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Wearing a nametag everyday has its advantages. I’m easy to find in a crowd, strangers are friendlier to me on the subway, I get better service at restaurants and airports, people never forget my name at parties, and I’m statistically less likely to commit violent crimes. That last one is a fact. Sociologically, there’s a direct correlation between anonymity and accountability. You don’t stab someone when everybody can see…

Expecting nothing changes everything. It creates contentment, since you’re grateful for what you have. It builds humility, since you’re surrendering control. It invites calmness, since you’re not meeting some standard. It allows acceptance, since you’re saying yes to what is. Expecting nothing changes everything. It triggers presence, since you’re not obsessing about the future. It achieves freedom, since you’re liberated from the past. It summons wonder, since you’re open…

Anything worth doing is worth doing for a long time. Because eventually, you’ll start to run into people who have heard of you. Or remember one of your works. Or talked to their friends about you. Or saw you perform somewhere. Or listened to you do an interview. Or read something you wrote. Or did a case study on you in one of their marketing or psychology or communication…

Productivity is not a science. We just tell ourselves it is.  That’s the human tendency.  To seek out systems and structures and seven step equations for getting things done. We just love any construct that satisfies our sense of order, offers security, conserves cognitive effort and gives us reassurance that some outside agent is absorbing the responsibility and doing the work for us. But the reality is, when it…

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,…

Thanks to everyone at The Smart Show for making this possible!

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…