Givers want to help others in a way that is selfless. Takers want to be pleased. And takers are never pleased for very long. Takers want to take from others in a way that is selfish. Givers are often easily manipulated in to giving that goes beyond selflessness and into activities or generosity that is…

You reach a certain point in life where “It will be good exposure” in an attempt to get you to do lots of free and original work that goes unpaid carries little weight. Where is this point in your life? About 30 seconds after you were born. If you do not have the work ready…

I’ve been running some corporate training classes recently at various Fortune 500s in the Bay area. It’s pretty nerve wracking standing up in front of a room full of engineers to teach them a technical subject. Public speaking was never my forte. One of the “tricks” people would always tell you is, “Just imagine everyone…

Last week I was in Las Vegas for DevConnections and the launch of Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Normally you won’t catch me dead in Las Vegas along The Strip due to all of the tourists, the constant cigarette smoke and the pervasive heat. This trip did not turn out so bad. I went in the…

I hate the very smell of shellfish. I am sure I would hate taste too, but I will never know because I just cannot get past that smell. The concept of eating shellfish, because of the the odour, induces abundant stomach churning and heaving. I believe in an abundant life, I just don’t subscribe to…

Talking to an admissions officer at a college that shall remain nameless, “As an International Student you will need to submit your TOEFL score.” Me: “I live in California.” Admissions Officer: “Yes, but you are from a different country so you will need to take an English language competency exam.” Me: “I speak English as…

Are you guilty of that? We’re all guilty of creative masturbation at times, but some people manage to take it to the extreme and do it almost consistently in every activity. Uh. Okay. Lets back up a bit and explain what I mean by this. I am not talking about an activity you would get…

The industrial era mind-set like the Victorian’s that made it the pinnacle of their society, is one of command and control, of rigid authority. Central authority, or just your boss’ authority, and personal responsibility are the anti-thesis to each other. You cannot have personal responsibility if your boss insists on having all of the authority.

An idle pursuit should be always be pursued with purpose. It is good to sometimes just “do nothing.” Where people get lost is when they get busying doing nothing that is of no use and their time for doing nothing of no use is unconstrained.

I found myself zipping down the freeway yesterday morning en route to meet with a client, thinking about an upcoming house move, when I pulled in behind a huge house moving van. Nothing unusual about that. But this moving van happened to catch my eye because the rear, roll up door and one entire side…

Do you deal mostly with urgent tasks in your day-to-day work? Unless you are a fire fighter or paramedic most of your work should consist of well-planned, directed tasks. Tasks that should have been decided upon well in advance, days or perhaps even weeks ahead of time. You should be able to predict, with a…

Live in an apartment? Own a house? Spend your entire life on a boat? On the road in a motor home? It is almost a certainty that no matter where you live, your home has a kitchen. Whether you are a gourmet chef or are so incapable (or clever) that you can burn the water…

Shoes that don’t fit, at any price, no matter how cheap, are worse than useless. I do not understand people who buy cheap shoes that don’t fit. Why do you do the same thing when seeking out vendors and business deals?

“I need money, I just don’t need your money.”

You don’t hit a billion dollar valuation with an idea, a few weeks of brainstorming and bumping into the right technical co-founder. Football games (American ones at least) are not won on a single — the first and only — Hail Mary pass. Each game is won by a few yards of gain in one…

If the work you do is worth doing because it positively impacts the lives of others, because it changes the world for the better, you should be willing to put your name on the work. Putting your name on your work isn’t to take away from others’ efforts, or to take focus from the world…

Work for free for yourself. Never work for free for someone else (unless it is your spouse, your Mother or your Mother-in-law, you cheap bastard). The only thing that free work builds for you is the reputation that you will work for free.

Start-up accelerators and incubators are built for one purpose – to give birth to the next hot new start-up. I’ve talked to a lot of just starting-out entrepreneurs over the years and based on my notes, over half of them won’t apply to accelerators until they have a working prototype or MVP. This refusal to…

Society suffers from a short-cut mentality. We watch training montages in movies and believe it takes a few hours, a few days or a few weeks to become brilliant at karate or kung-fu that ordinarily would take years of physical conditioning. We watch someone go from high school dropout to brilliant scientist or computer hacker…