“I need your help finding a Purple Squirrel.” I was catching up over coffee with a semi-retired friend who sources engineers for startups. Thomas (not his real name) smiled when he realized I had no idea what he was talking about. I had heard of a purple frog, but not a squirrel. As you might…
If you asked 1000 people if they were open or closed-minded, my guess is that more than 90% would claim to be open minded. But are they really open-minded? Nobody wants to admit they are closed-minded. In fact, it likely doesn’t even occur to a closed-minded person that they are closed-minded. This blind spot makes…
People are obsessed with goals. You could fill a large library with books describing how to create and accomplish goals. But they don’t seem to be effective: Only 1/3 of people who make New Year’s resolutions keep them for longer than a few days. More than 70% of the people who set goals for themselves…
With a little more couch time than normal this flu season, I binge-watched some new TV series and rewatched some classics. After seeing George Costanza double-dip a chip during a wake, I started to wonder – is it really “like putting your whole mouth right in the dip!” Here’s the scene from a 1993 episode…
Ever heard about the Seven-Eleven Rule? Neither had I. The seven-eleven rule is based on the belief that people make eleven decisions about a person in the first seven seconds after meeting them. Apparently, the eleven conclusions you make are the following: Education Level Economic Level Perceived Credibility, Believability, Competence and Honesty Trustworthiness Level of…
If you use your smart phone frequently, you’re less likely to trust strangers. Kostadin Kushlev of the University of Virginia and Jason Proulx of the University of British Columbia came to this conclusion by analyzing data from the most recent World Values Survey. The World Values Survey is a U.S. nationally-representative poll in which participants…
“We should stop thinking in terms of work-life balance. Work-life balance is a concept that has us simply lashing ourselves on the back […] In the ensuing exhaustion we ultimately give up on one of them to gain an easier life.” A few years ago, I was visiting colleagues in Bangalore when the subject of…
One rainy afternoon I was watching a re-run of a detective show when I began to think about the phrase “beyond a reasonable doubt.” How much doubt, I wondered, is reasonable? If you have an analytics background, you might fall prey to the temptation of trying to quantify the doubt. Using the language of statistics,…
Remember the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster? In 1986, there was an accident during a test at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine and the resulting explosion released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere. The radiation released was 400 times the radiation produced by the bombing of Hiroshima during World…
Not long after I joined my last employer, a colleague provided me with an incredibly important insight on how to get things done. Informal networks, she explained, were much stronger than the official hierarchy. Top-down decisions were usually met with questions which delayed their implementation. On the other hand, powerfully-connected people could implement decisions virally…