I was walking down the street the other day, and somebody asked me what time it was. I instinctively looked at my watch to tell them and after we passed each other, I realized two things. One is, I can’t remember the last time somebody asked me what time it was when I was just […]
telling time, time, watch
A recent Wall Street Journal article rated the best and worst airports in the US for business travel. The top-rated one was San Francisco, and one of the reasons they gave in the article was that it is relatively quieter than other airports because the number of announcements that are allowed on the overhead speaker […]
airport, noise, quiet, travel, wall street journal
A friend of mine had a job interview scheduled for the other day. When the company called her and asked if they could reschedule it for a few days later, she immediately assumed the worst, that they had found another candidate they liked better, or they had changed their mind or something was happening in […]
fear, fear or unknown, unknown
I don’t have a long commute to work every morning, it’s just about 12 minutes, but recently, I tried doing that commute in my car without the radio on, without listening to the radio or podcasts, and I have found three big benefits to this silent commute. Number one is just allowing my mind to […]
commute, morning commute, silent commute
There’s an old joke about a guy who goes to his doctor and says, “It hurts when I go like this.” The doctor says, “Stop doing that!” It reminds me that there are so many things in life that we do that cause irritation or upset to ourselves, or that we allow, it could be […]
commitment, doctor, joke, stop doing that
One morning, on my way to work, I passed a father and daughter waiting for the bus. He turned towards their mailbox, opened it up, saw nothing inside and shut it. She watched what he was doing, but she wanted to check for herself. So, she opened the mailbox, looked inside, kind of shook her […]
checking it twice, fact check, looking, mailbox, twice
One of my favorite expressions in sports comes from baseball and it’s the term “getting caught looking”. That’s when a batter who has two strikes on them, watches the next pitch come in, gets called for a strike, and they’re out. They didn’t swing the bat; they didn’t take any action at all. I think […]
baseball, bat, looking, strike, swing
One time, when I was in the supermarket, at the front of the line for the self-checkout, a customer and the manager had apparently been going at it, at the point where I got there, they were having the last pieces of this argument where the customer angrily turned to the manager and said, “your […]
argument, emotional intelligence, fight, grocery store, walk away
My brother Robbie was an aficionado of cigars, pens, chocolate, and many other good things. As an attorney, he had very few bad days but when one would occasionally happen, he had a saying: “On a good day, you have a little chocolate. On a bad day, you have a lot of chocolate.” I have […]
bad day, brother, chocolate
One of my favorite sayings is, “No one ever complained that something was too easy to read.” It’s a continual reminder for me when I’m writing for business, or personally, to keep things as simple as possible, not to use big words when small words would do because I want to make sure that the […]
easy, little words, quote, word, words