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Ordinary inspiration, extraordinary work
As of March 2024, Pokémon had sold over 480 million copies of its game. That’s 28 years after the company released the first Pokémon games, Pocket Monsters Red and Green, in Japan. You’d think that there were high expectations, or a grand vision, that drove the movement that would earn the name Pokémania—but art director…
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Long & McQuade
Over a decade ago, my friends and I released the first episode of Prologue with a recording artist named Ryan Lewis. We drove from Toronto to Montreal, went backstage to Osheaga, recorded the interview, slept, and left early the next morning. That kicked off a series of other interviews with artists like Ty Dolla $ign,…
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Your city’s culture needs you
One of Toronto’s few magazine shops, Presse Internationale, is shutting down after nearly two decades of operation. A new landlord bought the building and is increasing rent for that storefront from $7,000 to $11,000. It’s difficult news, and there are a lot of things to feel upset about. What I think is missing from the…
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The infinite game of blogging: 1,000 posts later
On February 14, 2022, I started playing a game. I could win by writing a blog post every day for 100 days. Before the game, writing had felt like a chore on good days and torturous on bad days. I struggled to find my way out of the mindset of “content creation.” I started the…
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A podcast’s marketing foundation
Some websites estimate that there are six million different podcasts on Spotify. If you’re making one of these podcasts, one of the key challenges is to find people who will like your podcast, and make sure they can easily access your podcast’s latest episode. When Hamza and I first started working on our podcast, New…
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Disappointment and writing
Michael Lopp wrote a simple post about what you can expect your writing to do for you. The one that caught my attention was, “45% will do much worse than you expect when published.” That is a high percentage, but it sounds right. Writing—and all sorts of creative endeavors, really—means becoming very familiar with disappointment.…
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Creative success will not fill the hole in your heart
Tara Brach writes in Radical Acceptance, “Even when we are engaged in activities that are meaningful to us, that are creatively and spiritually gratifying, they can be “co-opted” and used to satisfy the unmet needs of the wanting self.” This resonated with me. In July 2022, I wrote, “When you instrumentalize creativity—that is to say,…
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Ladders as liberating rules
Aaron Renn made a mistake early in his career. He attended Indiana University in Chicago, and he started his career in mid-tier corporate consulting. At the time, he didn’t have a clear perspective on the possibilities outside of his small town. He writes, “My choices were extremely high ambition by the standards of that community,…
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Waking up from the trance of hesitation
Sometimes you can control how something turns out. Sometimes, you can’t. You only have so much energy in your life. If you dedicate your attention to controlling how one project turns out, you will need to let go of how the other projects turn out in that present moment. If you don’t, you’ll start to…
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Very early Thursdays
For over a decade, that’s when Tyler Brûlé would write his Fast Lane column for the Financial Times. Of all details in his farewell article, that’s the one that stuck with me. It’s a helpful reminder that there is no secret technique. Everyone makes the same bargain with time—hacking it out of the marble of…