The Hidden Dangers of Confusing Attention with Accomplishment
Here’s a fundamental truth about creating compelling work that many don’t get: attention and accomplishment are incredibly different animals, and confusing one for the other will cause you to delude yourself into thinking you’re making progress towards a goal.You can do work that people naturally feel compelled to talk about. Or you can attempt to…
What I Wish I’d Known About Building A Career in The Arts
Navigating the geography of a creative life requires a compass – not a map. It’s something you design without any instructions to follow or boxes to check off. There are no prerequisites or roadmaps that get you from point A to B. You can’t put an address into a GPS because your destination is only…
Why I Read Physical Books and Start Most of my Writing by Hand
According to an article in the New Yorker, “Moleskine-style” notebooks have been produced since the 1850’s, by small French bookbinding companies, and distributed in Paris bookstores. They were used by Picasso, Hemingway, Van Gogh, and the like. (“Moleskine” refers to the traditional oilcloth binding; moleskines are not made out of moles’ skins.)Even though the company…
Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It’s Doing to Us
Selfie: How We Became so Self Obsessed and What It’s Doing to do Us by Will Storr Summary This is the most important book I’ve read in 2018. The more research I do on how social media impacts our emotional health, the more I’m convinced that we should use it less, ALOT less. This is a…
How to Find your First Mentor
Every piece of career advice you’ll ever get talks about the value of a mentor. Successful founders and business owners will often allude to their mentors in conversations. Naturally, everybody who doesn’t have a mentor wants one. So they approach potential mentors with emails about what they need. What they don’t realize is that the…
The Power of Setting Goals You can Accomplish in 90 Days
The great thing about having a 12 week year is that the deadline is always near enough that you never lose sight of it. It provides a time horizon that is long enough to get things done, yet short enough to create a sense of urgency and a bias for action. – Brian Moran, The…
Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of The American Elite by William Deresiewicz
Buy the Book Listen to the Interview Summary I came across this book when it was referenced in another book I was reading. I was intrigued by the title because I went to an elite school and have always felt like a failed byproduct of the education system. It’s a book every high school student…
Why Standing Out Is Essential to the Survival of any Creator, Brand, or Business
The survival of any creator, brand, or business depends on their ability to stand out in a sea of noise. Anything that doesn’t stand out will eventually become irrelevant, commoditized and ignored. There will always be a faster, better, or cheaper option for everything. As Sally Hogshead has said, “different is better than better.” Any…
Unless You Capture Your Ideas You’ll Never Capitalize on Them
If you talk to any prolific writer or successful entrepreneur, you will find they make it a point to capture their ideas. In your lifetime, you will likely have thousands of ideas. As I wrote in An Audience of One “none of us have a shortage of ideas, we just lack the discipline to capture…
How Our Use of Social Media Fuels Comparison, Envy, Anxiety and Depression
Through social media we have a continual window into the lives of friends, pseudo-friends, and celebrities. And what we see is not some unvarnished peek into their world but a highly idealized image that they present. We see only the most exciting images from their vacations, the happy faces of their friends, and children, accounts…
