Reviewing works about motivation and fulfillment around the new year and it was easy to come across videos featuring Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which has been going on for 87 years now. As you might imagine, just like with studies that aren’t conducted over multiple generations, this study does have some insights to share. You may recall some of them yourself if you saw his TED Talk from…
It’s the new year and if you haven’t already locked in your resolutions and resolution-related plans, have I got a post for you: a 26-minute breakdown of 20 tactics to make for a better 2026 from Daniel Pink. I first read Pink’s work with Free Agent Nation and then later Drive, which sent me down the scientifically-structured rabbit hole of “flow” back in the day. So when the almighty YouTube algorithm served up Pink’s videos…
It’s the end of the year, so it’s a good time to be contemplative. And you know those novels or TV shows, usually fantasy, where some character opines that they have “fewer winters ahead than behind?” It’s in that contemplative mood that I looked through my stack o’ possible blog posts and found an article called “The Tail End” by Tim Urban. You probably know Tim Urban from his gloriously funny and insightful piece on…
It’s definitely time people start thinking about making New Year’s resolutions or otherwise mapping out things they want to get done for the year ahead. And I’m suggesting that, whatever those plans are, it should include some art. This should not come as a surprise. I have advocated this whole wacky “making art thing” on this blog multiple times as my seven or nine regular readers may remember. Whether it’s a post I did about…
Perhaps thinking of my post back in August, how to deal with our interesting times has been on my mind, so that’s one of the reasons this hit me the way it did and might be useful to you. Besides suggestions for how to get through the timeline, he also has some good words on the “scarcity mindset” with people playing “zero-sum games” and a great perspective on gatekeeping vs. “paying your dues.” Leaving you…
Practicing random acts of kindness seems like a good idea these days, so as motivation, here’s a collections of writings on the subject from Marcus Aurelius to Leo Tolstoy to a host of writers in between, all courtesy of Maria Popova for The Marginalian.
This isn’t the first time I’ve posted about work-life balance, but it does feel that, in 2025, more people have the assumption that WORK has won and the imbalance is fine. We know it. We’ve felt it. I’m sure some researchers have excellent terms for it, but I’m thinking of it these days as overproductivity. And it succeeds because we have zealots, who probably get up at 4am, who push for overproductivity. And when they,…
Motivation to create –and breaking out of perceived writing blocks and creative ruts– feels like an evergreen problem. In fact, there’s enough books and articles and videos about such things that I believe it’s fair to say creative folks find themselves in different shaped ruts so that one solution might not fit all. BUT, in case this video is the one that helps you today, spend 15 minutes with filmmaker Luc Forsyth as he explains…
Thinking of last Monday’s post about how to tackle life and its inherent constraints, here’s a video from leadership speaker and business school lecturer Conor Neill that might scratch some similar self-reflective itches. The video was posted five years ago when the pandemic was in full swing and the title purports to be something for middle-aged folks to ponder, but I would suggest it’s useful for many people. For example, teenagers might not get the…
Periodically, some variant of a meme pops up in my feeds that goes “Adulting is saying ‘maybe next week will be easier’ until you die.” Yeah, I know. Great thought to start your Monday, right? Well, author Oliver Burkeman has a different approach in what he’s termed this “age of bewilderment.” It’s not going to get easier, but once you let go of “being on top of everything,” you have some options. Your mileage may…