by Gary Mintchell | Sep 12, 2025 | Personal Development
Twice yesterday I was introduced to the idea of curiosity as the guiding principle. Curiosity has certainly been my constant companion for as long as memory goes.
Barry Diller described curiosity as the cornerstone for a successful career on Guy Kawasaki’s Remarkable People podcast.
Then I found this gem of advice from the remarkable essayist, Paul Graham. If you’ve not come across his writing, click the link and then bask your intellect in his well-thought-out essays.
Graham focused this essay on choosing work.
When in doubt, follow your curiosity. It never lies, and it knows more than you do about what’s worth paying attention to.
I couldn’t agree with this thought more.
I found most of his other insights either something I’ve experienced and agree with or something where the opposite happened much to my chagrin. Check them out and ponder each as you think about your career—or for wisdom to pass along to the next generation.
- Choose work you have a natural aptitude for and a deep interest in.
- Develop a habit of working on your own projects; it doesn’t matter what they are so long as you find them excitingly ambitious.
- Work as hard as you can without burning out, and this will eventually bring you to one of the frontiers of knowledge.
- These look smooth from a distance, but up close they’re full of gaps. Notice and explore such gaps, and if you’re lucky one will expand into a whole new field.
- Take as much risk as you can afford; if you’re not failing occasionally you’re probably being too conservative.
- Seek out the best colleagues.
- Develop good taste and learn from the best examples.
- Be honest, especially with yourself.
- Exercise and eat and sleep well and avoid the more dangerous drugs.
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 12, 2025 | Personal Development
WordPress Engine threw a curve ball that I didn’t see coming. A setting buried deep switched off. I started to post something and, what (??!!), no website. Took some digging since several years had passed from the time I set up the latest DNS and such. After updating, it took some period of time for the update to work its way through the network.
All this searching while in the car (my wife driving, mobile phone as a hot spot) on the way to a swim meet. Our granddaughter’s first as a varsity swimmer at a high school with a top program.
Got the updates started. She won the 100 yard backstroke. Dinner and home. Website back up.
At the same time filling the last big opening for a referee for Saturday’s high school soccer games.
Busy Thursday.
<whew>
by Gary Mintchell | Sep 5, 2025 | Personal Development, Productivity, Workforce
I have had some good bosses and a bunch of bad ones. I tried to be a good boss, but I bet there are some people who worked “for” me that would dispute that. As a soccer referee assigner, I try hard to be fair while also putting officials on the games where they would be most likely to succeed.
From Seth Godin, who talked about being the type of person that a good boss will appreciate. Hopefully you have one of those. If not, I wish you luck in leaving and finding a good one.
He compiled a list of attributes. I would suggest not looking at this like a check list. It’s more of a description of a type of person.
Are you now, or can you develop into, this type of person? I try…
- Ask useful questions
- Show up before you’re expected
- Make big promises and keep them
- Identify errors and flaws and self-correct
- Default to optimism
- Do work worth doing
- Build a useful network worth outsourcing work to
- Show your work
- Develop good taste
- Generously invite feedback
- Make productive decisions
- Communicate with precision
- It’s easy to claim these skills, but not easy to commit to being quite good at them.
Seth concludes, “Most bosses don’t deserve this level of effort. I hope you can find one that does.”
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 29, 2025 | Personal Development
The Myers-Briggs Types Indicator suggests that I am an ENTP—extroverted, intuitive, thinking, perceptive. A key takeaway indicates that I think about new information coming my way and that I’m willing to change my mind if the new information is strong.
What about you? How willing are you to change your mind on something based on new data?
In manufacturing, that situation arises often. Those unwilling to change can face adverse events.
Catching up reporting on some of my past reading, I am visiting Adam Grant’s Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know.
What about you. Can you revisit past decisions and assumptions? How afraid would you be to rethink long-held beliefs? Can you let go of knowledge that no longer serves you well?
I remember a time as a marketing manager of a computer peripheral in the 80s. I had a model of how to distribute and sell that product. The reality had shifted. By the time I figured it out, even though it was only a few months, it was too late. I left the company for something ultimately better. The two people I left behind had negative 10 sales over the following few months (they accepted a return of 10 units from a distributor).
Sometimes we must think again quickly.
Charles Darwin suggested ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. This sounds like the Dunning-Kruger effect—in many situations those who can’t don’t know they can’t. When we lack competence we are most likely to be brimming with overconfidence.
The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger club is you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger club.
Tim Urban has noted that arrogance is ignorance plus conviction. We see that played out in myriad ways frequently.
What we all lack is this crucial nutrient for the mind—humility.
Nobel Laureate Danny Kahneman said that he refuses to let his beliefs become part of his identity. “I change my mind at a speed that drives my collaborators crazy.”
This is an outline of the 31 skills Grant identified in his research.
