Quality of People and Workplace Engagement

Yishan Wong on engineering management, The quality of coworkers is the single greatest determinant of workplace happiness, and fully engaged participation by everyone is the primary way by which everyone exercises direct power over making their job experience better.

Intimacy and Vulnerability

American psychologist and Buddhist meditation teacher Tara Brach writes in Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (2003): The intimacy that arises in listening and speaking truth is only possible if we can open to the vulnerability of our own hearts. Breathing in, contacting the life that is right there, is […]

Einstein Took Naps

Science journalist Zaria Gorvett on Einstein’s quirky habits: Luckily for Einstein, he also took regular naps. According to apocryphal legend, to make sure he didn’t overdo it he’d recline in his armchair with a spoon in his hand and a metal plate directly beneath. He’d allow himself to drift off for a second, then—bam!—the spoon […]

True Tolerance

Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias on what it means to be tolerant: “Tolerance” is a feel-good buzzword in our society, but I fear people have forgotten what it means. Many folks are proud of their “tolerance” for gays, working women, Tibetan monks in cute orange outfits, or blacks sitting at the front of the bus. […]

The Blood Brother of Corporate Evil

Charlie Munger at the 2005 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, The history of much of which we don’t like in modern corporate capitalism comes from an unreasonable expectation, communicated from headquarters, that [corporate] earnings have to go up with no volatility and great regularity. That kind of an expectation from headquarters is not just the kissing […]

Gratitude and the Dignity of Dying

Renowned neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, the bestselling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, writes in the New York Times, upon learning of his terminal cancer diagnosis at the age of eighty-one, I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I […]

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams

The close friendship between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams started when they worked together on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence, and in 1784. Jefferson was the runner-up in the presidential election of 1796, he became Adams’s vice president. They turned political rivals, when Adams ran for a second term in 1800 and […]

Make the Positive Things Bloom

From Helen Tworkov’s interview with Thich Nhat Hanh in the Summer 1995 issue of Tricycle, I have noticed that people are dealing too much with the negative, with what is wrong. They do not touch enough on what is not wrong—it’s the same as some psychotherapists. Why not try the other way, to look into […]

Trusting in Love

Jack Kornfield in The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace (2002,) Lovingkindness offers care and well-wishing to another without expectation or demand. There is no distance between their well-being and our own. True love is trustworthy. Our love for others is an expression of our trust in love itself. No matter what happens, we can […]

Leading in a Crisis: Embrace the Uncertainty

Jack McGuinness of the leadership-consulting firm Relationship Impact writes, The challenge that leaders face in a crisis is that their organizations aren’t typically set up to operate with such uncertainty. Leaders create visions, plans and metrics to attempt to control their environments and minimize uncertainty as best they can. In a crisis many leaders default […]