Letters Remain

Category: personal-development

  • The Seven Wastes

    One of the principal goals of the Toyota Production System (TPS) is to identify steps that add value (and those which do not) and then design out waste. Muda is one of the three types of waste (the other two being muri and mura) and the one that has been given the most attention since the TPS…

  • Life Advice

    Not from a life coach, personal development guru, or some other self-professed expert on life, but from those whose advice I think it’s actually worth paying attention to: those older than you. First is Life Advice From Old People (via Kottke)–a video blog containing nothing but interviews with a wide range of ‘old’ people, including…

  • The Five Whys

    Five Whys is “a question-asking method used to explore the cause/effect relationships underlying a particular problem. Ultimately, the goal of applying the 5 Whys method is to determine a root cause of a defect or problem”. Developed by Taiichi Ohno–one of the inventors of the Toyota Production System–the oft-cited example is as follows: My car…

  • Graduating into the Recession and What Next

    For recent graduates, those in their early 20’s and, well, almost everyone else, the job market at the moment is overwhelming bad. There’s hope, of course, and this interview between recent graduate and entrepreneur Alex J. Mann and Phila Lawyer discussing what it’s like graduating into one of the nastiest job markets in history is a good…

  • Determination, Long-Terms Goals, Success

    Determination and long-term goal-setting may be more contributory to success than intelligence, suggests research being conducted by Angela Duckworth and her contemporaries. These two traits (perseverance and keeping long-term goals in mind) are affectionately called ‘grit’ by researchers in the field and—according to a 2007 paper on the subject (pdf)—play an important role in many…

  • Goal Setting and Affluence

    You’ve heard of the Yale Goal-Setting Study, right? The one that goes like this: In 1953 a team of researchers interviewed Yale’s graduating seniors, asking them whether they had written down the specific goals that they wanted to achieve in life. Twenty years later the researchers tracked down the same cohort and found that the…

  • The 12 Core Human Skills

    Elaborating on a concept from one of my favourite posts written by Dilbert creator Scott Adams (career advice: either “become the best at one specific thing” or “become very good (top 25%) at two or more things”), Josh Kaufman of Personal MBA suggests the 12 core human skills that we should strive to become very good…

  • When Money Buys Happiness (or Not)

    After discussing consumer signalling and Geoffrey Miller’s Spent in his Findings column (mentioned previously), readers of John Tierney’s Lab were asked, List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever…

  • 30 Ways to a Better Person

    As Trent says, this article’s original title—30 Days to a Better Man—may exclude a large proportion of readers, and this is a bad thing. It’s a bad thing because these 30 articles compiled together to help you “improve in […] relationships, fitness and health, career, and personal finances” are not only excellent, but apply equally to both…

  • Laziness, Impatience, Hubris

    The three virtues of a programmer, according to Larry Wall (in Programming Perl): Laziness The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about…