You know what it feels like to be completely engaged in a task. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi coined the term flow to describe this state. Flow is crucial to performing any intellectual task. But how do you achieve it? Hack Your Tasks You won’t get flow with the carrot or the stick. External pressures are…

Many people are having a bad time in organizations today. It’s not simply those experiencing budget cuts and lay-offs. Many others are experiencing a deep sense of hurt and loss: loss of much of a life outside of work, loss of their hopes and expectations, loss of their trust in the future, loss of confidence…

Sometimes it feels as if life is against you. Nothing works as it should. The people around you seem distant, preoccupied, and indifferent to you and your interests. There are constant hassles and upsets. Whatever enthusiasm you once had has burned to gray, barely-flickering embers. You have little energy and feel like giving up. Many people…

Charles Darwin was one of the greatest scientific geniuses of all time. His Theory of Evolution is accepted just about universally in the scientific community. It explains that all life is driven by a process that he called Natural Selection. Life is a constant competition for survival. When creatures reproduce, tiny changes and imperfections…

Here are a few more guidelines for punctuating sentences, offered in response to comments on my How to punctuate a sentence post. Semi-colons A reader asked when it’s appropriate to join sentences with a semi-colon. The semi-colon is a good choice when sentences are clearly related, when they seem to go together, when a period would…

The best way to make a rope strong is to make it by weaving many strands together. The best way to create a strong, satisfying pattern for your life and career is to weave together the six different strands that make up a complete career pattern. Success isn’t a matter of completing each strand come…

Last month I showed how to unstuff a sentence by removing unnecessary words. This month I’ll offer a quick-and-dirty guide to punctuating a sentence. Nothing that follows is meant to substitute for the nuanced explanations of what’s usually called a writing handbook, the sort of book that college students purchase in a first-semester writing…

Be afraid. Be very afraid. There’s nothing like fear to put a stop to any kind of creativity: fear of getting it wrong; fear of what other people may say; fear of embarrassment; fear of change. The more afraid that you are, the less creative you will be—and the less you will act on any…

You’ve got your big project to work on. The deadline for your goals is looming over your shoulder. You are starting to feel it’s hot breath of guilt whenever you aren’t working. Socializing with your friends, taking a break, even just going to sleep now seems like it is just wasting time…

Here—again in no particular order—are 10 more ways to transform your working life. Maybe you should try them. Slow down. Give yourself time and space. Never be in more of a hurry than you have to be. Allow time for thinking, musing, just noodling around in your head with no apparent purpose. Give space in your…

Here—in no particular order (except as I thought of them)—are 10 simple ways to tranform your working life. Try them. Refuse to accept conventional answers or comforting assumptions. If you want to develop, you need to be skeptical of anything that seems to offer a panacea or an easy way to get somewhere with no effort…

Before you bet the bank on your next million dollar idea, you should do a reality check to see if the idea is worth it. People often fall in love with their ideas and as a result can experience tremendous pain if it turns out the idea is a bad one. Developing ideas into commercial…

Student-writers often believe that the secret of good writing is a reliance upon bigger and “better” words. Thus the haphazard thesaurus use that I wrote about last month. Another danger for student-writers involves the assumption that good writing is a matter of stuffy, ponderous sentences. Stuffy sentences might…

Maybe this sounds a silly question, but it’s not. We live in a business society dominated by demands for ever greater performance. Yet until we’re clear what performance is, focusing on it will produce only confusion and frustration. “Simple,” some people say. “Performance is getting the job done. Producing the result that you aimed at. Nothing…

I don’t think that anyone sets out with the intention of becoming a workaholic. Nor does it seem likely that most people allow it to happen willingly. Of course, for some, being a workaholic is seen simply as an unfortunate by-product of being successful and wealthy. Yet, even for them, workaholism is likely to…