How many crayons do you need to make a masterpiece? If you are judging by how many they give you with the kid's menu at a restaurant, apparently the answer is often...two. Back in the day, a box of 64 Crayola crayons — complete with a sharpener in the back — was as valuable as anything on earth. It contained every color known to mankind (who even knew there was such a color as periwinkle?!), including silver and gold, which I'm convinced was made with real bits of the precious metals. A box of 64 crayons turned anyone into an artist. Everything was possible; there was nothing you …
Tinkering: The Missing Piece in Your Problem-Solving Toolkit
Imagine sitting at your kitchen table with a thousand puzzle pieces scattered before you. A small island of interconnected pieces has taken shape. They were easy—the only face in the whole scene. You reach for a piece that looks like it could be part of the person's hair. After rotating it and testing the fit a few times, you confirm it's not the right one. Then, angered that it didn't work, you toss the entire table over in a furious rage. With pieces flying in every direction, you swear off jigsaw puzzles forever, convince yourself you stink at them, and remind yourself that you always …
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5 Favorite Words of Adultitis
I recently did a presentation on innovation. In preparation, I asked attendees to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 on how creative or innovative they considered themselves. Then, for those who didn't rate themselves a 10 (there was only one who did), I asked them what obstacle was in their way. A number of people judged themselves to be too practical or admitted to getting hung up analyzing the practicality of an idea. Ah, practicality: The enemy of awesome ideas. Many a brainstorming session has come to a screeching halt when someone suggests an idea deemed …
Is Your Job Getting More Emotionally Expensive?
"Inflation is real. And I'm broke." This was shared with me by a woman in an organization for which I was preparing to speak. Although many people have struggled to keep up with the rising cost of goods, she wasn't referring to money. Over the past few years, some of the most important jobs in our society have grown more emotionally expensive, thanks to the pandemic and other factors. They are harder to do and there are fewer people willing to do them, yet we need them more than ever. Let's consider nurses as one example. They are carrying unsustainable patient loads and burning out …
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Stacking Your Way to Success
Sometimes people look at successes I've had and say, "Must be nice," as if they happened by magic. What they don't often see is the framework that helped enable that success. Fortunately, it's a framework anyone can develop. We often assume that in order to be successful, we need to be great at one thing. That can work—see LeBron James, for example—but that path is extremely difficult and unlikely. The truth is you only need to be pretty good at a handful of ordinary skills. You just need to build a talent stack. Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip Dilbert, popularized …
The Downside of Doing Things the Regular Way
How do I eat my cereal? The regular way. I pour cereal into a bowl. Then I pour milk over the cereal. Then I eat the cereal, savoring the first bites before said cereal is ruined with sogginess. My wife does it differently. She pours cereal into a bowl. Then she adds the milk. Then she goes on a two-week vacation. Then she eats the cereal. Somehow, we've been married for almost twenty-three years. I recently learned of yet another way to approach this breakfast staple that might be even weirder. I actually met a person who pours the milk in first, before the cereal. She …
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The Most Important Thing to Do Today
How many Froot Loops can you stack on top of one another before they topple over? How tall would someone's tower have to be for you to find yourself impressed? We often relish the opportunity to declare how many activities we're balancing. Like a status symbol, our busyness signals our importance. We could pretend the pink ones are work responsibilities, the yellow ones are family and household chores, maybe the orange ones are volunteer commitments, and the green ones are hobbies...All hail the one with the highest stack of Froot Loops! I am always in awe of people who seem to …
Beautiful Questions from Ugly Cookies
QUESTION: Is it possible to create a working Volkswagon Beetle out of rice cereal treats and fondant? I don't think so, but I wouldn't be surprised to fire up Netflix one day and see it happen. I am awed by the mind-bending confections people create on those baking competition shows. It's entertaining television. But watching them make their beautiful creations don't teach us as much as the ugly stuff we create ourselves.A few years ago, I led an unusual workshop. Instead of whiteboards, charts, and slides, we rolled out frosting, sprinkles, and sugar cookies. There was only one …
Step Right Up: You are the Leader We’ve Been Waiting For
Going alone is usually faster. But it's rarely better.Last week, I talked about my family's trek up the Lanikai Pillbox Trail and the pep talk I gave them beforehand. I mentioned how I initially took a solo scouting mission to make sure it wouldn't be more than our littlest ones could handle.It was faster, but probably too fast. The problem is, I rushed it. I wanted to reach the summit as quickly as possible in order to attain the information I craved. So instead of taking the clear path, I looked for shortcuts. I kept a brisk pace, pushing myself to make record time. I knew what I …
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Do You Know the Real Reason They Made Stonehenge?
I remember the painting critiques back in art school. After spending several weeks working on our masterpieces, we’d all sit in a circle and explain what our paintings were about. Someone would inevitably say their piece was a postmodern reaction to the phycological impact of the industrial revolution that caused existential dread. To me it looked like a canvas with some paint sloppily applied. It did seem like the students who were better at making “serious" art got better grades. (Or perhaps they were just better at explaining why their art was serious.) Perhaps this is why, after making …
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