as true in our own lives as it is of the lives of former presidents and presidential candidates. Thinking before we speak is something I’ve personally learned the benefit of only very recently. Whether while giving media interviews for my recent book, or in daily conversations with my wife, I gain a certain something when I pause, allow for the cogs to whirr, and then say my piece—with the fact that I’m significantly less likely to offend the person I’m speaking with being the icing on the cake.

Your thinking deserves to see the light of day. Think before you speak to allow it to rise up and be heard. ∎

Mein Morgen Ritual

2018-11-02T00:00:00-04:00

I remember the first time something I wrote was translated into a different language. It was a piece I’d written for the Huffington Post about a week before that was doing pretty well. I received an email in Korean with clear Huffington Post branding that directed me to this article (here’s its English counterpart).

I was excited. A few days later the same piece came out in Spanish and German. The excitement continued.

All this is to say that the first translation edition of My Morning Routine, pretty wonderfully titled Mein Morgen Ritual, is available in stores across Germany now! I received my copies in the mail a couple days ago, and it feels pretty great. Despite my co-author Michael being German, I can’t read or speak a word of it, but it’s fun to flick through all the same.

For those asking, the next translations coming up are Korean, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), and Russian. Working hard on getting some more translation editions (I’m batting hard for Portuguese, Spanish, and French) solidified in the near future. ∎

Thank You

2018-07-02T00:00:00-04:00

There was a moment, six weeks ago, while writing article after article and recording interview after interview, that I thought “I need to update my blog telling people that my book is on sale!”

While this may be a little after the fact now, I just want to say thank you to everyone who bought the book, gifted it to someone else, or (to be honest) even just lent it to a friend or family member, or picked it up from your local library. That was really cool of you.

The book has been chosen as one of Amazon’s best business books of 2018, one of the Financial Times books of the month, and one of Business Insider’s best business books to read this summer. If you’ve not done so already, you can order the book now in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and a number of other countries. We currently have translation deals in I think five different countries, the first of which, Mein Morgen Ritual, comes out in Germany on October 8.

Thank you again, and if you enjoyed the book don’t forget to review it! Reviews are the lifeblood of books; even if you haven’t finished mine yet, consider reviewing someone else’s book in the meantime. I promise they’ll appreciate it. ∎

If You Seek Tranquility, Do Less

2018-04-24T00:00:00-04:00

In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius writes:

If you seek tranquility, do less. Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquility. Ask yourself at every moment, “Is this necessary?”

This is a good question to ask ourselves at every moment, especially when we’re being pulled this way and that, and struggling from overwhelm in our work and daily life.

When we ask ourselves “Is this necessary?” we’ll invariably find ourselves answering that it is not, or at least, that it doesn’t have to happen now, or it can be batched to take place at another time, or it can be delegated to someone else.

If you seek tranquility, do less. Do what’s essential, and do it now. ∎

External vs. Internal Character Traits

2018-04-17T00:00:00-04:00

External character traits are all around us. They’re what we choose to outwardly project to the world, whether in what we wear, what we share, or the causes we choose to side with or argue against.

Internal character traits are hard to define but easy to recognise. While first impressions can count for a lot, the longer you get to know someone the better an understanding you’ll get of the quality of their internal character traits over the external. Are they a loving mother, father, wife, husband, daughter, or son? Do they care deeply for their family, their community, and the world as a whole?

In post-war America and Europe, and in some instances even sooner, the focus began to shift from the internal to the external; that is, from building our internal character traits to choosing to display an external character that we believe (or simply hope) will be agreeable to those we want to impress. It’s been mentioned that Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People marked a change in the self-help genre whereby many previous works had focused on how to build your internal character traits, many new works began to explore how your external character traits can be manipulated to get you to where you want to be.

This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing in small doses, and in the right hands. As my wife put it to me, “People are still good people, but maybe our focus has shifted more towards external good deeds like saving the environment or endangered species rather than internally trying to have a good character.”

She then gave me the example of George Bailey in the 1946 Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life (one of my favourite movies). In the movie George, played by James Stewart, has plans to leave on a world tour right after high school before attending college, but after the sudden death of his father he chooses to stay in his small community of Bedford Falls to keep alive the family business, Building and Loan, after the board of directors votes to keep the business open (a business that much of the community relies upon) on the condition that George stays to run it.

George handed his college tuition over to his brother Harry on the condition that Harry will take over from him when he returns from college. Despite eagerly awaiting Harry’s return so he can finally see the world, when Harry returns four years later with a job offer from his father-in-law, George tells Harry to take it, offering (against his own self-interest) to continue to run the Building and Loan.

George’s internal character traits are clear for all to see in It’s a Wonderful Life. His life wasn’t glamorous, and in the end he didn’t get a “big win” against Mr. Potter, his family’s nemesis and the richest man in town. But without spoiling the movie too much (though it came out over seventy years ago, so you’ve had enough time to see it), the movie ends with George being surrounded by his friends, family, and his whole community, all of whom clearly love and value him for who he is. And that, in my wife’s words, is happy ending enough. ∎

My Morning Routine, the Book

2018-03-15T00:00:00-04:00

After much secrecy I’m excited to finally announce that I, along with my co-author Michael Xander, have a book coming out!

My Morning Routine is being published by Portfolio/Penguin and will be available everywhere books are sold on May 15, 2018. You can pre-order the book now in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

This book has been a labor of love for over a year and a half. We were approached by an editor at Portfolio in the summer of 2016, and since then it has been all go. We contacted 631 potential interviewees for the book in the space of six months, with a small number being whittled down and making it into the finished work. I was personally lucky enough to speak with everyone from retired U.S. Army four-star General Stanley McChrystal, to the president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, Ed Catmull, to the life-changing tidying-upper herself, Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo.

If you’re not yet an email subscriber to My Morning Routine, the website, sign up here and you’ll receive the book’s introduction and the first routine included in it right now, for free. If you’re already an email subscriber, check your inbox. ∎

Incessant Clicking and Scrolling

2018-02-06T00:00:00-05:00

Not too long ago, I copied down these words by author and associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, Cal Newport:

Incessant clicking and scrolling generates a background hum of anxiety. Drastically reducing the number of things you do in your digital life can by itself have a significant calming impact.

