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Contentions: Viewer discretion is advised
Beware people and products that position themselves to create a problem; to exacerbate a discomfort and dissatisfaction in your present life. For example, that job you were entirely satisfied with doesn’t look as appealing as the creator who claims to make passive income and is recording a video from a beach in Hawaii. Usually, someone…
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Contentions: “People don’t actually know that…”
… Your team works with a vast, fascinating, set of data. … Your team performed a migration in a way that nobody ever did before, and that was an awesome feat. … Your team is responsible for designing or developing some of the most exciting projects in the industry. Being the industry’s best kept secret…
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From 49% to 51%
I joined a podcast recently, and referenced this post I once wrote: don’t make “Bad” the enemy of “Good.” The editors at Fast Company picked it up a couple of weeks after I first published it. The gist of the post: Many times, “Good” things start out “Bad.” Thinking about it, getting feedback, looking for…
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The present-promise gap
You and I constantly deal with promises. We make promises to ourselves, we make promises with other people, and other people make promises with us. It’s easy to believe promises that are very near to the present, especially if the person has constantly kept their promises. Correspondence: “Let me get back to you by the…
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Make something for very few people
One of the prompts in Creative Doing is, “Focus on Connection.” There’s something special about making something for a few, specific, people you know. It helps make things specific: will this person like this? What would make them appreciate it? What problems are they facing, or what are they interested in? What do I want…
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Writing a book with index cards
I really liked Edward Slingerland’s coverage of how he wrote his book, mainly reading (for 18 months!), typing up note-sized cut outs in Microsoft Word and printing them out and pasting them on index cards, and then arranging and re-arranging the ideas until it makes sense. This always sounded like a ton of unnecessary work…
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Confessions of another recovering frog eater
Adam Mastroianni wrote a really cool piece, “Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs.” Mastroianni is referring to the analogy likening eating a frog to doing something that feels difficult every day. In this sense, I’m a frog eater myself. I started frog eating in the early 2010s in college, because I…
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Documentation debt
You’ll know it when you feel it; too many meetings, too much management overhead, and hiring more people isn’t really producing as much output as it should be. This is caused by a debt of documentation; when the people on the team have spent too much time working in the business, and not enough time…
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A decade since Hypebeast
I can’t believe I pitched this piece covering print magazines over a decade ago to Hypebeast. People showed love too—Hypebeast comments used to be friendly! It was really fun getting to do this, and it undoubtedly made me a better writer. Hypebeast also covered my work with Prologue and The World According to Kanye.
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Creative oscillations (redux)
When I was writing Creative Doing, I noticed a pattern: in order to develop your creative process, you need to get comfortable with oscillating; constantly swinging back and forth between opposites and extremes. For example, one prompt was, “Obsess over Details,” and another was, “Stop Obsessing.” In order to develop your creative practice, you need…