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Dogs can teach us a lot about motivation. I’m reminded of my favorite commercial of all time: Bacon! Bacon! Where’s the bacon? I smell bacon. It’s gotta be bacon. There’s only one thing in the world that smells like bacon and that’s bacon! There it is! It’s in the bag! Chewy, yummy smokey bacon! Oh boy oh boy oh boy, num num num num num, it’s bacoooooooon! That’s motivation….

Being prolific doesn’t mean doing everything fast. In fact, when it comes to the principal act of writing, that is, physically putting words on a blank page, I actually work quite slowly. Which seems unlikely, considering I’ve published two books per year, every year, for the last decade. But you have to understand, writing is only one step of the creative process. Before showing up at the page, there’s a…

When I have a headache, I take aspirin. Thirty minutes later, the pain usually goes away. But when my mind starts going to dark places, conjuring up horrible thoughts that are far too ugly and desperate and destructive to be okay with me, I snap out of myself like a werewolf turning back into a man and wonder, jesus christ, did I really just think that? Yes, yes I…

Sentences are my spiritual currency.  Throughout my week, I’m constantly scouring and learning and reading and inhaling and annotating from any number of newspapers, blogs, online publications, books, articles, songs, art pieces, podcasts, eavesdroppings, random conversations and other sources of inspiration. Turns out, most of these sentences can be organized into about eleven different categories, aka, compartments of life that are meaningful to me. And since I enjoy being a signal tower…

A few months ago, I posted my thinkmap, research and narrative arc about why Radio Shack is broken, and how we can use digital to fix it. I’ve been fleshing out the details of my strategic execution, which you can preview in the slides below or on Slide Share. Enjoy!

Yoga and creativity are parallel practices. Both require patience, discipline, flexibility, focus and vulnerability. Both can be done individually or with a group. And both achieve the most meaningful results when I’m wearing as little clothing as possible. Recently, I discovered another quality they have in common. In yoga, it’s actually easier to do the posture than it is to sit out. No matter how tired and sore and…

The biggest barrier to starting is finishing. That’s why so many artists die with their music still in them. They’re too busy twisting themselves into psychological pretzels, paralyzed by the wrong questions: When I’m done writing this script, then what? What if nobody likes it? What if the final product isn’t good enough? What if my work gets criticized and compared to everybody else? Or, what if my audience…

Misery isn’t doing something you hate. It’s becoming someone you hate when you do it. I have no problem executing the grunt work, sucking it up and grinding it out until the job gets done. With a little creativity and lot of focus, I can rationalize most of life’s activities into something at least marginally meaningful. Unless. When an experience causes me to degrade into the lowest version of…

With great chops comes great responsibility. When you’re the top talent in the room, you have a social obligation to share the artistic wealth. To elevate the collective game of the other players. To fight the selfish urge to concentrate all your skills and energies and sensibilities into your own performance and blow everyone away, and instead, to disseminate the volume of your spirit far and wide, so that…

Sentences are my spiritual currency.  Throughout my week, I’m constantly scouring and learning and reading and inhaling and annotating from any number of newspapers, blogs, online publications, books, articles, songs, art pieces, podcasts, eavesdroppings, random conversations and other sources of inspiration. Turns out, most of these sentences can be organized into about eleven different categories, aka, compartments of life that are meaningful to me. And since I enjoy being a signal tower…