AI is here, and it can (or soon will) be able to draw, code, or write with more skill than most of us. It’s tireless, very fast and very cheap. Understandably, some creators are up in arms. They say that if an AI is trained on their photographs, their architectural designs or the … | Continue reading
Something extraordinary happened. A record became a hit, a new technology was proven to work, someone raised their hand and asked an important question… On this date, someone took a chance, connected, opened a door or showed up with generosity. We can celebrate each of these mome … | Continue reading
It’s easier to understand than it is to say. The baker and the blacksmith should trade. The baker can make a loaf of bread more easily and efficiently than the blacksmith, and the blacksmith would ruin her productivity if she stopped making rakes and horseshoes in order to put a … | Continue reading
“They can always say no” is the mantra of someone who is hustling for attention, promo or a sale. But when you hustle a colleague or a friend, they can tell. They can tell that you’re being selfish, angling for a short-term win and trading something precious for something now. Wh … | Continue reading
Compared to the overall population, virtually no one built Wikipedia, virtually no one voted for that senator and virtually no one starts a business. Virtually no one cares enough to help a stranger in need, and virtually no one leads the way. And that’s okay. Because virtually n … | Continue reading
…is surprisingly easy. “We’ve done all this work and things haven’t gotten better,” so, apparently, we should stop trying and go back to what we were doing. “We’ve done all this work and things are getting better,” so that means that there’s no need to keep trying and we can go b … | Continue reading
No one sees reality. It’s worth repeating: No one accurately sees the world as it is. A person with hearing loss doesn’t experience the world the same way a synesthete does. A rock climber doesn’t see a steep slope the same way an elderly person does. And an optimist and a pessim … | Continue reading
86,000 people have taken my Udemy courses over the last few years, and the first week of January is always a good time to lean in and learn. These are self-paced, video lectures. Udemy is offering the Modern Marketing course at 25% off for the next few weeks. The course for freel … | Continue reading
We agree on so many things. Productive arguments are scarce, because they depend on shared constructs of reality. And arguments are a luxury, because they allow people to engage around ideas without resorting to external forces or authorities for resolution. An argument might be … | Continue reading
Data is everywhere around us, and most of it is simply noise. The purpose of information is to inform, to help us change our minds. Information has a point of view, it’s useful. It turns data into actionable truth. Getting more data isn’t the hard part. Turning it into informatio … | Continue reading
Someone’s not going to get it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t funny to you. It simply means that culture works because, for a moment, a group of people share a history, an understanding and a point of view. When a design or a song or a riff fails, it might be because there weren’t e … | Continue reading
The industry giants want tonnage. Undifferentiated, commodity-priced, regularly delivered, consistent work for hire. They’re not going out of their way for freelancers that are bespoke, artisanal or even ‘better.’ They simply want to meet spec at the best price. They can keep you … | Continue reading
And how soon is never? Most organizations are fundamentally incapable of planning ten years out. When a company promises to be carbon neutral by 2030, they’re actually saying that they may never be. That’s because almost all the pressures on them are short-term pressures. And it … | Continue reading
School and work push us to avoid real dreams. Dreamers are dangerous, impatient and unwilling to tolerate the status quo. Existing systems would prefer we simply fit in. The dreams we need to teach are the dreams of self-reliance and generosity. The only way for us to move forwar … | Continue reading
What’s a car for? Transportation. With reliability. Status. A transaction with the bank. A transaction with the dealer. Your relationship with the neighbors. A statement about your style and belief in design. Your sense of quality. A statement about how you walk on this planet. W … | Continue reading
Everyone has one. It’s the part of ourselves we won’t look at, acknowledge or risk disturbing. It’s the story or trauma or situation that must be avoided at all costs. People will choose careers, families and opportunities simply to avoid confronting the little tiny voice that is … | Continue reading
The time we spend fretting over what just happened is time we’re not spending on addressing the problem itself. When your client or your boss turns down a great idea, it’s tempting to focus on the idea and how right you were. It might make more sense to try to find empathy for th … | Continue reading
When a car is switching gears, the engine is providing no forward power. And it’s more difficult to steer, brake or otherwise control the forward motion of the car as you change it from one gear ratio to another. And yet, the only way to effectively switch gears is to do it while … | Continue reading
If you want to review the grocery list to see if you’ve forgotten anything, alphabetical order is a lousy way to do it. Instead, organizing it by course and then by dish creates a grid and the missing elements will be obvious. We default to time and ordinal ordering when we don’t … | Continue reading
And assertions are maps. Which means that: Budgets Timelines Plans Decision trees and projections are nothing to be afraid of. They’re a gift. They give us the chance to act as if, to describe a possible future and then to lean against them as we work to create the place we seek … | Continue reading
Soap is 85 cents a bar or two for a dollar. Which should you buy? It depends. It depends on how much space you have, whether you like this brand, how full your cart is and whether or not you’re sure if the person who sent you to the market wants you to buy two. […] | Continue reading
This is the season for all the lists–the hot authors, singers and restaurants in any given genre. If you’re on the list, congratulations! You’re the next big thing. For now. But the truth of the next big thing is that you can’t stay that way. The hot bands of yesterday aren’t hot … | Continue reading
The internet doesn’t have to be this way. It seems like the structure we live with and struggle with and sometimes work against is pre-ordained and obvious, but much of it is the result of the origin of the consumer net. Slow modems in particular. When the WELL and AOL and other … | Continue reading
