Blog
Clean Over Current
As leaders, parents, investors, and coaches, we often make decisions with imperfect and incomplete information. Therefore, we benefit by having an approach or philosophy for dealing with uncertainty. When screening and evaluating ...
Errors are Opportunities*
My baseball coach at MIT, Fran O’Brien, reminded us that we will all make errors. The ball will go between our legs. A pop fly will get lost in the sun and fall safely to the ground. But he did not tolerate mental errors. If you ...
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 resources for writing advice include books such as The Elements of Style by Strunk and White and On Writing by ...
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 in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. How did it go in 2022?
In 2022, I submitted versions and revisions of 26 stories 74 times to 46 ...
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 space in your head, eating your limited time. Finally, you pick one and plow ahead. Here, I focus on how to quickly produce ...
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 MIT.[1]In his eulogy, Kevin, the oldest of Coach O’Brien’s five children, said, “As Jackie Robinson said, ‘A life is ...
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 Hamsley had a way of setting me straight. It would start with a phone call.
“Brooks, I’m riding with you ...
Verbalize: Practice Your Presentations Out Loud
I’ve given a lot of presentations, mostly about forest finance, timber markets and communication skills. When preparing, I use current data and recent research overlaid onto basic “themes.” Then I practice with new stories or ...
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 Africa, toted between their ears brains similar to the ones we carry today.[1] The average homo sapiens on the street, ...
How to Deliver an Educational and Insightful Talk
The question “how do I teach this to them” has puzzled presenters, professors, and parents since the Greco-Roman god Apollo taught Chiron, his foster son and polymathic centaur, how to throw a curveball.
In this ...
Ten Observations of Human Behavior and Learning
As a writer, I read a lot of books and articles, listen closely to how people talk, and take notes to capture ideas, lunch orders, and fun phrases. Here are ten observations and quotes from my scribblings with thoughts on how or why I ...
One Rule for Performance Reviews: No Surprises
Regular performance reviews, while often criticized, offer a repeatable and transparent process for building more effective organizations. Systems and teams, big and small, require feedback to adjust and improve. Sports have scores, ...
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