Tracy Chapman was one of my favorite artists while I was in high school. Her self-titled first album was released in 1988. Several years later, while completing my masters degree at Boston College, I serendipitously lived in the town house in Boston in which Chapman had apparently written her first album while studying at Tufts. …
Category: Ideas Worth Spreading
U.S. Farmers Cope with Roundup Resistant Weeds: Address the Cause not the Symptom
There was an excellent article in the New York Times yesterday that underlines the risk of addressing symptoms rather than the underlying cause when addressing problems (see http://tinyurl.com/3yw758o). Such an approach offers appealing and typically profitable short-term gains, but invariably produces long-term side-effects and costs that outweigh the initial benefits. A biodynamic and organic farmer friend of mine argues that weeds thrive only in compromised soil. …
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Practical Wisdom: What’s your Job Description?
I once heard wisdom described as the "sense of the fitness of things." Wisdom is more than knowledge, it is a sensitivity of perception and consideration that facilitates excellence in thought, word and action. Wisdom in thought combines knowledge with accurate intuition. Wisdom in speech is saying the right thing at the right time or as …
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Principally Speaking: Solving Difficult Problems
I happened upon an interesting principle that understood and properly applied, can make life much easier. This principle became obvious during a recent horseback riding lesson while working on my trot-canter upward transition. Without boring you with the details, the principle I learned or perhaps better put, rediscovered, is this: the solution does not always lie at …
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The Top 7 Ways to Ruin a Perfectly Good Life by Gregg Hake
Leonardo DaVinci once wrote, "Life well spent is long." Socrates wrote some 2,000 years earlier, "Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued." To be sure, a life well lived is ideal, but optional. While I typically prefer to consider the positive attributes of any subject in order to provide stepping stones for …
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A New Shade of Green: Work Smarter, not Harder
Here is valuable insight on how to work smarter, not harder... My father-in-law gave me a fantastic Wall Street Journal Article last week entitled "A New Shade of Green" by the first director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), William Ruckelshaus (see http://tinyurl.com/2d9l9jn). His basic argument is that today's environmental challenges are far different than those faced by our country …
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Peace on earth: Dream BIG!
Everybody can be somebody. Everyone is free to make a difference in this world. Raul Midon, guitarist and singer, presents a pair of lovely songs at the TED 2007 conference. The first, entitled "Everybody," is inspiring and as the TED summary notes "category-defying" and the second, "Peace on Earth," carries a powerful message that I hope …
Our Planet is a Curious Place: Change, Grudges and Forgiveness
Our planet is a curious place. Filled with a remarkable array of both animate and inanimate objects, its surface and all that dwell thereupon morph from moment to moment. Never were there two moments exactly the same in history. A snapshot taken today of the earth in its fulness would be hardly recognizable if shown …
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Pride, Passion and Happiness: The Disappearing Artisan
Look at the world you center. Do you take great pride in it? Do you sweep the sidewalk at the storefront of your life daily, at daybreak? Do you polish the doorlatch to your home and straighten the welcome mat for friends and enemies? Do you feel you have the opportunity, nay the responsibility to aim to be the very best [enter your job title here] that ever walked the earth? If so, kudos to you. If not, get to it. (And have a wonderful day.)
Intrinsic Motivation: Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose
Career analyst Dan Pink, in his fascinating talk given at TED Global 2009, explains why the traditional approaches to motivation (extrinsic) are incompatible with many of the types of work that we do in the 21st century. Autonomy, mastery and purpose. A sensible approach when applied to the right types of work. I suppose the challenge lies in mapping a transition strategy from the …
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Gregory Hake 