Did you know that you’re a hero? Did nobody tell you? You are a hero. Not all the time, mind you. Nobody is a hero 24/7. After all, even heroes have to sleep sometime. Perhaps you’re a hero just one day of a year and regular Joe on the other 364. On that day, everything [...]
Just a few hours ago I chaired my first Toastmasters’ meeting. I’ve been a member for about a month. The whole thing went off pretty well, despite my nervousness. It was a very valuable experience overall. This is very atypical for me, actually. I’m what I like to call a “secondary leader”. What do I [...]
We’ve all heard the old Spiderman line – “With great power comes great responsibility.” I was never a big fan of this saccharine moralizing. It seems to me that when you have power you should be able to do whatever the heck you want with it. To redeem this nugget of wisdom, I’d like to turn it [...]
I’ve observed something interesting as I contemplate all these growth and productivity thoughts. I have a fairly cynical approach to most corporate training and motivational programs. A lot of the times, I can agree with the principles, but shake my head at actual practice. Lately, I’ve been finding that some of the “wisdom” that those courses dispense [...]
One reason why I find running useful is that it’s a testbed for personal development. It’s highly variable, like all things in life. Sometimes I’m dead-tired after the first lap and I have to drag myself through the rest of the course. At other times I have wings and I’m flying. It’s a neat microcosm [...]
I have a pretty bad allergy to superstitious and fuzzy thinking. I don’t know what it is, but some people’s beliefs make me want to roll my eyes until I look like a slot machine. One set of beliefs that elicits this sort of reaction from me is the whole “new age” school. Perhaps it’s the fact that [...]
I just went to my first toastmasters meeting ever as a guest. I lucked out – tonight was contest night, so I got to see some awesome public speaking mojo. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more positive group of people in my life. If you care about personal development or public speaking, you [...]
I’d like to offer a follow-up to the “Rewards” article. A comment that Greg has made bothered me enough to think about it at length. The good thing about running a blog is that you can make a post, instead of simply replying in the comments. Let’s talk about hard work. This is not a [...]
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what it would take to make games full-time. I have a significant war chest, so in theory I could do it for years without needing to earn money. Of course, it’s not that simple – nobody would want to live on slowly dwindling savings. If I’m going to go full-time [...]
I’ve just started using a great time tracking program – RescueTime. It tracks what you do on your computer and then tells you how efficiently you are using your time. I’m going to run it on my machine for a while and see how productive I really am.
Attack of the Paper Zombies
