or — it’s all the same game — Every company has some kind of EQ or “soft skills” initiative. They want employees who are better communicators, better leaders, better contributors, more courageous, more willing to be vulnerable, and less need for mental health days. Execs and HR want employees who have a high degree of mental wellness —…

and expecting stability is self damaging — Yesterday the news showed floods, airport delays, human trafficking, and financial crises. They showed the same kinds of things last week, last month, and last year. The same things were happening last decade and last century. By definition, the world is and has been volatile. It will always be volatile…

or how to die without regrets Stand up for what you believe in. When you are in your rocking chair talking to your grandchildren many years from now, be sure you have a good story to tell. — Amal Clooney — — — — — — — — — —…

I've run multiple successful WFH software teams. They were high producing, engaged, and repeatable. And the devil is in the details. We did agile with standup every morning - accountability was baked in. We did paired programming and changed partners daily - lots of cross pollination. I did informal 1-on-1 checkins with everyone on the team - usually twice per month. I persuaded the execs to let us evolve workflows, user experiences, and release schedules - because my team acquired better data over time.

or why it’s good to compete with yourself — Humans aren’t designed to sit on the couch and binge watch Netflix. Our evolution is all activity — finding food, fighting predators, migrating with the weather. We tested ourselves every day to survive. The shift to comfort is killing us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Every dream you have for yourself…

or it’s not the system — it’s you — Many individual contributors (aka ICs) earn promotions at work. It’s fairly common. And for those who get stuck and are not promoted — the “why” is clearly a mystery (otherwise they’d be promoted). I’ve seen these same three behaviors that stop promotions in tech, hospitality, and service businesses. …

So many thoughts. I used to have horrible social anxiety - today it's gone. Here's what I've learned. 1) way more people than I expected have social anxiety - it just manifests differently 2) my journey has been 1,000 baby steps. There is no silver bullet. 3) making good friends is easy, you just need to be vulnerable (scariest thing ever) 4) I needed to find my own "enough" point. Tried as many as 8 close friends, couldn't manage it. Today I have 2 and that's plenty.

which puts them in a rarified group — To many families will waste thousands of dollars and years of work — to see their student not complete college. This is high school graduation time — roughly 3.4 million seniors leaving high school. And a large percentage of those graduates are headed to colleges. Sadly, there will be over…

Things are rarely as simple as the tag lines for articles. I've lead multiple remote teams where we collaborated well, beat expectations, and people got promoted. I've also benefited from being in an office where I could easily have a hallway conversation, hear people's concerns, and easily talk with random…