Energy sinkholes are situations that repeatedly drain your energy and stress you out. There are plenty of good reasons to invest your energy, so don’t waste your attention on a sinkhole. Unfortunately, it is often hard to see sinkholes since they rarely cause a drain all at once. Instead they slowly leech…

Breaking down human behavior into rules might seem like a gross simplification. But even with the complexities, it is easy to fall into the same mistakes. I’d argue that many heated fights, lost sales and broken hearts are caused by a few critical errors. If you make the wrong assumptions, you’ve lost…

It’s funny how one word, a seemingly inconsequential one, can alter a statement’s entire meaning. Can’t and won’t are such words that, when switched, can give off much different intentions. Look at the difference in these two sentences: “I can’t get enough leads to make enough sales.” “I won’t get enough leads to make enough sales.” The second statement…

We all use email, but, sometimes we use it too much or use it inappropriately. To get the most out of email we need to use it carefully and judiciously. These are 10 tips to get the most out of emailing. 1. Use different email accounts for different purposes. It is is good to have separate…

It’s been said that a man who stands on principle is bound to face personal attack. In my line of work, school administration, this has certainly been true as attacks can come literally from out of the blue. A longtime colleague can take you on, seemingly out of the blue with a laundry…

A surprisingly large number of people do not know how to take a compliment. There’s something in our mind-set that says we cannot possibly deserve positive feedback and therefore anyone who pays us a compliment must be either lying, misguided, or feeling sorry for us. This is that little extra-critical voice in our heads…

Meebo is a web-based instant messaging client that allows you to talk to your friends on various different brands of IM. The big news today is that you can now transfer files through Meebo – something you had to previously go to the native IM clients [or email] to do. You’ll notice that there’s a new…

These tips from former Canadian diplomat Steve Kaufmann are good motivation for anyone struggling with learning a foreign language. The one tip I would share is that you really aren’t too young to begin learning. It may be easier to learn a language in your youth, but you are definitely more than able later in life. Listen…

We humans are story-telling creatures. On the face of it, telling stories seems absurd, for anything other than entertainment, and yet throughout the various societies of humankind, and throughout all the history we’ve uncovered in dusty libraries and remote archaeological sites, humans have told stories not just to entertain, but to teach, to build and…

A commenter on my blog sent me this little morsel: A project manager was running a piece of work with a geographically dispersed team. The team leader was tasked with communicating some bad news to the team members in another city, so he phoned them all and had a conversation with them. A couple of weeks later…

”I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Back in the early ‘80s, Vick’s Formula 44 cough syrup ran commercials that opened with that line, featuring Peter Bergman, who indeed played a doctor on The Young and the Restless All My Children. Vick’s could, of course, have chosen an actual doctor to tell…

Jerry Seinfeld has a skit where he points out that studies show public speaking is a bigger fear than death. That means, he claims, that if you are going to a funeral you are better off in the casket than doing the eulogy. While there isn’t a lot you can do to melt…

Remember Mikey, the kid from those Life cereal commercials in the ’70s? “Hey Mikey, he likes it!” In 1983, the actor who played Mikey was at a birthday party where he ate six bags of Pop Rocks, that fizzy candy, and also drank an entire six-pack of Pepsi. The pressure from the reaction of…

He was dead the whole time! Darth Vader is Luke’s father! She’s his sister and his daughter! The endings of movies like Sixth Sense, The Empire Strikes Back, and Chinatown — and the stories that lead up to them – stick with us for years and even decades because they trigger a deep psychological reflex: surprise…

“Just Do It.” Those words make up perhaps the stickiest marketing slogan of the past couple decades. In three words, only eight letters, Nike manages to say everything they want you to think, feel, believe about their brand. Three words to sum up the competitive edge Nike shoes and sports equipment promises, the…