Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged ideas on August 1, 2008 | No Comments »
According to The Eureka Hunt, an article by Jonah Lehrer in last week’s New Yorker magazine, scientists have finally found neural proof of what creative thinkers and those who study them already know: Insight doesn’t come from focusing on a problem.
Instead, insight comes from focusing on a problem and then taking your mind off that problem, leaving your mind [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged ideas, innovation, learning, parenting on June 24, 2008 | No Comments »
My company just celebrated it’s 10th Anniversary. To celebrate, we invited some amazing thinkers and doers to talk about whatever they’re thinking about and doing these days. My brain is full of interesting ideas, which I’m sure will spill into the blog over time.
But today I’m thinking about one speaker in particular, Andy Hargadon. His blog [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged childcare on June 6, 2008 | No Comments »
I’m always a bit suspicious of company outings. I get that they’re a nice way to connect with co-workers in a different way. I just worry that sometimes they’re the only time people actually have fun together. Meaning, the actual work isn’t together or isn’t fun, and the outings are a compensation for that. I [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged working moms, household help, guilt, environmentalism on June 3, 2008 | 1 Comment »
I just read Laura Vanderkam’s post on ‘core competency moms’ on the Huffington Post.
It’s an interesting perspective on how working moms compensate for not having enough time to do it all by prioritizing and focusing on the things that really matter, not necessarily the things that keep the house looking pristine. These moms thrive by knowing what they’re [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged expectation setting, movies, Parenting Wisdom, role models, Westerns, working moms on May 17, 2008 | No Comments »
I just finished watching 3:10 to Yuma, which was a completely enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours. Like all Westerns, it was a story about What It Means To Be A Man wrapped in a plot involving horses, guns, and manhunts.
What was particularly interesting about this one was it’s emphasis on parenthood - [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged Parenting Wisdom, learning on May 7, 2008 | No Comments »
At school and at work, we learn to build on our experiences.
In fact, the older the get, the longer we’re supposed to remember information. When you’re younger, you get tested on what you’ve learned that week, or that month. By the time you’re in college or graduate school, you may only get tested once every [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged working moms, household help, guilt, Judaism on April 15, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I’ve written about feeling guilty for being a working mom - both about what I can’t do at work and about not always being around for my husband and my kids. This week, though, I found a couple of things that as a working mom, I get to not feel guilty about. So, let’s stick [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged client management, intuition, context on April 1, 2008 | No Comments »
Part of my job is to understand what’s going on inside my client’s heads, figure out what they really need from us, and help our teams deliver something just right.
On a pretty regular basis, people behave in ways that I can’t quite make sense of. Often, I take it personally, as if their behavior is [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged attention span, technology, focus on March 27, 2008 | 2 Comments »
I mostly work from home, and I spend a lot of time talking on the phone. Recently, I noticed that my attention span was really falling. No matter how interesting the call was, I’d find myself checking e-mail, reading blogs, and sometimes even IM-ing with my husband. It’s horrible, but it’s also hard for me to stop [...]
Posted in The Practice of Life, tagged routine, schedules, sex, time management on March 9, 2008 | No Comments »
To say I’m not a creature of habit is an understatement. I get easily bored when I follow the same schedule day after day, rarely walk the same route to the grocery store, and don’t even like to eat the same thing for breakfast two days in a row.
You can imagine the shock that hit [...]
