Reading Material – Page 3 – Curious Pursuit

What Do They Want

One of the hardest steps to learning successful negotiation is the paradox of knowing and honoring your goals while focusing on the other party’s needs at the same time. Why focus on their needs? Because that’s where successful negotiation begins and ends. If you can discover what they TRULY want and find a way to satisfy that need in the context of your own goals … you’ve got it made. At that point it isn’t really a negotiation as much as a deal finalization. Often, though, their real needs are not apparent to you … or sometimes even them! Somewhat …

Quotes for Motivation

How about a list of good quotes about “sticking to it”? Here are a few that are worthy of posting … Fall seven times; stand up eight. Japanese proverb You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you. Joseph Campbell The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now. Chinese Proverb Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Theodore Roosevelt I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my …

Baby Steps to a Better Life

“Baby steps get on the bus, baby steps down the aisle, baby steps …” – Bill Murray as Bob Wiley in “What About Bob?” If you suffer from work paralysis, your problem might be that you don?t know how to take “baby steps”. Just like you can’t eat an entire Thanksgiving dinner in one bite, or weed your yard with a single pull … you also can’t get to where you want to be in a single moment. In “Getting More” the author, Stuart Diamond writes … An analogy: If you are a .280 hitter in baseball, and you get …

The Paradox of Choice

I’m just finishing a skim read of Barry Schwartz’s book The Paradox of Choice. I’m sure if I read the entire book it would be very good. But appropriately, with everything going on in life right now … I chose not to really dive into this particular book. Instead, I did my usual “skim” method on the book … Speed read the first chapter to get a feel of the writing style and perspective of the author Bold type “skim” until the last chapter (or summary chapter) Read the last chapter As far as I can tell, it was a …

Olympic Lesson on Success

I was impressed by this recent article on American athlete’s success at Vancouver (from the Wall Street Journal of all places). A few things impressed me … 1. How little money was spent to target a “medals race” and yet how much success the team is having … particularly in events not usually dominated by American athletes. 2. How Bode Miller is crediting the ski team’s successful run with a more aggressive and exciting attitude toward their sport. He says, “The inspiration level is climbing. They see teammates on the podium and they want that, too. It’s not necessarily the …

Will Curiosity Kill My Brain?

I was listening to a podcast recently that mentioned the number of books in the Library of Congress in relation to what we can actually take in. The numbers were a bit old and a bit off. As best as I can tell there are now over 30 million cataloged books ? but over 140 million total items. You would have to read well over 5,000 of those items every day for 70 years to consume it all. Insane. Reading one book every week (close to my current average) for 50 years (close to what?s left of my current life …