Ever heard the one about the policeman and the drunk? A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys, and they both look under the streetlight together.  After a few minutes, the policeman asks if he is sure he […]

Derek Sivers had a problem.  A few months earlier, Sivers had agreed to speak at a conference in Sydney, Australia. As the date drew closer, however, Sivers, based in New York, USA, at the time, realized he had overcommitted.  “When it actually came down to it, I was just like, ‘Man, I don’t really want […]

American novelist, Johnathan Franzen, is regarded as one of the greatest emerging novelists of the 21st century. His work has garnered widespread critical acclaim, with one critic calling his 2015 novel, Purity, “Piercingly brilliant.” As talented he may be, though, there’s one thing that Franzen owes to his prolificity as a writer: his preference for precommitments.  For […]

In the mid-1960s, a researcher, posing as a volunteer, went door to door in an affluent area with an unusual request. The researcher asked if homeowners were willing to place an unsightly billboard on their front lawns, instructing drivers to “DRIVE CAREFULLY.” A mere 17 percent complied. Not bad, but not surprising, either. The researcher […]

Suppose you’re a factory worker and a machine you’re responsible for stops working. When pressed for a reason, you answer there was an overload, and the fuse blew.  You’re right in your assertion. The machine did overload, and the fuse was the reason. But after some self-interrogation, you realize that the root cause of the problem was not due […]