Being an effective student is one of the more important attributes you can have, because it’s upstream of your ability to gain the knowledge, skill, and awareness you need for any challenge whatsoever. When you stop learning, you start dying. There was a single event in my childhood that changed my life as a student forever.…
The Art of Asking Questions: Curiosity, Listening, and Intuition course begins live on Zoom this Thursday, March 31 2022 at 11:15 am PT. Most people think they are curious, but as I say so often, it’s not useful to make conclusions about oneself. Instead, be curious about where you’re incurious. The result of incuriousness is stagnation,…
As the 2020 presidential race looms in the not-too-far distance, there will be frequent examples among the candidates in which excuses, deflections, and a general lack of critical thinking will be on display. Unfortunately it isn’t just the politicians that are guilty. If you ask 1,000 people if they can think critically, the majority would…
Our world of fiction is filled with evil characters who seek to dominate the world, immerse it in darkness, let loose destruction and mayhem, and do other “evil” things. While such stories can be entertaining, they contribute to an already less-than-responsible world and complicate accountability. Here’s how… Most people have good intentions. The majority of…
I thought I was done with the series I did on The Matrix, but I’m not. That’s what epilogues are for! It’s like a P.S. for writers, and who doesn’t like a good postscript? If you read the series, which started with Part One, you probably appreciate now more than ever that it’s a film…
I was a springboard diver as a kid. I was good, but I was never great. I understand why now. There are two principles that make the difference between good and great in any endeavor. When you learn to dive, you start with the easy stuff, of course: front dive, back dive, maybe a single…
This is the final installment of my series on The Matrix. Have you seen Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 yet? Neo’s meeting with the Oracle is quite built up, so we share Neo’s disorientation when he walks into a shabby kitchen and meets who looks like a mitten-knitting grandmother when we’re…
One of my favorite movies is the cult classic, “Office Space” written by Mike Judge, the nefarious creator of Beavis and Butthead. In the film he portrays management as being so incompetent that it’s comedic. But it’s easy to miss the powerful lessons amidst the caricature. Let’s unpack one of the most-loved scenes to learn…
Question: How do you know if you can push your people further? Answer: They will tell you, if you know how to listen. Recently I was messaging with a Clear and Open member, let’s call him Andy. It went like this. This is a good example of the power of asking questions. Josef: “Relook at…
I grew up in the historic town of Concord, Massachusetts, a couple miles from Thoreau’s Walden pond, the site of the first battle of the Revolutionary War, and a dozen other things that would probably bore you as much as they did me as a kid. In third grade, my class took an intrepid field…