Why Even a Dead Page can have Purpose In 1895, Sigmund Freud started Project for a Scientific Psychology, a monograph where he tried to explain all neuroses under a single framework. The ambition and expectation of the task brought trouble of equal magnitude. In Creating Minds, Howard Gardner writes that Freud “reveals his own despair […]
As Stupid As This Sounds
Eddie Huang and David Chang dropped a podcast yesterday, and it was as good as I thought it would be. David’s voice kinda sounds like Joe Rogan’s, so it was almost like Eddie was back talking about TED and stuff. There’s a moment in the first year of Eddie’s restaurant Baohaus, when Eddie personally delivered […]
Doing Something Interesting Is the Best Way to Promote Yourself
I’ve advised a lot of companies, leaders, and friends on how to promote their work through writing. But as I was thinking about it, combing through Eddie Huang’s The Pop Chef archives and having seen one too many aphorisms on Twitter, I thank God for granting me this moment of clarity: If you’re not a […]
The Rise of Personal Infrastructure
The company person is dead; long live the entrepreneur. There are plenty of people who have written extensively about reasons this change is happening; the gig economy, neoliberalism, the winner-take-all system being just a few of many factors. I’ll leave it to the experts to talk about macroscopic changes. One very clear factor is, each […]
When You Can’t Outspend, You Need to Outteach
Showing Your Process Is the Best Promotion One tried-and-true formula to promoting your work requires you accomplish something, draw people’s interest (and sometimes money), by showing them how they can do the same thing. I’ll paraphrase what Kathy Sierra writes: When you can’t outspend, you’ve got to outteach. CEOs, creatives, and marketers all approach me […]
How to Win the Social Media Lottery
Angellist founder Naval Ravikant writes, “Every single tweet costs nothing and has the potential to reach the entire world. “It’s the best lottery ever made.” It’s difficult to predict what will be a hit or not, and luck is a factor, so the metaphor of a lottery works. Artist Pharell Williams calls himself “the Mr. […]
Rethinking Content Marketing Incentives
“To make marketing that doesn’t suck.” I can’t tell if this phrase had imprinted itself into my mind, or if it was an original thought — if there is such a thing — when I was thinking about the future of my business. Then again, this sort of thing is what content marketers do best. […]
Writing Is Building, Too
Reading Marc Andreessen’s recent article really brought me back. In 2013, when I interviewed eight entrepreneurs for a magazine I was making, this phrase came up almost every time: “Learn to build stuff.” My first thought was that writers, like me, build articles, essays, and blog posts. Sometimes we build entire blogs. At other times, […]
How to Be More Creative
Long before the World Economic Forum and LinkedIn called it out as one of the most important skills, people have wanted — needed — to be more creative. The problems we face today are more challenging, complex, and ever-changing. Creativity itself is also challenging, because there’s a mystique to it; it’s a force that has […]
Aim High, but Make Sure You Shoot
Rebranding, “Done Is Better than Perfect” “Worse is better,” is the perfect blend of catchy and counterintuitive. It’s a meme; it captures a trend, its catchiness enables its spread, and bolstered its traction as an idea. The phrase was originally used by Richard Gabriel in his paper, “Lisp: Good News,Bad News, How to Win Big.” […]