Joni Mitchell was one of a kind. A sensation. A record-selling machine, with legions of fans. And then she made Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter. A personal, idiosyncratic album that marked the f… | Continue reading
As the fossil fuel era comes to an end, gas station attendants (those few that remain, as well as the unpaid pumpers who are filling their own tanks) persist in topping off the tank. After the auto… | Continue reading
Their own fears. Their own narrative. Their own drama. You’re not the only one. On any given day, your thing is smaller than their thing. And when things aren’t going the way you expect… | Continue reading
You will encounter real limits. You can’t turn yourself invisible, bench press 3,000 pounds or do a heart transplant with a steak knife. But real limits are easy to identify. We rarely have a… | Continue reading
[We’re launching a new free project today. Read on for the details…] Industry offered a deal to the worker: Here’s a job. We’ll pay you as little as we can get away with whi… | Continue reading
The first 250 copies of my new book were shipped to bookstores with some of the pages upside down. How does this happen? It’s a 500-year-old technology… What does it mean to do work in … | Continue reading
When the people we serve present themselves, when they offer us their attention and their trust, we need to work to see two things: Who they are. What do they fear, what do they believe, what do th… | Continue reading
Consider: You’re on the plane, headed home after a conference. The flight attendant says, “This flight is oversold, and we’re paying people $300 to take the flight that leaves in … | Continue reading
A friend is getting ready to publish a video. She worked hard on it, for months and months, and she wants it to be seen by the right people. The traditional SEO strategy is to be sure to title it a… | Continue reading
It’s entirely possible that you’re better. Better by some axis you’ve invented, fallen in love with and decided is the most important thing to be better at. But if people arenR… | Continue reading
There’s nothing in the dentist’s office that was there fifty years ago. Every device, every compound, every technique has been changed. Bit by bit. Involving thousands of people and org… | Continue reading
We come up lots of reasons to work with jerks. We take an investment from a jerk investor instead of a kind one. We accept a job from a bully instead of someone who will nurture and challenge us wi… | Continue reading
My new book launched about two weeks ago. Thanks to you, it went to #1 on the Wall Street Journal business bestseller list, made the New York Times list and best of all, has led to an ever-growing … | Continue reading
A cherry can’t grow without the pit. The drupe works because it uses the pit as instigation, a foundation to go forward from. The same is true for the way most of us engage with a coach. That… | Continue reading
Because the IT team is interacting with your customers. And they call them users. Or ignore them. The local bank, for example, decided that adding a seventh and eighth digit to its two-factor authe… | Continue reading
Poet Donald Hall told the story of a hermit in New Hampshire, a man who passed away leaving behind sheds full of hoarded stuff. In one of the sheds was a box labeled, “string too short to be … | Continue reading
The world is not flat. The easiest way to demonstrate that is with a simple question, one that challenges unexamined belief with the need to understand how things work. If it’s flat, there… | Continue reading
If you want to annoy someone with back pain, tell them it might be in their head. And if you want a medical practitioner to feel disrespected, you might trying bring up the placebo effect and how i… | Continue reading
Cyber Monday (inspired by its evil cousin, Black Friday) is a symptom of our obsession with convenience. As Tim Wu has pointed out, convenience trumps privacy, morality and good judgment for too ma… | Continue reading
That place you’re going, at breakneck speed, the one that requires shortcuts, hustle and compromises… What will happen when you get there? —– Thanksgiving is my favor… | Continue reading
The easy way to figure out the problem is to try the treatment. If the treatment works, you probably had the problem the treatment was there to fix. But that’s dangerous, expensive and time c… | Continue reading
A new organization launches and finds excited and willing customers. These are the early adopters. The nerds. The people who knew they had a problem. These are the easy sales, the folks who will wa… | Continue reading
It’s almost impossible to have a substantive conversation at a soccer match. It’s too loud. Too much noise. It’s exhausting to listen to some politicians speak, because there̵… | Continue reading
