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
The lunch you’re catering at the wedding of a friend next week—who’s it for? It might be for the bride, because it’s her special day, so you should make food she likes. It might b… | Continue reading
The magic of the workshops we’re running is that we do them together. That’s not how most online education works. Which is odd, because learning almost always works that way. Find the o… | Continue reading
Which is closer, the sun or Buffalo, NY? Something might be vivid and clear and right in our face, but that doesn’t mean it’s nearby or accessible. If you’re seeking to get things… | Continue reading
And now, that’s always true. Whatever you’re doing. No matter who you’re with. Something, somewhere, is more interesting than this. And it’s in your pocket. All the time. As… | Continue reading
Ruts don’t dig themselves. Most of the time, we’re in a rut because that’s precisely where we put ourselves. Actions become habits, and habits get repeated because they feel safe.… | Continue reading
Some of the greatest buildings of all time were created by unskilled craftsmen using cheap and readily available materials. McMansions, on the other hand, are often created by highly paid workers a… | Continue reading
Too often, we take what we are offered at face value. The zoom setting is determined by someone else, and in our rush to get onto the next thing, we fail to discover what is going on within. The ac… | Continue reading
How often is that true? Not very. Changing a mind is difficult work. It won’t happen with a standard intervention, and it probably requires enrollment on the part of the person you’re e… | Continue reading
Citizens aren’t profit-seeking agents who are simply constrained by rules. Citizens behave even if there isn’t a rule about it. Citizens aren’t craven partisans, voting for party … | Continue reading
If your posture is to give hoping that you’ll earn the moral high ground and thus get something back, you didn’t give first. You gave second. You’re saying, “how can I incur… | Continue reading
Alas, not an option. Luck over time is inevitable, though. If you show up with good work and generous action, again and again, sooner or later something that appears to others to be luck will appea… | Continue reading
Compare 1960 to today: Cars are a bit faster, a bit safer, higher in quality and a lot more expensive. Houses are much bigger, a bit more efficient and enormously more expensive. TVs on the other h… | Continue reading
Compare 1960 to today: Cars are a bit faster, a bit safer, higher in quality and a lot more expensive. Houses are much bigger, a bit more efficient and enormously more expensive. TVs on the other h… | Continue reading
We are more aware than ever before. More aware of victims of violence, or a natural disaster. More aware of insane wealth or grinding poverty. It gets beamed to us, regularly. We’re even more… | Continue reading
Dogs aren’t supposed to have willpower, that’s what they have us for. Marketing changes culture and culture changes us. And then we end up changing the world around us. Not just the dog… | Continue reading
…is you. Jerry Garcia performed thousands of times, and he was the only one who heard every performance. The same is true for the work you’ve created, the writing you’ve done, the… | Continue reading
The convenience regime is in full force. You don’t often earn points by being baroque, rococo or byzantine. Given a choice, people will simply move on to the next thing. “As simple as n… | Continue reading
I am 41 years old is a very different statement than I am a vegan. In the first case, there’s not a lot you can do about your “am”. It is an accurate description of a state of aff… | Continue reading
Superman could bend steel with his bare hands. Along the way, we’ve been sold on the idea that difficult tasks ought to be left to heroes, often from somewhere far away or from long ago. That… | Continue reading
What if that’s not actually true? Perhaps it’s more useful to consider that in every moment, on every project, no one is actually doing their best. Because there’s always a need t… | Continue reading
A still life painting was supposed to capture a moment in time, something that we’d photograph if only the camera had been invented. And a sauna was a nordic way to simulate a warm afternoon … | Continue reading
Why is the new Dolittle movie so bad? Savaged by critics and viewers, it had: One of the most bankable movie stars in the world A story that had previously been the basis of two hit movies The best… | Continue reading
There’s always someone who is more willing to play the short-term game than you are. Someone who is willing to cut more corners, send a more urgent text, borrow against the future, ignore the… | Continue reading
