As if you have only 12 years to live
What if you could turn weakness into strength?
Archive
A collection of 95 issues
Featured
Waffle House—An American institution you can trust
Waffle House is more than just a breakfast restaurant. It's a symbol of America itself.
Looking for my orange
One ordinary orange, one extraordinary moment of clarity, and a reminder that healing sometimes tastes sweet
AI vs augmented intelligence—A post about marketing semantics in the tech industry
'AI' puts the machines front and center, while 'augmented intelligence' leaves the spotlight on the human.
Latest
Growth at all costs? The case for corporate efficiency
Growth is a hell of a drug. But at some point, businesses gotta come down. Is now one of those points?
Solution-made problems and cash from chaos
While everyone's saying you should focus on using new technology to increase efficiencies, what if the real opportunity lies in foreseeing the consequences of solution-made problems?
Make no promises beyond intent
Promising results just might bite you in the butt.
How sketching helps me get over perfectionism
I haven’t historically thought of myself as a visual artist. I’m a writer, not a sketcher or a painter. Or so I thought until a few months ago, when seeing my kids’ drawings inspired me to give the visual arts a try.
Now, as someone who’s added
Curiosity as a business asset
Curiosity is an underrated business asset.
Because curious people ask questions. And questions lead to new answers.
But businesses want to hire know-it-alls. Hiring know-it-alls is fine as long as you never run into new problems. (Old problems aren’t really problems; they’re routine. They’re familiar. They don’
What inefficiencies drive your business?
Efficiency isn’t always the goal. (Any consultant or private equity bros reading my blog just scoffed and clicked away to something else.)
Efficiency is worth pursuing, but we shouldn’t strive to be ruthlessly efficient in all things. Such emphasis is bound to lead to a lack of quality.
Does quality belong in American efficiency?
In American business, efficiency typically emphasizes two points:
1. Do something as cheaply as possible.
2. Do something as quickly as possible.
Quality is often an afterthought, if it’s a consideration at all.
So, I ask: Where does quality fit into the American efficiency equation?
This question has been
Addicted to distraction
In the movie T2 Trainspotting, Mark Renton tells Spud:
You’re an addict! So be addicted! Be addicted to something else.
There’s something freeing about this admission. In a perfect world, we’d all be able to cure our tendencies for addiction. But for those of us who can’
The truth you know vs. the truth you feel
Why do insecure people believe things they know not to be true? Why do they listen to that nasty voice in their head telling them they’re not good enough?
These questions are just some I’m digging into as I’m on the fast track to middle age.
Recently
What gives generative AI its value?
How much is any one item worth? The simple answer: It’s worth whatever someone will pay for it.
But what gives art value, whether that value be monetary or otherwise?
Uniqueness can’t be the answer, because very little in the world is truly unique. Unique means something is