A generation ago, there was a real worry: privileged parents, those with time, education and money, were giving their kids access to the tools of the net while other kids were missing out on the we… | Continue reading
A generation ago, there was a real worry: privileged parents, those with time, education and money, were giving their kids access to the tools of the net while other kids were missing out on the we… | Continue reading
I don’t agree with Oscar Wilde on this one. In fact, almost no one else is taken. You definitely can’t (and shouldn’t) be someone who already exists, but the number of slots left … | Continue reading
A Toyota Prius passed me at 100 miles an hour. I didn’t know a Prius could even go that fast. The driver was passing on the right, using the breakdown lane, zigging and zagging across traffic… | Continue reading
Thanks to everyone who already made it a bestseller. So many people went to the site Tuesday, we broke Amazon’s checkout algorithm for several hours–I’m apologizing on their behal… | Continue reading
Those emergencies from a year ago (and a month ago), they’re gone. Either they were solved, or they became things to live with. But emergencies don’t last. They fade. Knowing that, know… | Continue reading
Today is launch day for my new book. Thanks to fast-clicking readers and alumni, it’s already a bestseller. You can check out some of the advance reviews. And the Financial Times picked it on… | Continue reading
If you share a pizza with a large crowd, no one will be very satisfied. But if you share an idea with a group, it creates cultural impact and becomes more valuable as it spreads, not less. Most of … | Continue reading
Not groggy, not zoned out, not hyper, merely awake. Aware of what’s around us. Present. Seeing things clearly, hearing them as if for the first time. How often are we lucky enough to be awake… | Continue reading
The unanticipated but important memo has a difficult road. It will likely be ignored. The difficult parts: a. no one is waiting to hear from you b. you need to have the clarity to know who it’… | Continue reading
Perhaps it’s time to do something else. Not a new job, or a new city, but perhaps a different story. A story about possibility and sufficiency. A story about connection and trust. A story abo… | Continue reading
Filling up a bucket might not be fast or easy, but you can easily measure your progress. Patience isn’t difficult, because you can see it getting filled. Most of what’s important to us,… | Continue reading
Perhaps it’s time to do something else. Not a new job, or a new city, but perhaps a different story. A story about possibility and sufficiency. A story about connection and trust. A story abo… | Continue reading
There are two good reasons to do random testing. The first is that you’re working with a homogenous or expected distribution, and the cost of letting something defective slip through is prett… | Continue reading
On almost every issue that divides the electorate (in the US and abroad), the group that gets out the vote will win. In most elections, the more some candidates spend, the more disillusioned the el… | Continue reading
Your car may have a powerful engine, but if the steering wheel is out of whack, it’s probably a mistake to simply drive faster. And putting in premium gas and removing the muffler doesn’… | Continue reading
Your car may have a powerful engine, but if the steering wheel is out of whack, it’s probably a mistake to simply drive faster. And putting in premium gas and removing the muffler doesn’… | Continue reading
Persistence is sort of annoying. Consistency, on the other hand, is the happy twin brother of persistence. Consistent with your statements, consistent in the content you create, consistent in the w… | Continue reading
Twelve years from now, your future self is going to thank you for something you did today, for an asset you began to build, a habit you formed, a seed you planted. Even if you’re not sure of … | Continue reading
The answer to your quandary is right there, in front of you. It’s just that it involves more work, more risk or more trade-offs than you were hoping for. | Continue reading
It seems as though the opposite of “careless” ought to be “careful.” That the best way to avoid avoidable errors is to try harder, to put more care into the work. This means… | Continue reading
It seems as though the opposite of “careless” ought to be “careful.” That the best way to avoid avoidable errors is to try harder, to put more care into the work. This means… | Continue reading
For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventual… | Continue reading
…doesn’t mean it isn’t true. …doesn’t mean it isn’t important. If we spend our days ignoring the things we don’t understand (because they must not be true … | Continue reading
It doesn’t make any sense to spend your life proving them wrong, it’s a losing battle. Far more effective is the endless work of building connection, forming alliances and finding the v… | Continue reading