This is such a powerful perspective. It represents a clear line between Confidence and Arrogance. Arrogance is being confident with no reason to be, where confidence is a real understanding of what it means to fail or succeed in a given situation. Both give the appearance of a self-assured and capable person who…

Section 4 of this article is so spot on it hurts. I work in a regulated industry, so everything is process centric, and every process is documented and has documents that are created. Most times the process is a paperwork exercise that gets in the way and wastes time. Rarely though, when the the planets align and the…

Certainly it’s always dangerous to stray too far from reality, and into fantasy, but you are already telling yourself a story about your past, and your future. Why not make it less requiem for a dream and more trainspotting? Especially if it helps you in the future to align your goals in a way that lets you steal…

Good advice. I also like to structure my emails like this:

Kind of crazy to think of how little impact fact checking has on people’s opinions. With the internet where everyone can find their own set of facts to believe, reality takes a backseat to ideology. Partisanship means that people have picked a team, and really are just going to go with the team regardless of any…

That just the thing, Sweden, it doesn’t matter. The first impression isn’t really about you, it’s about them.

This can be so liberating. Maximizing and perfecting served me well in school, but for everything else it’s just paralyzing! I even got to the point where I got stressed out playing videogames because, what if I missed an item? What if quest #6 out of 3000 could have given me 3 more gold oh god! I finally learned…

I love thinking like this. It also keeps you confident in your abilities. The hard way is often how you had to do it when you didn’t know what you were doing and were just starting out. If you keep up your confidence in being able to do things the hard way, you keep up that confidence you can do that new scary task…

From what I’ve seen hard work is just one piece of the puzzle. Someone has the authority to promote you, you need to seem productive to them, and convince them that they should. You can do this by overwhelming them with your productivity and ability to make their job easier, or through sucking up to them like…

My four are:

Just a followup note from the developer side, for apps in doze mode if the developer tries to wake the app or service using a regular alarm, the wake is deferred until the next maintenance window (approximately 1 per hour). However there is a setExactAndAllowWhileIdle() alarm that will wake the app even if it is in…

Love it, it also makes me think, what are the personality traits that work best for relationships other than friendship? Just because someone is a good friend doesn’t mean they are a good as a roomate, or co-worker, or boss, or even parent. I guess each of those have different personality traits that help them work…

As true as this is, what we all really want is to be Biff and go back in time so we can be rich and get with your mom.

If someone actually takes the time to do a professional critique of your work and overcomes the awkwardness of being the bearer of bad news... PAY ATTENTION. It’s not often that you get clues on which direction to head, and negative feedback can be a great source of info on what you should be focusing on, and where…

Defaults are basically the only way I ever reach a goal. My goldfish-like will power and concentration lasts all of 15 seconds, but defaults are forever. I was spending too much, and then I made my default savings 25% direct deposit into a different account. My spending has dropped and my attitude has changed, and my…

The toughest thing about side gigs is competition. If you are doing something part-time, that you picked up as a hobby, how do you compete with someone who is all in? Make sure that the market you are in is local enough, so you are only competing with those in your immediate surroundings, or niche enough that people…

I love the reminder about how easy it is to justify your own actions, tendencies and indeed shortcomings. It would be nice to think that the smarter and more experienced you are you would naturally avoid doing it, but I’ve found its just the opposite. The smarter you are the more elaborate your justifications become!…

If you can do this consistently, ideally you can get to place where you have productive arguments. Not no arguments, because there will always be things to disagree about, but arguments where you actually reach a resolution instead of just falling back on the emotional cycle of every argument you’ve ever had.

It certainly varies widely by manager, and by the organization as a whole, but in my experience these ratings are tied to compensation, and so directly correspond to how much they need to pay to keep you. Are you a so-so employee or have been here forever? Average rating, average raise. Do you suck and they want to…

Not directed at me, but I also did cancer research at M.D. Anderson. The part of this argument that has never made sense to me, is the assumption that a Big Pharma company that made a cure would not also make a ridiculous amount of money. I understand that treatments of chronic diseases are big money makers, but cures…