150 years ago, the periodic table of the elements was published. It’s a truly stunning achievement because it predates the electron microscope. It’s a bit like labeling all the colors i… | Continue reading
Why is there so much short-term hustle? Because that’s what we buy. Why is there so much negative campaigning? Because that’s what changes our actions. Why is social media filled with m… | Continue reading
This isn’t a current events blog. It might be inspired by them, but I try to write something every day that’s worth reading in a month or a year. And so, I choose to ignore the specific… | Continue reading
When is it time to give up, to stop trying, to settle for what is? Five years ago, when I founded the altMBA, I had no idea what 2020 would be like. I don’t think anyone could have described … | Continue reading
Hearing happens when we’re able to recognize a sound. Listening happens when we put in the effort to understand what it means. It not only requires focus, but it also requires a commitment to… | Continue reading
Before desktop publishing, the best way to layout a complicated image for printing was to cut a rubylith. Rubylith is a translucent sheet of thin plastic. A craftsperson would carefully cut the rub… | Continue reading
Before desktop publishing, the best way to layout a complicated image for printing was to cut a rubylith. Rubylith is a translucent sheet of thin plastic. A craftsperson would carefully cut the rub… | Continue reading
We know that the median is often not the same as the mean, but in describing a population, it also pays to differentiate between the average person and a typical one. For example: The average dog o… | Continue reading
Think about your most deeply-held beliefs. It’s entirely possible that someone who disagrees with you feels just as deeply. Consider your chronic aches, your devastating pain, your persistent… | Continue reading
When a problem appears too large, too intractable and too unspeakable to deal with, it’s easy to give up. There never seems to be enough time, enough resources or enough money to make the big… | Continue reading
There’s just no way to be sure what it feels like. Other people, people in our lives or out of it, people who look like us or don’t. Your mileage will vary, your experience will be diff… | Continue reading
[From two years ago, even more relevant right now] You will never regret offering dignity to others. We rarely get into trouble because we overdo our sense of justice and fairness. Not just us, but… | Continue reading
Millions of college-age students have to make a difficult decision soon. Spending all that money and time has always been a significant choice, but now it’s more fraught. The accredited insti… | Continue reading
Two ways of saying the same thing. If the bridge needs to hold 20,000 pound vehicles, the client isn’t interested in paying extra for you to build it to hold 30,000 pound vehicles. The spec i… | Continue reading
How will you spend your resources? If you want to open a can of tomato juice, you can squeeze the sides of the can as hard as you can, for as long as you can, but it’s unlikely to open. You c… | Continue reading
In many situations, a leaky roof is worse than no roof at all. If there’s no roof, we’re not surprised or disappointed if we get hit with some raindrops. But a roof that leaks has raise… | Continue reading
Consider one of three paths. Which works for you? Honor the noise in your head. Make the work you believe you were born to make. Create things you can visualize but haven’t seen yet. Do it wi… | Continue reading
How good are you at Google Sheets? Can you write a query? A filter? Do you know how to install add-on tools to trim extra cells or create a mail merge? If you wanted to learn those things, do you k… | Continue reading
It’s easy to wait for it. The movies have taught us that when the music swells and the chips are down, that’s when leaders arrive and when heroes are made. It turns out, that’s no… | Continue reading
Tell us when you’re going to finish. Tell us if you fall behind. Don’t make us ask. It’s difficult for a small organization or a dedicated craftsperson to run an operation as punc… | Continue reading
Fewer meetings, fewer resources, fewer constraints. The biggest advantage that a small business has is that the owner can look customers in the eye. And vice versa. Instead of policies, groupthink … | Continue reading
Fewer meetings, fewer resources, fewer constraints. The biggest advantage that a small business has is that the owner can look customers in the eye. And vice versa. Instead of policies, groupthink … | Continue reading
Learning happens mostly outside the classroom. Learning is the difficult work of experiencing incompetence on our way to mastery. And learning opens the door to identity. When someone says, “… | Continue reading
