It will never let you down. Bitterness is never-ending, impenetrable and refuses to negotiate. If you give it a chance, it will persist. It lacks nuance or surprise. It’s simply a wall you can lean against, whenever you choose. Consistency is all it has to offer, actually. | Continue reading
I’m pretty sure how the first meetings went almost a decade ago: “Well, we’re paying our affiliates 5% for referrals. If we pay charities a tenth of that and call it a donation, it’ll be great PR and we’ll also make a profit on every sale because we won’t need to pay a full commi … | Continue reading
Not that long ago, you could make a living as a typist. Technology keeps changing the world. Now, you’re more likely to find a job doing something that seems a lot less mechanized. But that too will be programmatic soon enough. PS here’s an important new book about perfectionism. … | Continue reading
There are mistakes. These are moments when reality teaches us something. And there’s stupid. This is what happens when we refuse to learn from our mistakes. “Don’t be stupid” is a fine mantra. It’s particularly apt when talking about cultural forces, political agendas and our tho … | Continue reading
Maybe one piece of information is insufficient to get from where you were to where you just ended up. When we gradually walk our way to conclusions, we’re a lot more likely to find something useful. Leaping is best reserved for generous acts. | Continue reading
We’re often reminded that the best way to get what we want is to help other people get what they want. That opening the door for others makes it more likely that others will open the door for us. What makes it odd is the implication that if we don’t get, it’s hardly worth giving. … | Continue reading
Perhaps it’s a proprietary manufacturing technique, or the fact that you add a little chickpea flour to your dosa batter. Professionals often develop secret approaches and recipes that they use in their work. It doesn’t matter. Even famous ones. If it really matters to your compe … | Continue reading
They’re easy to confuse. An event happens at date certain, then it’s over, nothing more to be done. A journey might include an event, but it’s bigger than that, and ongoing. A wedding is an event, a marriage is a journey. The week a book is published is an event, while the creati … | Continue reading
Who has their hand on the dial? Talk with someone who works at Apple, Amazon, Google, Linkedin, Facebook, etc, and they’ll be happy to give you tips on how to work the platform to your advantage. How to get a bit more attention for your podcast or your website or your photos… Uns … | Continue reading
Pronouncements are more common than ever. It might be an insurgent announcing a way to change the government, a CEO with a bold new plan or an entrepreneur seeking funds. Or perhaps it’s a pundit or a critic, hard at work. Pronouncements are bold, definitive and dramatic, but the … | Continue reading
If you want a breakthrough, or something at the top of the rankings, or a skill that few have, or the chance to build something you’re proud of… It doesn’t pay to also require that it be convenient. | Continue reading
Good riddance. There’s not a lot of evidence that getting good at writing book reports or regurgitated essays under typical high school conditions leads people to success or happiness later in life. When typing became commonplace, handwriting was suddenly no longer a useful clue … | Continue reading
Luxury goods are items that are worth more (to some) because they cost more. The cost itself is the benefit that is being sold. There used to be a correlation between superior performance and price. In 1900, an Hermes saddle or a Louis Vuitton trunk was arguably better built for … | Continue reading
Entrenched cultural organizations and icons feel more permanent than they are. Network effects, brand power and the status quo can seduce us into believing that we’re stuck with what we have, but things are rarely as permanent as they appear. James Bond is bloated and dated. Idri … | Continue reading
You may have noticed that when you eventually find something, it’s in the last place you looked. Mostly because after that, you stop looking. And when a long-awaited moment finally arrives, the respite comes just in time, when we’re at the end of our rope. That’s largely because … | Continue reading
AI is here, and it can (or soon will) be able to draw, code, or write with more skill than most of us. It’s tireless, very fast and very cheap. Understandably, some creators are up in arms. They say that if an AI is trained on their photographs, their architectural designs or the … | Continue reading
Something extraordinary happened. A record became a hit, a new technology was proven to work, someone raised their hand and asked an important question… On this date, someone took a chance, connected, opened a door or showed up with generosity. We can celebrate each of these mome … | Continue reading
It’s easier to understand than it is to say. The baker and the blacksmith should trade. The baker can make a loaf of bread more easily and efficiently than the blacksmith, and the blacksmith would ruin her productivity if she stopped making rakes and horseshoes in order to put a … | Continue reading
“They can always say no” is the mantra of someone who is hustling for attention, promo or a sale. But when you hustle a colleague or a friend, they can tell. They can tell that you’re being selfish, angling for a short-term win and trading something precious for something now. Wh … | Continue reading
Compared to the overall population, virtually no one built Wikipedia, virtually no one voted for that senator and virtually no one starts a business. Virtually no one cares enough to help a stranger in need, and virtually no one leads the way. And that’s okay. Because virtually n … | Continue reading
…is surprisingly easy. “We’ve done all this work and things haven’t gotten better,” so, apparently, we should stop trying and go back to what we were doing. “We’ve done all this work and things are getting better,” so that means that there’s no need to keep trying and we can go b … | Continue reading
No one sees reality. It’s worth repeating: No one accurately sees the world as it is. A person with hearing loss doesn’t experience the world the same way a synesthete does. A rock climber doesn’t see a steep slope the same way an elderly person does. And an optimist and a pessim … | Continue reading
86,000 people have taken my Udemy courses over the last few years, and the first week of January is always a good time to lean in and learn. These are self-paced, video lectures. Udemy is offering the Modern Marketing course at 25% off for the next few weeks. The course for freel … | Continue reading
We agree on so many things. Productive arguments are scarce, because they depend on shared constructs of reality. And arguments are a luxury, because they allow people to engage around ideas without resorting to external forces or authorities for resolution. An argument might be … | Continue reading
