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I have a friend who’s a perfectionist. She would rather show nothing than show work that’s less than her best. And I tell her all the time, look, I understand you want to put your best foot forward, but you’ll never impress anyone by putting no foot forward. The reality is, being amazing is nice, but it’s not always necessary. What’s most important––at least, for now––is having something, anything,…

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Nobody can sell you better than you. I bought into that lie for a long time. Like many artists, I made the proclamation that I was my own best salesman. That only I can do my own head. And that I don’t need anyone’s help hawking my wares, thank you very much. Which is really just a stubborn way of saying I’m a control freak about my work, I…

What counts as work these days? Conceptualizing our next big idea, taking productivity seminars and going to the coffee shop to organize all of our material?That’s not work, that’s hiding. Learning in public, doing book reports of other people’s research and dissecting our creative process? That’s not work, that’s studying. Telling strangers they’re wrong for being who they are and prolifically sharing our thoughts about what other people are…

Time is the great thickener of things. When it comes to your art, time is the strongest agent for making your work robust enough to find its audience and make a difference. More than talent, more than connections, more than money, more than anything, time is the invisible hand that always has your back. Because no matter how many romantic stories you hear about innovators and artists and computer…

For many years, I existed in one of two modes: Rewind or fast forward. Watching the trailer for my imagined future or studying the game tape from my imperfect past. Rehearsing what I was about to say or revising what I should have said. Learning from yesterday or lusting for tomorrow. Which left me little time to exist in any of the other, better, healthier modes: Play and pause…

Sentences are my spiritual currency.  Throughout my week, I’m constantly scouring and learning and reading 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 of things…

A friend of mine just called it quits with her longtime boyfriend. She said they broke up because of an interpersonal imbalance. A poor division of relational labor, to use her term. Turns out, after four years of being the girlfriend and the therapist and the babysitter and the parent, she had nothing left. One individual, carrying the entirety of the relationship load, making a career out of catering…

Losing your virginity isn’t about sex and it isn’t about loss. The larger story is about a person of any age, inexperienced and uninformed, who uncovers a stepping stone to a new level of awareness and maturity about himself and the world in which he lives. When I landed my first job as an adult, I lost my professional virginity. But looking back, that experience was less about the…

Every once in a while, life takes me out of myself. After a certain amount of time and speed and space and pressure, I start to lose touch with my identity. I get stuck in a system of other people’s expectations and agendas that puts me at odds with myself. And all of the sudden I realize, oh crap, if I don’t find a way to get back to…