Taken from a blog post exploring the idea of digital minimalism, the phrase “incessant clicking and scrolling” struck a nerve with me for just how accurate it was. We are incessantly clicking and scrolling our way through life, and it’s true that the background hum rarely, if ever, stops.

Newport has some thoughts on how to silence this noise, and I highly recommend his blog for practical recommendations on how to do so. Until then I challenge you to look out for this hum and not give in when you hear it. Just sit with it for as long as you can.

This is easier said than done, but we’ll be rewarded for our patience over time. ∎

Going Decaf

2018-02-05T00:00:00-05:00

Looking ahead to the year to come, last year I wrote down, amongst other notes, “Find out why I’m tired all the time.”

I’d had many theories on why this might be; my main being the comforting notion that everyone is just as tired as me. The afternoon slump is real, after all, and it’s something that the vast majority of us feel every day, regardless of whether or not we’ve had a big, carb-filled lunch (though this does make it worse).

But this wasn’t it. After exchanging notes with my wife—a non-coffee, occasional black tea drinker—on how she experiences daytime tiredness, it was clear that something wasn’t right. We eat the same foods and get the same amount of sleep for the most part, so my wife suggested that I cut coffee out of my diet. I’d previously only been drinking one or two cups a day, but it was clearly a prime candidate to be dropped, so I agreed to it.

Now, about three to four weeks after giving up caffeinated coffee and tea for good, I can say with reasonable certainty that it was the caffeine making me tired all the time. After a couple of weeks of just drinking decaf tea, I started to mix it up with a decaf coffee here and there. And while I’m aware that there is caffeine in decaf coffee and tea, I’m not drinking nearly enough of it to feel the effects.

If you’re feeling tired all the time, and you drink caffeinated coffee and/or tea on a regular basis, consider giving it up for a short period to see if your energy improves as a result. ∎

The Planning Fallacy

2018-02-02T00:00:00-05:00

I’m approximately three-quarters of the way through Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, and one of the insights that has stuck out to me the most so far is that of the planning fallacy.

The planning fallacy, in short, states that we tend to underestimate how long a task is going to take to complete. From taking out the trash, to writing an essay, to making a meal, we consistently believe that either our most optimistic guess of how long these tasks will take, or the fastest we have ever completed these tasks, are our averages. The planning fallacy does not foresee the natural complications that come up in our everyday lives. As Kahneman notes in the book:

Most of us view the world as more benign than it really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be. We also tend to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters optimistic overconfidence.

We all fall victim to the planning fallacy. I’d heard the phrase thrown around before I read it in Kahneman’s book (the book itself has become hugely popular, and has spent 156 weeks on the New York Times Paperback Nonfiction best sellers list as of this writing), but even then, I still tended to believe that my most optimistic guesses and my most impressive times are the norm. They’re not.

Give some thought to the planning fallacy the next time you’re pushed for time; and maybe extend your estimation a little further out. ∎

Log Cabin in a Forest

2018-02-01T00:00:00-05:00

Earlier today, I was pointed toward a video by Canadian outdoorsman, photographer, and self-reliance educator Shawn James.

The video is a five-minute time-lapse of James building a log cabin from scratch in the Canadian wilderness. You can watch it below:

I’ve seen similar videos to this in the past, but there is something about watching this time-lapse that, while massively underplaying the effort that this would have taken James, is truly magnificent to watch.

Using only hand tools, this was a one-man effort worthy of a medal. And while the time and resources to undertake such an effort is, of course, not available to all of us, I thank James, and others like him, for documenting his experience so the rest of us can enjoy it. (This reminds me of a thought I had a few months ago that we should create and share things because it’s rude to just consume. It’s uncivilized.)

For more from James, check out his website, on which he links to all his current videos. ∎

Fig Trees

2018-01-31T00:00:00-05:00

In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius prompts us:

You shouldn’t be surprised that a fig tree produces figs.

He goes on to state that “A good doctor isn’t surprised when his patients have fevers, or a helmsman when the wind blows against him.” The truth Marcus is getting at here, or at least as I understand it, is that past performance is a reasonable indicator of future results.

This isn’t always the case, as no doubt that last sentence reminded you of the common “Past performance is no guarantee of future results” line that is, sensibly, plastered across risky investment products. But in life, as with fig trees, medical patients, and the blowing winds upon the shore, past performance is no guarantee of future results… but it’s a reasonable bet. ∎

Our Choices

2018-01-30T00:00:00-05:00

In J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, upon confessing to Professor Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, that the Sorting Hat (a hat new students put on their head to determine which house they will be placed) only placed him in Gryffindor because he explicably asked not to be put in Slytherin, Harry was greeted by this reply from Dumbledore:

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

And so it is. In this example, Dumbledore was telling Harry that he needn’t worry that he was only placed in Gryffindor (the arguably “good” house) instead of Slytherin (the inarguably “bad” house) because he asked not to be placed in the latter, because by asking not to be put in Slytherin he was making a choice to reject the bad in favor of the good.

Harry was aghast that the Sorting Hat had considered his qualities consistent with those who had been placed in Slytherin house before him, but his choice to reject these qualities is ultimately what showed him off for who he is; to his moral credit. ∎

Your Days

2018-01-29T00:00:00-05:00

I was recently reminded of a post by Austin Kleon in which he offered up these words:

[Success] is closing the gap between what your days look like and what you want your days to look like.

I’ve thought about this line almost every day since hearing it, and it has become increasingly relevant as my wife and I have been feeling a newfound realization of the importance of the basics in life. Though we’re not minimalists (despite this being something I frequently described myself as and wrote about around the time I met her), we’ve come to realize that we have our own goals and ideas in life, and it’s okay if they don’t exactly match the goals and ideas of the people real, fictitious, or a composite, we may aspire to be.

