Writer David Foster Wallace on the importance of controlling your attention:

“Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about “teaching you how to think” is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.”

Source: This is Water

I was once an analyst for an aircraft component supplier. The Division Vice-President asked me for an estimate of the market size and of our sales for the next year. I had access to the best data in the whole world. My data listed every commercial airliner in the world (over 40,000 of them), by model and type, by owner, by tailnumber. It included hours flown for each aircraft, by month. I could tie this data to our records for each customer and tail number. I built a huge spreadsheet model and pasted the spreadsheets all over my office wall. Continue reading The Danger of False Concreteness →

Procrastination. We all do it. You know we all do it. I do it. You do it. Just look at how often I update this website.

Procrastination is the act of avoiding doing what you know you should be doing. It comes from the Latin procrastinare: “to postpone or delay,” and the Greek akrasia: “a lack of self-control or the state of acting against one’s better judgment.” Continue reading Procrastination →

Your body reacts exactly the same when you are eager and when you are anxious.

But your mind reacts quite differently.
Hearing eager generates confidence. Hearing anxious generates fear.

Then you act in confidence or you act in fear. Everyone around you will pick up on your actions and attitude.

Now that you have become aware of this, you will substitute eager for anxious every time you hear it.

Leaders influence others to effect change in a situation. That’s the definition of a leader.

Leaders don’t have to be in positions of authority. Anyone can be a leader. Continue reading Secrets of Effective Leaders →