at Dilbert comic is pretty accurate. Gallup says 40% of people fear public speaking -- and some people fear it more than death. Jerry Seinfeld interpreted this as meaning that at a funeral, more people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. Via Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and Cool: A wide variety of studies have crowned fear of public speaking - or glossophobia, for sticklers - as…
2011, Foreign Policy Magazine named Tyler Cowen #72 in their list of the "Top 100 Global Thinkers." He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and, along with Alex Tabarrok, he blogs at Marginal Revolution, one of the most popular economics sites on the internet. Tyler is a New York Times bestselling author, having written 13 books including Discover Your Inner Economist and The Great Stagnation. His latest book is Average Is Over which gives a fascinating look into where the…
ter Sims is the bestselling author of Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries. It was one of the best books I read in 2012 and I’ve posted about it numerous times (here, here, here and here.) Peter and I discussed Pixar's secret to collaboration, the creative process shared by world class architects and comedians, and the single most important thing everyone needs to be doing to have breakthroughs of their own. My conversation with Peter was quite…
at's the number one thing that holds most people back from success? It's not intelligence or hard work. It's your attitude. Sound like the drivel your parents told you when you were 16 that inspired eye-rolling? That's what I thought, too. But then I kept seeing the same thing over and over from experts and research... The War For Talent Is A Myth Marketing genius Seth Godin says it's actually a war for attitude: ...it's not really a search for talent.…
you guys are anything like the readers of Slate.com, 38% of you are already gone. You couldn't stay focused long enough to engage with this post at all. Is it time to scroll to see more? Too much effort, too busy, meh, gotta go, HEY LOOK SOMETHING SHINY!!! -- another 5% of you just vanished. Yes, attention spans are that bad. Now I'm wondering if I should have made this post shorter. Cal Newport, Georgetown professor and expert on…
rvard's Teresa Amabile, author of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, says there are three components to creativity at work: Expertise (People who aren't any good at physics rarely come up with relativity theory.) Creative thinking skills (Are you even trying to think outside the box?) Motivation (Personal interest like curiosity beats monetary bonuses.) Her research produced 6 things that companies and managers can do to support and inspire creative work: …
t the schedule down for a second. Consider something I read in The Power of Full Engagement: Maybe it's not about time. It's about energy. Via The Power of Full Engagement: Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of high performance. It's a qualitative lens instead of a quantitative one. Focusing on your time management skills sounds great but all hours are not created equal. We're not machines and the time model is a machine model. Our job isn't to be…
my interview with Harvard Business School professor Gautam Mukunda, author of Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter, I asked him about the biggest mistake leaders make: Gautam: Over time, it’s grandiosity. Eric: Hubris? Gautam: Yeah. You live in an environment where everybody constantly tells you how great you are, and you begin to believe it. Eric: Yeah. Even Machiavelli said a leader needs people who are going to be honest with them, because everybody’s going to kiss their ass. Gautam: Exactly...…
I want to subscribe!