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You might have noticed my sporadic posting here, and I'd like to explain the factors and ask your patience. I also ask you to indulge some reflection in this post after three full years of consulting.

I'd like to tap your experience to help with my in-process book, "Think, Try, Learn: A scientific method for discovering happiness" (working title). I've collected ideas for five years (since I started this consulting journey), and it's time to pull them together into a structure that leads to chapters.

A few examples I've found:

I'm double-checking my comment spam filtering software, and I don't want to miss your insights! So let me know if you posted something that I didn't reply to. Cheers -- matt

"Curiosity is antifreeze." -- me :-)

"When I think of all the hours and hours of my life I have spent watching television, it makes me realize, Man, I am really rich with television." -- Jack Handey

(This is a guest post that a TTL friend wrote some time ago for a defunct blog. Posted here for your consideration.)

When I ask myself if Christendom is compatible with TTL philosophy, I think first of Jesus the person (insofar as we know of him from Scripture). He is TTL in many ways. Consider: adored children ("a little child shall lead them"), loved parties, turned water into wine, doodled with a stick in the sand when the legal authorities tried to trick him into being Wrong, and advised freedom from anxiety about the future ("Consider the lilies of the field..."). I imagine him laughing, playing, and frankly mocking anyone obsessed with money and status.

Have you experienced a point where your time management lists (e.g., GTD's Projects, Actions, and Waiting For) have undergone deep-seated change? I've had just such a change in my Waiting For list (for non-GTDers, it's simply a delegation list - who, what, and when delegated): It has tripled in size.

When I was in grad school I used to have an attitude about meeting people. It probably stemmed from feeling inferior, but it was a kind of "guilty until proven impressive" one. Until you show me you're impressive, I'll assume you're not.

This didn't work for me. It kept me from appreciating, connecting to, and learning from people. Now I actively look for things to be impressed about. Not the generic "That's great!" type, but genuine respect of people and their accomplishments. My thought is that we don't acknowledge these enough, and - if you look around your personal and professional circles - many people really are impressive!

So my tip is, Come prepared to be impressed. Show active interest in others. If you explore deeply enough, I bet you find something amazing in there.

This weekend when talking about medical procedures, a witty niece shared this tip: Do NOT look at the instruments when you arrive :-) This makes sense. After all, why spook yourself more than necessary? This led to a question: When don't you want to/should be curious? An emerging Think, Try, Learn principle is that those two characteristics lead to a scientific version of being present. It's like my yoga teacher used to say: The past is over and the future hasn't happened yet, so the only living we have available is now. (They go on to say the body can only be in the present, so focusing on sensations will bring you here. I like the idea.)

Thoughts? Any good resources? How about Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer?

I'm getting knocked out for my outpatient surgery on Tuesday, and it occurs to me whether I'm a higher order creature while I'm unconscious. (My wife might argue that I'm never one.) I wonder because there's apparently no subjective time between when you go under and come back, including dreaming. If that's the case, and if it's our self-conscious nature that separates us from the rest of the kingdom, then am I technically (i.e., not simply physiologically) human during that time?

What do you think? Any good references you like around this topic?

Wish me luck!