One friend recently opened a bookstore instead of a bookmobile. Another is investing two years of his life to open a restaurant instead of a series of pop up dinners. And a third is buying a boat instead of chartering one. It’s easy to see why. A real bookstore has a lease. They … | Continue reading
That’s easy advice and a fine goal. Except… if you look at the last hundred years, we haven’t seen many useful advances in mousetraps, despite the number of people who have tried. It feels like an infinite market, so it attracts a lot of entrants. You probably won’t come up with … | Continue reading
Who is Nicole Bennet and why does she keep calling me? A few times a day, a voice pretending to be someone named Nicole rings my cell, and in a petulant, entitled voice, insists she’s calling me about a loan that I never applied for. I’ve never interacted, I block each number, bu … | Continue reading
52 years ago, Apple’s 1984 ad ran on the Super Bowl. Once. It’s generally considered the most effective ad of its kind, creating a legend and also a trap. Was this ad the reason the Mac is still around? Or was it Regis McKenna’s work in getting Steve on the cover of more than 20 … | Continue reading
Why do books and records have standard pricing? You’d think that a record from Miles Davis or Patricia Barber would cost more than one from the local garage band. Economists tie themselves into knots trying to explain why wine and handbags have such wide price variation, but tick … | Continue reading
It’s difficult to write directions. A user interface, a map or a recipe all require empathy. That’s because the person writing it knows something the reader doesn’t. In fact, that’s the only reason to do it. But because instructions exist to bridge this gap, we benefit by underst … | Continue reading
We are story-processing creatures, and the most effective stories are often embodied in people. Living examples of the lesson we’re trying to learn and the posture we hope to model. Heroes, mentors, martyrs, examples, icons, avatars, archetypes, and even villains. Sometimes those … | Continue reading
Celebrity gossip, fortune-telling and superstitions are the original forms of fake news, but now it’s increasingly widespread. In every field from science to world affairs, it’s troubling to see. People who are familiar with reality can’t understand why it’s popular–in a low-trus … | Continue reading
Until you look at the system. Kevin Wilson wrote a great short story about the workers who have to sort the tiles that go into a Scrabble box. The hero is responsible for searching through the pile for the letter ‘q’. All day. On commission. At this absurd level, it’s clear that … | Continue reading
Once a company hits a plateau in its market share, the pressure begins to mount. Investors want more of a return, shareholders want the stock price to go up. Managers pay attention to the metrics they’re held to, and the squeeze begins. At first, the squeeze focuses on efficiency … | Continue reading
Pop culture is spiralling. I had no idea what “mad magazine autostereogram, cutecore” meant, but it was enough for Midjourney to create this: Older generations have always been left out of the codewords and trends of the makers of pop culture, but the gatekeepers and lack of shel … | Continue reading
Nothing important is for everyone. When we encounter a thoughtful critic, we need to quickly understand who is speaking to us. If the work we made was intended for someone just like this, and they don’t like it, we need to do a better job next time. The criticism will help us und … | Continue reading
This is the first rule of safe driving. Don’t hurtle your car into a jam where you have no options. But the first rule of management and human interaction is to leave other people an out. When you give people a chance to take action that helps them get to where they’re going, the … | Continue reading
This is not the same as not working very hard. In fact, they’re very different. We’ve been indoctrinated to avoid trying hard (too risky and emotionally fraught) and to resign ourselves to working hard (held up as a virtue). People who work in productivity-focused jobs where they … | Continue reading
In a world of automation, AI and outsourcing, what exactly do we do for a living? Perhaps we make decisions. And what’s in short supply? A willingness to take responsibility. If you choose to sign up to make and take, there have never been more tools or more leverage available to … | Continue reading
Left alone, a cup of coffee will gradually cool until it reaches room temperature. Stable systems regress to the mean. Things level out on their way to average, which maintains the stability of the system. The same pressures are put on any individual in our culture. Sooner or lat … | Continue reading
Here’s a useful writing breakthrough that has made a difference for me… Set up an account at ElevenLabs. Create a custom voice by uploading some recordings of yourself speaking. It’s not perfect, but it’s eerily close. Now, when writing an essay, a book or even a report for work, … | Continue reading
Of course it’s not going to work the first time. You’ll need to fix errors in the code. Adjust errors in measurement. Deal with changing conditions. Perhaps there are systems effects no one could have predicted. If we begin a project with the high school mindset of getting a good … | Continue reading
Those are harsh words. They imply agency, responsibility and failure. The response might be, “I did everything I was supposed to do.” Or perhaps, “What should I have done? I followed all the instructions.” Agency and freedom go together. We have more choices than we want to admit … | Continue reading
Even though yeast is far more reliable than it used to be, many bakers still proof it before investing the time and materials to bake a loaf of bread. The extra few minutes waiting for it to bloom is cheap insurance to avoid a failed loaf a day later. If you need to be sure […] | Continue reading
Consider the role of status in just about all human interactions. It begins at a primal level–every species cares about access to food and resources. We share a prehistoric history of status based on strength. But civilization is about awarding status on something other than viol … | Continue reading
Consider beginning the new year by subscribing to purple.space. It’s a private online discussion group that I started several years ago. A practice keeps a promise. A community of people who support, respect and encourage each other makes it far more likely we’ll find our way for … | Continue reading
Are entrepreneurs professionals? In professional fields, like law, medicine or accounting, it’s expected that you’ve done the reading. A professional has seen what has come before, understands the best practices and eagerly duplicates effective methods that have been shown to wor … | Continue reading
