Remember the swings on your playground from childhood? Remember how they’re built? There’s a wooden or hard rubber seat and two long chains hanging from a metal bar. That design inherently either invites someone to run to it and play, or not. The swing requires people with two arms and legs, a certain degree of…
I’m trying to play more guitar. So I took the guitar out of the closet, tuned it up, and keep it by my desk, within reach. It works. I play more. It’s a small, simple habit stack that helps me achieve a small goal. But what about longer term goals, bigger goals – the kind…
Remember that weird feeling when you’re in 5th grade and you see your teacher at the grocery store, just picking out bananas like a normal human? And it’s really strange because she doesn’t belong at the grocery store. She belongs in math class. Like, what’s she doing here? Or you see your mean, yelling gym…
Maybe it’s a function of the age, of being 12 years old. I dunno. But a few years ago, our son would keep score of everything. If I asked him to empty the dishwasher, he would say it’s his sister’s turn. If we’re stacking wood in the shed, he lets me know how many more…
Henry Ford is heralded today as a technological genius, a brilliant capitalist, even a kind and generous moralist fighting for the rights and wages of commoners. He is often referred to as the inventor of the modern age. Quotes from Henry Ford are plastered on notecards and in boardrooms everywhere. “If you think you can…
This may surprise you, but prior to the early 1970s the word “parenting” didn’t exist. The word parent was a noun, not a verb. A parent was someone you are, not something you do. In the same way that we don’t child our parents, and we don’t husband our wives. According to Alison Gopnick, a…