Part of this is growing older. I’m lucky in that my wife is three years younger than me (this is, of course, not the only reason why I’m lucky to be married to her), so I frequently come up with her age when considering “our age,” but the point is the same.

Your days are all you have, and closing the gap between what they look like and what you want them to look like is a worthy goal. You will likely never close this gap all the way, and that’s okay. There will be points in your life where this gap will feel like an unbeatable chasm, and this is to be expected. But as Kleon notes, “What do you want your days to look like?” is a question he asks himself whenever he’s trying to make a decision about what to do next. In his own words:

I believe that most questions about what to do with one’s life can be replaced by this question… [it] forces you to imagine the day in, day out realities that making such choices will present you with.

So, what do you want your days to look like? ∎

Don’t Waste Time on Nonsense

2017-12-29T00:00:00-05:00

Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor from 161 AD up until his death in 180, implores us (or rather, himself) in his Meditations “Not to waste time on nonsense.”

How true is that? Of course, what is nonsense to me may not be nonsense to you, and vice versa. And what any of us believe to be “the nonsense” that we’re wasting our time on now may later turn out to be important after all.

With that said, there are certain activities (such as refreshing Twitter or Facebook for the tenth time in the past half hour) that are, unless you work for either of these companies, unquestionably nonsense. Later in Meditations (all quotations are coming from the excellent Gregory Hays translation) Marcus goes on to remind us (himself) about the importance of character and self-control, noting: “Remembering that our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to,” and “Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions.”

Stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions; don’t waste time on nonsense. Easier said than done, but a high and worthy ideal to take into this new year all the same. ∎

Reviewing Pains

2017-11-16T00:00:00-05:00

One of the hardest parts of reviewing books is justifying one rating against another.

In my rating system, a color-coded spreadsheet which my wife rightly points out is somewhat over the top, I allow for half-ratings (I readily admit this is something of a cop-out, as it allows me to pile on the 4.5 ratings while preserving five star ratings for the best of the best), which helps but doesn’t solve this problem.

For example, I recently gave both Robert Greene’s Mastery and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking a 4.5. Do I personally believe both books to be equal in status? No. For me, Mastery is the superior book (no offence, Joan), but when I rate books I’m rating them against similar books in their field, as well as against other titles by the same author. This means that Mastery was held to a higher standard than The Year of Magical Thinking, in deference to Greene’s previous books, which I believe to be superior works of his.

I’m sure this is a wholly unfair strategy, but it works for me. ∎

Putting Ourselves Together Every Day

2017-11-07T00:00:00-05:00

Every morning we go through a very personal routine to put ourselves together. We have perfected this routine throughout our lives. We know each part of the routine intimately.

We recognize our different pairs of socks. They may not be in any way special to us, but we could pick them out in a laundry bin full of others. We know them intimately, yet the people we see each and every day couldn’t recognize a pair of our socks from one day to the next.

Next, we spend some time with our favorite mug. Our mug doesn’t enter into our consciousness throughout our day, but in that moment, we’re aware that it’s a great mug. We look at the other mugs in our kitchen in disgust. “You’ll never hold my tea”, you think. “You’ll never be my favorite.”

We walk to the bathroom, instinctively picking out our toothbrush from the pot of twenty (the ratio of toothbrushes to residents is always exaggerated). Our toothbrush doesn’t enter our mind for 23 hours, 55 minutes of every day, but for those remaining five minutes, we’re all about our toothbrush. Maybe it’s due to be replaced. We’ll recognize that, but you can be sure we won’t be thinking about it later.

Every day, we put ourselves together for the day ahead. Each little activity contributes to the larger role of getting us out the door. Getting us to market. Getting us shipped.

You’ll mess up along the way. Even after putting myself together every day for 29 years I still, from time to time, leave the house (go to market, ship) without wearing a belt.

It’ll happen. You’ll end up with your trousers around your ankles, socks on your hands, and toothpaste in your hair. Regardless, throw yourself into each step of your morning routine. Be in the moment with each step, like you are with your socks, your mug, and your toothbrush. Make the steps a part of you.

Figure out the steps you need to take to do something, then do them.

And don’t forget your belt. ∎

Quake Books

2017-10-16T00:00:00-04:00

I’ve been thinking about quake books recently. The concept of ‘quake’ books and ‘quake’ reading came to me through Ryan Holiday, who in an almost decade-old blog post discussed an email exchange he had with the economist Tyler Cowen.

In the exchange, Cowen noted that as he gets older he’s running out of books to read that can profoundly change his views or open up his mind to something new—or at least that’s how I interpreted his thoughts. (As it happens, Holiday and Cowen’s morning routines—both of which include reading quake books whenever possible—can be found in my book.)

I’ve found this to be true in my own reading, yet I am fortunate to be young enough (and to not have read especially voraciously in my early twenties) that such books still exist to grab me. I’ve read two quake books this year, out of 45 total books for the year so far.

Quake books may not come around that often, but when they do, you know it. You get a tingling feeling on the back of your neck, and you just have to read on; you have to. It’s a different sensation to being in the middle of a gripping scene in a thriller, it’s something much more urgent. You need to absorb everything on the pages in front of you, as fast as you can. It’s primal, it represents your true thirst for knowledge.

Quake books represent why we read. ∎

What Works for You

2015-04-07T00:00:00-04:00

In a recent article for The Huffington Post (republished on Medium) I spoke of the hidden brilliance of late risers; something my research on the topic showed is rarely spoken of. I ended the article with:

Late risers shouldn’t feel pressured into ‘becoming’ an early bird. One isn’t better than the other; the most important thing is you know what works for you.

And it’s true. In the same way that late risers shouldn’t feel pressured into ‘becoming’ an early bird, an early bird shouldn’t feel pressured in the opposite direction.

What works for you is so much more important than what works for me, what works for your partner, or what works for your friends and social group.

Of course, as commented on in the article, if you have a job that requires you to work a ‘standard’ work day, or you have children, doing what works for you is significantly harder for late risers than early risers. And this sucks, it truly does. But that doesn’t mean you can’t accept this and work with it to improve the quality of your mornings, if only slightly.

