For more than two years now, I have sent out an email on Monday mornings, containing a few thoughts of mine, along with links to five things I thought were beautiful. I call it The Hughsletter. This post recounts how it all happened, but basically, I wanted a medium more … [Read more...] about What two years of publishing a weekly newsletter taught me
We have a lot of work to do.
Like most of the country, I saw the eclipse yesterday. As I child, I remember the much less impressive annular eclipse from 1984 when I was 12. In that pre-internet era, it is hard to believe we heard about it at all, but we did. I remember watching the news – the TV news, the … [Read more...] about We have a lot of work to do.
A New Thing
As I have said before, video is a thing I want to do well. Ever since I saw this TED talk, I have been a believer – video is the future, and can at least do for the world what print has done the last 500 years, and because of the nature of video, probably do more. But video is … [Read more...] about A New Thing
The Heart Transplant Diaries
My wife Renee was born with a particularly aggressive form of heart disease - Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. Yeah, I have trouble saying it too. By early 2015, she was in heart failure, and her quality of life was plummeting, so her cardiologists at Duke University hospital in … [Read more...] about The Heart Transplant Diaries
Winning
I have a long to-do list. I bet you do too. As a creative person with a large imagination and a raging case of ADHD, who is mostly introverted and moderately depressed, I often don’t get everything done I want to get done. And at the end of the day, when I am looking at that … [Read more...] about Winning
Using units to structure your time
Those of us who are in the helping professions seldom end up having 40 hour, structured workweeks. Instead, we are often responsible for creating our own schedule, which always involves other people’s schedules, which can lead to long, unstructured days. For instance, I have an … [Read more...] about Using units to structure your time
Running toward the fire
A long, long time ago, I went through Infantry School in the United States Marine Corps, where they taught us how to “locate, close with and destroy the enemy by fire and maneuver and/ or repel enemy assault by fire and close combat.” Marines study such things, and they purport … [Read more...] about Running toward the fire
The legend of you
Fed Ex was based on an idea Fred Smith had in college. He shared the idea in a paper, which got a C because of the idea's impracticality. Nobody thought it would work. In the early days of the company, it looked like the skeptics were right - it wasn't obvious they would make … [Read more...] about The legend of you
The Bible on my desk
The Bible on my desk is nothing to look at. It’s black leather, with gilt edges and a black ribbon to mark your place. If you were looking for a generic idea of what a Bible should look like, it would look like this one. No, this Bible is nothing special on its own, but it is … [Read more...] about The Bible on my desk
Our stories matter. So tell good ones.
Life is about stories. Our lives are made up of stories, and as the computer in the Spike Jonze movie Her said, the past is a story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Because of that, I believe that stories matter. And sometimes, the stories we tell ourselves are the … [Read more...] about Our stories matter. So tell good ones.