Offbeat Advice I Wish I Was Given in School

Culture | MIPRO

Offbeat Advice I Wish I Was Given in School

Michael Lazerow, LinkedIn Influencer and entrepreneur lists some advice he wishes he was given in school. I could easily quote the whole article, but I won’t. Here’s a sampling: Play a sport. What you don’t learn in art class you’ll pick up on the field. Doodle often. It’s your brain on auto drive. You never

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The Promise of Big Data (& Dawn of 21st Century Problems)

Cam Davidson-Pilon has an excellent blog post about 21st Century Problems. In it, he posits one of the best explanations of the promise of Big Data I’ve yet to come across: 21st Century problems are statistical problems Statistical problems describe the space we haven’t explored yet. Statistical problems are not new: they are likely as

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The Social Stress and Status of the iPhone

Bianca Bosker, writing for HuffPo Tech, interviews 14-year-old Casey Schwartz about Schwartz’s iPhone. Specifically, what really happens on a teen girl’s iPhone, and how it becomes a source of stress and social status among Schwartz’s peers. Some excerpts are below, but you owe it to yourself to read the whole interview. Parents of teenage girls,

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“You Don’t Have to Find Out You’re Dying to Start Living”

At 14 years old, Zach Sobiech found out he had a rare form of cancer called osteosarcoma, a disease of bone tissue most commonly found in teenagers during heavy growth phases. In the months he had left, Zach turned to music and literally became a star. In the process, he created something truly astonishing. He

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David Foster Wallace on Adulthood and the Real Value of Education

David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Keyon College commencement speech made the rounds a few years ago, never more intensely than after his death in 2008. As a guy in his mid–40s who reflects on what he has and hasn’t learned over the years, I find commencement speeches interesting and hopeful – little spoken placards of life

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The Psychology of Procrastination

Peter Bregman (whose blog posts I love, by the way), writes about the unspoken psychology of procrastination: Here’s the thing: More often than not, our fear doesn’t help us avoid the feelings; it simply subjects us to them for an agonizingly long time. We feel the suffering of procrastination, or the frustration of a stuck

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: 20 Things I Wish I’d Known When I Was 30

Self-described “secret nerd” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar lists 20 things he wishes he knew when he was 30 years old. The most poignant to me: 20. Everything doesn’t have to be fixed. Relax, K-Man. Some stuff can be fixed, some stuff can’t be. Deciding which is which is part of maturing. Read the whole thing. Heck, print

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The (Beneficial) Power of Frustration

I have spent the last 25 years of my career either managing implementations or working with customers to ensure a successful implementation.  During that time, my most prominent theory for the use of consultants is that ‘trial and error is not an implementation methodology’.  It’s true. Many companies consider the use of consultants for various

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Casual Friday: Know Your Yelling Goat Meme (and Mashups)

A couple weeks ago, a video of goats yelling like humans dominated the Internet. If you haven’t seen it, here it is. I have to warn you: it’s more entertaining than you think it is. Don’t skip over this; it’s required viewing if you want the rest of this post to make sense. So naturally,

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Why I Don’t Care About DST

Every spring, it’s the same gig. The internet erupts into frustrated cries about the sleep-flummoxing evils of Daylight Savings Time (DST), how it throws you off, causes your sleep to be ruined for two weeks, destroys your family life and causes your children to morph into foam-drooling, bleary-eyed hyenas. (Okay, I’ll concede that last part

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