If Harper Lee had written To Kill a Mockingbird today, there’s no doubt that the salesforce and the marketers would have pushed for a catchier title, probably with better SEO. And it’s … | Continue reading
That’s how you know that they’re not obvious. When smart, committed people disagree about the answer to a question, you’ve found a question worth pursuing and a discussion worth h… | Continue reading
It might not be autumn where you live, but the iconography of the large orange pumpkin travels around the world. People carve faces into them, stick a candle inside and use them to ward off the dar… | Continue reading
Ideas are like that. The successful editor, curator or entrepreneur doesn’t go hunting ideas to kill them, but to celebrate them, identify them and dance with them. And a brutal, all-out fron… | Continue reading
It’s entirely possible to believe that your ideas come from the muse, and your job is to simply amplify them. And that successful people are lucky because the muse keeps giving them useful an… | Continue reading
Google is not your friend, it’s a tool. It’s been 2,702 days since they shut down Google Reader and people still remember. Or consider that Google can shut you out of all their services… | Continue reading
The Ngram tracks words used in books over the last 200 years. Here’s what a million authors and a billion readers think: Kindness matters. | Continue reading
I have a little wooden plaque with those three words on it. And of course, the answer is often “yes.” If you’re waiting on an unavoidable delay, then you’re not stalling. If… | Continue reading
This is the Inuit word for “sitting together in the darkness, quietly, waiting for something creative or important to occur.” Of course, this works. The only difficult part is doing it.… | Continue reading
Belief happens when we combine community with emotion. It’s a way for us to see and understand the world, at the same time that we engage with some of the people around us. Belief is a sympto… | Continue reading
An attitude of entitlement doesn’t increase the chances you’ll get what you want. And it ruins the joy of the things you do get. Win or lose, you lose. | Continue reading
That’s easy to say but hard to visualize. Even a puddle has more drops than we can count. It’s got to be difficult to be a drop. And yet… What else could the ocean be made of? | Continue reading
Of course, every rule, every announcement and every policy is in place until further notice. We say it as a form of throat clearing. A way to make the announcement seem more official and specific. … | Continue reading
Which is better: Feeling like you were right the first time or actually being correct now? When we double down on our original estimate, defend our sunk costs and rally behind the home team, weR… | Continue reading
Then everyone else would find it easy as well. Which would make it awfully difficult to do important work, work that stands out, work that people would go out of their way to find. When difficultie… | Continue reading
We all have them. “If ____ happens, then I’ll do ____.” If this emergency passes, then I’ll take a break. If this customer closes, then I’ll invest in my education. If… | Continue reading
Standing at my desk this summer, it had just turned 10 am, and I realized that I’d already: Heard from an old friend, engaged with three team members on two continents, read 28 blogs across t… | Continue reading
When Ignaz Semmelweis pioneered statistics in order to save countless women from dying in childbirth, his fellow doctors refused to believe him. They ignored his work, didn’t wash their hands… | Continue reading
Being smart often has little to do with being persuasive. And yet we often assume that one leads to the other. We spend years and years educating people to do well on tests in the belief that this … | Continue reading
Organized sports often turn into a play about status roles and dominance. Bullfighting, pro wrestling, even hockey, are about who’s winning, who’s losing and who’s in charge. But … | Continue reading
The launch is fraught. It takes a lot of energy to get the thing started, and the orbit is the goal–there are still satellites up there, circling, decades after launching. Even after twenty o… | Continue reading
If you can’t replicate the work and get the same outcome, then it’s not science. If you can replicate the work and get the same outcome, it’s not art. PS Tuesday is the First Pr… | Continue reading
If you can’t replicate the work and get the same outcome, then it’s not science. If you can replicate the work and get the same outcome, it’s not art. PS Today’s the First… | Continue reading
A principle is an approach you stick with even if you know it might lead to a short-term outcome you don’t prefer. Especially then. It’s this gap between the short-term and the long-ter… | Continue reading
