“Defense wins championships” is the dumbest thing you’ll ever hear in sports. Winning requires scoring and damage control, regardless of the competition. To prioritize the latter over the former is absurd. In fact, offense might be more important—not to mention more exciting to watch.

Pelé, the world’s greatest soccer player, also made this point in his biography (p. 280). Although his comments are directed at soccer, the same can be said of just about every other sport. “Why do I find fault with defensive football, when it obviously is the style preferred by many coaches throughout the world?” he says. “For one main reason: The only way—or certainly the most possible way—to score goals is if your team is in possession of the ball. (more…)

OREM, Utah — After four convenient but usually bad-habit forming years, I canceled my Blackberry email/data plan with T-Mobile last week. To my surprise, I was amazed that my email would actually wait for me on the computer, as opposed to following me around wherever I went. Now, if I’m away from my desk, my email will tell me how many unread messages I have upon my return, so as not to overlook anything. (Some fancy email programs even support audible alerts, such as “You’ve got mail!” Really neat stuff.)

In a flurry of discovery, and in search of more answers, I asked a representative of ARPANET, the inventor of email, for comment. “The great thing about email is that it’s free, provided you don’t give money to your cell phone provider for the same service,” the spokesman said. “And unlike the Post Office, you don’t have to put a hold on your mail if you’re away, say on nights and weekends. If it fits, it ships—which is all the time.”

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I have found, as many before me, that with age comes added responsibility and a much larger to-do list. I’m arguably busier than I’ve ever been in my life with managing a marriage, a new baby, a company, and working on several other projects. Opportunity surrounds us, and I want to take it all in. I hope to learn, experience, and do as much as I can (or even can’t sometimes) throughout my life. I thoroughly enjoy meeting new people, learning new things, and finding other ways of applying the little that I know.

While pondering all of this on my way to Salt Lake City this morning and after catching myself saying “I’m so busy,” to those around me, I couldn’t help but think how this claim might sound to the receiver. Does that phrase add any value to the person listening? Does that make them feel important? If it doesn’t, then do away with it. (more…)

You don’t have to wait until you’re old to enjoy this hammock. You can do it today.

I have never believed in traditional retirement, the complete withdrawal from one’s occupation, business, or office near the end of one’s life. It’s a pipe dream. As millions of ex-retirees quickly realize after an uneventful year on the beach, idleness never was happiness.

But leisure and periodic breaks from work are an important part of life. When used properly, regular vacations can inspire and rejuvenate a willingness to work harder. And contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be rich or wait until the end of your life to vacation. Here’s how: (more…)

I think every hard-working individual who desires should be able to live in the United States. Unfortunately, that’s not as easy as it should be for people trying to get in by the book, because illegal immigration is so rampant. Call it the emigrant’s plight: they want to get into the country, but our system is so broken, they either abandon (or postpone) the American Dream or risk deportation by going undocumented.

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The British had it right at one time. During the 19th century, their culture viewed stocks and securities exchange as a less than noble venture, according to the writings of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens—like how you and I look upon multi-level marketing companies today. Appropriately, the stock market was widely known then as “speculation.” A theory. A guess. An unverifiable promise or conclusion.

At some point, investment sharks (don’t call ‘em bankers) hijacked the accurate description of “speculation” to mean “investments,” “stock market,” and “Wall Street”—prestigious terms that sound nothing like the conjecture they represent. Smart people made money on changes in the fickle market, giving hope to uninformed individuals, who blindly followed and still lose the majority, if not all their money, every few decades. Some are lucky. Most are not.

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(April 23, 2005) A message—whether an email, voice-mail, sticky note, or blog post—is just a mini presentation. It’s a way of conveying information to an audience. To effectively do so, I try to adhere to the following 3 principles.

1. Be brief. Say what you need to say and nothing more. Keeping it simple will allow your audience to understand and remember what you want them to.
2. Be detailed. In what you do choose to say, tell the audience specifically what they need to know, including quantities, hard deadlines, and delivery.
3. Have structure. Write, record, annotate, say, or outline your message in an organized manner, so there is no confusion.

If you are brief, detailed, and structured when conveying information to an audience, your message will be loud and clear. Just be sure you have something important to say…

They can take away my representation, but that can’t take away my purchasing power.

I’ve said it before, but it’s been frustrating to watch the ballooning growth of our national debt, after eight years of unprecedented ballooning. For a long time, it seemed as if I was powerlessness to what was going on—like I couldn’t fight back.

Not anymore.

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I have been against any type of taxpayer bailout or “stimulus package” since Congress and America’s most liberal-spending president first passed the $700 billion one in October. I even asked my representative not to vote on the bill, which he did anyway.

As the majority of Americans predicted (60% in both a CNN and Gallup poll), the bailout didn’t work, according to today’s report in The Washington Post. Banks aren’t lending the $200 billion they received from taxpayers back to taxpayers. How kind of them. (more…)

I think rhetorical questions can be a persuasive and colorful form of language, but only when left unanswered.

I’m not sure how or when it started, but answering your own insincere rhetorical question seems to be increasingly popular these days, especially among public relation and business folk. Here’s how they do it: “Am I happy about [insert any controversial issue here]? No. But… [insert any justification here].” Worse still, rhetorical answer lovers will often string together three negative questions, followed by a mega justification. Dumb.

Good communication is concise and precise, replete with active voice and direct sentences. In other words, I don’t like when people answer their own rhetorical questions.