If you’re under 14: “Good.” It’s good that you’re feeling bored. Bored is an actual feeling. Bored can prompt forward motion. Bored is the thing that happens before yo… | Continue reading
The last eight weeks have been like no other. An unfolding tragedy, unevenly distributed. An economic freeze. A media frenzy. It’s easy to be exhausted, especially since there’s still q… | Continue reading
Save With Stories is a community-driven fundraiser on Instagram. It features authors and others reading their books for kids on camera, all to raise money for @savethechildren and @nokidhungry. Yes… | Continue reading
Save With Stories is a community-driven fundraiser on Instagram. It features authors and others reading their books for kids on camera, all to raise money for @savethechildren and @nokidhungry. Yes… | Continue reading
[Here’s a simple communications hack for small teams and organizations:] When times are changing and you’re adjusting on the fly, it’s tempting to send another alert. The rules at… | Continue reading
What brings out the worst? One more question: Is it possible to adjust your life so that you show up more often in situations that bring out the best? Can you have an agenda, a rider or an itinerar… | Continue reading
The easiest way to get a contribution, advice or feedback is to present something that’s 90% done. If you ask too early in the process, if you’re hoping for conceptual insights, youR… | Continue reading
Here’s what you had to do to go to a conference in Toronto: Get a passport • Register for the event • Pack • Figure out how to get to the airport on time • Navigate the TSA • Find a hotel • … | Continue reading
If you want to know how to work with new or limited resources, find a population that’s used to not having many alternatives. Of course Harvard and the others are terrible at distance learnin… | Continue reading
The times are nothing remotely like that any of us would have predicted just a few months ago. And many of the institutions and jobs we depended on have changed, perhaps for a long time to come. It… | Continue reading
The times are nothing remotely like that any of us would have predicted just a few months ago. And many of the institutions and jobs we depended on have changed, perhaps for a long time to come. It… | Continue reading
If your career depends on detection and selection, it’s a helpful fiction to imagine that you’re doing something more than random guessing. College admissions. Greenlighting a movie. Pi… | Continue reading
There are things you’re going to do just once. Get your tonsils out. Pick a caterer for your wedding. Raise money from a venture capitalist. Apply to college. In these situations, the institu… | Continue reading
Two things: We do it all the time. Constantly. We’re terrible at it. We spend our days guessing how an action will impact the future, and we’re often wrong. And we spend the rest of our… | Continue reading
If your job is giving people good news, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing a good job. And the opposite is also true. Often, we conflate the situation with the people involved, bu… | Continue reading
That’s what makes it a model. The map is not the territory, and a model is nothing but a stripped-down approximation of what might be happening. By definition, the model for your problem, you… | Continue reading
It’s possible that your job is to make decisions. If that’s what you do, what would it mean to do it more productively? With less hassle or drama? If we make decisions all day, how can … | Continue reading
There’s rarely a straight line from here to better. But there’s usually an arc. The slog won’t last forever. And winning streaks aren’t endless either. As we move through ti… | Continue reading
Some of the shift to digital is unwanted, fraught with risk and lonely. But in some areas, organizations and leaders are realizing that it’s actually more powerful and efficient. So why didn&… | Continue reading
We all are. Throughout a lifetime, everyone has their troubles–someone might have stubbed a toe, or missed a car payment or be studying for an upcoming exam. Big problems and small. We each h… | Continue reading
Media culture and crisis collide in amplifying the voices of doom, anger and the short-run. Or perhaps empty reassurance and day-trading of emotions. But the other voices, they matter too. The marg… | Continue reading
Old-fashioned monopolies rely on some sort of coercion. Perhaps you need to bribe FCC commissioners to avoid net neutrality, or simply influence a local board to permit you to, by law, be the only … | Continue reading
The other day, I was talking to a friend in college. He was complaining about a lousy class he was taking, one that was now significantly worse because it was online. I asked why he was even taking… | Continue reading
There are three ways to tell if people are hard at work in an office: the boss can watch them go to meetings. And they can watch each other in meetings as well. the boss can watch them sit at desks… | Continue reading
