When the desire for approval is driving many decisions, it is a "defense value." It distorts your choices and actions and undercuts your successes and sense of self. Fortunately, this is a problem that can be remedied by taking an active approach to reprogramming your...
Peter Drucker once said, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." That applies to happiness just as much as to the quality of automobiles that Toyota is producing. If you want to be happier, a good place to start is to make objective just how happy you are...
After back-and-forths with some Thinking Labbers, I've got a lead to what causes some people to bog down in thinking about issues and never get into action. It's popular to say that such people are "overthinking" and need "a bias for action." But inaction is a symptom...
Please ignore the title of this book and read on. David Burns, a well-known cognitive psychologist, has created an insightful guide to help people deal with a wide range of disruptive emotional issues: depression, anxiety, unearned guilt, phobias. In fact, his...
Introduction to Rationally Connected Conversations Defensiveness on either side of a conversation kills the connection and dooms communication. “Rationally Connected Conversations” (RCC) is a method for unilaterally eliminating defensiveness from both sides of a...
About Brainstorming "Brainstorming" means systematically generating a large number of candidate ideas for some purpose, usually to solve a problem. Brainstorming works because one idea triggers another. A "bad" idea, when considered seriously without censoring, can...
This series of articles on happiness would not be possible without the philosophic foundation I got from studying Ayn Rand, with much help from other Objectivist philosophers. Ayn Rand gave me an integrated understanding of the world, how you know it, and what matters...
I've had a love/hate relationship with planning, and I've finally figured out why. Although I love the clarity I get from planning, and I see that planning helps me in the long run, I had always been distressed when a project didn't go as planned. This is crazy. Most...
Exercise: Deeper Thinking with Q&A Background The #1 reason people get stuck is that they censor their thoughts. In practical terms, this means they have the thought, but they don't want to write it down on the piece of paper for some reason. This could have...
At the start of a break during the workday, I have the idiosyncratic practice of reading one paragraph of Ayn Rand’s non-fiction. This is an example of a highly tailored tactic to help with a problem that many people have: breaks take over the work day. Let me explain...
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