Save Your Brain

Atrophy in your hippocampus is linked to terrible conditions including Alzheimer’s disease and post-traumatic stress disorder. In addition, a degraded hippocampus hurts your episodic memory and your ability to make cognitive maps and to imagine yourself in the future. In case you’re wondering what’s a hippocampus, it’s a small organ...

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Random Requests

We all get them, those random requests to connect on LinkedIn from people we don’t know who want to leverage our connections for their benefit. We may just ignore them; we may take a closer look to figure out why they reached out before hitting the wonderful delete key....

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Comfort To Chaos

“In 1998 Steve Jobs convinced me to leave Compaq to join a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy.” It’s the time for commencement speeches, offering graduates all kinds of advice on how to venture forth in the world, diplomas in hand. At his commencement address at Tulane, Tim...

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Do or Do Not

While wandering through the big swamp a few hundred yards from my house in Birchrunville, I came upon a grayish figure levitating above the water. Disturbed by my approach, he opened his eyes and stared at me intently. We watched each other silently for a bit, me frozen in shock...

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Don’t Just Watch, Observe

“You can observe a lot just by watching.” Yogi Berra Many of us smile when we read a quote from Yogi Berra, noting the humor in his wisdom. (He probably even said quite a few of the observations on life attributed to him).  But if we stop and really think...

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Niksen: The Dutch Art Of Doing Nothing

I always have a lot going on. In spite of getting better at saying no, I seem to be an easy target for anyone who asks “Can you help me?” Like most of you, I only have 24 hours in my day. No matter how much I try to...

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Don’t Make Things Worse

The headline in the April 30th edition of the Wall Street Journal business section reads: “Boeing CEO Defends Design of 737MAX” The first words of the article, by Andrew Tangel and Doug Cameron: “Muilenburg says certification process consistently produces safe planes.” Next words in the article: “Boeing Co. Chief Executive Dennis...

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Stop It!

How would you like to do a lot less work and get the same or better results? I thought so. Some years ago I was in Houston advising the CEO of a large energy company. I particularly enjoyed our meetings because they often took place over dinner in a nice...

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