It happens every year. Complaining. It starts in December and will continue until February and maybe longer. Why do you ask? Annual compensation reviews. Managers dread this time of year. It is budget season, and your managers are fighting for a pile of money to distribute to their direct reports…

At their core, computers are simply a device of ones and zeros. They are beautifully complex and binary. However, all of the ones and zeros are hiding behind an abstraction. An abstraction is a layer within a system that hides complexity below. We don’t think about all the hidden complexity…

Have you ever been stuck on one of those projects where the same topic comes up, and both sides dig in and defend their positions? When the topic first came up, it was a minor problem. However, this minor item became a critical path item as time passed. …

How is your role measured? How do you measure yourself? These are questions I asked myself this week. It is a New Year, and it is time for annual reviews and a time of reflection. So as I started reflecting on the past year and the new year ahead, I…

We all have a physical blind spot where the optic nerve joins the eyeball. Our brain tricks us, filling in the spot with what it thinks should be there. We don’t notice this unless we intentionally try to find it. You can find an example here. What is funny about…

Before writing this post, I searched my Audible books and discovered 13 books with “Happy” in the title. Yet when I think about happiness, nothing has impacted me more than a quote from a holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl. “Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make…

Dopamine What is “Dopamine?” Dopamine is the feel-good chemical in our brain. Dopamine in and of itself is not bad and is essential to have. Increasing Dopamine via healthy activities and food can lead to more satisfaction. So what is the problem? Most of us have become addicted to seeking a…

Have you ever started looking for a new car? Then you find one you want only to start seeing them everywhere. This post is like that but from my counselor. Missing Connection leads to Protest Behavior. My counselor shared an excellent book about how we connect as humans. …

Making a report has never been easier. Most of us sit on mounds of data waiting to be mined for its precious insights. Back in the day, you had to break out your SQL skills and join a bunch of tables together to get the data required. Report writing was…