One can refuse to pay bills, bully employees, steal credit, work the refs and look for shortcuts… or pay bills ahead of time, elevate employees, amplify the credit of others and take the long road. While both are modern signifiers of a certain kind of success, only one is a resil … | Continue reading
Gratitude might be the way forward. So much of what ails us gets a bit better when we say ‘thank you.’ Even when it’s hard. Especially then. | Continue reading
It changes. It changes as we age, and it changes depending on the situation. A second-grader might think that a boring class is never going to end. A bad cold might feel endless, unless we have the perspective of someone who has experienced a chronic problem. Some things actually … | Continue reading
Engineering problems are difficult, but they have a right answer. People problems, by their nature, are on a spectrum, a distribution of possible forward paths. But they’re complicated. A situation might not fit a person, and vice versa. Add a second person and know you have two … | Continue reading
A written contract benefits the party with the least power. Power might be in the form of money, access to plenty of lawyers or simply a willingness to burn it all down to the ground. In the moment before a contract is signed, the lower-powered party momentarily has more power. T … | Continue reading
There’s no competition for cookbooks on making food out of soccer balls and hockey pucks. There’s no competition for software that charges you to find out the temperature on Mars. There’s no competition for a service that counts how many pairs of shoes you own. In fact, in every … | Continue reading
It is, by far, the fastest-growing social network in history, growing more than 20% in about a week. And yet it didn’t stutter much. How can this be? It’s a network in the real internet… | Continue reading
This is a problem that comes up every year or two, but no one has implemented a useful solution yet. Advertising is a surprisingly bad way for a culture to pay for content, because the kind of content that gets rewarded is often dumbed down for a large audience or is optimized fo … | Continue reading
It is, by far, the fastest-growing social network in history, growing more than 20% in about a week. And yet it didn’t stutter much. How can this be? It’s a network in the real internet sense of the word. It’s not just a network of users, it’s a network of servers as well. No one … | Continue reading
If you often find yourself saying “sorry” in a way that doesn’t advance the conversation, it might be interesting to substitute “thank you” instead. So, “I’… | Continue reading
If you often find yourself saying “sorry” in a way that doesn’t advance the conversation, it might be interesting to substitute “thank you” instead. So, “I’m sorry this came out of the kitchen after your other dishes,” becomes, “thank you for waiting so patiently.” And, “I’m sorr … | Continue reading
It’s tempting to imagine that mixing half a glass of milk and half a glass of orange juice might get you a hybrid that’s better than either. Alas, not so much. The goal is to find something that is in and of itself. That becomes the very best version of what you’re trying to do, … | Continue reading
Update: You can subscribe to this blog by email (but it often gets filtered by our evil tech overlords.) You can also get regular daily updates via FB , LinkedIn, Twitter while it lasts, and now, Mastodon, a distributed, free alternative to more chaotic social media outlets. The … | Continue reading
The wrong answer is, “it won’t.” If you buy a piece of tech, it will break. If you buy an asset of some sort, it’s likely to go down in value one day. If you start a project, you will one day walk away from it. And everything that is alive will die. Refusing to […] | Continue reading
Toddlers don’t get afforded a lot of respect. They whine all the time about how unfair things are, and it’s difficult to take them seriously. Lately, in our quest for victory, we’ve established that some winners get there via whining, and perhaps this is a useful strategy. It see … | Continue reading
Few branches of medicine have created as much comfort, solace and relief. When we realize that traditional Western medicine is not going to be able to cure a life-threatening illness, the palliative care team is able to help. Instead of torturing and bankrupting patients, they ca … | Continue reading
A placebo is a human intervention that changes the story we tell ourselves. And those stories are powerful. They can alleviate pain, make wine taste better, improve our golf swing and even grow hair. Because the placebo is so powerful, we spend a lot of time and money on it. Enti … | Continue reading
It’s autumn in North America, and that means that homeowners and contractors are busy removing suburban leaves. It’s almost impossible to avoid the deafening roar of gas-powered leaf blowers. Here’s what we know, without doubt: We also know that: The solution, if we’re serious, i … | Continue reading
_______ is [Always/Never] the solution to a problem. In my experience, “always” and “never” are rarely useful ways to approach a problem. “Sometimes” requires nuance and insight and discovery. It might not be the lazy response, but if you’ve got a problem, it might be worth think … | Continue reading
Digital advertising has turned millions of people and organizations into not just the target of ads, but the advertisers as well. But it doesn’t easily answer the obvious question: Did that ad work? Long before digital ads were invented, my late friend Lester Wunderman coined the … | Continue reading
While it’s tempting to view our days as an amusement park with unlimited rides, that’s not really true. It might not maximize our impact or enjoyment either. In fact, we each have a limited number of tickets to trade in. Limited time, limited opportunities, limited money and othe … | Continue reading
“As soon as possible” is a trap if you focus on soon instead of possible. | Continue reading
No can do. We drift. Our standards aren’t set in stone. They change over time, often based on the situation we’re in. This explains how cults or extreme views occur. Not all at once, but bit by bit. Until one day, people wake up and are shocked to discover that they’re advocating … | Continue reading
What can we build for 2050? Thirty years ago this month, I created 18 Pine Street, a series of young adult novels with bestselling author Walter Dean Myers. He was a brilliant creator and a delightful partner. The kids who bought those books are having kids of their own now, and … | Continue reading
