Arthur Brooks is teaching a great deal about happiness: at HBS and HKS, as a regular columnist for The Atlantic, and via a podcast (it is great!). He says that if you summarize thousands of social science studies, happiness is a function of three things: friends and family, faith (religion or a coherent life philosophy),
Category: HBS
Comfort with Discomfort
When the New England cold and rains hit last fall, I jumped for the first time on a Peloton bike. It has been a lifeline for me since. Biking has always fascinated me. Before the pandemic, our family tried to take a biking trip each summer. These days, it is a great outlet through which
Bridges 2021
Just after booking my first vaccine shot, I felt compelled to do the next best thing: plan a fly-fishing trip! In fact, I planned two, a solo trip in the Berkshires and a long weekend in Maine with my fly-fishing-blog posse. I’ve taken a few days from work this week to fish. Uncharacteristically for me,
Book Review: Tom Eisenmann’s ‘Why Startups Fail’
Tom Eisenmann’s Why Startups Fail is a gem of a book. As I’ve blogged before (here), the success rate in venture capital is only about 33%: a super-majority of investments made by people who supposedly know what they’re doing comprises of flops. Some mainstream-media articles extol and chronicle successes that, truthfully, are few in number;
Friendships on the Water
Some years ago, for grins and chuckles, I started to write for a fly-fishing blog (here). I did so to document my learnings, failures, and outings for myself. Plus I love writing. Gradually, other anglers offered to write for the blog as well, and we became a crew. We are passionate fly fishers who want
Conquering Fear
I’ve long thought that the two most powerful human emotions are these: fear and greed. You see it in everyday life, in the news, on social media, and in ourselves. I write this because I have been reading students’ reflections on fear. We organized the class into small groups and each discussed this: “If fear