Category: Creativity
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Fast Company!
I worked with the Fast Company team on a piece about saying no that ended up at the homepage. The key ideas from this piece came from my daily blogging; all it took was stitching them together, editing it, and making it more cohesive. Life is about saying yes, and saying no.
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Half a match
When psychology professor Lee Ross wanted to persuade his team at Stanford to recruit Amos Tversky, he used this story (via The Undoing Project, by Michael Lewis): “I said, I’m going to tell you a classic Yiddish story. There’s a guy, an eligible bachelor. A happy bachelor. The matchmaker comes to him and says, ‘Listen,…
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You shouldn’t write a book unless…
One of the most interesting pieces of advice on writing books comes from author Ryan Holiday, who advocates not writing a book. Unless… “What matters more now than any other single thing is that what you’re saying is different–that it’s interesting, that it provokes some response from people. You’ll only accomplish this if you’ve got…
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30 productivity hacks
1. Start for just 15 minutes. You’re allowed to stop after. 2. If you’re nervous about writing an email but need to respond, schedule it to go out. 3. Make a decision at the end of the meeting. Don’t do in two meetings what you can do in one. 4. Do something, even if there’s…
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Wiz ships
Two weeks before I wrote this, Wiz Khalifa published a new documentary, Still Rolling Papers (11 years after his debut album, Rolling Papers). A quick look: Will Smith has close to 10 million subscribers, so does Ye. Ellen DeGeneres has 38 million. Kim Jong-Kook’s Gym Jong-Kook channel has close to 3 million subs. Gary Vaynerchuk…
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The “no skip” intro
I skip most introductions of TV shows. But never The Simpsons. It’s mastered the perfect balance of novelty and familiarity; same songs, same characters, but slight tweaks in style or short storylines make a huge difference. It keeps me intrigued; what will happen this time? It’s a tension that’s too light to feel close to…
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Obscurity is a gift
You have a great idea, you write a blog post in five minutes, you post it. A friend reads it, they message you and say, “Hey, I know you had the best intentions, did you consider how this could be misinterpreted?” Oops, you didn’t. You misspoke, and could be easily misunderstood. No big deal. You…
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Stop stopping
Margaret Atwood writes in the Paris Review, “Everyone writes in a way; that is, each person has a ‘story,’ a personal narrative which is constantly being replayed, revised, taken apart, and put together again. The significant points in this narrative change as a person ages—what may have been tragedy at twenty is seen as comedy…
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How to present your work so it gets the results it deserves
Good work absolutely does not just speak for itself. That’s why a piece of art is always accompanied by an artist statement, and each art show is accompanied by ephemera, an audio guide, or a curator. A staff member at a restaurant not only delivers the food, but explains the story behind a dish or…
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“Quarter million a year, and that don’t bounce”
That’s from “Untouchable,” when Pusha T talks about working as the president of Ye’s record label GOOD Music. His boast was in the salary he’d be earning working in a powerful role at a cutting edge record label, and not relying on the fickle income of music and the struggle of staying relevant in an…