Avoiding Panic Attacks: 13 Questions I Ask Myself Before Saying Yes To Anything
I like to joke that I have adult ADD. I’ve never been diagnosed or sought treatment, but there are times I notice my mind and attention drifting many different directions when they should be focused on one.
If I ever cut my arm off, I’ll probably bleed to death on my way to the hospital because the squirrel I just saw definitely wanted me to see where it buried some nuts in the neighbor’s yard.
I can make jokes about my difficulty with focus, but the truth is it really gets in the way. Or, at least, it used to.
I was the guy who had 12 different projects at any given time. My many interests, along with my inability to focus, lead to a haphazard lifestyle. I was always juggling a dozen balls. Except I wasn’t. 10 of them were on the floor, and the other two were being closely held so they wouldn’t end up there as well.
Worse, the stress of it all was overwhelming. If you were a distant friend, you might have thought all the stuff I was up to was interesting, but the people close to me had a different experience. I was short-tempered, always on edge, and constantly worried.
It came to a head a few years ago when I had a series of small but debilitating panic attacks. I’d get worked up, flooded with stress, and then shut down. There were days I felt so helpless I couldn’t leave the house or even think about working. This is no way to live!
After this episode, I was finally fed up and determined to change.
This Harvard Study Can Predict When You’ll Make Bad Decisions (And When You’ll Make Good Ones)
A few years ago, I was on the hunt for some new financial investments, and doing a lot of research. After giving it some thought, I decided to buy some individual stocks. Which specific stocks doesn’t really matter because buying them now would not be a wise bet, but for transparency’s sake, they were: Cato…
You Got Sharked: A Street Hustler’s Guide To Building An Audience For Your Idea
Whenever I’m in San Franscisco, I like to wander The Embarcadero—it’s one of the best places in town for people watching. This trip didn’t disappoint, and we ran into a street hustler playing the shell game—a ball is placed under one of three identical looking shells before they’re quickly rearranged while you try to keep track…
Want Better Habits? Stop Making This Very Common Mistake
Research from some of the top universities in the world are showing that what we think we know about building good habits is all wrong. If you want to be a better risk-taker and live more adventurously, you need to avoid making this very common mistake.
Psychologists Explain: How To Get Your Boss To Listen To Creative Ideas
It’s one thing to be creative. It’s another to get anyone else to care. But thanks to science, there are a few easy tricks you can use to get important people to listen to your ideas.
How The Internet Exploits A Bug In Your Brain To Keep You From Learning (And How To Patch It In 10 Minutes)
Your brain isn’t great at dealing with a large amount of conflicting information. This is a bug in the system. And the Internet is exploiting it. Here’s the patch.