Blog
How Do You Know What to Do Next?
Seneca wrote, “do not be unhappy before the crisis comes…” Avoid imagined sorrows and anticipated anxieties. Be present. See the big picture. Understand how things work. Control what you can.
Thanks for the fortune cookies, ...
Three Reasons to Pick Up a Pen and Write
Introduction
Deciding to leverage your lived moments into wisdom, insight, and appreciation rather than choosing the passive habit of regurgitating op-eds or puffery means engaging directly with people and ideas. Forwarding a link ...
How to Say No (When You Know What You Want)
My Dad taught me the importance of keeping the “end in mind” when managing time. As a result, I pause and think before accepting an invitation. In business school, a friend teased me about this habit, but it was rooted in an ...
Write Thank-You Notes
Writing personal thank-you notes remains an effective way to stand out in the workplace. Thank-you notes send several messages, all good. They demonstrate professionalism, appreciation, and good manners. After an interview, they ...
Brooks Writes Stories: How Did It Go in 2021?
In mid-2017, I started submitting and tracking my fiction writing and posted updates in 2018, 2019 and 2020. How did it go in 2021?
In 2021, I submitted versions and revisions of 24 stories 106 times to 50 different outlets. This ...
Know What Matters: Baseball, Boundaries and the Astonishing Beauty of Things
The poet Robinson Jeffers[1] worried that people increasingly failed to engage with the world or to appreciate nature, that we had become blind to the “astonishing beauty of things” around us. When I read Jeffers or Wendell ...
Make a Decision and Act: An Ode to Star Trek and Stoicism
Growing up, I enjoyed the science fiction movies Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Star Wars, and television shows such as Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers. The stories combined space travel, advanced technologies and humor ...
Train or Hire? Both.
During my career in forestry, I learned that managing trees is about managing people. Forest resource managers and timberland investors are also human resource professionals. The work gets done through building productive ...
Checklists Improve Results, Reduce Errors and Save Lives
Four years ago, in September 2017, spacesuit technician Joseph Schmitt passed away at 101. The Economist magazine reported how, at NASA, Schmitt helped design and fit spacesuits during the years when Alan Shepard made America’s first ...
Brooks on Books: What are You Reading?
When visiting family or eating with friends (or interviewing job candidates), I often ask “what are you reading?” I find books or other long form writing a better source of conversational kindling than discussing the weather, recent ...
Is This Meeting Necessary?
According to the late author and management expert Peter Drucker,[1] “one either meets or one works."
While our sympathies agree with this, we’ve also experienced effective, well-run meetings that got things done. Meetings ...
How to Improve the Communication of Research: Lessons from Forestry and Wood Bioenergy
In 2012, the Forest History Society published “Wood for Bioenergy: Forests as a Resource for Biomass and Biofuels,” a book I co-authored with Amanda Lang. It serves as a primer on the markets, policies and technologies ...
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