Doing what works for you doesn’t mean doing what you want, when you want. Some of us are lucky enough to choose when we sleep, work, and eat lunch; but for those of us that aren’t; at least when we figure out when we’re most productive we’re on the road to improving the quality (and quantity) of our output.

And hopefully, we’re getting enough sleep along the way. ∎

Procrastinate Smart

2015-02-20T00:00:00-05:00

For somebody who harps on about productivity as much as I do, I’m insanely good at procrastinating.

We all say this of course, followed by a laugh about how lazy we all are, but seriously. If I have one thing I need to be getting on with, I’ll do everything else in the world to avoid doing what I need to do.

While going through my most recent spell of looking at what I needed to do, followed by four Instagram refreshes and a quick check on the news, I noticed that in-between these distractions I was working on something that I didn’t need to work on at that moment, but it needed to get done.

It wasn’t the ‘one thing’ I needed to be getting on with, but it was something I needed to do all the same. Though my ordering was dramatically off, at least while I was procrastinating I was still getting something worthwhile done, something that I would have needed to do after my ‘one thing’ anyway.

It reminded me of something I read recently (I can’t remember who by) where the writer said that whenever he falls deep into a procrastination bubble he lets himself run with it. He closes the program/tab he had been working on, and he lets himself totally indulge in his habit of procrastination, actively telling himself he can’t work; he has to procrastinate.

It doesn’t take long for him to become tired of swiping down to refresh Twitter before he jumps at the chance to get back on with the work he had originally intended for himself.

This situation is not ideal, but where’s the fun in that? Avoiding procrastination altogether, though possible in certain situations, is rarely going to work. Much better to procrastinate on the ‘one thing’ you really need to do with something you need to do with less urgency, than doing nothing at all. ∎

The Perfect Sleep Environment

2015-02-11T00:00:00-05:00

We’ve heard it must exist, but the perfect sleeping environment still eludes most of us despite our best efforts.

Though the simplicity of the three areas I’ll cover is clear, I’ve gone into some detail on each. If you decide to use any of the recommendations I’ve written of I’d suggest you only make a couple of changes at a time.

There are hundreds of reasons why you may be struggling to sleep that are unrelated to your sleep environment (such as the movements of your bed partner, drinking alcohol before bed, or an uncomfortable mattress), but if these haven’t presented themselves it’s your duty to yourself to deal with your environmental factors first.

Light

The perfect sleep environment is dark. Very dark.

Despite all the good electric lighting has brought us, artificial lights are the enemy of a good night’s sleep as our bodies haven’t had enough time to adapt and evolve with the number of artificial lights littering our homes throughout the night.

Quoted from Sleep: A Very Short Introduction by Steven W. Lockley and Russell G. Foster:

The introduction of electric lighting in the 19th century, and the restructuring of work hours and social schedules caused by industrialization, have meant that our species has become progressively detached from the natural 24-hour cycles of light and dark.

The 24-hour cycles of light and dark, regulated through our eyes, are essential for getting a good night’s sleep, but our modern use of artificial lighting is having a profound impact on our nighttime light exposure (something our ancestors would have never experienced), which is doing untold damage to the quality of our sleep.

Under natural conditions melatonin is released early in the evening to make us drowsy and prepare us for sleep. But in our modern society artificial light disrupts our light/dark cycle (called our circadian rhythm; circadian meaning ‘about a day’ in Latin), preventing melatonin production until after we’ve turned out our bedroom lights and put down our phones.

It’s been suggested that the use of electric lighting to extend our day beyond that of our candle-bearing ancestors has many health implications, though not everybody working in the field of sleep research agrees with these theories. From Sleep: A Very Short Introduction:

Light exposure at night elevates heart rate and so waking repeatedly at night might increase the variability in heart function at a time when, under natural conditions, bright light would never be seen… The widespread use of electric lighting at night effectively consigns society to live in a never-ending metabolic summer — perhaps the increased rates of obesity are in part because we never experience a biochemical winter to use up the fat stores laid down earlier in the year.

The Bluest Light

More than any other color, blue light (the color that comes off our phone, tablet, and computer screens) shifts the rhythm of our circadian clock, blocking melatonin production, helping us to stay awake and alert through an increase in reaction times and continued activation in areas of our brain that would otherwise be slowing down; preparing for a less active role during sleep.

Blue light is so harmful to proper sleep that ‘blue-light therapy’ is a treatment for people suffering from seasonal affective disorder (also known as winter depression), helping to pep them up by having them sit in front of a light box for a number of sessions each day.

Stripping the Blue Light

One of my favourite Mac applications (also available on Windows and Linux) is a free program called Flux which offers a powerful compromise to those of us worried about ruining our sleep by staring at our screens into the evening, but who appreciate having these hours to work when needed.

Flux works by stripping the blues from your screen as the sun begins to set, uncovering a strong yellow glow that’s softer on our eyes. Unfortunately Flux isn’t available on iOS (unless you jailbreak your phone), but there are a number of options for Android users, including Twilight and Night Filter.

Removing Light from Your Bedroom

The ideal sleep environment shouldn’t use any artificial lighting, but this is an unreasonable ask (if you’re willing to go the no-artificial lighting route read this educational, funny piece by J.D. Moyer on his experiences doing exactly that).

One step in this direction would be to use your electric lighting on a dim setting if your overhead lights allow (if not, invest in a lamp that does). Better still, use a dim red-bulb, as red light doesn’t affect our circadian rhythm as much as white or blue lighting.

Turning off Standby Lights

It may sound petty, but the pinpoint standby lights that litter your bedroom have an affect on the quality of your sleep. The darker your room, the more noticeable they will be. Turn them off. You’ll thank yourself in the morning.

Hang Heavy Curtains or Wear a Sleep Mask

The recent popularity of blinds and thin curtains may have tidied up our windows, but they haven’t done much to improve the quality of our sleep.

The brighter lighting inside our homes is coupled with much brighter nighttime environments outside our homes, especially if we live in a city (as a general rule, you shouldn’t be able to see from one side of your room to another once your eyes have adjusted to the darkness).