Every year, on the first weekend of the year, it’s probably worth replacing the dried spices in your pantry. The best, freshest spices still taste like the spice that’s on the label, but they taste more like themselves. That’s what successful brands and freelancers do as well. Th … | Continue reading
By the time you get around to embracing the fashion of the moment, it’s almost certainly too late. The leading edge is defined by the fact that most of us aren’t on it. | Continue reading
An essential feature of every bottle is the neck. No neck, no bottle. There are bottlenecks in every process, every project and every method. Something is limited. We can pretend that’s not the case and avoid the discussion. Or we can see it as an opportunity. Successful organiza … | Continue reading
If you went back 45 years, the built world would be eerily similar–the clothes, the cars, even the haircuts. Except you’d quickly notice that there were no personal computers and no smart phones. That for seven or ten hours a day, every day, people were interacting in real life, … | Continue reading
If you buy an Ikea table, you’ll need 8 bolts to put it together. 7 is not enough. This is functional sort of ‘enough.’ It can be critical to our survival. “I have enough medication to last through this illness.” “We have enough food to feed our family.” But this isn’t the stress … | Continue reading
Perhaps this has happened to you: You’re at the reference desk of the library, with the answer to any question available–and you can’t think of anything to ask. And there’s the vegetable blindness that occurs at a really good farmer’s market. After a few stalls, it’s hard to imag … | Continue reading
On poison and high voltage wires, the label clearly informs us that this can kill us, right away. For obvious reasons, these are important labels, and generally quite effective. On cigarettes, it’s clear that if you smoke long enough, you’re going to die, and probably not pleasan … | Continue reading
At some point, anything we buy feels like a bargain. Something needs to be worth more than it costs or we wouldn’t buy it. So, what makes what you offer a bargain? Is it that you’ve lowered the price, or have you increased the value? | Continue reading
The Method: Everyone who disagrees with you is right to do so–based on who they are and what they see Attention is priceless and trust is worth even more Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem Don’t find customers for your products, find products for you … | Continue reading
“Feels So Good” and “Chuck E’s in Love” were megahits. They transformed the careers of their creators. But any fan of Mangione or Jones will tell you that it’s far from their best work. Not even close. And yet, that’s what the crowds came to hear. In a long tail world filled with … | Continue reading
Not just similar. Cavendish bananas (the usual kind here in the US) are all clones, each from a tree grafted from a tree grafted, all the way back, from the first tree of the species in the UK. There are problems with this. Sure, the banana is the most reliable fruit. The banana … | Continue reading
They seem like they’ll spread to everyone and stick around forever. This almost never happens. In order to spread to everyone, they need to move beyond the people who are looking for a new idea. And that happens when existing users have a powerful reason to tell their friends. No … | Continue reading
Under each post on my blog there’s a button that says RANDOM. I’ll confess that reading posts I wrote ten or twenty years ago is often a surprise. I wrote each one, but I have no recollection of doing so. We can no longer expect that others will experience an introduction to us a … | Continue reading
Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Some people, hoping to avoid responsibility, insist that they don’t have great power. That’s a choice, but it might undermine what we’re capable of. [Also worth a thought: with great responsibility often … | Continue reading
If it takes three to five years for a project to gain traction, it probably doesn’t pay to start a project that the world knows it needs right now. The challenge is picking something the world will need then. And the hard part is patiently and persistently sticking with it despit … | Continue reading
Extraordinary organizations have this is as their employee handbook. Resilient ones. Human ones that can thrive in the face of automation and AI. Organizations that are built on customer service, hospitality and flexibility. Of course, this means you’ll need to treat your team wi … | Continue reading
Some pits are infinitely deep. Problems that, once addressed, always get worse. N +1. For some folks, the acquisition of money or power are like this. A little needs to a desire for more. Other problems have known solutions. The tank only holds 8 gallons and then you can move on … | Continue reading
What do you do regularly? Where do you show up, what do you publish? Who do you ask, and what do you answer to? What gets better because you persist? Are there systems you support or work to change? What do you do when you don’t feel like it? Especially then. The ocean is made [… … | Continue reading
In a typical tournament, you don’t score any extra points for winning with the fewest number of moves. Quickly isn’t the point. | Continue reading
We don’t use the same language or ideas with an in-law that we do with our bar buddies. When the internet was young, people often chose to filter themselves online. We didn’t know who was on the other end of the pipe, and we knew it would be there forever. And typing feels more p … | Continue reading
Frozen pizza changed the game for many pizzerias. If you couldn’t offer something better than what I had in my freezer, what do I need you for? If the wedding photographer can’t deliver more magic than the phone in my guest’s pocket, no thanks. Does working with your non-profit m … | Continue reading
It’s an odd term, worth a look. We don’t notice that the tree we planted a few years ago thrives just a bit more each day. We don’t notice that the mail shows up when it’s supposed to, that our civilization persists in the face of chaos, and that the lights (usually) go on when [ … | Continue reading
And shiitake mushrooms, spaghetti squash, ginger and even packaged tofu? In the 1960s, the culture changed, and so did the supermarket. Small markets with fifty or sixty kinds of fruits and vegetables transformed into supermarkets carrying hundreds of varieties. Cooking shows and … | Continue reading
There’s a face on Mars. Ever since Viking took this photo fifty years ago, some people have been sure–certain–that it clearly shows a face on the planet’s surface. Of course, once we had a high resolution image from a later mission, all resemblance to a face went away. Human bein … | Continue reading
The simple rule: Nine shortcuts take longer and are less productive than simply doing the work the right way the first time. When we look for one-quick-tip and the lazy hack, we’re wasting time we could have spent on the direct path instead. When a shortcut becomes the best way t … | Continue reading