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Perfection is unattractive and unrelatable and unsustainable.  I understand we’re all actors and we’re all on stage and we’re all playing parts. But I have limited patience for people who carefully curate themselves as flawless little universes with zero dark matter, whose faces are glossed over with the veneer of perfection and order.  Can’t you just take a break from being amazing?  Can’t you just admit and accept and…

The thing about advertising is, it works. It’s always worked.  Not because it makes people buy a product right away, but because it embeds subtle impressions that will drive sales later.  Advertising is patient like that. And after years of hammering remorsefully into our brains, the clouds of metaphor and mythology and connotation hypnotize us into a buying frame of mind, ultimately creating an overwhelming sense of urgency that we are…

Ambiguity is so uncomfortable that it causes people to abandon their project completely, or worse yet, jump into premature closure.  It’s like eating raw cookie dough. It’s delicious and satisfying and helpful for quelling the anxiety, but ultimately, it hurts us in the long term.  And so, the secret is to push through the ambiguity, rather than evade it. To accept that we will never be ready, never in…

We can make a pros and cons list. We can ask our peer review board for feedback. We can even use a software program to calculate the asset value of a potential new opportunity.  But at the end of the day, we will only know what to do by realizing what feels right to us. Because the machinery of intuitive thought is, and always has been, the artist’s most dependable…

Ideas are free, execution is priceless. That’s been my mantra since day one of starting my business. It’s also the title of a book I wrote a few years back. You can download it for free here. But here’s the problem. I’m an idea junkie. Everything I look at in the world breaks down into a collection of ideas. I have about fifty new ones every day, and sadly, I…

For decades, management gurus have been preaching to the masses about enhancing strengths, rather than correcting eliminating weaknesses.  Which is a solid approach to activating human potential, but only if we understand the difference is between the two.  A strength, for example, isn’t necessarily something we’re good at. Because it’s not about a good or bad. It’s about what gives us energy.  Similarly, a weakness isn’t necessarily something we’re…

When it comes to getting your work done, you do whatever it takes.  It doesn’t matter if your productivity tool is dopey or dramatic or extreme, as long as it gets you one step closer to your dream, it’s worthwhile.  As long as it advances your ability to do what you love, it’s worthwhile.  I have a writer friend who’s highly extroverted and has severe case of attention deficit…

It’s hard to have a predilection for rebellion.  When your dominant ethos is innovative, risk taking and individualistic, and when the choices you make are often as an expression of your identity, you have to steel yourself against the inevitable slings and arrows.  Because despite millions of years of evolution, human beings are still superstitious natives. We’re still tribal animals. We possess the profound tendency to affiliate.  And so,…

Nobody goes to work waiting for somebody else to light their fire.  That’s how motivation works. It doesn’t happen to people, it happens in them. And so, if you want the people around you to spur into the kind of action that will help the organization thrive, don’t spend too much time pointing out their flaws and inspiring them with fear and offering sandwich feedback and dangling carrots on sticks.  Instead, focus on…

Neff’s psychological research on compassion found that people’s relentless pursuit of superiority is the cause of significant emotional pain.  She reminds us that we live in a hyper competitive culture where we need to feel special and above average and okay about ourselves, which leads to chronic social comparison.  And one of the saddest consequences of that behavior is how we distance ourselves from people whose success makes us feel bad…