Sometimes when I’m stressed I like to go down into my basement and play the drums. I’ve been playing them since I was 10, and one of the things I’ve always liked about them is that you can hit them as hard as you want. You’re supposed to hit them, in fact – that’s the…
Sometimes life doesn’t turn out the way we expect it to. At least, that’s the phrase we use, which is at least a little dramatic. Life? Like, all of it, the entirety of our existence, just somehow went entirely the opposite direction from what we wanted? That’s probably not the case. What’s actually happening is…
People are always trying to predict what the world is going to be like in the future. Doing so sometimes involves imagining how current trends might affect the cost of doing business a few years from now, or how new and emerging technologies will impact the way we work and interact with our colleagues and…
Impostor syndrome is one of the most insidious challenges to our mental well-being. In case you aren’t familiar with the phrase (although I’m guessing you are), impostor syndrome is a fairly common phenomenon in which individuals doubt their abilities and/or feel like they don’t deserve their accomplishments. Put another way, you think you’re in over…
Last month I wrote an article about the way that technology impacts the nature of human work. (You can read that article here if you care to, which you should – it’s awesome.) But I realized later that nothing I said is especially valuable if computers eventually destroy all of humanity. And since that particular…
As everyone in the writing world knows, ChatGPT has come, and the end is nigh. Pretty soon the written word will be owned by machines, and all the people who used to make their living with words (like yours truly) will be thrown onto the proverbial streets. At least that’s the way some of the…
As 2022 draws to a close, there are two issues that seem to have completely dominated the year – supply chain, and labor shortage. Those have been the two key drivers at pretty much every conference I have attended this year. Fixing the supply chain is beyond my ability. But dealing with our persistent labor…
In the last several months I’ve spoken at a few dozen conferences. And at every single one of them – big ones, small ones, and basically every industry there is – the people at those conferences have been talking about exactly two things: supply chain, and the labor shortage. Your company probably is, too. Those…
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. I also wanted to be a builder (which was my Lego-inspired term for ‘construction worker’), and I also wanted to dig up dinosaurs. I have done none of those things, and it’s perfectly OK. I chose a different path, and I’m happy with it. …
So it’s a new year, which means it’s time to do something different. At least that’s what everyone else seems to think. So half the world has just joined a gym, or bought some language-learning program, or maybe signed up for those piano lessons they’re constantly putting off, and this is going to be the…