Hand washing used to be controversial. Before Ignaz Semmelweis did his groundbreaking work in proving that disease spread when doctors didn’t wash before and after treating patients, hygiene … | Continue reading
We can gain a lot of clarity if we insert the right words into daily conversation. “That’s a good college,” is more accurately stated as, “that’s a famous college.R… | Continue reading
Sometimes the rule is: You don’t have to finish, but you do have to start. And sometimes the rule is: You don’t have to start, but if you do, you have to finish. When building a persona… | Continue reading
Resolutely refusing to accept a conventional understanding is a statement of certainty. That’s different from honest skepticism. The skeptic offers an open mind and is clear about what would … | Continue reading
Magic first: Acar and the folks at Penguin are offering a limited-edition deck of special cards to go with The Practice. It launched today. Persistence: Today is the 200th episode of my podcast Aki… | Continue reading
This might be the workplace question of the decade. Does the boss buy your time or your productivity? In the pre-industrial age, when we worked from home (“cottage industries”) workers … | Continue reading
This simple free tool lets you speed up just about any video you watch in Chrome. And it’s not difficult at all to speed up audiobooks or podcasts, just look for the button in your favorite p… | Continue reading
But first, let’s understand some words… Bitcoin is not the blockchain. If the blockchain is a printing press, Bitcoin is a kind of paper money. There are countless things that one can do with a pri… | Continue reading
Jargon is intentionally offputting, and lingo reminds us how connected we are. They might look similar, but the intent is what matters. Jargon is a place to hide, a chance to show off, a way to dis… | Continue reading
It might be the best way to save someone in distress. But it doesn’t scale. You can only offer this sort of lifesaving intervention to one person at a time. Often, we get stuck because we try… | Continue reading
A general malaise is not new. Sociologists have been writing about it since the Second World War. Today, of course, the malaise isn’t simply general, it’s also specific. There’s t… | Continue reading
Rarely talked about, and the heart of marketing and more than that, of culture. We can’t possibly know precisely what’s inside the book or the box or the bottle before we buy it for the… | Continue reading
Meteorologists on TV spend most of their time talking about how the weather is right now, right outside. And progress for TV weather often looks like more accurate reporting of the current precipit… | Continue reading
It pays to know what something is for. It helps us figure out how to do it better, how to allocate resources and how to know when we’re done. Much of what we build or invest in is complicated… | Continue reading
No one wants to be hustled. To be pitched and pushed and most of all, pressured into buying something. Hustle culture has been around for a long time, but the internet–and new forms of it in … | Continue reading
Possibility has a flipside. We need possibility to do our best work. To believe that it might work. To understand that if we do our best work and bring our full selves to the project, we have a sho… | Continue reading
Organized sports, particularly for school-age kids, present a real challenge. The results are easily measured and are on just one axis. Points scored. Winning vs. losing. If we teach a child to ide… | Continue reading
Who we are isn’t the same thing as what we do. But sometimes, what we do can change who we are. Our identity describes the person we see in the mirror, the groups we identify with, the versio… | Continue reading
A mass noun is one that doesn’t take an S when we have more. “Butter” and “Information” are both uncountable in use, because when we only have only one unit of butter … | Continue reading
We can improve and magnify things in very short order. Light bulbs, elevators, website technology–give it some time, and people will pile on and all of the important metrics will be sharpened… | Continue reading
When a new medium shows up that allocates attention, someone comes out ahead. They win a Google search, amass a ton of FB followers, hit the jackpot on Twitter or even Clubhouse. “They picked… | Continue reading
A “Deer Xing” sign isn’t there to tell the deer where to cross the road. It’s there to let drivers know that this is the spot where deer often choose to cross the road. Beca… | Continue reading
You can build a city below sea level, and it might work for a while, but sooner or later, the water will win. Trends don’t determine whether we’ll be able to accomplish something tomorr… | Continue reading
Innovators rarely have a competition problem. The challenge isn’t that your market is buying from an alternative provider–the challenge is that they’re buying from no one. The wor… | Continue reading
