Turns out the secret to good writing was not what I thought it was. — As milestones go, it’s a nice one. The number “1000” has a nice ring to it, and when you apply it to something like “articles I’ve written” it has a certain gravitas. My posts tend to average about a thousand words each, so that means I’ve written about 1,000,000 words…

Take five minutes and make your life better. — Why do you put on a seatbelt? It’s kind of inconvenient, after all, to fasten and unfasten it every time you get in and out of your car. But it would be a lot more inconvenient to be severely injured after an accident (or dead, I suppose, but I’ve never…

And that’s ok, if you understand the real reason you like it. — Productivity nerds (like me) have a problem. It’s an obsessive rotation of apps and methods, all promising to organize my life and bring me the serene “mind like water” that David Allen appropriated from Bruce Lee. The thing is, while many of us here on Medium spend a lot of…

You have to ask yourself: is it worth the risk? — Do you believe workplace romance is a good idea? According to CareerBuilder.com (via Inc.com) 38% of the working population actively agree with you. Some surveys estimate estimate that more than one out of every five marriages start as an office romance. Some of the highest profile couples — Bill and…

“Simple” is just another word for nothing left to choose. — It was going to be a great day. A sunny Sunday on a Fourth-of-July weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, one of those days I categorize as “the Big Lie” because the lush green, gentle breezes, and sultry heat give the illusion that this is actually a habitable climate. Winter will quickly…

Turns out: it’s in the way that you use it. — When they came out last year with the sixth version of the iPad mini and announced that it would also work with the Apple Pencil, I thought I’d go all in. I ’ve been a mostly-happy denizen of the Apple ecosystem since the Apple IIe, with MacBooks, iPads, Apple Watches…

I thought I had what it takes. Turns out, it wasn’t enough. — By mid-June of 1988, I’d technically made it through the hard part of Marine Corps boot camp. I’d survived the first month where they broke us down into common lumps of human resource. I’d learned to drink coffee for the first time in my life during the two weeks of…

How the Marines taught me the true value of strict obedience — I went through USMC boot camp during a kinder, gentler age. If you watch the movie Full Metal Jacket you get an idea of how it used to be. Drill instructors used to be able to physically assault recruits to correct them, as long as it didn’t do “permanent” damage. …