How much genetic material do you share with your biological relatives? Take a look at the family tree below and the figure in the red box is the percentage of genes your body has in common with your blood relatives.
One of the coolest, and most thought-provoking, experiences of The Walt Disney World experience thus far is the greenhouse ride at the Living with the Land attraction in Epcot. By focusing on renewable farming techniques and applying best-practices in technology, the researchers and scientists that work in this facility have been able to dramatically increase…
To Have a More Successful Life, Understand the Motivations and Motives of Yourself and the People Around You Last month, I promised to pull more essays from my past out of the file cabinet. This one dealt with motives and understanding how they influence human behavior. This insight is one of the reasons I decided…
For the past few years, I’ve kept a file on extended adolescence because it is one of the most common symptoms I see among the thousands of messages I receive each year from readers asking for advice. Often, they are dissatisfied with the way their life is going, yet they almost inevitably suffer from extended…
Mental Model: Using the Primary Mission of Your Life to Determine the Hierarchy of Priorities Between Task and Relationship One of my mentors from early in my career shared a mental model that has been a fantastic guideline and framework through which I’ve conducted my life. It involves determining the hierarchy between personal relationships and…
Many of the Problems In Your Life Are Due to Your Assumptions One of the biggest secrets to success in life and business is to always check your assumptions. Whether you realize it or not, you are full of assumptions. You walk around every day, all day, making assumptions about people, places, political parties, institutions,…
How big is Earth compared to the Universe? Think about Earth. The oceans. The mountains. The forests. The millions of forms of life. Thunderstorms. Volcanoes. Snow. Our history, including past civilizations and enormous monstrous dinosaurs. Now consider that there are at least 10 trillion planetary systems in the known universe.
The odds are good you won’t read this entire post. The reason? It has to do with confirmation bias. If you think what I am going to say conflicts with your belief system – whether you are a scientist or a Christian – you won’t finish it to avoid cognitive dissonance even though you aren’t…
I found myself in a situation today that illustrated the powerful concept of a specific mental model known as the illusion of choice. This theme, of course, is familiar to anyone who has watched The Matrix trilogy, from the scene wherein the architect explains that the key to keeping humanity subdued is providing a system that presented the illusion of choice.
A few days ago, I was reading a psychology study that discussed the difference between the physical brains of men and women and the real-world implications of these differences. [mainbodyad]The best way to summate the data was the example of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As he was shot, the typical response of…
