Category: Creativity
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The Kanye West Religion (Part 2): The Future
“My greatest award is what I’m about to do. I’m always thinking about the future,” the Grammy website quotes Kanye West. Kanye is, very much, a quintessential American CEO. He positions himself as a creative genius and innovator. More importantly, he invests vast amounts of resources into backing his claims up with the projects and…
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The Kanye West Religion (Part 1)
Who Is This For? Artists and creative independents. Kanye West’s most recent albums sound nothing like the one before. In an age of blockbusters and calculated risk, he proclaims his strategy is no strategy. Yet he has also cultivated one of the most fervent fan bases, rivaling the Beyhive, Beliebers, and the Swifties. Rolling Stone…
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The Agile Writer
A key concept I learned when I worked at Xtreme Labs was the idea of agility. Agile development was one of the distinctive features of their services. Xtreme believed that this style of programming, driven by weekly releases of a project to their clients at the end of every week, enabled better speed and quality.…
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Keep Your Expectations Small
When your skills evolve, so does your fear. Here’s what you can do Image: Eunice De Guzman/Unsplash “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor,” Truman Capote’s saying goes. The inversion is equally true; even just a sample of sweet success provides failure with its bitterness. Three weeks ago, I decided to make a…
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If You’re Starting to Write, Here’s the #1 Thing to Focus On
When the writing process met the theory of constraints Image: Damir Spanic/Unsplash “Should I write at my own blog, or at Medium?” Of course, the question is worth considering if you’re a new writer. But a more pressing question you need to focus on is: “How do I write something I’m proud of?” Writing is…
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Hard Decisions Become Easy When You Do This
4 Ways to Gain Clarity When Opportunity Knocks Last week, a friend had a job offer come up. It was a stable job opportunity in a chaotic time. It would be a step up in his field of work, it promised good money, and it could open up very interesting doors. He also experienced high…
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The Power of the 10% Read
Remember, 10% Is Better than 0% “I wish I knew about this 10 years ago!” I exclaimed this after I started organizing my notes and writing with them. And I only did that because after I read parts of How to Take Smart Notes. The book had been on my shelf for years; I’d even…
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Respond, Don’t Create
For many of us writing online, finding something worth saying is half the battle. And yet, this problem runs counter to one strategy to making ourselves heard: speak loudly and frequently. VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk, a successful user of such a strategy, has talked about how he was releasing 40+ pieces of content per day,…
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How to Learn, and Earn, like Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson
6 simple lessons, for a complex world, that will change your life You may know Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson for selling 30 million records, for his hit TV show Power, or his lollapalooza business successes (including owning Vitamin Water, which sold to Coca-Cola for $4.2 billion). What you may not know is Curtis Jackson writes…
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The Creative Failure that Led to Sigmund Freud’s Success
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…