When I was growing up, I never left food on my late. I spent my entire childhood as a scrawny growing boy hoping to bulk up for the football field, so I couldn’t afford to miss out on any calories. Fast forward to present day, and the story is very different. I’m still fairly active and …
Author: Brandon
If You Can Do It Once…
I’ve previously written about the odds of recurring events, and the likelihood that an unlikely event will occur if given enough opportunities. But how about the other side of the coin? If you can confidently do something once, why can’t you do it every time? If I can walk up to a 3-foot putt with nearly …
The Ultimate Athlete
The decathlon is the best test in the Olympics for identifying the best overall athlete in the world. Various track and field events encompassing a combination of running, jumping, and throwing are combined to compare the contestants. But what if we took it a step further? What if the athletes had to: Throw a football …
Polarizing
The best type of art is polarizing. Take hip-hop as an example. Even more specifically, the rapper Kendrick Lamar. Ask your average person what they think of Kendrick’s music, and I can almost guarantee that they don’t like it. The vocals on the tracks are nothing like what we’re used to considering “music”, the lyrics …
Bad News First
Toyota has established themselves as a world-class company and a leader in the development of high-quality vehicles. They revolutionized the manufacturing world with their unique approach in the Toyota Production System and continue to remain on the cutting edge of technological advancement. Entire books and courses have been devoted to all of the intricacies contained …
The Right Scoreboard
Money can be thought of as a scoreboard in life. The guy cruising around in his Ferrari and the lady pulling into her fenced-in estate can be thought of as”winning.” They likely decided that wealth was something that they wanted to pursue, and they were successful. When thought of that way, wealth is a clear …
Good, On Time, and Pleasant
Neil Gaiman presented a theory that there are three key aspects to succeeding in whatever you do: Being good Delivering on time Being pleasant to work with The interesting thing about his theory was that he thought you only need two of these three characteristics to do well. If you’re exceptional at what you do …
Thinking vs. Doing
Where’s the line between theory and practicality? I can honestly say that I learned a lot in Engineering school. I gained a better understanding of how the world around me works, and I got to understand the math and physics underlying so many of the greatest inventions. But from a practicality standpoint, the past year of …
Feedback Loops
Honest, timely feedback can be some of the most valuable information that we can come across. Given our own biases, it’s almost impossible to objectively evaluate ourselves or our performance. And when we ask for feedback, people are usually hesitant to be completely honest due to fear of hurting the relationship or coming across as …
We’ll See
I’ve heard a similar story from a few different places now that beautifully captures one of my core outlooks on life. I don’t know where this officially comes from, or even how the original version goes, but here’s the gist of it: There once was a man who owned a single horse. One day, the gate …