jump to navigation

How to become a leader September 18, 2007

Posted by Niels in : How to, Other, Personal , 1 comment so far

Employers consistently name leadership as one of the top qualities they look for in job applicants. The ability to lead is important in relationships, too. Everyone’s had this conversation: “What should we do tonight?” “I don’t know, whatever you want to do.” “Well, I’m flexible. What do you want to do?”

Each partner means well, but they’re missing the big picture: that what their partner really wants is for someone to make a decision.

So if you’ve never been a leader, how do you become one?

Anytime you have a goal that seems daunting, begin by taking small steps. There are plenty of small opportunities for leadership in your every day life. Next time you’re out to dinner with friends, take the lead. Pick the place, herd everyone out the door, split up the check. Once you’re used to that, organize the dinner yourself. Craig and I have an at-least-monthly potluck at our place.

Take initiative. Pick a movie that you want to see and invite friends along. Or host a video night. Or a games night. Remember, you choose the game.

Teach your friends something. If you learn something interesting, chances are, they’ll find it interesting, too.

Tell your supervisor at work that you want to start a side project. Excel at it with minimal supervision. Take even more initiative next time.

Stick your neck out. Make leadership a habit.

Your thoughts?

How to get out of a crowded concert September 17, 2007

Posted by Niels in : How to , 1 comment so far

Waiting in a huge crowd tonight to get out of a concert, Alexandra and I heard a guy behind us yelling “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!” as he weaved his way through the crowd. As he passed us he stopped, grinned, and whispered, “you get out faster if you yell ‘oh my god’.” And with that, he was off again. “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!”

Your thoughts?

Birth control pills are dooming your marriage September 17, 2007

Posted by Niels in : Life, the universe, and everything, Other , 10 comments

Tanja Diamond bills herself as “the world’s only sexual transformation expert”. (I’m not sure why, because each time she introduced herself she would have to follow it up by explaining that she didn’t transform men into women, she transforms their sexual abilities. Just so we’re clear.) She was one of a panel of five speakers, including myself, who spoke at a men’s development event on Sunday, and she brought up some troubling recent research.

I was already familiar with the first study. Women were given T-shirts from a number of different men and instructed to smell the shirts and rate which they thought smelled the best. It turned out that universally, women preferred the odors of men whose immune systems most differed from their own.

It was found, by Wedekind and his team, that how women rate a man’s body odor pleasantness and sexiness depends upon how much of their MHC profile is shared. Overall, women prefer those scents exuded by men whose MHC profiles varied the most from their own. Hence, any given man’s odor could be pleasingly alluring to one woman, yet an offensive turnoff to another.
-Psychology Today

It makes sense that nature would engineer us to be attracted to people with a different genetic profile. Encouraging cross-breeding leads to healthier offspring. The catch is that once a woman gets pregnant, her preferences change and she is more attracted to her own tribe. And birth control pills work by manipulating hormone levels to simulate pregnancy. So the men a woman is naturally attracted to change when she goes on the pill.

The Swiss researchers found that women taking oral contraceptives (which block conception by tricking the body into thinking it’s pregnant) reported reversed preferences, liking more the smells that reminded them of home and kin. Since the Pill reverses natural preferences, a woman may feel attracted to men she wouldn’t normally notice if she were not on birth control - men who have similar MHC profiles.
-Psychology Today

The obvious question: well, what happens if my wife and I fell in love while she’s on the pill and wired to be attracted to her own family? Scientists have something to say about that, too. Back to Psychology Today:

The effects of such evolutionary novel mate choices can go well beyond the bewilderment of a wife who stops taking her contraceptive pills and notices her husband’s “newly” foul body odor. Couples experiencing difficulty conceiving a child - even after several attempts at tubal embryo transfer - share significantly more of their MHC than do couples who conceive more easily. These couples’ grief is not caused by either partner’s infertility, but to an unfortunate combination of otherwise viable genes.

Conclusion? Before you enter into any serious long-term commitments, have your partner go off the pill for a while. If the chemistry evaporates with the hormones, better to find out sooner rather than later.

Your thoughts?

The thirty day challenge begins again September 15, 2007

Posted by Niels in : Work , add a comment

The thirty day challenge isn’t about sales. Ideally you’ll make a few dollars, but it’s really a full month of market research. Find a niche, find traffic in that niche, see if that traffic consists of buyers. My old niche didn’t have enough buyers.

In that light, the market research was actually quite successful. Craig and I learned within a month that our niche wasn’t worth pursuing, before we invested a single dollar and before we invested large amounts of time. Ed Dale says that every internet business he starts begins through this process.

So, we don’t really have a choice. Thirty Day Challenge, round 2, here I come! Craig and I did some preliminary niche research yesterday and I found a few ideas I liked. One of them actually had a huge payout and terrible looking AdWords competition, so I threw up a few Google ads while I was at it and hopefully will even make a few bucks on the side off of that.

Your thoughts?

What I’m reading September 14, 2007

Posted by Niels in : Personal, Work , 2 comments

I read three books today. All of them were great. And one of them even has to do with business, so I’m chalking up today as self-employed. I also moved my desk, ate leftovers, and did twelve pull-ups, so I feel quite productive for having sat on the couch all day.

Today I read:

Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. I’d been meaning to read this since watching Dan Gilbert’s TED talk on happiness a few days ago. The book was interesting, full of counter-intuitive examples of how terrible our minds are at predicting how we’ll feel in the future. (Did you know that having kids makes you unhappy? Doesn’t matter, though, you don’t believe me and you’ll have them anyway. I will, too.) I’m disappointed that he doesn’t talk about synthetic happiness in the book, as it was the whole reason I picked it up. Oh well, it was a great read anyway.

Cesar Millan’s Cesar’s Way. Cesar Millan is the Dog Whisperer. I’ve never seen a single episode of his show, but his book blew me away. And I’m not a dog person, either. Every once in a while you read something that absolutely resonates with you and makes you go, “Yes! That’s right! Now I understand!” Cesar Millan’s book did that for me. He talks a lot about body language and nonverbal communication and animal instincts, which is right up my alley. I’ll be getting his second book, definitely.

Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. So good. Amazing. Fantastic. If you ever attempt to communicate ideas to other people, you need to read this book. I had to keep putting it down every few pages because I was coming up with so many ideas I wanted to incorporate into my own presentation and I needed to write them down. Thanks to the Ed Dale and Mike Mindel from the Thirty Day Challenge for recommending this book. It has found a permanent place on my bookshelf.

And now I’m in the middle of:

Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis. It got great reviews on Amazon, it seemed like everyone who bought Stumbling on Happiness also bought this, and Craig just happened to have a copy lying around. So of course I had to read it. It’s going a bit slower thanks to its extra-small font and the fact that all the research is so interesting that I have to keep looking it up. Seriously, “alien-hand syndrome”? Crazy!

David Deida’s The Way Of The Superior Man. David Deida’s understanding of relationship dynamics is astounding. He is an amazing writer and brings spirituality and understanding to relationships in a powerful way. It takes me a few days to process each page - the book is short but it’s taking me months to get through it. Read it. Of course, if you have no desire to ever have a satisfying relationship, feel free to disregard this suggestion.

Your thoughts?