Building trust
Trust is forming an expectation that someone will act in a certain way in a certain situation. We tend to think about trust more when we’re in a situation where it may be tested, and less about how we are developing it. This focus should be the other way around. We should be thinking about […]
Searching for advice or confirmation?
When you’re grappling with a problem, be careful of your true intentions when you go to others for “advice”. Are you genuinely hoping for your thinking to be challenged, and you want their perspective to help you work through the problem? Or have you subconsciously made up your mind and you’re searching for reasons to […]
Being offered equity
If you have been working for a company for a while and you’ve been doing a great job, you may be offered equity in the company. It’s a great reward, but be aware of its conditions. Let’s first start with what equity is. Equity can come in a few forms, but it’s basically a way […]
Cold showers
If you asked me what is the one thing you can do to turbocharge your life, it’s having cold showers. Really truly. They are unbelievably exhilarating. I can’t speak to the health benefits, which apparently are great too. I can only speak to how alive you feel when you have them. And when you get […]
One basic idea
When you look at the people and the companies that changed the world, their impact was defined by one basic idea which they committed to testing and growing. For ikea, would people want to assemble their own furniture? For Netflix when they started as a mail-out DVD service, would people mail back their watched DVDs? […]
Ask
Consider how little you know about the internal desires of others. Even the people we’re close to are a mystery. It’s not until they make their desires known that we’re able to be useful. This makes sense right? Well, how many times have you expected others to know your desires without telling them? We each […]
Protect yourself from you
With QLA, when someone says they want to make a change in their life, we spend a lot of time on whether they will commit to the change before we consider next steps. The reason is simple – how many times have you said you will do something and not followed through? You know yourself […]
The three doors to find a job
If you’re looking for a way into the job market, there are three doors you can try – the Front Door, the Back Door, and the Side Door. The Front Door is where a company is advertising for a position. It’s going to a job board and scrolling through all the available opportunities. Or it’s […]
7/10
Whenever you’re asked to rank something out of 10, how often do you pick 7? You would think that 5/10 is the middle ground, given that it’s in the middle. But being the average value, how many times do you say 5/10? And how likely do you say anything under 5, even though this range […]
Ahead of the game
I’ve written before about my system for writing blog posts. But there’s another system that I’m using that keeps me ahead of the game (and I like it more). My process for writing daily blogs is simple but extremely effective – I’ve set an external expectation that a blog will be sent everyday at 7:30am. […]