Photo courtesy of Libby What do you think of this phrase: “The Joy of Apathy”? It sounds like such a clashing contradiction: how can joy, which is associated with happiness and passion, be found in the opposite stoicism of apathy? While joy and apathy certainly aren’t the same, they often work together and…

I’m not a big fan of mind mapping, though I concede that it does have its uses. Recently, I learned of a different approach to brainstorming that seems both more practical and better grounded in the way the mind works than traditional, Buzan-style mind mapping. This approach, called the Rico Cluster after its…

Last week, I explained some of the ways that our brain tricks us. There’s more ways than just the three I listed that the brain works in odd and mysterious ways, causing us no end of mischief. Here’s three more: I am not a racist! In 1964, a woman named Kitty Genovese was…

A mind is a terrible thing. Whether because of the brain’s internal structure or the way social and cultural pressures cause our minds to develop and function, in the end the result is the same: minds that are not only easily deceived and frequently deceptive in their own right, but when caught out, refuse…

A few weeks ago I wrote a post on note-taking skills. One common experience many people have, and that several people mentioned in response to that post, is that when they take good notes they remember things well enough that they rarely end up having to look at their notes again. In fact, it…

Discover your thought patterns, then act on that knowledge. We all develop habitual patterns of thinking: channels along which our minds run all too easily into recurring patterns of mental behavior. People often aren’t fully aware of these patterns precisely because they are so much part of their lives. It’s terribly easy to miss…

After the election last week in the United States, change is a hot topic, but it isn’t political change that I have been thinking about recently. It’s how organizations and their leaders cope—or, more often, fail to cope too well—with the need for changes in business practices to promote growth and foster creativity. It’s a truism…

Over at Slow Leadership, this week has been all about using your time. I don’t set out to give each week’s postings a single theme, but sometimes it happens that way. It began with considering the relationship between time, action and thought in a posting I called Taking Your Time. Some people…

Cognitive approach to stress management is found effective based on recent research. From the stream of cognitive approach, different tools are designed for helping people live out a happy, stressful-free life even under unhappy or stressful situations. Over at Mind Tools site, you’ll find a useful tool, Cognitive Restructuring: … for understanding and turning…

Ignorance and fear, the two pillars of bigotry, are powerful allies. Each supports the other. Ignorance seems to be on the increase as people are persuaded by “true believers” of every kind to value belief over thought.

I found a great reminder of high school, college, and dream journals in an article from DiYPlanner. I’ve always liked notebooks, to keep track of dreams, records, ideas, and so much more. It also might be good for your hand to write a while instead of type! Here are a few tips…

Brian Fling from Blue Flavor talks about a term called Thought Leadership. From Wikipedia, Thought Leader is: … a buzzword or article of jargon used to describe a person who is recognized among his or her peers for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote those ideas. The term can also be applied to…