Legacy ’systems’

After several hours of a rough morning with the monkeys, I found myself threatening thus: “I’m going to call your father.” To which the monkeys literally responded: “Why?”
And really, I’m not sure why I said it. They’re not afraid of him, and really, he was working at a cafe. What was he going to do?
I must have [...]

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Being a good manager/mom: be empathetic

Brazen Careerist, is one of my favorite blogs, and I especially liked Penelope’s recent post on how to be a good manager. Her mantra: be generous. Which I love, of course, because it’s not only something that applies to being a good manager, it applies to being a good person in general. Life is not [...]

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Yes and…

It’s been a tough couple of weeks with the monkeys. We’re in one of those phases where hanging out with them is sort of fun, but sort of a pain in the a** because we keep finding ourselves having to work really hard to get them to follow directions.
The other day I had to put [...]

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3:10 to Yuma

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 – [...]

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Do a hard reset on yourself

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 [...]

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Made to Stick, Lesson 4: Emotion

I’ve written before about the power of emotion, and about the importance of leaders not hiding their emotions but using them to motivate and inspire others. The Heaths say that good ideas and good messages, too require emotion. 9 out of 10 dentist agree that a healthy dose of emotion helps get your message across [...]

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Made to Stick, Lesson 2: Unexpectedness

It might surprise you that the second principle of stickiness is unexpectedness.
According to the Heaths, the element of surprise is a way to keep people engaged with an idea long after the first telling. Unexpectedness can drive repetition, turning an idea from something you heard once to a legend that continues to be told over [...]

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little voice vs. open mind

I like to think of myself as open minded. But sometimes I realize that, well, my mind isn’t as open as I’d like.
Over the course of several weeks, I read several mentions of the same book, Momma Zen. I’ve been writing about parenting and yoga and how one informs the other in my life, and the book seemed [...]

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What we can control

I pretty much stopped reading books about parenting after the first year of the monkeys’ lives. In part, I stopped reading because I was less desperate for help. In part, I stopped because I finally realized that there was no answer in any book that would really help me figure out my kids and figure out [...]

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Getting over the guilt

I’ve been working part time since the monkeys were born. When I first went back to work it was two days a week and over the last two years it’s slowly inched up to four days a week. That actually seems like the right amount for me to be able to feel somewhat successful in my career [...]

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