A good rule of thumb is as follows: If the numbers come from somebody wearing a tie (Wall Street economist or analyst, industry public relations department, captive think tank academic and so on), you ought to be very skeptical. By design messages from these people are intended to move markets, move merchandise and/or move public policy and are not a comment on the state of the physical universe.

Comfort makes you weaker. We need some variability, some stressors. Not too much, but just enough.

You have family-owned businesses that have been around for 500 years. You cannot name a corporation that survives intact for even a few decades.

If you are in banking and lending, surprise outcomes are likely to be negative for you.

My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don't have the guts to sometimes say: I don't know.

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally.

Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.