Your Gut is Thinking Too

I finished Jonah Lehrer’s book, How We Decide, last week. In it, Lehrer describes his view on, well, how we decide things. It’s basically the same concept that was presented in Gerd Gigerenzer’s Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious and Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. In fact, some of the same research is used as examples [...]

Everyone Has the Entrepreneur’s Work Schedule Now

A recent article at CNN introduced me to the term “weisure.” It’s the blending of work and leisure time that is spreading across America. I found the article interesting because that’s been the way I’ve lived ever since I started my computer outsourcing company, Port-to-Port Consulting, back in 1991. It’s how every small business owner [...]

Is Time Real?

I stopped wearing a watch more than a decade ago. I was in my office, deep in some project or other when I suddenly glanced up to see what time it was. Without having to do a Linda Blair kind of head turn, I was able to see three clocks plus there was one on [...]

The Things We Take for Granted

I got out of the shower yesterday morning and heard noises downstairs. Susie was still sleeping and I didn’t figure there was any way that Christopher would be out of bed this early. The noise wasn’t the sound of intruders though, so I dressed and went downstairs to see what was going on. There, in [...]

Your Incredible Brain

I’m the Executive Director of the Indiana Post Adoption Network this year. I-PAN is a support group for parents who have adopted special needs children. This past Saturday we had our monthly meeting. The speaker talked about neurofeedback, biofeedback, and other methods for becoming aware of what your brain is doing. I confess that I’m [...]

The Rules We Create

I was a Distinguished Graduate of my Air Force Officer Training School class in 1984. To this day, I give credit for that distinction to the fact that I was good at following the rules, without creating extra ones. Have you noticed how people will start to create rules that don’t exist? Then they start [...]

Energy Suckers

When I read The Cellestine Prophecy a few years ago, there was one piece that keeps coming back to my mind. The main character learned to see the energy fields of other people and how they interacted with one another. I often get that feeling when interacting with others.
I can feel my energy being sucked [...]

Pie Day

Today is Pie Day! Only math geeks really appreciate it. I was a math minor in college. Pi starts with 3.14. Today is 3/14. I probably didn’t have to give that much explanation but just in case your wheels are turning slower on Saturday.
I’m a big fan of holidays that are just fun rather than [...]

How Many People Do You Really Know?

I’m sitting in a customer’s office watching his computer grind away at synchronizing his contact database to his Outlook address book. (For the record, synchronization sucks.) As I watch the nearly 7,000 contacts move, I’m reminded of a recent conversation I hadwith a co-worker about friends. He said he has about 20 close friends. I [...]

Will Your Machine Have Rights?

In the February issue of Wired magazine, Daniel Roth describes the discomfort of watching an incineration of Tickle Me Elmo. He goes on to wonder about the future of machine rights. I wonder too. As machines get better at mimicking human behavior; as they appear to have personalities and interact with us by voice instead [...]

What’s the Alternative to Incentives?

In the February issue of Fast Company magazine, Dan and Chip Heath write about the curse of incentives. They tell an interesting anecdote about a clever lawyer for the New York Jets added a penalty clause to Ken O’Brien’s contract that made it cost him to throw interceptions. His interceptions were the lowest in the [...]

Avoiding Confrontation

When my wife and I started living together more than 26 years ago, we came to an unspoken agreement about divisions of labor that has worked well for us. Quite simply, the person who cares the most gets to choose, or the person who is most picky has to do it. There are occasions when [...]

Things Santa Didn’t Bring Me

In the last few years, Santa Claus and I have had a very intimate relationship. You see, he just tells me to pick up whatever I want, wrap it, and put it under the tree with a tag that says it’s from him. I’ve been more than willing to oblige the old man and do [...]

Do This and You’ll Get That

John Watson is known as the father of Behaviorism because of a series of lectures he gave at Columbia University in 1912. His greatest contribution, besides coining the name, may have been to have written the book, Behaviorism, that prompted Burrhus Frederic Skinner to become a psychologist. It was B. F. Skinner, in his lab [...]