Mike Mason
on
Conflict is an unavoidable consequence of large collaborative effort toward a common set of goals. We can do a lot to organize teams in a way to avoid too much conflict and we can create a culture that doesn’t break down when conflict arrises but it will occur nonetheless. Conflict occurs when two or more people are in disagreement or experience a clash of interests. It’s normal, and should [...]
Mike Mason
on
Post-covid meetings are changing. The ebb and flows of meeting fatigue is an endless cycle we’ve all sunk into. Your calendar slowly builds up with well-meaning re-occurrings, or you expand your sphere of influence and become a required voice on critical decisions. We can’t forget that we have 252 working days in a year, 1260 productive hours, and for many of us 882 of those hours are spent [...]
Mike Mason
on
If you’re like me, you spent more than 3000 days going to school. You spent 24,000 hours in and out of classes and countless more on homework assignments and test preparation. You were subjected to standardized “tests” that normalized your responses to questions and hypothetical problems relative to the performance of your peers. Forced to consume and memorize second-hand facts and frameworks, [...]
Mike Mason
on
Alternative title: We’ve been setting goals all wrong. I recently purchased a few extra credits on Audible and was looking for books to listen to as I ride my bike when I found: A Guide to a Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. My initial thoughts were that the book might have a 50/50 chance of being a self-help book that I would drop after chapter 2. Those thoughts might have been justified [...]
Mike Mason
on
Alternative title: Being happy is mostly dependent on your frame of reference and an invisible force called anchoring. You walk into a 7-Eleven on a scorching day on the hunt for a tasty beverage that will cool you down and quench your unbearable thirst. You see the slushy machine with the Big Gulp sign, and you think to yourself, I haven’t had one of those in a WHILE, I’m going for it. You don’t [...]
Mike Mason
on
Alternate title: Does the (wo)man make the decision, or does the decision make the (wo)man? Decisions. We make decisions every day; every action is the result of a decision, whether we make it consciously or not. My decisions make me who I am, so it’s mind altering to ponder this topic in detail when you discover that many of the decisions you make aren’t made by “you.” We [...]
Mike Mason
on
So much of what we experience in life is profoundly personal. Not because it should be hidden from others, but because even if we wanted to share these experiences, we often don’t have the right words. We can’t muster the right combination from our vocabulary to have them completely resonate with others. Communication through language, both verbal and written, has a natural limit to how far it [...]
Mike Mason
on
This one is short but worth sharing. I had stumbled upon the concept of the Monomyth some time ago when George Lucas mentioned in interviews that he was inspired by the framework in his writing of the Star Wars script. In it’s simplest form the Monomyth can be described as the perfect template for the story of a hero. A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural [...]
Mike Mason
on
Four years ago my grandfather passed away painlessly as he slept in his summer home on PEI. The summer before I had interviewed him and asked him what advice he would give to future generations. Here’s what he said: Stay the course. If we had an example to lay down then it would be engrained in our kids, and it turned out to be the best thing since we now enjoy grandkids. Of all the things he could [...]
Mike Mason
on
Alternative title: understanding how someone thinks is more important than learning what they’ve done. As far as I can tell, I learn best from other people. For a long time, I thought this learning process may be some kind of skill for mimicking others. I’ve never had any issues fitting in with different groups and can have great conversations with most people regardless of what they value. [...]