If you want reach and engagement, optimizing for small screens is usually the way to go. There are more mobile devices in the world than we can count, and large numbers of people spend their days consuming content from the palm of their hand. But productivity? In just about every … | Continue reading
It began with what bosses needed to say to get workers to do what they needed done. And then it became widespread, because typing the right things into Google makes it more likely you will find what you’re looking for. (True aside: When I worked at Yahoo, they had a secret list o … | Continue reading
Random events are unevenly distributed and rarely arrive on time. Resilience and frequency increase the chances that the break we are hoping for will arrive when we need it. The resilience to keep at it so that we can live with later instead of sooner. And the frequency of intera … | Continue reading
The question, of course, is how long? We’ve been working hard on fusion for sixty years (using ‘we’ to include myself with all of humanity, not because I’m a physicist). The Post writes: “To most of us, this was only a matter of time,” said a senior fusion scientist familiar with … | Continue reading
Our stories about brains are all invented. If a stunning surrealistic painting turns out to have been painted by an elephant or a toddler, does that make it less beautiful? If an essay on the nature of reality was written by GPT-3 or a Tufts scholar, does it matter? There are peo … | Continue reading
When AI is smart enough to write an essay, then what happens? GPT3 is back in the news, because, as expected, it’s getting better and better. Using a simple chat interface, you can easily ask it a wide range of questions (write a 1,000 word essay about Clara Barton) that certainl … | Continue reading
The thing is that facts almost never get in the way of a good story. Because a good story feels true. A good story resonates. A good story is based on our feelings, long-held and hard-earned. A good story sticks with us, regardless of the facts. If I bring facts to rebut your sto … | Continue reading
Would you fill out this simple, quick and informal survey for me? We spend most of our lives at work. And yet we don’t spend much time talking about it the opportunity to make it worthwhile. Thanks. | Continue reading
If a customer, a colleague or a friend is generous enough to share their feelings, those feelings are what they are. We might disagree with the assumptions that led to those feelings. But acknowledging that the feelings are real is a great place to begin a conversation. “You feel … | Continue reading
For thousands of years, eggplants have had ‘features’ like this. But once we learned what they resemble, we can’t unsee it. It used to be a weird shape for a vegetable, but now it looks eerily like a former President. Once we find a hook, we can’t forget it. Our job as story tell … | Continue reading
Put this one next to Dunning Kruger, which shows that people of low ability traditionally overrate how talented they are. The Massie Effect is the tendency of people who support good causes to believe they are in the minority. A study at Princeton showed that almost 80% of Americ … | Continue reading
In a competition between someone who knows the most and someone who is willing to learn the most, the edge usually goes to the curious and empathic professional, not the one who is simply protecting what’s already known. | Continue reading
When we look in the mirror, who do we see? [A note I sent to a young friend.] The person we see when we look in the mirror is the person we become, the person we fight to defend and persist with. If you see someone who doesn’t have a lot of friends, then every […] | Continue reading
It doesn’t matter how sure you are that this is a winning ticket, the ticket doesn’t care. And there are lots of lotteries in our lives. I was talking to a fifteen-year old the other day. He’s decided to devote the next decade of his life to getting drafted to play in the NBA. Wi … | Continue reading
Every small business needs a bookkeeper, but few take appropriate advantage of accounting. Accounting is a way to turn organized books into insight. Particularly: It can help us make decisions. Any… | Continue reading
Even with the powerful Ecosia engine, but especially with Google and Amazon, it’s getting rarer and rarer that a search feels as though it finds just the right site or product or information on the very first try. There are a few reasons for this: | Continue reading
In the Northern Hemisphere, it gets dark in December. And worldwide, people buy gifts for whatever holidays they celebrate, and a lot of them are around the corner. For both reasons, books! The Carbon Almanac was an Amazon Editor’s choice, a Do Lectures top 100 choice, a bestsell … | Continue reading
The problem with winning all the marbles is that the game is then over. And owning all the marbles is not really worth the effort if it means no one else has a chance going forward. And quick money? It pales in comparison with money earned over time for a job well done. | Continue reading
Culture shifts. But it’s held in place by norms, and those are driven by status and affiliation. No one actually needs a car that can accelerate one second faster than most other cars. But having one confers status in some circles. But what happens when a new generation of techno … | Continue reading
Hurry, sure. We need to hurry. Hurry puts it up on our priority list. Hurry gives us urgency and focus. But rushing is something that leads to errors and then apologies. “I’m sorry, I r… | Continue reading
Hurry, sure. We need to hurry. Hurry puts it up on our priority list. Hurry gives us urgency and focus. But rushing is something that leads to errors and then apologies. “I’m sorry, I rushed it,” is not something we want to hear. But hurry. | Continue reading
Try to fit in every general and conceptual detail when describing a very big concept and it’s likely that we’ll be confused. When you’re intent on explaining all of it, we glaze over. Consider switching gears and sharing the most specific possible example with impact and humanity … | Continue reading
Perhaps that super-genius is playing a very well-thought-out long game, anticipating every countermove with plenty of resources and alternatives at hand. It might be the local business you’re competing with, the publisher you hope to work with or the general of the opposing army. … | Continue reading
If you see a set of rules that don’t make sense, that are overly stern, that seemed designed to be offputting instead of helpful, it’s possible that the poster is leaving part of the me… | Continue reading
If you see a set of rules that don’t make sense, that are overly stern, that seemed designed to be offputting instead of helpful, it’s possible that the poster is leaving part of the memo unsaid: It could be something like: THE LAST CUSTOMER WAS UNFAIR AND UNKIND! And so the list … | Continue reading