Number of words: 249 I think it fair to say that by any convetional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain … Read more
Number of words: 242 Perseverance and leadership skills, of course. What is less obvious – and much less boring – is what the speaker neglected to mention: that those traits are likely to be the charecterstics of extremely unsuccessful people, too. Think about it, Denrell observed afterwards. ‘Incurring large losses requires both persistence….and the ability … Read more
Number of words: 217 By far the most striking thing about the museum of failed products, though, has to do with the fact that it exists as a viable, profit-making business in the first place. You might have assumed that any consumer product manufacturer worthy of the name would have its own such collection, a … Read more
Number of words: 89 With no proper sanitation, Kibera’s primary means of disposing of human waste is what the slum-dwellers wryly refer to as ‘flying toilets’: the practice of defecating into a plastic bag, then flinging it as far from your own home as possible. Flying toilets add diarrhoea and typhoid fever to the neighbourhood’s … Read more
Number of words: 383 The security scanning procedures at Philadelphia, in common with those across America and the rest of the world, were becoming progressively tighter. Less than a month previously, Richard Reid, the would-be ‘shoe bomber’, had been tackled and subdued on board a flight from Paris to Miami, thereby intiating the era of … Read more
Number of words: 308 Shapiro did, in fact, start out as an all-American achiever, committed to his goal of becoming a highly paid management consultant. His punishing hours destroyed his marriage. ‘I’m not sure if my goals drove me to work the crazy hours I did,’ he later wondered,’ or if I used my goals … Read more
Number of words: 177 This problem goes to deeper than one might think. The standard answer to it, from the proponents of goalsetting, is that these are examples of people setting the wrong goals – overly ambitious or everly narrow ones. Of course, it’s true that some goals are wiser than others. But the more … Read more
Number of words: 327 One illuminating example of the problem concerns the American automobile behemoth General Motors. The turn of the millennium found GM in a serious predicament, losing customers and profit to more nimble, primarily Japanese, competitors. Following Latham and Locke’s philosophy to the letter, executives at GM’s headquarters in Detroit came up with … Read more
Number of words: 425 To understand one of the many reasons why goals can backfire, consider the experience of trying to hail a taxi in a major city during a rainstorm. If you’ve ever had to do this, you’ll be familiar with the despair it can induce – and you probably think you understand why … Read more
Number of words: 199 Once an individual’s search for a meaning is successful, it not only renders him happy but also gives him the capability to cope with suffering. And what happens if one’s groping for a meaning has been in vain? This may well result in a fatal condition. Let us recall, for instance, … Read more
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