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Ode to Weighted Averages

Several years ago, in the essay Average is the Enemy, I wrote about the “false shortcuts offered by averages” for ...

Learn from Others and Tie Your Camel

After watching then New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady at practice, former Indiana basketball coach Tom ...

Clean Over Current

As leaders, parents, investors, and coaches, we often make decisions with imperfect and incomplete information. ...

Errors are Opportunities*

My baseball coach at MIT, Fran O’Brien, reminded us that we will all make errors. The ball will go between ...

Four Ways to Strengthen Non-Fiction Writing

This post introduces an essay on improving the clarity and power of blogs, essays, and articles.  My go-to ...

Brooks Writes Stories: How Did It Go in 2022?

In mid-2017, I started submitting and tracking my fiction writing, and have since posted updates ...

How to Write a Blog Post: Zero to 500+ Words in One Hour

You wake at 5:40 in the morning to write for an hour before the family circus starts. Several ideas fight for ...

Learning to Compete, Lead, and Give Back with Coach Fran O’Brien

Recently, I attended the visitation in Reading, Massachusetts for Francis O’Brien, my college baseball coach at ...

Shooting Diameters with Danny Hamsley

When I missed the mark in my role as a log buyer and harvest manager in northeast Georgia in the 1990s, Danny ...

Verbalize: Practice Your Presentations Out Loud

I’ve given a lot of presentations, mostly about forest finance, timber markets and communication skills. When ...

Information Overload: Brains and Homo Sapiens

We share the brain of our ancestors. The humans of one hundred thousand years ago, as they started migrating from ...

How to Deliver an Educational and Insightful Talk

The question “how do I teach this to them” has puzzled presenters, professors, and parents since ...