Do you remember your first birthday party? That’s pretty unlikely, even if you have pictures to remind you. So what’s all the hoopla for? Why the cake and the pony and the rest? It̵… | Continue reading
Every time we have the floor we have the chance to create connection (or to sever it). We can open up possibility or we can close it. Sometimes, we share our answer thinking it might be the answer,… | Continue reading
Before we make a decision, we wonder about our dreams, our stories and our needs. Some of the things we wonder about, even if we don’t verbalize them to ourselves: What will I tell my friends… | Continue reading
It’s comforting to have a snappy answer or the certainty of knowing not only how it is, but how it happened and precisely what happens next. But sometimes we don’t know. And in those mo… | Continue reading
Today is ship day for my new book, The Practice. Medium asked me to do a weekly series about creativity. The first two posts are now live. Also! I’m doing a Facebook Live (to be reposted late… | Continue reading
The Cuban Missile Crisis was an actual crisis. The world was hours away from being annihilated–gone forever, all of us. Since then, the media has exploited (and invented) crises on a regular … | Continue reading
This is pretty easy to discuss when we’re discussing buying an ice cream sandwich. It costs $2, you get an ice cream sandwich. It gets a little more nuanced when we talk about what $2 means t… | Continue reading
If you accidentally leave the gate open and foragers end up destroying 1000 acres of crops, the guilt feels different than if you went and actively burned down the fields, even if the damage is ide… | Continue reading
It’s time for the annual window painting competition in my little town. Store owners allow kids to have a 2 foot by 4 foot piece of window to paint a scary/funny/punny Halloween billboard, an… | Continue reading
Striving to be asleep is a difficult leap. On the other hand, committing to lying still is do-able. Lying still makes it more likely you’ll get to the next step. Hoping to grow your business … | Continue reading
The scientific method is the most powerful invention humans have ever created. It’s not just for people in white coats and in labs. The scientific method has changed what we wear, what we eat… | Continue reading
That’s a criticism, of course. A report, study or testimony that’s all anecdote with no data carries little in the way of actionable information. On the other hand, if you want to chang… | Continue reading
There are two kinds of mistakes. One is the sort where failure is not noticeable because failure means that you didn’t engage with an audience. If you do an art show and no one comes, no one … | Continue reading
If you’re not having any second thoughts at all, it’s probably because you’re not thinking it through enough. The hallmark of the true believer is that there’s no room for j… | Continue reading
They’re not the same. We often strive to have both, but that’s unlikely. The price of having one almost certainly involves losing the other. We often end up compromising something to g… | Continue reading
Tomorrow is another opportunity. There are thirty people over there who are just waiting for you to help connect them, lead them or make things better. But if you’re still defending the stuck… | Continue reading
Small companies create almost all the jobs. They are the insurgents, the agents of change. Big companies are a backbone, reliable providers of goods and services. Big companies operate at a scale t… | Continue reading
Disagreements among people who mean well usually begin with that emotion. You meant to say something or agree to something, but the “other side” didn’t hear it that way. That̵… | Continue reading
53 years ago, early in her career, Joni Mitchell recorded this song. It’s not something most people will want to listen to often. Shortly after that, she became the one and only Joni Mitchell… | Continue reading
My new book ships in two weeks. It’s about the human process of shipping creative work, regardless of what sort of job we have. It’s about trusting yourself. Mostly, it’s about ge… | Continue reading
Back in the old days, I took someone to a local Italian restaurant for dinner. As we looked over the menu, complete with regional specialties and handmade pastas, he started to sulk. With a sullen … | Continue reading
That’s a pretty powerful combination. Some customers gravitate toward the option that offers ease, quality and convenience, while others prefer low price. If you can do both… One way we… | Continue reading
We are always under tight deadlines, because time is our most valuable asset. If you make a promise, set a date. No date, no promise. If you set a date, meet it. If you can’t make a date, tel… | Continue reading
The word has a very specific meaning, which is why it’s so powerful. If we accept behavior that’s unacceptable, we’re compromising on something that we thought was too important t… | Continue reading