Text of "What's Up with Jordan Peterson?" video

Jordan Peterson is the reigning self-help guru. The genesis of his best-selling (a term thrown around but in this case true) book, 12 Rules for Life, was a Quora post in response to the question, “What are the most valuable things everyone should know?” He listed 42 “rules for life.” Sixteen evoked a response in me. 

As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I quote the 16 and offer my response. Then I offer my own 6 Contrarian Rules for Life.

What's Up with Jordan Peterson?

Some Positives: Antidotes to Our Worry-Filled Mindset

It's easy to succumb to negativity: nuclear rumblings, hollowing middle class, ever more choking traffic, hateful political roiling.  We can’t even take solace in Steven Pinker’s famous assertion that the world is getting more peaceful. More recent data is agnostic.

Perhaps because those worries are legitimate, it may be all the more important that we remember some big positives, not pollyannish positives but legitimate bases for gratitude and hope. I offer some as my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Why You Should Be a Liberal. Why You Should be a Conservative.

All sides agree that the country is more polarized than ever. I’ve written a few pieces here on PsychologyToday.com to encourage more open exchange between the poles, for example, Ten Question in the Time of Trump.

As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer another such effort at encouraging liberals and conservatives to at least be more respectful of the other side and maybe even to moderate their views. Aristotle’s Golden Mean has been invoked to great success for millennia. It may well be what's needed now.

A Last Conversation: A composite of deathbed confessions

Sometimes, deathbed confessions offer a legacy for all of us. 

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers a composite of revelations I’ve heard from my career and personal coaching clients within the confidentiality of our sessions.

The Self-Made Man (and Woman)

Academics and the media have deemed the self-made man a myth. But is it? I explore in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

Real Acting: Tips for acting on- and especially off-stage

We tend to think of acting as something done on stage, in the movies, or on TV.
But we’re all acting, all the time: at work, in relationships.

Off-stage acting is viewed as unseemly, phony but, framed more accurately, it’s the appropriate adapting to your counterpart's needs, the opposite of the narcissism so often written about these days.

Of course, acting can be used for nefarious as well as benevolent purposes but that’s true of most tools--from intelligence to a pocket knife. That doesn’t obviate the value of learning how to be a better actor. To that end, as my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer tips for how to act without being discovered as acting

A Review of a Restaurant That Has Been Closed for 15 Years

A Review of a Restaurant That Has Been Closed for 15 Years

I write this in memory of the long-closed  Economy Cafe.

 In today's era of frou-frou, overpriced, not that tasty restaurants, the uncommercially named Economy Cafe made fabulous food, right in front of you, with fresh ingredients, and one of two true master chefs+with "Wok Hei"--infusing the taste of the wok.

The place had absolutely no ambiance--It let the food speak for itself, and because no money was spent on ambiance, the price was, yes, economical.  It was a monument to integrity in a world now being rapidly taken over by restaurant consultants designed to milk every dollar per hour and square inch.

Patronize the declining number of such restaurants. Alas, I have a hard time thinking of any. Even the many hole-in-the-walls in Oakland Chinatown lack one or more of the attributes above. But I'd certainly rather go to one of them than, for example, the ridiculous restaurants on College Ave, where professed uber-liberals act like the worst of the bourgeosie--overspending and preening on image, not substance. 

One non-Chinese such restaurant comes to mind: Old Weang Ping, a Thai restaurant in a tough neighborhood in East Oakland.

 If you know of such restaurants, I encourage you to write Yelp and Google reviews of them. 

As I get older and as the Bay Area gets ever angrier and intolerant, often reflecting merely a transient zeitgeist inflamed by a so-short-sighted media, I feel the need to write such things.

The Case for Preschoolers Having More Screen Time

No less than the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children between two and five years old spend a maximum of one hour a day in front of a TV or video screen.

However, a reasonable argument can be made, that many kids should spend double or even triple the recommended maximum amount. I make that argument in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

The World's Shortest Course in Hiring, Training, and Managing People

As my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer the tactics my clients have found most helpful in hiring, training, and managing people.

The World's Shortest Course in Hiring, Training, and Managing People

A Thinking Person’s Bucket List

My Favorite 50 Tweets

A Thinking Person's Bucket List

A typical bucket list might consist of going on safari, eating at a Michelin-star restaurant, and going skydiving. Indeed, when I did a Google search on “bucket list,” all the lists of suggestions focused on travel, adventure, luxury, and unusual ways to have fun, for example, take a belly dancing class, eat fire, or drive a race car.

