Get the thing quickly, so you can puncture the illusion that it will save you

My mentor used to joke that he was going to write a personal development book that only contained one sentence. You know what you need to do, you just need to do it. Guaranteed to become a bestseller by the holidays. But looking back, his insight might have been inaccurate. Because for so many of us, myself included, the issue isn't a matter of knowing or not knowing. The issue is that we’ve already convinced ourselves why we can't do...

Holiday marketing campaigns used to be centered around joy, gratitude, appreciation and love. Now the universal sentiment that companies use to coerce customers is some version of:Just don’t screw it up. The message they’re sending is, love it or resent it, this special holiday is about covering your ass. This is the wrong kind of pressure to put on people. It comes from a narrow place of fear, scarcity and lack, rather than abundance and generosity and optimism. It’s not...

Are you the kind of person who always felt a disharmony between how the industry works and how you work? You’re not alone. Many professionals feel this way. We’re not agreeable to having our pride and joy changed from beginning to end by producers, mangers, committees and other horsemen of the creative apocalypse. This is our art, damnit! The question we have to ask ourselves is:Can we find a balance between the two? Whatever industry we belong to, can we use...

Life has not cheated you. Because in order for it to have cheated you, it first needed to promise you something. But nothing was promised, and so no fraud was committed. It’s very hard for us to wrap our minds around this cold truth. Maybe because we enjoy being the victim of betrayal. Maybe because it reinforces our view of the world as an atrocious carnival of horrors that’s out to get us. Maybe because complaining about life’s unfairness earns...

If you’re a growing company, there are an infinite amount of creative tactics for hiring more great people. Running hyper targeted social ads, securing press mentions about your cool, laid back culture, building out an email marketing campaign to applicants, getting listed on career communities, creating a social media presence that shows a fun day in the life of an employee, utilizing the referral networks of your current team, and connecting with professors at reputable business schools. My personal favorite is...