Essays on becoming Chris Barclay
As an American with a type-A personality that can border on crusading, I have sometimes found living in Asia frustrating. 18 years in China, with its stultifying bureaucracy and a cultural aversion to decision making, taught me a lot about the power of persistence, as opposed to being forceful. In Northern Thailand, where everything seems […]
Continue ReadingI am a huge fan of HBO’s The Wire, and like The Sopranos before it, I was sad to see it end. While The Sopranos reminded me of a Greek tragedy, The Wire unfolded like a sprawling Dickens novel set in present day Baltimore, portraying its broken social, political and economic institutions with artful precision […]
Continue Reading“If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness; for wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to […]
Continue ReadingIn an upcoming post, I’m going to write about how to monetize a hobby. I feel I’ve achieved some success in this area, to the point where at the age of 42, I don’t have to go to work anymore; I pursue what I love and find a way for it to pay for itself. […]
Continue ReadingHere’s a puzzle: how do you become something if you’ve never been something? For example, how do I become a leader if I’ve never been a leader? The conventional answer is to study how to be a leader and then gradually learn as you go along. I teach leadership at the executive level, so I […]
Continue ReadingYou may have heard the practice of Japanese fishing ships keeping a small shark in their fish tanks. The first time I heard this I wondered, “Why would you want to put a fish in the tank that will eat other fish?” What the fishing companies found was that because they were having to go […]
Continue Reading“No one should have to work. Nearly all the evil in the world comes from working, or living in a world designed for work.” So begins Bob Black’s essay on the Abolition of Work. Black goes on to say that not working doesn’t mean doing nothing, but instead, re-organizing your life around play. To play […]
Continue Reading