I think this passage, from an unpublished speech Maslow gave to the Saga Foundation in 1969, is especially relevant today: “The strongest people in our society are maybe the softest– in the sense of being altruistic and idealistic… Part of the American difficulty with affection, love, and sentiment is mixed up with our never-ceasing effort […]
Archives for February 2016
Understanding Complex Material: Don’t Give Up Too Soon!
Often when I’m reading something very complex, I don’t understand it right away. So I sleep. The next day, I may still be overwhelmed. But I keep reading it again. And again. Little by little, as the days go by, things start to get chunked in my head. My working memory burden is alleviated by […]
Abraham Maslow on being an introverted leader
I just finished reading over 1000 pages of Abraham Maslow’s personal journal. This project has taken up a good part of the last 6 months of my life. But I have found it immensely satisfying and rewarding to peer into the deepest recesses of the mind of one of my intellectual heros. I have a lot […]
4 Ways to Hack Your Inner Creativity
From Daniel Pink‘s newsletter today (thanks Dan!): 4 WAYS TO HACK YOUR INNER CREATIVITY What do Thomas Edison, Frida Kahlo, and Michael Jackson have in common? No, they haven’t all recently launched a podcast. Instead, they grace the pages of a terrific new book that tries to reverse-engineer that elusive quality/trait/skill known as “creativity.” In Wired […]
How I Write
A lot of people ask how I write. I thought I’d offer a little confession in case it helps. I often start with a hazy intuition of what I hope to accomplish by an article, but I ultimately let the process of writing guide me. I find that my best pieces are those in which […]
How to Be an Optimal Human
What does it take to be an optimal human being?* Throughout history there has been much speculation. For Aristotle, the highest human good was eudaimonia. For Carl Rogers, it was the “fully functioning person“. For Abraham Maslow, it was “self-actualization“. For Erik Erickson, it was wisdom and integrity. For Erich Fromm, it was about having a “being” orientation (in which you value personal growth […]
Being an individual differences researcher is a thankless job
Being an individual differences researcher is a thankless job. We get slammed from our colleagues (reviewers), we get slammed from the public (no one wants to hear that individual differences exist). We’re overworked (finding the right structural equation model takes eons), underpaid(compared to authors who write about how anyone can be anything, anytime), underappreciated (it’s nearly impossible to get a […]