Block out outside light with heavy curtains, or wear a sleep mask. Though they’re not the most comfortable solution, I wear a sleep mask for the last third of the night during the summer; often waking around 4:00am to reach across for it, rather than putting it on when I go to bed.

Sound

Noise can be an issue depending on what sleep stage you’re in when a sound occurs, as well as an unending range of other factors.

New parents, for example, tend to be more alert to noises in their home than childless couples, though it could be argued that this is because they rarely get the chance to fall into deep sleep…

If you’re frequently hounded by the sounds outside your window you have two options: wear earplugs, or use a white noise machine.

Using a white noise machine (or app) is an option if the noise keeping you awake can be drowned out by the machine. If you need complete silence to sleep I’ve suggested wearing earplugs to many friends and family members over the years, but two complaints keep coming up; they don’t like the way they feel, and they’re scared they’ll sleep through their alarm.

Both of these complaints are valid, but you can find comfortable earplugs that you’ll get used to wearing if you look hard enough, and if you’re worried about sleeping through your alarm you should try them out on a night you don’t have to get up for work in the morning, making sure to put your alarm on its maximum volume setting. It works for me.

If you often find yourself sleeping through your alarm, waking up feeling groggy and disoriented, you may want to start going to bed earlier or take afternoon naps, as there’s a good chance you’re not getting enough sleep.

Temperature

Your body temperature rises and falls during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, meaning you’re better off sleeping in a cool environment than a warmer one, as sleeping in a warm room can be uncomfortable and your rising body temperature during REM sleep has a good chance of waking you in the middle of the night.

Sleeping in a cool environment is so conducive to a good night’s sleep that there’s a popular treatment for insomnia known as ‘passive body heating’ where you take a hot bath an hour or two before your bedtime to raise your core body temperature. The change in your body temperature (as you cool down after your hot bath) makes you sleepy as you expend excess energy to make such a temperature drop possible. The same sleepiness occurs if you take an ice-cold bath, as it’s the energy needed to bring your body back to its core body temperature that causes your sleepiness, rather than the temperature of the bath itself.

Regulating your body temperature before going to sleep, and during the night, plays a large role in keeping you asleep. Quoted from Sleep: A Very Short Introduction (forgive the length, it’s worth it):

Temperature regulation is a key factor in falling and staying asleep, and poor temperature regulation is associated with sleep complaints. Poor circulation is one potential cause and may be associated with sleep complaints in older people.

As we go to sleep, core body temperature falls more quickly than the natural circadian decline, and is accompanied by increased heat loss at our extremities (hands and feet). People with poor circulation and cold hands and feet cannot lose as much heat and take longer to get to sleep. Warming the hands and feet, which causes vasodilation and increases body heat loss, increases sleepiness and increases the likelihood of falling asleep.

So Grandma was right — bed socks and a night-cap are a good idea, as they will increase overall heat loss and help you get to sleep.

The perfect sleep environment does exist, but it requires us to make some changes to the way we prepare for a night of sleep well ahead of our head hitting the pillow.

Though many factors affect the quality of our sleep (with having a consistent sleep routine being one of the most positive), sleeping in a perfect (or close to perfect) sleep environment can make all the difference. ∎

This post was first published on Medium. If you enjoyed it, please recommend it on Medium and follow me there!

How to Nap

2015-02-11T00:00:00-05:00

If you wake up groggy after napping, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Afternoon fatigue is a real problem; a problem that can cause us to dose ourselves with as much caffeine as possible as the inevitable decline of our day plays out. Your body is craving sleep. The solution to afternoon fatigue is simple: feed your body’s desire, don’t cover it up.

Napping has gained a resurgence in popularity in recent years, but it remains an area that’s largely frowned upon, rather than something that’s celebrated as the rejuvenating method of upping your per-day productivity that it is.

But you can’t go into this with your eyes closed (if you’ll excuse the pun). You have to be deliberate about when you nap, why you nap, and for how long you nap. The most useful naps, after all, depend on what you (the napper) need.

Periods of Intense Sleepiness

The human body has been designed for two periods of intense sleepiness; from 2:00-4:00am and from 1:00-3:00pm.

Most mammals sleep for several periods throughout the day. The typical household cat, for example, needs 12 hours of sleep a day, with them (as we all know) making up this number over several occasions during a 24-hour period.

Unsurprisingly, our biology hasn’t changed in line with how fast, evolutionarily speaking, we’ve changed to consolidate two periods of intense sleepiness into one long overnight period. For most of us, afternoon fatigue still sets in between 1:00-3:00pm, regardless of whether we eat lunch (studies show this effect still occurs when we skip our afternoon meal).

Napping during the second period of intense sleepiness is common in several Mediterranean and Spanish-influenced countries. The word ‘siesta’ derives from the Latin ‘hora sexta; sixth hour’ which, counted down from dawn, points to midday.

Power Naps (10-20 Minutes)

Power naps of between 10-20 minutes are a deliberate form of napping designed to get the maximum possible efficiency from your nap, or more “bang for your buck,” as Dr. Leon Lack, professor of psychology at Flinders University, Australia describes it.

During a power nap you’ll remain in stage two light sleep (stage one is falling asleep), which may include a small amount of non-rapid eye movement (NREM).

Waking from a power nap should leave you feeling alert and energized, with you often being unsure whether you fell asleep or not.

Full-Cycle Naps (90 Minutes)

A nap of 90 minutes, or one full sleep cycle, can help to reduce your sleep deficit if you’re feeling sleep deprived, especially when it’s taken in the 1:00-3:00pm window.

During a full-cycle nap you’ll experience every sleep stage, starting in stage two (light sleep: NREM), moving to stages three and four (deep, slow-wave sleep), before reaching rapid eye movement (REM) sleep; the dream phase.

The sleep stages will then reverse until you’re back in stage two, at which point your 90-minute alarm should be due to go off, allowing you to avoid sleep inertia (see ‘avoiding sleep inertia’ below).

