[For members of the public, staying at home and sheltering in place isn’t selfish, it’s generous. Social distancing helps keep the virus from infecting others at the same time that it f… | Continue reading
“This is worthy and important and right so I should do it…” sounds like what we say just before we do something. It rarely is. There are an endless number of worthy shoulds in our… | Continue reading
“This is worthy and important and right so I should do it…” sounds like what we say just before we do something. It rarely is. There are an endless number of worthy shoulds in our… | Continue reading
That’s pretty much all that’s on offer. What will you do next? The first gives us visceral satisfaction and emotional release, and it almost always leads to bad outcomes. Responding is … | Continue reading
Homemade art is essential. It’s the only kind that resonates. A human, doing something that might not work. Something generous. Homemade cuisine is the basis of all the food we eat. A chef, a… | Continue reading
This is a scary strategy. Because it’s no strategy it all. It hands your future over to the inbox, randomizing your path and absolving you of possibility. Perhaps it would be more effective t… | Continue reading
Three tricky words. Tricky because home used to be a refuge from work. Home is safe, work brings tension. Home is long-term, work might not be. But mostly because the industrial, cog-oriented minds… | Continue reading
Three tricky words. Tricky because home used to be a refuge from work. Home is safe, work brings tension. Home is long-term, work might not be. But mostly because the industrial, cog-oriented minds… | Continue reading
All the easy ones are already solved. Difficult problems are precisely what we signed up for, right? Or, at the very least, the only problems that are left. Difficult problems are rarely solved imm… | Continue reading
A friend told me that she was dreading a possible quarantine in response to the worldwide health emergency. “But you work at home,” I said. She agreed with me, but made it clear that wh… | Continue reading
We have two choices: We can buy into the stress, the noise and the craziness and make it even more chaotic. That’s certainly how it spreads. It feels like the right thing to do–to join … | Continue reading
When the world changes, it’s easy to feel stressed. That’s because stress is wanting to do two things at the same time–stay and go. When we’re surrounded by people who are a… | Continue reading
That’s a pretty silly thing to write on the store window. It says to loyal customers, “watch out, someone new is in charge.” And it says to strangers and the apathetic, “thi… | Continue reading
In the future, of course, there are no handshakes. Star Trek, Star Wars, even Spaceballs… no one shakes hands. And handshakes haven’t been the standard default for as long as we think&#… | Continue reading
In the future, of course, there are no handshakes. Star Trek, Star Wars, even Spaceballs… no one shakes hands. And handshakes haven’t been the standard default for as long as we think&#… | Continue reading
Getting found. No clients, no work. And the clients have a problem as well: Figuring out who the truly good freelancers are. A marketplace like Upwork is supposed to solve a classic two-sided probl… | Continue reading
Getting found. No clients, no work. And the clients have a problem as well: Figuring out who the truly good freelancers are. A marketplace like Upwork is supposed to solve a classic two-sided probl… | Continue reading
That’s not the only way we experience the world, and until relatively recently, it wasn’t even the dominant one. The sun rose this morning. You don’t have to agree with me, but a … | Continue reading
Often, we choose to be selfish because we feel insufficiency. “I don’t have that much, how can I possibly share it?” The insecurity that comes from feeling like our foundation is … | Continue reading
Story. When there’s simply data, it’s all noise. It’s impossible for a human being to absorb data without a narrative. Once we figure out how to turn your features and ideas and b… | Continue reading
I’ve been studying digital media “viruses” for more than 20 years, and much of what we have discovered about them comes from the analogy to epidemiology and the behavior of real v… | Continue reading
Selling magic wands is surprisingly easy, given that they never work. Shortcuts, hustles, hacks and too-good-to be-true are always in high demand. Buyer beware. | Continue reading
Do you tip more if the food is good? Do you tip more if you buy a fancier bottle of wine? Do you tip more if the bartender or the server comps you on an item? When you split the check, do you look … | Continue reading
Calendars are obviously artificial. Leap year isn’t a thing. Unless we want it to be. A bonus day, to do whatever we like with. Actually, we can have a bonus day whenever we choose, because t… | Continue reading
