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Crushing the Soulcrushers

A weekly newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Every Sunday, you'll get fun and actionable tips on how to facilitate stronger creative thinking and make your work fun again.

Featured Post

Beware the soulcrushers

Hi there, We have an enemy when it comes to making our work fun. I call them the soulcrushers. They are microscopic, squishy little energy-vampires that look something like a fusion of virus, germ and extremely gross insect: soulcrusher, magnified 1000x Except we can’t see them. No modern scientific instruments exist that allow us to view soulcrushers. Any reputable scientist, in fact, will tell you that there’s no evidence that such things even exist. Oh, but we can feel them. We can tell...

The weekly newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ Last week was a great week to be a Dodgers fan. Next week will be a rollercoaster, I'm sure. Let's try to enjoy the ride. There's nothing routine about the power of routines. Human beings are funny. We like BEING ABLE to make our own decisions. But we don't actually like making decisions. "Decision fatigue" is well-documented β€” we get worse at making decisions as the day goes on. Not only...

The weekly newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ Earlier this week, I facilitated a creative solution workshop for an executive advisory committee. (Leading these kinds of "creative solution sprints" for leadership teams is my main thing, if you weren't already aware. So, you know... reach out if that might be valuable to you. Hint Hint. Nudge Nudge.) A big part of what makes these experiences magical is the energy and excitement that comes...

The weekly newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ I hope you're ready for an amazing week. I'll be leading an executive workshop in Laguna Beach, CA in a few days, and I'm very pumped for that. But being honest, this past week was frustrating for me. A good 93% of that frustration was completely self-inflicted. Nothing bad happened. I just had day after day of not being at my best, which led to more frustration and more not being at my best....

The weekly newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ I hope you're ready for an amazing week. I just got home from a very fun event called CicLAvia, where they closed off 7.5 miles of streets across Downtown Los Angeles for the day and made it exclusively for bicycles. It was a BLAST. My family goes to a few of these a year, and they're always inspiring and fun. But the days aren't without frustration. Getting four bikes onto the bike rack,...

The weekly newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ I hope you've had an amazing week. As I previewed last week, I just spent a few days at the Second Brain Summit, a conference about digital creativity for people who love using technology to be more productive. (My words β€” not exactly what they put on the brochure) It was packed with inspiring presentations and people. And a recurring theme was that we need to stop driving ourselves crazy...

The weekly newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ I hope you've had an amazing week. In a few days, I'm heading to Tiago Forte's "Second Brain Summit" β€” a conference on the topic of using technology to unleash digital creativity. I'm looking forward to walking away overflowing with smart take-aways, and expect I'll mention one or two of them in next week's email. Feeling overwhelmed at work = soulcrushingThe "intention initiative" =...

The weekly newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ Hey hey, today's my birthday. (Yep, I'm on the Virgo/Libra cusp.)A few birthday requests, if you're so inclined... If you enjoy this newsletter, please tell some friends and colleagues about it, or share it on social. Folks can check things out and subscribe at crushingthesoulcrushers.com. If you know of anyone looking to do an executive team workshop or offsite soon ('tis the season), please...

The weekly newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ I hope you've had an amazing week. It was a fun one on my end, highlighted by facilitating an energizing board meeting workshop for my friends at ThinkLA. I have somewhat contradictory ideas to share this week β€” but both lead to great things, I promise. The first is on the power of being ourselves β€” and the second is on the power of imagining we're someone else. Amplifying our us-ness. A...

A newsletter that helps people be more successful at work, by enjoying it more. Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ Hope you've had an amazing week. Lots of exciting stuff bubbling up over here, which I look forward to sharing soon. In the meantime, let's get to soulcrusher-crushing. Empowering Experiments As humans, we crave novelty. As people who have professional jobs, we crave solutions to stupid annoying problems that make our work mega-frustrating. Here's a thing of beauty that helps satisfy both cravings:...

Hi Reader! πŸ‘‹ Happy Labor Day weekend to all my friends in the U.S. β€” and, uh, happy regular ol' weekend to everyone outside of the states. Last week, I had the opportunity to facilitate a fun and powerful workshop for executives at a Fortune 500 company. My favorite part wasn't just how energized the group was, or how meaningful the work is for the company, or the amazing feedback from participants saying things like, "It was energizing, inclusive β€” and we achieved a LOT, in less than 48...