Kirkus Reviews: Productivity is Power II is “A compassionate, very practical blueprint for getting things done.”

I’m thrilled to share with you the wonderful review Kirkus Reviews gave Productivity is Power II: For Creative, Business, and Other Professionals: The problem is procrastination, writes Rettig at the outset of her book. “Many people think they procrastinate because they’re lazy or undisciplined, but that’s wrong,” she contends. “We procrastinate because we haven’t been…

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The Welcome Debunking of “Grit”

I’m happy to report that “grit,” that awful, victim-blaming concept, has largely been debunked. An Education Week piece by University of San Francisco psychology professor Christine Yeh reports that Grit author Angela Duckworth has been forced to walk back some of her book’s key claims: “Much Ado about Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grit Literature” by Marcus Crede…

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How to Have a Beautiful Soul

Some books that profoundly influenced me in 2014, and that I urge you to check out, are: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature. A massive but highly readable book whose encouraging thesis is that humans are getting less violent over time. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals. About Lincoln and his cabinet. Spellbinding…

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