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Aren’t you just a little worn out from believing you have to control everything?  Doesn’t it feel better knowing that you don’t have to save the world?  And don’t you realize that you don’t have to do all that for people to love you?  Our answer was a full body yes. And it was magnificent.  Because once we’re released from the painful chore of being responsible for the world…

Watterson’s final comic strip before he retired as one of the world’s most successful and beloved cartoonists makes me cry every single time.  Calvin says to his trusted feline friend: Wow, it really snowed last night. Isn’t it wonderful? Everything familiar has disappeared. The world looks brand new. It’s a new season with a fresh, clean start. Like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on. A day of…

The greatest motivator for starting new habits is public embarrassment.  The experience creates just enough guilt and fear and humiliation to positively change our behavior for good.  When my boss chewed me out for overlooking a very obvious spelling error on an important client facing document, all of the blood drained from my face and a wave of humiliation flew threw me.  Stupid, stupid, stupid. Excuse me while I go…

Olgivy’s bestselling book on advertising makes an inspiring point about successful client service.  Fight for the kings and queens, but throw away the pawns. The habit of graceful surrender on trivial issues will make you difficult to resist when you stand and fight on a major issue.  It’s also useful advice in any of our relationships. Because while conflict does help define what needs attention in our lives, we can also avoid…

Beck’s influential book on spiral integration dissects something called entrepreneurial intelligence. After interviewing thousands of chief executive officers and managing directors from around the word, here’s what the characteristics were.  Entrepreneurial intelligence is the impulse to start something new, to peer into the future, a fierce determination to succeed, a penchant for high risk, a creative resourcefulness and the ego to stand alone and cut your own pathways.  In a word, initiation….

The scariest part about getting married is the prospect of sharing.  Because that’s what happens when couples change their pronouns. They share. Their whole lives, in fact.  Everything from information to experiences to sorrows to joys to finances to the plate of brussell sprouts. And it’s hard. Sharing is counterintuitive to the very way our species is wired.  Csikszentmihalyi’s brilliant book about the evolving self explained it best: Humans are bundles…

What if we publicly shamed inconsiderate parkers?  What if your face could convince coworkers that you’re actually healthy?  What if we fried fresh fruit for breakfast?  What if you took a supplement that brings out your dinosaur tendencies?  What if rich people shoveled cow shit as a meditation? In this episode of Steal Scott’s Ideas, Brittany, Jennifer and Katie gather in Brooklyn for some execution in public. **Sponsored by…

We can’t retrofit intuition.  It certainly makes for a romantic and compelling story, telling people that we knew it all along and had no doubt from day one that our business, project or relationship was something that we just felt in our gut and followed and everything worked out.  But the reality is, in the bewildering chaos of human experience, most of us are shitty predictors of pretty much…

Microexecution is the incremental ability to create meaningful work in a limited time frame.  Let’s unpack that definition one chunk at a time.  First, incremental. Which means leveraging the gloriously underrated power of compound interest. Doing your work one chunk at a time. Moving the mountain by taking small bites out of it. Chipping away at the mass in front of you.  Second, ability. Because execution truly a skill….

Sorkin, the award winning stage and film writer, recently taught a master class on the art of the screenplay.  One of his students asked if it was worth the time and money to invest to art school. To which the instructor said: The only advantage of going to college is, you give yourself a chance to write the worst stuff you’re ever going to write.  It’s an interesting insight…