Data is everywhere around us, and most of it is simply noise. The purpose of information is to inform, to help us change our minds. Information has a point of view, it’s useful. It turns data into actionable truth. Getting more data isn’t the hard part. Turning it into informatio … | Continue reading
Someone’s not going to get it. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t funny to you. It simply means that culture works because, for a moment, a group of people share a history, an understanding and a point of view. When a design or a song or a riff fails, it might be because there weren’t e … | Continue reading
The industry giants want tonnage. Undifferentiated, commodity-priced, regularly delivered, consistent work for hire. They’re not going out of their way for freelancers that are bespoke, artisanal or even ‘better.’ They simply want to meet spec at the best price. They can keep you … | Continue reading
And how soon is never? Most organizations are fundamentally incapable of planning ten years out. When a company promises to be carbon neutral by 2030, they’re actually saying that they may never be. That’s because almost all the pressures on them are short-term pressures. And it … | Continue reading
School and work push us to avoid real dreams. Dreamers are dangerous, impatient and unwilling to tolerate the status quo. Existing systems would prefer we simply fit in. The dreams we need to teach are the dreams of self-reliance and generosity. The only way for us to move forwar … | Continue reading
What’s a car for? Transportation. With reliability. Status. A transaction with the bank. A transaction with the dealer. Your relationship with the neighbors. A statement about your style and belief in design. Your sense of quality. A statement about how you walk on this planet. W … | Continue reading
Everyone has one. It’s the part of ourselves we won’t look at, acknowledge or risk disturbing. It’s the story or trauma or situation that must be avoided at all costs. People will choose careers, families and opportunities simply to avoid confronting the little tiny voice that is … | Continue reading
The time we spend fretting over what just happened is time we’re not spending on addressing the problem itself. When your client or your boss turns down a great idea, it’s tempting to focus on the idea and how right you were. It might make more sense to try to find empathy for th … | Continue reading
When a car is switching gears, the engine is providing no forward power. And it’s more difficult to steer, brake or otherwise control the forward motion of the car as you change it from one gear ratio to another. And yet, the only way to effectively switch gears is to do it while … | Continue reading
If you want to review the grocery list to see if you’ve forgotten anything, alphabetical order is a lousy way to do it. Instead, organizing it by course and then by dish creates a grid and the missing elements will be obvious. We default to time and ordinal ordering when we don’t … | Continue reading
And assertions are maps. Which means that: Budgets Timelines Plans Decision trees and projections are nothing to be afraid of. They’re a gift. They give us the chance to act as if, to describe a possible future and then to lean against them as we work to create the place we seek … | Continue reading
Soap is 85 cents a bar or two for a dollar. Which should you buy? It depends. It depends on how much space you have, whether you like this brand, how full your cart is and whether or not you’re sure if the person who sent you to the market wants you to buy two. […] | Continue reading
This is the season for all the lists–the hot authors, singers and restaurants in any given genre. If you’re on the list, congratulations! You’re the next big thing. For now. But the truth of the next big thing is that you can’t stay that way. The hot bands of yesterday aren’t hot … | Continue reading
The internet doesn’t have to be this way. It seems like the structure we live with and struggle with and sometimes work against is pre-ordained and obvious, but much of it is the result of the origin of the consumer net. Slow modems in particular. When the WELL and AOL and other … | Continue reading
If you want reach and engagement, optimizing for small screens is usually the way to go. There are more mobile devices in the world than we can count, and large numbers of people spend their days consuming content from the palm of their hand. But productivity? In just about every … | Continue reading
It began with what bosses needed to say to get workers to do what they needed done. And then it became widespread, because typing the right things into Google makes it more likely you will find what you’re looking for. (True aside: When I worked at Yahoo, they had a secret list o … | Continue reading
Random events are unevenly distributed and rarely arrive on time. Resilience and frequency increase the chances that the break we are hoping for will arrive when we need it. The resilience to keep at it so that we can live with later instead of sooner. And the frequency of intera … | Continue reading
The question, of course, is how long? We’ve been working hard on fusion for sixty years (using ‘we’ to include myself with all of humanity, not because I’m a physicist). The Post writes: “To most of us, this was only a matter of time,” said a senior fusion scientist familiar with … | Continue reading
Our stories about brains are all invented. If a stunning surrealistic painting turns out to have been painted by an elephant or a toddler, does that make it less beautiful? If an essay on the nature of reality was written by GPT-3 or a Tufts scholar, does it matter? There are peo … | Continue reading
When AI is smart enough to write an essay, then what happens? GPT3 is back in the news, because, as expected, it’s getting better and better. Using a simple chat interface, you can easily ask it a wide range of questions (write a 1,000 word essay about Clara Barton) that certainl … | Continue reading
The thing is that facts almost never get in the way of a good story. Because a good story feels true. A good story resonates. A good story is based on our feelings, long-held and hard-earned. A good story sticks with us, regardless of the facts. If I bring facts to rebut your sto … | Continue reading
Would you fill out this simple, quick and informal survey for me? We spend most of our lives at work. And yet we don’t spend much time talking about it the opportunity to make it worthwhile. Thanks. | Continue reading
If a customer, a colleague or a friend is generous enough to share their feelings, those feelings are what they are. We might disagree with the assumptions that led to those feelings. But acknowledging that the feelings are real is a great place to begin a conversation. “You feel … | Continue reading
For thousands of years, eggplants have had ‘features’ like this. But once we learned what they resemble, we can’t unsee it. It used to be a weird shape for a vegetable, but now it looks eerily like a former President. Once we find a hook, we can’t forget it. Our job as story tell … | Continue reading