Caffeine Naps

The half-life of caffeine is enormous (upwards of six hours), but it only takes about 20 minutes for your body to start feeling the effects once consumed.

When you drink a cup of coffee or black tea (or take a caffeine supplement) before a power nap you should feel the caffeine start to kick in as you wake.

Caffeine naps are especially effective when you’re required to drive long distances. Scientists at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom found caffeine naps beat out a number of alternatives (such as napping or drinking caffeine by themselves, and getting fresh air) in reducing driver fatigue among study participants.

How to Wake Up

You can make waking up from your nap as easy or complicated as you like. On the easier side, set an alarm (or countdown timer) on your phone, placing it beside you as you nap.

If you have an iPhone, the company behind the popular Sleep Cycle app recently released Power Nap, an app that will wake you before you enter deep, slow-wave sleep (or after you’ve come out of it, for a full-cycle nap). I’ve used it a handful of times, and I’ve woken up refreshed every time — something which happens about 2/3 of the time when I use the standard iPhone alarm.

For a more unconventional approach, consider Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí’s method:

Obsessed with the creative potential of sleep, Dalí placed a tin plate on the floor before sitting relaxed in a chair beside it, holding a metal spoon over the plate. In this relaxed state he would soon fall asleep, causing the spoon to slip between his fingers, landing with a loud clang; waking him with a mixture of ideas and images ripe in his mind.

Best Practices

Napping best practices are mostly common sense and similar to regular sleeping best practices—avoid light and noise by wearing a sleep mask and comfortable ear plugs (if necessary) and nap in a cool room.

Stick to the same nap routine over time, scheduling it into your day as an absolute; an unmoving commitment to yourself.

For power naps, less really is more. In a study comparing naps ranging in length between 30 seconds and 30 minutes, 24 participants at Flinders University in Australia were tested on a number of mental-processing tasks after their nap. According to lead-professor Dr. Leon Lack, the sharpness of the 10-minute nappers became clear immediately and remained intact for over two hours afterwards.

Avoiding Sleep Inertia

The whole philosophy behind deliberate napping is to avoid sleep inertia: that feeling of grogginess (and a desperate desire to go back to sleep) experienced after being woken.

Power or full-cycle naps reduce your chance of experiencing sleep inertia, as the former doesn’t allow you to fall into deep sleep and the latter allows you to snooze through your deep-sleep period, waking you when you’ve cycled back round to stage two, light sleep.

If you wake up groggy after napping you’re probably doing it wrong. Naps of 45-60 minutes are counterproductive for most of us. You’ll reduce your sleep deficit, sure, but the impaired alertness, reduction in motor dexterity, and general feeling of tiredness is generally not worth it.

—

Afternoon fatigue is here to stay, but deliberate napping can help us to get the most out of our day while avoiding the rapid decline in our afternoon productivity.

Feed your body’s biological desire for a second period of intense sleepiness with precisely what it craves, rather than masking it with caffeine. And please let me know how you get on. ∎

This post was first published on Medium. If you enjoyed it, please recommend it on Medium and follow me there!

I Can’t Trace Time

2013-01-22T00:00:00-05:00

Time is a complicated thing. We’ll often talk about how we’re going to spend our time, how we don’t have enough time, or how we arrived at an appointment half an hour early and have to ‘waste’ time beforehand.

In all three of these examples, we’re looking at time in a different way, and all three of these views could belong to any of us, all on the very same day.

Two years ago I wrote about how time is our only real currency, something I still believe entirely in the context of the post. More than just that though, time is something that is going to happen regardless. There are no surprises when it comes to time. Contrary to popular belief, you can’t spend time, waste time, or try to stretch time out.

Everything we experience in our lives passes through that little thing we call our mind, and the idea of time is little more than what we choose to focus our mind on in the present.

Our experience of a particular ‘time,’ whether positive or negative, relates entirely to what our mind was focused on, which is why we will return from a vacation saying that we had the best (read: most relaxing, adventurous, intimate) time, and why we’ll return from work one evening to declare we had a horrible (read: boring, unchallenging, dissatisfying) time.

We can’t always control what we should be focusing our mind on in the present, due to work or other obligations, but we can choose to focus our mind on positive and happy thoughts and ideas in our down time, such as when standing in line or waiting for the kettle to boil.

When we regard time as what we’re choosing to focus our mind on in the present, rather than something we can spend, wish for more of, or waste, the idea of time becomes a whole lot simpler. ∎

Make a Choice, Any Choice

2012-11-16T00:00:00-05:00

Not too long ago, I wrote about how (and why) it’s a good idea to act actively, not passively, in your day to day life.

The idea is that there is so much information available nowadays that it can become easy to sit back and let it wash over you, piece by piece, tab by tab, meme by meme, until you’re unable to even stand up, let alone create something of value yourself. In the words of English poet, translator, and satirist Alexander Pope (1699-1744), “Forever reading, never to be read.”

With that said, sometimes you’re actively looking for information. Sometimes the whole point is to search for something to read to help you solve a problem.

In this case, while it may at first seem handy that there are 750 million search results for your query, this doesn’t much help you when you have to go through these results, not only checking the validity of each, but trying to discover which is most relevant to you, or which may most suit your current needs.

Even if you bring your results down to four or five choices, it can still be difficult to decide upon one in which to follow, replicate, or learn from—assuming different ideas surrounding the specific piece of information you’re looking for is discussed in each.

The trick here is simple. Make a choice, any choice.

Choose to move forward, not remain stranded deliberating over the tiniest details. Make a choice, and move forward with confidence. The rest is up to you. ∎

Action > Planning

2012-09-07T00:00:00-04:00

We are too good at planning ahead. Whether jotting down our future plans into a journal, or stocking up on notebooks for the coming years, planning is our thing, and we’re well-learned in the habit.

Reduce everything you want to do, to an action you can do right now. — Jason Randal

But planning often doesn’t get us anywhere, at least in the beginning. I have a number of “plans” surrounding numerous different ideas and ventures, stored in both ink on the page and pixels on the screen that never got past the simple planning stage, despite their execution being meticulously planned out for months and years to come.