If you find yourself stranded in the desert with nothing but an endless supply of chips, you’re going to die within a week. The same thing could happen to you if you had nothing but water to … | Continue reading
When a company is young, with few products and fewer customers, the phone doesn’t ring and customer service is a lonely job. As more customers arrive, each one is made a promise: we’ll … | Continue reading
Your promo folder is broken, and our fix for it is a bit stuck. If you use Gmail, you probably have thousands of emails in your promo folder. A quick look will show you that there are dozens of ema… | Continue reading
Every political structure, every organization, every relationship has at least one. The topic, that once you bring it up, must be addressed. An argument so existential that it cannot be left alone.… | Continue reading
People talk about compromising like it’s a bad thing. But we’re always doing it. Even the most ardent vegan is killing tiny creatures in a glass of water. There’s no economy on ea… | Continue reading
The thing the media is talking about, in heavy rotation. The breaking news, the one you’re required to give an opinion on. The thing is, if it’s not for you, about you, or something you… | Continue reading
That makes sense, because the obvious solution is obvious because we’ve learned how to solve problems like these. Your car keys are probably on your dresser, not in Santa Fe. Here’s the… | Continue reading
The culture punishes people by reminding us that we’re falling behind. The camera focuses on the person who is winning the race instead of the one who is trying harder than ever before. The b… | Continue reading
If you invest in an education, you expect it to pay off in a decade. Invest in a buy and hold investment, and you probably expect a return within a year. Day trade bitcoin and you might be measurin… | Continue reading
A simple editing trick: Every sentence has a purpose. It doesn’t exist to take up space, it exists to change the reader, to move her from here to there. This sentence, then, what’s it f… | Continue reading
Because marketers make change happen. That’s the work. Not to run ads, not to sell crap, not to invent hoopla. Marketing makes change. If you’re not proud of the change you’re mak… | Continue reading
The following idea is endorsed by all of these people: None of them exist. They’re constructs, built by an algorithm. Rights released, happy and smiling, but no one in particular. Fifty years… | Continue reading
The following idea is endorsed by all of these people: None of them exist. They’re constructs, built by an algorithm. Rights released, happy and smiling, but no one in particular. Fifty years… | Continue reading
Apart <—> Connected Hierarchy <—> Lattice Them <—> Us Winning <—> Interacting Brittle <—> Flexible Just in time <—> Slack Excluded <—> Included Willful <… | Continue reading
The most important decision-making rule you learn in business school is still largely misunderstood. When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the futu… | Continue reading
He doesn’t exist. This is what makes him the perfect creator of fear. An enemy with no defects, an affront for which there is no defense. Critics and skeptics can bring up the boogie man beca… | Continue reading
It’s comforting to use someone else’s priorities to guide our work. It lets us off the hook. But the only way to do our best work is to realize that part of what it means to do our work… | Continue reading
I’ll only use that 2020 riff once. But it was on-point enough to have been worth waiting for ever since I got my first eye exam. For most of us, 2020 is going to be a turning point. Because i… | Continue reading
The single best term I’ve learned this year. Apparently turned into a computer term by the MIT media lab five years ago, yak shaving was recently referenced by my pal Joi Ito. (Link: Joi Ito&… | Continue reading
It’s hard to look right at it. The possibility that lies before us, the chance to connect, to lead, to be heard–it’s bigger than it’s ever been. Tempting indeed to avert you… | Continue reading
Knowledge is a great equalizer. It’s available to more people than ever before, in exchange for effort, and the person with insight has an extraordinary advantage over the one who doesn’… | Continue reading
The architecture of the internet is about choice. That’s where the resilience comes from. Email can take one of a trillion paths to get from me to you. You have millions of pages to choose fr… | Continue reading
The Amtrak Acela is capable of going well over a hundred miles an hour. And yet, it’s not unusual for a 90-mile ride on the Acela to be only three or four minutes shorter than it would be on … | Continue reading
In between the holidays, it all seems to slow down. Most days, there is little traffic on the road (or on websites). Fewer products launched, fewer inbound emails, fewer things to check off a todo … | Continue reading