The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life

In Braverman’s terms, the machines that enhance people’s skills are considered life-supporting, while those that deskill people and devalue their work are life-destroying.2

to be at ease with his

his classic essay “Buddhist Economics,” Schumacher points out that work serves to feed our basic need for association with other people. In fact, work supplies several of our basic human needs:5 1. It gives people a chance to utilize and develop their faculties. 2. It enables people to overcome their ego-centeredness by joining with others in a com

Design thinking is a set of general practices a group of us has developed over the years that are effective in solving design challenges.

1. Empathize. This is where it starts. When you design, you’re not primarily doing it for yourself; you’re doing it with other people’s needs and desires in mind.

“Each is seeking candor and warmth, and the exploration of self-potential (sexual capacities and many others), all of which is facilitated by cooperation of someone else engaged in a similar development. Such persons are not preoccupied with being loved or with maintaining romantic illusions. They are trying to enjoy life—together.”

One way to see how prevalent projections are is to make a list of things that bother you about other people in your life. Then take these same things and think about how they appear in your own life. For example, I’d say, “I hate how my son Elliot bickers with his friend Claudia” since, not surprisingly, “I hate how I bicker with my wife.”

Idea Logs These are notebooks in which you sketch out your ideas, using drawings, words, and even pasted-in items to create a record of tangible speculations on your part. It is good to develop the habit of creating notebooks in which to record your ideas. Without a record, ideas are often forgotten and lost forever. The most famous idea logs ever

Make a pact with yourself to not use reasons unless you have to. This is actually an incredibly empowering position to come from. Be confident enough in your actions not to need to explain yourself. Trust yourself and act.

The point of the exercise is not to get the participants to change any of their relationships. Rather, it is to empower them with the realization that they have chosen the meanings they give to all of their relationships.