How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that! This was the reaction of the biologist Thomas H. Huxley to Charles Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species. Breakthroughs often appear obvious—in hindsight. To paraphrase Arthur Schopenhauer, talent hits a target no one else can hit, but …
Life Lessons
The nonsense of “guilty pleasure”
One of my guilty pleasures is reading Dan Brown novels. I love the startling plot twists, the cliffhangers, and the adrenaline rush produced by his over-the-top plots. Reading airport thrillers isn’t “productive,” so I’d call it my guilty pleasure. But then I started to question the term “guilty pleasure.” The …
How to tame your inner critic
We all have an inner critic: The voice that criticizes you (Why did you do that?), the voice that replays conversations in your head (What were you thinking?), the voice that tells you that you’re not good enough (This sentence you just wrote—it sucks.). In the personal development space, the …
Stop asking children these 6 questions (and ask these instead)
During a recent keynote, I got a question from a dad on how to cultivate curiosity and critical thinking in his children. I’m not a parent so, in one sense, I feel totally underqualified to say anything on the topic. At the same time, during my ten years as a …