What do you want to do? From traveling the world to starting your first business, there are a thousand and one things you could plan around each of them right now; from making sure you look up the best backpack to take with you on a world trip, to deciding on a designer to piece together the logo for your new business.

But none of these things are what we should be asking ourselves right now. Before planning our lives away we need to take the first step in anything we want to do.

How will you fund yourself while traveling around the world? Is there a viable market for your business?

We all know that action is the only about-turn that ever gets us anywhere. Reduce everything you want to do to its first step, then take action on it. ∎

The Right Advice

2012-05-08T00:00:00-04:00

Asking for, taking, and dishing out advice are three very different practices that each hold their own difficulties.

It is often said that the advice we give to other people is the advice we most likely need to take ourselves. It’s easy to throw our words around, vaguely connecting experiences with results in a round-about attempt to find meaning from random events, but it’s a lot harder to ask for that advice in the first place—or to take it later down the line.

When it comes to taking advice from people (something we rarely do) we have to be sure that they’re either in a position that we want to be in, or they’re proactively working their way towards it.

Every ounce of advice they give will have been filtered through their personal experiences, as it’s their beliefs (the advice they gathered, and the advice they gave themselves) that got them there.

In the same way that we would ask a plumber for advice about our leaky faucet before we would ask a florist, because it is their experience that got them to becoming a plumber in the first place, we should be careful to only take advice from people we look up to, and that have done what we want to do.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t listen to other types of people. There are new ideas to be found all around us, just be sure to differentiate between these different types, as they will be highly personal to you, and you alone.

Focus on these people; your mentors, your influencers, and sooner than you know it, you’ll be making similar strives in the direction you want to go. ∎

The Weight

2012-05-04T00:00:00-04:00

The weight on your shoulders is bigger than you think.

People are looking for you to succeed. They are looking for proof that you can be great so they can be great too. However much their words say otherwise, they’re secretly willing you along.

Sure, chances are that they won’t pick up on their own opportunities, but so long as you give them hope, the hope that “I can do it, so you can do it too,” they’ll follow along with you all day long.

That’s why whenever we want to do anything nowadays, the first thing we do is search online for other people who have done that same thing before us. And we find hundreds of examples. We’ll go to their blog, follow them on Twitter, like their Facebook page, and watch their journey as they continue to do what we want to do.

And we start to will them along. We want them to succeed so much, as their success is our (potential) success. Every time they hit a new milestone we celebrate with them like they’re a member of our family or one of our closest friends, and they are, as their representation of our passion creates a feeling deep in us like only a family member or best friend can.

So remember, you’re only at the beginning. Stay humble, and stay focused. People are looking for you to succeed. ∎

No Amount of Caffeine Can Motivate You Above a Great Idea

2011-10-20T00:00:00-04:00

A couple of days ago, I was taking the train into work in a daze. I was tired. I hadn’t been this tired in a long time.

The night before I had intended on having an early night. I’d been working hard at my real-life, non-online job for a few days on 5-6 hours sleep a night, and it was starting to tell.

I went to bed at 11:00 p.m., but then, much to the annoyance of the rest of my body, it struck.

An idea.

I stayed awake until one o’clock in the morning, working frantically online, pulling in different ideas, registering domains and generally getting over-excited about the endless possibilities this idea could bring. If it wasn’t for me forcing myself to eventually get some sleep, I doubt I would have.

Back to the train the following day. I was checking Twitter on my phone when I wrote what I assumed to be a standard, throw-away tweet:

No amount of caffeine can motivate you above a great idea.

Those words ran around in my head for the remainder of the day. I wrote them down on a piece of paper and placed it in my pocket, so scared I was of forgetting them.

The previous night I had been so tired I could barely pull myself up into bed, let alone write today’s post (about something entirely different) as I had intended.

But a great idea. That’s something else. Even if it doesn’t turn out to be a great idea (who knows, this may be a white elephant the size of the Millennium Dome), the fact is that in the moment I couldn’t have possibly fallen asleep. Scooping coffee into my eyes would have been less effective at keeping me awake (and a damn sight more painful) than a great idea.

If you ever find that you don’t have the motivation to keep working, be it late at night or the middle of the afternoon, ask yourself; are you working on a great idea?

It doesn’t have to be something new. If you are doing something that you love, and you can see the positive impact it has either on the world, or just a smaller intimate group of people around you, you are working on a great idea.

Sometimes it’s not possible, in this moment, to be working on a great idea. If you are working a job you don’t like, you may be working towards an idea you have no interest in, and that’s fine. Just make sure you are working on your great idea in your own time.

The greatest start-ups of the day were born out of somebody working on them as side projects while they kept down their full-time job.

They weren’t working on their great idea during the day, but they sure as hell were putting in the time and getting things done out of hours.

So, what’s the big idea? ∎

Writers Write

2011-07-27T00:00:00-04:00

Seth Godin recently wrote a short post entitled A Definition of a Leader.

Leaders lead, he wrote. If you want to be a leader, lead. And if you want to be a writer, write.

This can be applied to any industry. Recently, I was with a group of people who kept suggesting I use video on this website, as video is the fastest growing segment online, and it could help skyrocket my subscriber numbers.

Though I’ll never say never, right now this isn’t an avenue I’m looking into. Why? I understand facts and figures as much as anybody. They’re right, video is the fastest growing segment online, by far.

But writing is my thing. And writers write.

I have a good friend who’s working hard to break into the television and film production industry. He waits tables five days a week to support himself, but during those few snatched hours of spare time he has per week, you can bet he’s creating.

He comes out with project after project, each one better than the last. He never stops creating. He wants to be a television and film producer. So he’s producing.

Leaders lead. Writers write. Producers produce.

What do you want to do? ∎

Our Only Real Currency

2011-07-01T00:00:00-04:00

Time is our only real currency. Work out the value of your time and you’ve got it made.

Sure, you may have been hit by a few extra bills this month. You may have had an accidental shopping spree during those two hours you had free in the city—but this rule still applies.

