The 365 Commitment

We spend a lot of time and money trying to improve. We listen to books, podcasts, videos, and spend countless dollars on ways to improve ourselves. However, the single greatest thing that we can do to improve anything we are working on is deliberate reflection. This is rarely done, yet it is provided by many behavioral psychologists as one of the foundational methods for improving subsequent learn...

One of the most underestimated concepts, in my opinion, is what is known as a feedback loop. It is a highly effective mechanism, and despite that fact, we tend to dismiss or ignore the concept in planning business and personal projects. So what exactly is a feedback loop? Simple concept, rarely implemented. For illustration, I will tell you a short story. When I was a child, I would go with my mom...

A core principle to consider in daily living is to get control of what you spend your attention on before the world does it for you. I do this with a morning ritual. Every morning I like to ask myself the question, what is the most important thing that I should accomplish today? Many times I draw a blank when asking this question, so I go back and look at the 12 goals I have set for myself. Armed...

Have you heard this phrase, Get while the getting’s good? It has been a while since I have heard someone say that, but I do remember when this was a common phrase. I am not sure where this came from, and after doing a bit of research, I do not think anyone does. This is a phrase used in Midwestern areas in the USA that basically means take advantage of favorable circumstances before they change. I...

We all have good intentions. If there were a reward for what we intend to do, then some of us would be highly decorated. Yet, unfortunately, many of our large aspirations never see the light of day. They lay dormant, quiet, with nothing but our own internal hopes and dreams to keep them company. Our most noble of intentions are just goals that are psychologically weak because they remain abstract,...

I sat down this morning and had a long debate with myself. I have decided to start numbering my 365 commitment blog by the number of consecutive days rather than by the 365-day cycle. So whereas today is technically Day 1 of my next 365 commitment, it is really Day 3,199. That is what sealed it for me, one day away from 3,200. My goal is to keep this up until I hit 20,000 or die. So I keep going;...

You might have seen the movie Obsession recently. I will not spoil it for you, but it is a classic story of a young man using a talisman to get a wish granted, and he wished for a girl to be obsessed with him. Of course, this backfires, and he gets what he wanted, but the mechanism by which he gets it is at a terrible price. I was reading about the creation of this movie and the director acknowled...

We all can recall with trepidation the last question on the math test; it was always the dreaded word problem. Most of us just immediately folded. The one brainiac smart girl in class had learned how to convert key phrases back into the required equation and found the word problem to actually be really easy. The one recluse kid in the back corner of the classroom could solve that problem without e...

I have noticed that one of the things that creates the most stress for me is simply thinking about everything I have to do. It is not necessarily that any one of those things is overwhelming. The problem is that when I think about all of them together, they begin to feel like one enormous responsibility that I am somehow supposed to be managing all at the same time. There is work that needs to be...

I came across an article today by Susan Emerson talking about the difficulties of being a new mother. This can be an incredibly trying time for a young woman who is suddenly put in a situation where coping skills are highly valuable. The premise of this article is that it is wrong to believe people either have this skill or do not; that it is a trait. So to say, I just do not have the ability to c...

When I was younger, I had a steel-trap brain. I was wickedly smart and remembered every little detail. This superpower came in handy. Everything from system admin command-line details to the day's grocery list. Now that I am getting older, that trusty recall capability has started to fail me. It is unsettling to suddenly realize that I cannot remember every detail. I have to write things down or f...

In my early days of college, I had a pair of humanities teachers who could tie pretty much anything in life back to Greek writings. They'd say something like, "Well, if we look back at what the early followers of Socrates had to say on this matter..." One day, they thought it would be a great exercise for us to read Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, as a class. Fun times, to say the least. I...

Having an opinion is a cognitive trait we usually admire, especially when it's grounded in evidence. However, being opinionated is different. This usually refers to people who hold opinions  strongly and frequently and tend to push them on others . So when do we cross this line? What social dynamics are at play? Conversation depends on a kind of reciprocity. A back-and-forth, and we tend to like t...

A person or group doesn't become legendary simply by doing something impressive. Other people have to keep telling the story, and that retelling becomes the legend. History may be what actually happened, but legend is what people decide is worth remembering. If you extend this concept over a few hundred years, history no longer matters. Essentially, if no one remembers it, then it might as well ha...

I have an admission to make that is important for this discussion to make sense. The problem is that conversations with people drain me. Classic introvert problem. When you get into a conversation, you leave feeling drained, like someone took your energy. As a result, you tend to avoid interactions with people, even when you know they are important and necessary. You simply cannot build a relation...

I have been spending more time lately trying to get in touch with my emotions. Finally, after all these years, I am confronting those internal demons and doing what that preschool teacher told me when I was 4. She said, " You need to get in control of yourself! I have spent over 50 years trying to figure out just what that woman meant by that. What is control? Who is in control? How can I control...

The canary principle can be best stated as follows: Before exposing the whole system to a change, expose a small part of it and watch closely. This idea comes from coal mining. Miners faced invisible threats such as carbon monoxide. Because canaries are more sensitive to dangerous gases than humans, a caged bird could provide an early warning that the atmosphere was becoming unsafe. Poor canary. T...

We all instinctively know this is not right, yet we tolerate it. Anyone who has recently made it through K-12 or has been a parent of these young people knows what I mean. School has increasingly substituted evidence of work for evidence of learning. A completed worksheet, a submitted Google Classroom assignment, a passing quiz, satisfactory completion of an online module. These all fall firmly in...

Around 1784, Immanuel Kant published an essay asking the question, " What is enlightenment? He was at the tail end of the Enlightenment age, and people were now assigning that label. The Renaissance came and went, and now Kant immortalized the idea that there was a new age that was just experienced. A new period of human enlightenment. If he only knew what was to come! The French spoke of les Lumi...

I have always understood intellectually that developing habits is a good idea. In the way that you comprehend that brushing your teeth every morning and night is necessary. If you want good dental hygiene, you must form this habit. So I plodded along through life, trying to develop good habits here and there, but I found myself stuck in a vicious cycle and never quite living up to the expectation....

The real risk is not beginning. It is what happens after the easy gains are gone. This is one of the biggest misconceptions that keeps people from taking on new initiatives that could change their lives. They fail to start because they fear initial failure. They fear that it will not be enough. People overestimate the risk of starting and underestimate the risk of continuing. The initial plunge fe...

I remember taking a basic survival course when I was younger. The instructor took us outside to demonstrate a basic surveying technique called triangulation. The concept is simple, so if you are unfamiliar, let me explain. If you know the location of two points and the distance between them, then measure the angles from those points to a third object, you can calculate where that third object must...

I developed a superpower over the course of my life without intending to. I had a really hard time understanding things growing up. I desperately wanted to, but some concepts eluded me. They didn't come easily to me, and my cognition took a while to develop. I did not want people to discover this, so I would pretend that I knew things and then spend countless hours thinking about them until I coul...

I have been keeping the same seven basic habits for several years now. Every day, no matter what, I must complete the habits before I can go to bed. Admittedly, on some days, I just did the bare minimum, but I still got the habits done and kept the streak alive. One of those has been writing this blog. This marks the 3,181st day in a row I have done so. Not all have been the best quality, but I ca...

The man looked me in the eyes and said, 'Every morning when I wake up, I look in the mirror and tell myself that everything I believe is not true.' This statement shook me, especially coming from a spiritual leader. This man was a giant in my young eyes. He even looked like the Moses I imagined. He was tall and powerful, and his voice could shake the ground; when he spoke, even the rowdiest crowds...