Individual
Develop the Habit of Thinking Again
Think like a scientist
Define your identity in terms of values, not opinions
Seek out information that goes agains your views
Calibrate your Confidence
Beware of getting stranded at the summit of Mt. Stupid
Harness the benefits of doubt
Embrace the joy of being wrong
Invite others to question your thinking
Learn something new from each person you meet
Build a challenge network, not a support network
Don’t shy away from constructive conflict
Interpersonal
Ask better Questions
Practice the art of persuasive listening
Question how rather than why
Ask “What evidence would change your mind?”
Ask how people originally formed an opinion
Approach Disagreements as Dances, not Battles
Acknowledge common ground
Remember less is often more
Reinforce freedom of choice
Have a conversation about the conversation
Collective Rethinking
Have more Nuanced Conversations
Complexify contentious topics
Don’t shy away from caveats and contingencies
Expand your emotional range
Teach Kids to Think Again
Have a weekly myth-busting discussion at dinner
Invite kids to do multiple drafts and seek input from others
Stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up
Create Learning Organizations
Abandon best practices
Establish psychological safety
Keep a rethinking scoreboard
Stay Open To Rethinking Your Future
Throw out the ten-year plan
Rethink your actions, not just your surroundings
Schedule a life checkup
Make time to think again
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 18, 2025 | Personal Development, Workforce
I saw an article about jobs in The New York Times (it was long enough ago that I’ve lost the link).
It started with the premise College graduates, on the other hand, often do not have the right skills to be successful on a factory floor.
I find that a completely bogus argument. Someone who truly educated themselves at university should have learned essential skills for living such as how to research, how to think, how to write coherent thoughts, how to communicate. They should have some math and science, as well as some literature and philosophy.
Speaking as someone with that above education who also worked on the factory floor in one function or another for about 20 years, the failure lies elsewhere. Probably in expectations.
Try this statement presented as one of an n=2 examples (journalism):
The country is flooded with college graduates who can’t find jobs that match their education, Mr. Hetrick said, and there are not enough skilled blue-collar workers to fill the positions that currently exist, let alone the jobs that will be created if more factories are built in the United States.
Society has spent about 50 years telling young people to a specific training at university and then get a nice, cushy white collar job leading to CEO within 15-20 years, if not sooner. Unfortunately, the markets and economy did not cooperate with these predictions.
This initiative, however, does directly address a flaw in our system.
The Business Roundtable, a lobbying group whose members are chief executives of companies, has started an initiative in which executives collaborate on strategies to attract and train a new generation of workers in skilled trades. At an event last week in Washington, executives commiserated about how hard it was to find qualified people and swapped tips onstage for overcoming the gap.
My grandfather taught me a lot about manufacturing before I was even 10 years old. He talked about being forced to drop out of high school (about 1915) and apprenticing as a machinist at the old Monarch Machine Tool Company. He had a number of jobs with increasing responsibility and opportunity. During World War II he was a production superintendent in a GM plant that was converted to the manufacture of aircraft machine gun bolts. He employed a number of strategies that I later learned were similar to Lean Manufacturing. GM sent him to take college courses while he worked for them. (OK, you win, this is n=1; adding me, the journalist n=2.)
Their ideas included combing through existing company job descriptions to prioritize relevant experience over college degrees and recruiting high school students as young as sophomores for experiences that could draw their interest in manufacturing careers.
“For every 20 job postings that we have, there is one qualified applicant right now,” said David Gitlin, the chairman and chief executive of Carrier Global, which produces air-conditioners and furnaces and services heating and cooling equipment.
By the 1960s companies had farmed out their apprenticeship programs demanding public schools to provide compliant workers. The public school skills training programs thrived to a degree, but also faltered under parental wishes for their children to become rich, college-educated people.
I believe university education (short of PhD track) even in technical training such as engineering really exists to help a willing individual learn to research, think, write clearly, and acquire a background deserving an educated person. Where they work? Well, that’s up to serendipity and drive.
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 4, 2025 | Personal Development
I am willing to pay for services, especially health and nutrition, that provide valuable information. Examine.com is one. Their latest newsletter shatters some current myths referring to actual research.
Here’s a teaser:
Have you heard about granulated beet extract (GBE)? So hot right now!
Moderate doses improve mood by activating the mesolimbic dopamine pathway. And unlike many supplements, GBE’s bioavailability is off the charts! This is due to its dual use of SGLT1 and GLUT5 transporters.
Oh by the way, granulated beet extract is also known as table sugar. You may very well have supplemented with GBE this week because 55% of table sugar (sucrose) produced in the U.S. comes from beets.
As GBE illustrates, names hold great power. Would you trust my scientific acumen more or less if, instead of Kamal Patel, my name was Booger von Simpleton, Attorney at Law?
