A Happy New Year to all ribbonfarm readers. It’s been a month since my last post, primarily due to a chaotic 3-week vacation in India. 2008 is shaping up to be a year of action for me, so I thought it would be appropriate to start off my 2008 blogging year by chasing down some [...]

Posted in Thinking 4 Comments »

“What is thought?” is a question that is foundational by any reasonable measure. The best short answer I have found so far has been “thought is conceptual metaphor,” and it is one of the enduring regrets of my life that it took me so long to encounter this answer. An undergraduate friend (hi there Max!) [...]

Posted in Philosophy, Science-Math, Thinking 5 Comments »

There are four major approaches to decision-making: deliberative, reactive, procedural and opportunistic. The first three are well-understood. Academics study them, business and military leaders practice them, self-improvement gurus teach them and hippies protest them. Ordinary people understand them in common-sense ways. Opportunism though, is both the least-understood and highest-impact approach to decision-making. Here is my [...]

Posted in Business, Thinking 6 Comments »

We use triangles to visualize certain types of mathematical and non-mathematical relations and concepts. Unlike 2d and 3d visualizations, triangles aren’t mathematically coherent in any intuitive way. So let’s try and figure out the logic of triangular representations of ideas, and why we use triangles so extensively but not other shapes. Here are two common [...]

Posted in Thinking No Comments »

The Kindle ebook reader, the Wacom digitizing tablet, and a variety of scanning digital pens. Add it all up, and you get a possible revolution in one of the oldest technologies of humankind: written language. Only an impact on fire or the wheel could top a serious revolution in reading and writing. This is not [...]

Posted in Technology, Thinking 2 Comments »

Much of work-life balance, I think, is about trying to match what you need to get done to what your current energy pattern can handle. It is no use trying to control your energy patterns — the day-to-day wins and losses around whatever is absorbing you at the moment will drive that. But you can [...]

Posted in Thinking No Comments »

I have encountered three metaphors for what most people call the ‘work-life balance’ issue. These are: juggling, keeping multiple plates spinning on sticks, and surfing. Each has its strengths and flaws. All share in common the problems that arise from calling the whole thing a ‘balance’ problem in the first place, but the ‘balance’ point [...]

Posted in Business, Thinking, Work-Life 8 Comments »

Seth Godin, who I first discovered through his bestselling Permission Marketing has made something of a specialty of writing compact and focused books around single clear ideas. His latest, a tiny little book called The Dip, is his most abstract yet, but still fits the mold and develops a single punchy idea. The idea [...]

Posted in Book Reviews, Business, Thinking 1 Comment »

In the winter of 2001, for a variety of deep and compelling reasons, I found myself faced with the prospect of spending yet another vacation alone in Ann Arbor. Having previously learned everything that being miserable and bored has to teach, I doughtily resolved to explore other dimensions of enforced solitude. So, with an inspiring [...]

Posted in Philosophy, Thinking, Work-Life 1 Comment »

Do labels like “broad thinker,” “generalist,” “synthesizer,” “right-brained,” or “conceptualizer” get at aspects of a coherent personality type? Call this mind the “Da Vinci” mind for short. Recently, two rather interesting takes on such minds have appeared: A Whole New Mind (WNM) by Dan Pink and Five Minds for the Future by Howard Gardner. [...]

Posted in Book Reviews, Culture, Thinking 4 Comments »