1: Are you facing a challenge that feels overwhelming?  Are you walking through something really hard right now?

There is good news, Jane McGonigal writes in her book SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully.

Let’s start here. “You are stronger than you know. You are surrounded by potential allies. You are the hero of your own story,” Jane notes.

How do you access these powers that are already inside … continue reading

1: In the summer of 2009, researcher and game designer Jane McGonigal hit her head and got a concussion.

“It didn’t heal properly,” Jane writes in her book SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully, “and after thirty days I still had constant headaches, nausea, and vertigo.”

Reading or writing was only possible for a few minutes at a time. “I had trouble remembering things,” Jane notes. “Most days I … continue reading

1: “Our conversations started out funny and just got funnier,” Diane Button writes in her wonderful book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living.

Diane and Franck Battelli, both end-of-life doulas, were meeting with Greg, 53, who was dying from ALS.

Before proceeding, Greg wanted to make sure it would be a good fit.

“He let us know in a very serious tone of voice that … continue reading

1: “There’s wind and then there’s a typhoon, there are waves and then there’s a tsunami,” Andy Grove writes in Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company.

The same is true in business.

“There are competitive forces and then there are supercompetitive forces,” he notes.

Andy calls it a “10X” change.

2: Harvard Professor Michael Porter identified the various forces that determine … continue reading

1: “We managers like to talk about change, so much that embracing change has become a cliché of management,” Andy Grove writes in Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company.

But not all changes are the same.

What Andy calls “a strategic inflection point is not just any change,” he notes. “It compares to change the way Class VI rapids on a … continue reading

1: Then Intel CEO Andy Grove was sitting in a conference room with other members of the Intel team.

The topic? “Evaluations of a certain highly touted new software from a company whose other products we already use,” Andy writes in his legendary business book, Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company.

Intel’s head of Information Technology shared the challenges her team … continue reading

1: I’m often credited with the motto, “Only the paranoid survive,” former Intel Chairman and CEO Andy Grove writes in his legendary business book of the same name.

“I have no idea when I first said this,” Andy notes, “but the fact remains that, when it comes to business, I believe in the value of paranoia.”

Why?

Because “business success contains the seeds of its own destruction,” he observes. “The … continue reading

1: Randall was frustrated.

“Everyone wants to know how I’m doing, if I’m sleeping, and what treatments I’m having,”  Diane Button writes in her wonderful book What Matters Most: Lessons the Dying Teach Us About Living.

“Don’t they understand this is the this is the last think in the world I want to talk about?” Randall said.

“I want to talk about life, and love, and how everyone is … continue reading

1: Intel president Andy Grove was nervous.

It was 1986. Andy had flown to Oregon to address Intel’s best developers, recognizing that the company stood at a crossroads, he writes in his book Only the Paranoid Survive.

Since the company’s inception, memory chips had been the company’s core business.

But now the company was exiting the memory chip business because Japanese competitors had entered the market with higher quality … continue reading

1: When former Intel CEO Andy Grove was in school, the instructor in his management class showed a scene from the World War II movie Twelve o’Clock High.

A new leader was brought in to reform a rogue squadron whose lack of discipline led to self-destruction.

“On his way to take charge,” Andy writes in his book Only the Paranoid Survive, “the new commander stops his car, steps … continue reading