The language we use, the standards we adhere to, the kind of interactions that are permitted–this is up to the host. You’re at a dinner party, and if you want to be welcomed back, you&#… | Continue reading
Just about every business, every initiative and every intervention fails sooner or later. Since that’s demonstrably true, it’s worth considering how you intend to fail when the time com… | Continue reading
Walking away from something that we’re used to, even if it’s unjust or inefficient or ineffective–it usually takes far too long. Fear, momentum and the status quo combine to keep … | Continue reading
And that’s a feature, the reason the map exists. The phrase reminds us not confuse the diagram or model or overview of the situation with the situation itself. Because they’re not the s… | Continue reading
When we do our work without regard for a third party, simply to serve the reader, the customer or the story, we’re creating something that’s unsponsored. The third party shows up when w… | Continue reading
If your comment is helpful to anyone else, than it’s generous indeed. Holding back is selfish, because it deprives the group of your insight at the same time that it normalizes non-participat… | Continue reading
One goes up in value, the other doesn’t. It’s fun to imagine that our expenses are investments, but if they were, we’d call them investments. Our tools can be re-used, and our ass… | Continue reading
But if that’s true, then why don’t we all agree on the right next step? It could be because everyone has a different experience, different data and different goals. Or, it could be that you are the… | Continue reading
The arc of institutions, including governments and corporations, particularly public ones, bends toward short-term thinking, bullying, anti-competitive behavior and laziness. The antidote is persis… | Continue reading
Do you notice that you’re dressed dramatically differently than everyone else at the event? That you’re driving at a different pace than everyone else? That your question at the end of … | Continue reading
These are the three problems with creative work. The first is that when we begin, we’re not that good. This is a fact. The breakthrough for anyone on this journey is adding the word “ye… | Continue reading
Identity feels permanent, powerful, emotional and fragile. Identity has been used to unite college alumni (“we are!”), political factions and groups of all kinds. Criticism is not in sh… | Continue reading
Those are four words that are often overlooked when we focus on the rest on the sentence instead. “All things being equal, pick the cheapest option.” Or, “All things being equal, … | Continue reading
What do you want to be doing 100 days from now? What change do you seek to be making? With which skills? Surrounded by which people? For that to happen, day 99 will need to be different from today.… | Continue reading
Perfectionism is a cudgel and a way to hide. Perfect is the often-attainable outcome of meeting spec. “That’s perfect!” says the delighted patron. Modern perfect: A plane that doe… | Continue reading
A useful way to get in sync. “What’s the hard part” is a question that everyone on the team should be able to answer. But you won’t find out unless you ask the question. You might discover th… | Continue reading
It’s time to get serious about how we show up in remote meetings. For a year, we slogged through it, but it was exhausting. Not only did we feel lousy at the end of the day, but other people … | Continue reading
It’s time to get serious about how we show up in remote meetings. For a year, we slogged through it, but it was exhausting. Not only did we feel lousy at the end of the day, but other people … | Continue reading
The dog needs to be fed, there’s a blog post to write, a report is due, there’s a meeting at 10, this form from the bank has to be submitted… We can measure our performance (and o… | Continue reading
The optimism and possibility that come from training and learning in groups is a miracle. It means that, with a little effort, we can level up, become more productive and enjoy the work more tomorr… | Continue reading
It’s more productive to offer directions to someone who has already decided to go on the journey. “How do I get there?” is a much easier transaction than, “you must go.̶… | Continue reading
Qualified means that you’ve done the work, earned our trust and could be invited to join us. More than ever, our current technology and the lack of gatekeepers mean that your body of work cou… | Continue reading
Well, actually, “after a long slog” is a much more accurate way to describe it. An overnight success almost never is. Might as well plan for the journey. | Continue reading
If you’re designing a package, a cover, a fashion or even a meme… The goal is to have it be recognizable from across the room. That doesn’t mean it has to be loud or interruptive.… | Continue reading