Boston is on lockdown this morning, so here's a yellow bird.

Markus Persson, the creator of the megapopular game Minecraft, is blocked on his next project. Sounds like a classic case of situational perfectionism to me. SP often follows a huge success or an early success. (See, also, this.) He sounds like a genuinely nice guy (among other things, a supporter ...

I'm turning into a big fan of Annie Murphy Paul's Brilliant Blog. The advice in this article on thinking more effectively by locating your centers of power nicely complements The 7 Secrets of the Prolific's thesis that procrastination is caused by disempowerment. I particularly like Paul's advice to find a ...

Some great suggestions from Laura Vanderkam author of What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: I like her #2 and #3 best: 2. They Don't Go Limp. If you spend your workweek running -- or worse, flying -- from place to place, you may think you want to ...

An artist did this for me a while back at a science fiction convention:

This Wall Street Journal article is old, but still worth checking out. It reports on twin studies showing that some young kids seem to have a biological predisposition to perfectionist behaviors like getting unreasonably upset if their shoelaces are different lengths, or to "[idolizing] the bodies of models and celebrities." ...

A new cycle of the Academic Success Catalyst Program - 4 weeks of small-group conference calls - starts next week. The ASCP is for graduate students, postdocs, junior faculty, and other junior academic researchers who would like to: • get more productive in their writing and other work • finish ...