Years from now, after this event is long over, what should we remember about it? A week from now, when the crisis hits, what should we remember about this meeting? Tomorrow, when the day gets busy,… | Continue reading
What to do in the face of failure? What happens when you’ve done your best and it still doesn’t get the review, close the sale or win the race? One approach is to embrace the easy path … | Continue reading
It’s trickier than it sounds. It’s often conflated with ‘quality’ (which means consistent adherence to spec) and ‘luxury’ (which means it costs more than it need… | Continue reading
The internet is infinite. For humans, anyway. In the time you’ve been reading this, more than an hour of video has been uploaded to YouTube. You will never catch up. The thing is, the world h… | Continue reading
For five hundred years, a fellowship was understood, Tolkien-style, to be a collection of humans engaged in mutual support. [Definition] It’s hard to imagine something more reassuring, challe… | Continue reading
When you bought your first smartphone, did you know you would spend more than 1,000 hours a year looking at it? Months later, can you remember how you spent those hours? When you upgraded to a new … | Continue reading
If the people you seek to engage with have a choice, they’re likely to make a choice that’s in their self-interest. The question is: When? Is it in a high school student’s self-in… | Continue reading
Those little plastic figurines don’t actually move. If we’re being honest, they’re not action figures, they’re remind-us-of-action figures. Many of the totems in our lives d… | Continue reading
To what end? Is tomorrow another day to get through? After you get through all the days, then what happens? What if we saw opportunities instead of tasks? Chances instead of risks? | Continue reading
Free markets aren’t particularly common. At the baseball game, the snack vendors sell what the person with the concession tells them to sell. It’s a choice, but Hobson’s choice: t… | Continue reading
It might be because they are uninformed. It might be because they are misguided in what they seek. It might be because they’re short-sighted. It might be that they are controlled by demons. I… | Continue reading
If you hand an electronics engineer an amplifier, she can take it apart and tell you what it is capable of doing, without reading the manual or seeing an ad for it. If you show a civil engineer the… | Continue reading
When a pop band goes on the road to promote a hit record, they’re almost certainly re-singing a version of their work that matches what the fan expects to hear, not the daring, original work … | Continue reading
Draw a perfect circle. Use a compass or a plotter. Now, zoom in. If you zoom in close enough, you’ll discover that it’s not a perfect circle at all. In fact, anything we create, at clos… | Continue reading
Lenny Levine was a great kindergarten teacher. And he ran his class by this one rule. It means that if another kid comes along, you need to include them in your game. That’s it. It changes ev… | Continue reading
When you’re beginning a new engagement, a new job, a new partnership, it might be worth agreeing on a list in advance. You don’t have to include all of these, and you don’t have t… | Continue reading
All of us are on borrowed time. There are no refunds and there are no guarantees. At some point, the only time you’ll have to worry about is the time you’ve wasted. Coming soon: … | Continue reading
“I’m doing this meaningless/damaging/banal work because that’s what the client wants.” There are many variations of this. The plastic surgeon who does hideous work on the fa… | Continue reading
Name a brand of sneaker. Name a flavor of ice cream. Name a dead rock star. If you came up with answers like Nike, Chocolate or Prince, you’re not alone. This is unaided awareness, the abilit… | Continue reading
*No, that’s not what he said, and no, it’s not completely true. Thirty-five years ago, in a conversation with Steve Wozniak (pioneer of the personal computer), Stuart Brand (founder of … | Continue reading
For a very long time, major magazines and TV networks were very strict about the ads that they would run. The format, content and impact of an ad had to be approved before it showed up on network T… | Continue reading
That’s another way of saying, “It’s complicated.” If you’ve got one reason that’s good enough, share that reason. The other reasons are extra, and if you spend a… | Continue reading
That’s another way of saying, “It’s complicated.” If you’ve got one reason that’s good enough, share that reason. The other reasons are extra, and if you spend a… | Continue reading
You’re born with talent. You earn a skill. I don’t think there are many places where talent is the key driver of success. The biggest exception might be that a drive to acquire skill co… | Continue reading