We’re announcing a free intensive today, especially for people who are finding their college journey disrupted right now. If you know someone in that situation, I hope you’ll forward th… | Continue reading
What does it mean that for forty years you’ve been a steadfast and true fan of a team? The Red Sox, perhaps, or even the Montreal Expos. Over time, every player has changed. Every coach. Perh… | Continue reading
We rarely have complete control over the big issues. But the way we interact with each other, the small kindnesses, the extra effort–it adds up. One after another, day by day. It might be eno… | Continue reading
Authors get to put a page in their book thanking people who have quietly and persistently and generously helped. But the page is rarely read, and it comes out infrequently and it’s not so tim… | Continue reading
It’s difficult to get adults to wear bicycle helmets. (I wrote about this on the blog 16 years ago). The reason has nothing to do with comfort or safety. It has to do with signals. Semiotics … | Continue reading
We know how things are. How could we not? And we see the emotional rut that so many have fallen into as well. The question is: Will you embrace an emotional posture that models how you’d like… | Continue reading
Today, April first, was the day for a particular greeting, the only one except New Year’s that’s simply based on the date. Happy. It was a day that people on the internet understood tha… | Continue reading
There’s a tragedy unfolding all around us, unevenly distributed. It’s about health and it’s also about the economy. We are called upon to not panic, to try to focus, to figure out… | Continue reading
It doesn’t really pay to classify multitudes by their age–every generation is complex and intermingles with all the others. But it might be a useful way to understand the issues we̵… | Continue reading
In the short run, it’s easy to abandon what we believe. Deep down, we assume that once things go back to normal, so will we. Organizations end up with bullies, predators and bad actors for on… | Continue reading
It’s not just like the real world but with keyboards. Leap 1: Attention is too easy to steal online, so don’t. Spam is a bad idea. Interrupting hundreds or millions of people doesn̵… | Continue reading
People have been generous with you through the years. A doctor who took the time to understand your pain. A server who didn’t hesitate and brought you what you needed before you even knew you… | Continue reading
That depends. If we mean, “Is everything going to be the way it was and the way I expected it to be?” then the answer is no. The answer to that question is always no, it always has been… | Continue reading
As we’ve seen through these challenging times, the real skills matter. The ability to hold it all together, to lead, to bring insight and care to interactions. Too often, we’re pushed t… | Continue reading
A divisive radio personality, asking for forgiveness, says to his critics, “don’t judge me by my clips.” Why not? The things we say and the projects we do are our clips. Taken tog… | Continue reading
The way we feel can be triggered by outside events. And that can change how we act. And the way we act can reinforce how we feel. Of course, the opposite is true as well, and far more in our active… | Continue reading
Panic loves company. And yet calm is our practical, efficient, rational alternative. If you’re on a crowded plane and one person is freaking out about turbulence, the panic will eventually pe… | Continue reading
Other than multiple-choice, this is one of the easiest ways to work through a test or a workday. Find the blanks, fill them in. Here’s the question: Who decided what the blanks were? We get t… | Continue reading
When the stock market is on an upward tear, day trading becomes popular. You sit in your basement, surrounded by terminals and tickers, searching for the latest bits of information, hoping to make … | Continue reading
Panic loves company. And yet calm is our practical, efficient, rational alternative. If you’re on a crowded plane and one person is freaking out about turbulence, the panic will eventually pe… | Continue reading
A short manifesto about the future of online interaction [Feel free to share.] The world is changing. Faster and more suddenly than most of us expected. And beyond the fraught health emergencies th… | Continue reading
We only get it once. Why waste it? We can spend it in fear, or we can create possibility for the next person. We can spend it alone, or we can create digital but real connection with someone else. … | Continue reading
There’s safety in numbers. (Virtual, digital connection). Resilience, too. Not to mention inspiration and mutual support. Go start a group. Find the others. Learn together. Meet regularly. If… | Continue reading
A short manifesto about the future of online interaction [Feel free to share.] The world is changing. Faster and more suddenly than most of us expected. And beyond the fraught health emergencies th… | Continue reading