Let’s say the bus home is $1.00, and the train home is $3.00. Riding the bus, it will take you approximately one hour to get home. If you choose to take the train, on the other hand, you will be home within twenty minutes.

What had you planned to do when you get home? Do you want to spend some quality time with your kids, work on an independent project, or simply wind-down and relax?

Sure, by taking the bus you’re saving $2.00, but by taking the train you’re saving forty minutes. How much is forty minutes worth to you?

People often try to rationalize small savings by quoting the amount you would save over a week, a month, or even further out. If you were to take the bus twice a day over a five-day work week you would save $20.00 over taking the train. In exchange for that $20.00, by taking the train you would save 6 hours and 40 minutes.

Over a one-month period you would save approximately $80.00 by taking the bus. In exchange for that $80.00, taking the train would save you 26 hours and 40 minutes. Or in other words, more than a day.

This is just an example—real prices and time frames have not been used, and for all I know your bus journey to and from work may be the most productive part of your day.

The rule still applies. What is your time worth to you? ∎

Attention Please

2011-03-31T00:00:00-04:00

It has come to my attention that… that’s a nice knot in the table. Fetching, arty almost. I think I’ll make a cup of tea.

It has come to my attention that I have the attention span of a small child that has been thrust into a ball pond filled with toy lions to hug and Lego bricks to put into its mouth.

I am not alone, you’re probably just as bad. As a collective we are becoming less and less focused at an alarming rate, distracted by each and every little thing that pops into our mind (or line of sight) at any given moment.

Twitter, Facebook, you name it. Emails, text messages, phone calls, they keep coming. Even the need to constantly be up to date with the news, with your favorite television shows, with your closely followed blogs. They’re all as distracting as can be.

I’ve started on my way to cutting as many of these distracting elements out of my life. Not one by one, but as many as I can, as quickly as I can. I’ve got stuff to do! The world waits for nobody.

As my own antidote to relieve us of our lack of collective focus, from now on my posts are going to be shorter, and more frequent. I will still be writing essay-type reports from time to time, but on the whole I’m going to keep things short and to the point. I’m sure many of you who have been reading my blog for a while will have had times when you saw I’ve written something new, clicked on it, seen the length of it and thought “Maybe I’ll give this one a miss.” I don’t blame you, I do it all the time with other people’s work. We’ve all got stuff to do! We’re all as busy as can be.

Let’s regain our attention together. ∎

How to Develop the Gratitude Attitude in 59 Seconds

2011-03-01T00:00:00-05:00

I’ve wanted to write a post on the gratitude attitude for a while now. Gratitude isn’t some obscure ‘up-in-the-air’ notion—in many communities around the world it is still taken extremely seriously, sometimes as part of a religious practice.

I’m an atheist, but like many atheists I absolutely see the need to appreciate what I have every day. It keeps you grounded, sane, and generally improves your character and makes you a nicer person to be around. If you can appreciate the little things while striving towards your own big goals, you’ve got it made.

Developing the Gratitude Attitude

So often we forget to appreciate what we have, what we have achieved, and what we are working towards. The importance of the gratitude attitude and gratitude more generally was recently brought to my attention as something you can strive towards doing more of as an actionable being, rather than a simple concept, in the book 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute by Professor Richard Wiseman.

In the book, Professor Wiseman of Hertfordshire University in the United Kingdom expelled tips for life that can be implemented in 59 seconds or less. In the first chapter, ‘Happiness,’ Professor Wiseman talks about developing the gratitude attitude. He describes how, when a new smell enters a room, at first you notice it, but quickly you get used to it and eventually it disappears from your consciousness. However, as we all know, it’s easy to reactivate the smell again by stepping out of the room and back in again.

This, in a nutshell, is the concept of the gratitude attitude. Professor Wiseman’s gratitude attitude five-day plan goes as follows:

Monday: Thanksgiving

There are many things in your life for which to be grateful. These might include having close friends, being in a loving relationship, being part of a supportive family, enjoying good health, having a roof over your head, or enough food to eat. Alternatively, you might have a job that you love, have happy memories of the past, recently had a nice experience (such as an especially delicious cup of coffee), enjoyed the smile of a stranger, had your dog welcome you home, eaten a great meal, or stopped to smell the flowers. Think back over the past week and list three of these things.

Tuesday: Terrific Times

Think about one of the most wonderful experiences in your life. Perhaps a moment when you felt suddenly content, were in love, listened to an amazing piece of music, saw an incredible performance, or had a great time with friends. Choose just one experience and imagine yourself back in that moment in time. Imagine how you felt and what was going on around you. Now spend a few moments writing down a description of that experience and how you felt. Do not worry about your spelling, punctuation, or grammar. Instead, simply commit your thoughts to paper.

Wednesday: Future Fantastic

Spend a few moments writing about your life in the future. Imagine that everything has gone as well as it possibly could. Be realistic, but imagine that you have worked hard and achieved all your goals. Imagine you have become the person you really want to be, and your personal and professional life feels like a dream come true. All of this may not help you achieve your goals, but will help you feel good and put a smile on your face.

Thursday: Dear…

Think about someone in your life who is very important to you. It might be your partner, or a close family friend or family member. Imagine you only have one opportunity to tell this person how important they are to you. Now, write a short letter to this person, describing how much you care for them and the impact they have had on your life.

Friday: Reviewing the Situation

Think back over the past seven days and make a note of three things that went really well for you. The events might be fairly trivial, such as finding a parking space, or more important, such as being offered a new job or opportunity.

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Each of these points are explained in more detail in the ‘Happiness’ chapter of Professor Wiseman’s book, along with scientific backing as to why each method works, and just as importantly, why many conventional methods don’t work and often cause more harm.

If you can only do one of the above exercises, I suggest you take on thanksgiving. I’ve been doing this for some time now, and I can honestly say that I’ve felt the gratitude attitude grow within me. It’s been a powerful experience.

Complain less, and appreciate the small things. Develop the gratitude attitude. ∎