Your house contains products from hundreds of thousands of suppliers and craftspeople. The food you eat comes to you from a very loosely coordinated (not organized, not controlled) network of millions of vendors and farmers. To read this blog, you’re using software from hundreds … | Continue reading
It’s easy to imagine that they are, as it lets us off the hook as habits become negative, or even addictions. If someone else is thriving without the habit we seem to need, then it’s likely a desire pretending to be a need. For example: You can be a successful professional withou … | Continue reading
Fair is often in the eye of the beholder. What you think is fair might depend on where you are in the transaction. Losers tend to think an outcome is more unfair than winners do. But square? The thing about square is that everyone can agree on that part. If something is fair and … | Continue reading
It’s certainly a common excuse for being stuck. In fact, there are more good ideas right now than ever before. That’s not the hard part. Need a name for your project? This site will not only invent a thousand names, it will also generate a nearly infinite number of logos for you. … | Continue reading
Infinity is seductive. 1,000 emails take up just as much space (and cost just as much) as one. An online bookstore can carry every book ever published. And the long tail of music gives every single person a chance to share their work. The simplest thing to do is “let the market s … | Continue reading
This is obvious. Circus peanuts don’t have nuts, legumes or anything else that resembles a nut. They’re a metaphor. Or perhaps a simile, it depends on your level of pedantry. And yet, many people have a hard time with metaphor. Metaphor, not memorization, is the heart of learning … | Continue reading
History is filled with examples of people who made errors in judgment. The executives at Decca that turned down the Beatles, the CEO at Digital who said that no one would ever need to have a computer in their home, and the reviewers that didn’t like the movie 2001. And of course, … | Continue reading
There are unforeseen speedbumps, missed connections and of course, a lot of luck. If you are in love with your authentic voice, you’re unlikely to change. One lesson from the 500 Songs podcast is that most classic rock songs were made by people who started pretty far from where t … | Continue reading
The industrial age prized these three attributes. We’ve all been indoctrinated into adopting them through our time in organized schooling, and it’s easy to imagine that the world still wants this. When work is geographically bounded and the assembly line is the dynamic of efficie … | Continue reading
A 98% chance is dramatically different than a 100% certainty. Certainty isn’t on the spectrum of chance. It’s a different thing altogether. If the weather report says the chance of precipitation is zero, one should never walk outside into the rain. When you leave yourself a few p … | Continue reading
Some problems lend themselves to reexamination. A second, third or even fourth thought is productive, because our initial impulses might not reflect our best effort at understanding the nuances of the situation. But many problems simply create more thoughts, without productive ou … | Continue reading
It’s the first mile. Big tech likes to talk about the last mile problem–how to get a wire, a system or a concept from where the nodes are easy to plant to where people actually are. As … | Continue reading
It’s the first mile. Big tech likes to talk about the last mile problem–how to get a wire, a system or a concept from where the nodes are easy to plant to where people actually are. As if the hard part is what they’ve already done, and now it’s just the last little bit… None […] … | Continue reading
When one person needs to fix a wall, adjust a cabinet or choose what to serve for dinner, they can optimize their choice. Make appropriate trade-offs. Take responsibility for the path chosen. But when a group of people are asked to do the same thing, it’s easy to err on the side … | Continue reading
Decisions and crises and moments of significant effort and risk can be stressful. But the challenge of a stressful day is rarely directly related to today, it’s about tomorrow or years from now. Which means that pushing your way through some critical choices now will probably pay … | Continue reading
Many offices and public settings are putting up clear plexiglas barriers to insulate staff from the spread of disease. While we can easily see through these partitions, it ends up creating a lot of… | Continue reading
Many offices and public settings are putting up clear plexiglas barriers to insulate staff from the spread of disease. While we can easily see through these partitions, it ends up creating a lot of yelling. What if there were a disc, about the size of a hockey puck and the thickn … | Continue reading
It’s hopeful to believe that the NFT, baseball card or even car that we next purchase is going to go up in value. It probably won’t. The secret is to only acquire things where the resale value doesn’t matter to your overall satisfaction. That’s one reason there’s a huge differenc … | Continue reading
“The number of people who say that Moore’s Law can’t continue doubles every 24 months.” Even if you don’t understand this at first, it’s worth a second to unders… | Continue reading
“The number of people who say that Moore’s Law can’t continue doubles every 24 months.” Even if you don’t understand this at first, it’s worth a second to understand it. Moore’s Law, now nearly sixty years old, describes a simple engineering fact that has changed the life of ever … | Continue reading
Objections are helpful. We object by holding back action or support because we question one or more pieces of data. But the other half of this is the obligation: if the data ends up meeting the standard of proof we set for it, we have to change our minds and spend as much energy … | Continue reading
When the stakes are high, when it has to be a HIT, in all capital letters, we overinvest. The big stars. The lack of creative risk. The inflated budget and the meetings overrun with meddlers. After all, it’s big. Our insistence that it be guaranteed to work almost ensures that it … | Continue reading
Even the longest biography is only 66 hours on audio. This means that the author has to leave out almost everything. We write our own autobiography each day by deciding what to focus on, what to rehash, and what to worry about. The same life story can be told in many ways, and th … | Continue reading
Cars aren’t like companies. Most cars on the road will be sold, again and again, until they end up as parts. Companies usually start and end with their founders. Sometimes, a small, stable company … | Continue reading