The same is true in your life outside of your job. All my adult life I’ve felt drawn to ask long-married couples how they were able to stay together. All of them said the same thing: “We worked hard at it.
If you have a question,” my folks would say, “then find the answer.” The.
We’ve placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people’s rights. That’s how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities. Rights have to come from somewhere, and they come from the community. In return, all of us have a responsibility to the community. Some people call this the ‘communitarian’ movement, but I call it common sense.
If your trashcan or wheelbarrow has dent in it, you don’t buy a new one. Maybe that’s because we don’t use trashcans and wheelbarrows to communicate our social status or identity to others.
When they talk of building self-esteem, they often resort to empty flattery rather than character-building honesty. I’ve heard so many people talk of downward spiral in our educational system, and I think one key factor is that there is too much stroking and too littke real feedback.
Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things?
Time is all you have.
A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing.
Hard work is like compounded interest in the bank. The rewards build faster.
I sure got their attention. That’s always the first step to solving an ignored problem.
I knew for sure that I didn’t want the lecture to focus on my cancer. My medical saga was what it was, and I’d already been over it and over it.
One rule in our house is that you may not ask one-word questions. Dylan embraces that idea. He loves to formulate full-sentence questions, and his inquisitiveness goes beyond his years.
But Andy van Dam, my “Dutch uncle” and mentor at Brown, advised me, “Get yourself a PhD. Be a professor.” “Why should I do that?” I asked him. And he said: “Because you’re such a good salesman, and if you go work for a company, they’re going to use you as a salesman. If you’re going to be a salesman, you might as well be selling something worthwhile, like education.” I am.
So it’s OK that I won’t set foot in the Promised Land. It’s still a wonderful sight.
Who remembers that it was Kirk who introduced us to the cell phone?
It was a hot summer night, and I had the soundtrack to Disney’s The Lion King blasting on my stereo. Tears actually began streaming down my face as I drove past the building. Here I was, the grown-up version of that wide-eyed eight-year-old at Disneyland. I had finally arrived. I was an Imagineer.
Hi, this is Randy. I waited until I was thirty-nine to get married, so my wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don’t have a problem with that, but my boss does.” I then gave the names of Jai’s parents and the city where they live. “If you call directory assistance, you can get their number. And then, if you can convince my new in-laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter’s honeymoon, they have our number.
I’ve also collected techniques for keeping unnecessary calls shorter. If I’m sitting while on the phone, I never put my feet up. In fact, it’s better to stand when you’re on the phone. You’re more apt to speed things along. I also like to have something in view on my desk that I want to do, so I have the urge to wrap things up with the caller.
Sports cut across boundaries of race and wealth.
Instead of “I think we should do A, not B,” try “What if we did A, instead of B?” That allows people to offer comments rather than defend one choice.