It’s easy for us to choose to worry. The world is upside down, the slog continues, a tragedy unevenly but widely distributed. Worry takes a lot of effort. And worry, unlike focus, learning or… | Continue reading
You may have seen the miracle sudoku video that spread this week–a good sort of virus, one based on an idea. About half a million people have watched Simon spend nearly half an hour solving a… | Continue reading
There’s a huge gulf between earned expertise and strong opinion. Knowing what others who have come before have done (and having successfully done it yourself) is demonstrably more effective t… | Continue reading
If you can study something behavioral on college students, you can bet it gets studied a lot. It’s easy and cheap to run these sorts of tests. Which is how we came to understand the power of … | Continue reading
“If I can’t make it perfect, is it okay if I try to make it better?” When a project doesn’t come out precisely the way we hoped, when customer service isn’t 100%, when… | Continue reading
The difference between science and conspiracy theory/superstition is simple: Good science leads to useful insights. And good science is the cure for bad science. On the other hand, there are no goo… | Continue reading
Robert Moses, the road builder, understood that that building tunnels takes just a little longer and costs just a little bit more. And it turns out that bridges are monuments and create glory for t… | Continue reading
One of my books took more than a year to write, ten hours a day. Another took three weeks. Both sell for the same price. The quicker one outsold the other 20 to 1. A $200 bottle of wine costs almos… | Continue reading
What do you dream of? We’ve worked overtime to create a sports imagination. Kids dream of dunking a basketball or scoring the winning goal at the World Cup. That’s a pretty new phenomen… | Continue reading
If we’re holding back because we think someone (or the culture) might not be ready to give us what we want, it’s probably a good instinct. Nobody likes to be hustled. But if you’r… | Continue reading
What did we just tell ourselves about what happened? And why do we choose to take the actions we take? How does that narrative change the way we’ll deal with tomorrow? Lots of things can trig… | Continue reading
Marketers used to have little choice. The only marketing was local. The local neighborhood, the local community. Mass marketing changed that. Now, the goal was to flip the culture, all at once. Hit… | Continue reading
No matter how hard you try, you can’t. After just a few steps, you’ll be slightly enlarging the footprint. By the time six people have done it, the original is completely gone. Footprin… | Continue reading
In my most recent book, I helped people see how we’re always tracking status roles in the way we make decisions. Who’s up and who’s down? What does this interaction or this purcha… | Continue reading
Almost no one who takes an intro to economics course becomes an economist. One reason might be that within a few days of starting the class, it becomes abstract, formula-based and dull. The same en… | Continue reading
A friend writes, “it is so frustrating not being able to control people.” Of course, there’s a flipside. If you could control people, just imagine how heavy that responsibility wo… | Continue reading
“Wake me when it’s over,” is a natural instinct during a short-term interruption in our usual pattern. A crisis is there to be managed or waited out. The goal of each day is to si… | Continue reading
Today, the new book from Jacqueline Novogratz arrives. Manifesto for a Moral Revolution is brave, personal and audacious. This is an important book, now more than ever. Please share this with peopl… | Continue reading
Maybe you work with an organization. They have systems and charts and boxes. But the very nature of an organization is that someone developed it, figured it out and has to approve its changes. Afte… | Continue reading
Our experience of time always goes in one direction. It might seem to speed up or slow down, but entropy and the outside world conspire to keep things moving from yesterday to tomorrow. Given that … | Continue reading
Without a doubt, today’s average jazz producer has heard more jazz than any jazz producer working in 1960. And today’s VC has seen more business plans than her predecessor forty years a… | Continue reading
Mathematicians don’t need to check in with the head of math to find out what the talking points about fractions are this week. That’s because fractions are fractions. Anyone can choose … | Continue reading
I just noticed something about the ubiquitous sign at every diner. On one hand, it means, “the special that was assigned to today.” It’s possessive. But on the other hand, it coul… | Continue reading
Me & Now vs. Us & Later This is the conflict every culture lives with. Modern industrialism has embraced the extraordinary power of instant gratification and has amplified it by reminding u… | Continue reading