Leadership
In the 1999 science fiction comedy, Galaxy Quest, a key plot line revolves around the “Omega 13,” a device allowing the user a 13 second jump to the past to repair a single mistake. When I first watched the movie, I was initially underwhelmed with the benefit offered. How much could you change your life with a 13 second do over? And then I thought about all the harmful accidents that could be prevented or even the opportunity to have never spoken words in anger that seemed to forever change an important relationship.
Yet, when most of us think about…
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Leadership
A favorite question my son likes to ask after we watch a movie is, “which character did you most identify with?” My response is usually based on similarities in age, role, and intent. As I have gotten older, I find myself relating much more to the character serving as a mentor than the younger protagonist making life altering decisions. Being able to see ourselves in the story greatly adds to the enjoyment and engagement of the experience. The inability to relate to the main character can also be a challenge in reading the biography of a historic figure or…
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Leadership
The tease line on the back of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci reads, “He was history’s most creative genius. What secrets can he teach us?” Isaacson applies the same rigorous research to Leonardo’s life that he has to other historic innovators like Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Steve Jobs. When he concludes that Leonardo was one of the few in history to rightfully earn the title of genius, there is little for the reader to dispute as we learn he was so much more just than the creator of the Mona Lisa.
However, Isaacson’s goal is not to…
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Leadership
While every child wants to be on a championship team (a desire shared by their parents), the nature of sports doesn’t make that possible. Most sporting contests possess a zero-sum design that creates a winner and a loser. While the creation of winners and losers can seem like a flawed design to a parent trying to comfort a distraught child that missed the potentially winning shot, it also provides some of sports’ greatest lessons.
In my own childhood, I felt the confidence building and joy of being on teams that won every game and the disappointment of finishing the season…
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Leadership
Time management can generally be divided into to two broad topics; answering the big picture questions about life to address effectiveness (“are we doing the right thing?”) and exploring productivity or efficiency (“are we doing things right?”). Both are obviously important though the productivity concern may feel like the more pressing need for many. The burden of getting more done with our limited resource capacity confronts us as we start every working day and equally applies to our personal lives.
Oliver Burkeman in Four Thousand Weeks attempts to answer the productivity question by applying a big picture philosophy. He provides…
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