But many people might want to include some items with a little more intellectual or emotional heft. Perhaps you'll find one or more of those I offer on PsychologyToday.com worthy of your list or, better, will trigger your own ideas.

How-to-Do-Life Tweets: Trips for improving your life

I believe in tweeting. It provides an archive of one’s distilled thoughts. I’ve posted 4,593 tweets since 2009. Here on PsychologyToday.com, I periodically post the best that are relevant to my blog’s title, How to Do Life. My Psychologytoday.com contribution today offers the current crop.

The Disliked Person

The Disliked Person

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I explore an under-discussed type of person--the disliked. They're not hated just disliked.

Tips for Smart Gardeners

Gardening is the everyperson’s hobby. It's America's most popular recreation. So, most of the gardening advice is aimed at the grand middle. 

In my PsychologyToday.com article today, I offer suggestions for people who’d like to use an above-average amount of noggin.

7 Stress Management Tips for Smart People

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers tactics that have especially helped my intelligent clients reduce their stress.

Gardening Tips for Smart Gardeners

Seven Stress Management Tips for Smart People

Time Management and Procrastination Tips for Smart People

My PsychologyToday.com article today is on time-management and procrastination tips that have helped many of my clients...and me.

This is part of a series of tips for smart people. The others are: Five Tips for Smart People in a Not-So-Smart World, Seven Money Tips for Smart People, Five Learning Tips for Smart Adults, Five Tips for Smart Job Seekers, Four Dating Tips for Smart People, and Ten Tips for Parents of a Smart Child. 

Time-Management and Procrastination Tips for Smart People

7 Money Tips for Smart People

Seven Money Tips for Smart People

My PsychologyToday.com article today offers money tips that have helped many of my clients...and me. 

This is part of a series of tips for smart people. The others are: Five Tips for Smart People in a Not-So-Smart World, Five Learning Tips for Smart Adults, Five Tips for Smart Job Seekers, Four Dating Tips for Smart People, and Ten Tips for Parents of a Smart Child. 

Five Learning Tips for Smart Adults

Learning Tips for Smart Adults

Perhaps you’re preparing for a new career. Or you’re wanting to build skills in your current one. Or you’re trying to skill-up in some avocation.

Some people find the traditional method—courses—time-ineffective: The pacing is too slow and/or the content too obvious. If that sounds like you, my PsychologyToday.com article today offers alternatives.

Six Dating Tips for Smart People

My PsychologyToday.com article today, Six Dating Tips for Smart People,  is part of a four-part series of tips for smart people. The others are: 
Five Tips for Smart People in a Not-So-Smart World

Five Tips for Smart Job Seekers

Ten Tips for Parenting a Smart Child.

Five Tips for Smart Job Seekers

Five Tips for Smart Job Seekers

My PsychologyToday.com article today, Five Tips for Smart Job Seekers, 

is part of a four-part series of tips for smart people. 

The others are: 
Five Tips for Smart People in a Not-So-Smart World

Six Dating Tips for Smart People


Ten Tips for Parenting a Smart Child.  (It will be published 1/11/18 at around 9 PM Pacific time.)

Google’s head of human resources, Laszlo Bock, reported that in choosing employees, they greatly value reasoning ability: “The second-best predictors of performance (next to job-task simulations) are tests of general cognitive ability.” While perhaps not stating that publicly, many of my clients who hire agree.

Most employers don’t give tests of cognitive ability. How can a high-ability job seeker best reveal it? My PsychologyToday.com article today offers tactics that my clients have found helpful.

Five Tips for Smart People in a Not-So-Smart World

Five Tips for High-Ability People

My clients of high intellectual ability have benefited from the tips I offer in my PsychologyToday.com article today. These tips are aimed at adults but may well be relevant to children.

A World With Few Decent Jobs

A World With Few Decent Jobs: A pessimistic but possible scenario

Previously on PsychologyToday.com, I’ve written job projections, for example, this, that concludes that for, at least the next decade or two, we needn’t worry much. 

Alas, there is another scenario worth contemplating in which far fewer decent jobs will be available. I lay it out in my PsychologyToday.com article today.

The World's Shortest Course in Choosing, Training, and Owning a Dog

More Best Plants to Grow in the Bay Area + Overrated ones

Best Plants to Grow in the Bay Area