articles

For the aspiring and the professional alike

As it became the way to define a whole new generation of internet explorers, I asked myself that question and came up with a definition.

Positioning is like finding a seat on a crowded bus. Most brands sleepwalk onto the bus and sit on top of one another. The smart brands look left, right, find an empty row, paint their logo on it and start singing sweetly like the Sirens

Writing in 1801, at the age of 30, Ludwig van Beethoven complained about his diminishing hearing: “from a distance I do not hear the high notes of the instruments and the singers’ voices.” As Arthur C. Brooks recounts in a 2019 op-ed, published in the Washington Post, Beethoven “raged” against his decline, insisting on performing, […]

Try to be a legitimately interesting person with all the varied things you find fascinating, and don't worry if it takes longer than the growth you see from others.

The right words will shape the entire experience.

There are two kinds of people: Those who think they can write, and those who think they can’t. And, very often, both are wrong. The truth is, most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We are all capable of producing good writing. Or, at least, better writing.

The go-to owned community platform for creators will play a major role in the creator economy. To understand why let's explore the owned community matrix.

Newcomers to social media and influencer marketing naively assume that if they can build a big following, those followers will buy from them. But that's not always the case.

My process for putting together my weekly newsletter week after week...

A truth that applies to many fields, which can frustrate some as much as it energizes others, is that the person who tells the most compelling story wins. Not who has the best idea, or the right answer. Just whoever tells a story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads. C. R. Hallpike is a respected anthropologist who once wrote a review of a young author’s recent book on the history of humans. It states: It would be fair to say that whenever his facts are broadly correct they are not new, and whenever he tries to strike out on his own he often gets things wrong, so...

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I've published my newsletter for three years. Here are 7 important things I've learned that will help yours.

I’ve spent a good few lockdown evenings recently in the company of a four-part documentary: 10 Years with Miyazaki. It’s a surprisingly low-fi and intimate encounter with the legendary Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, produced by national broadcaster NHK.

Writing as usual. Publishing like never before.

Josh Spector shares his most valuable career move, how to speed up your audience growth, when it’s time to stop what you’re doing and move on, and more...

How are successful creators transforming audiences into empires? To better understand the process, here’s the framework I use: The Creator Lifecycle.

The mathematician and philosopher Gian-Carlo Rota spent much of his career at MIT, where students adored him for his engaging, passionate lectures. In 1996, Rota gave a talk entitled “Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught,” which contains valuable advice for making people pay attention to your ideas.

Last year was the first year I really forgot how old I was. This year was the year that I started doing stuff over again. Not out of nostalgia, or premature memory loss, but out of the sense that enough time had elapsed that it was time to revisit some things. I re-read books that I hadn’t touched in ten or fifteen years. I went back to places I hadn’t been since I was a kid. I re-visited some painful memories that I had walled off and chosen not to think about. So I thought this year, for my birthday piece (more than 10 years running now—here is 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, and 32), I would revisit...

Here you are, stuck indoors, stuck somewhere you don’t want to be. Maybe also you’re stuck because you’re 17 going on 30. Maybe also you’re stuck because you’ve got another two years left on your enlistment or because you’re waiting for a position to open up at a new company. Or you’re stuck because there […]

A thought piece on what it takes to truly be great and what that even means in the first place.

The person who tells the most compelling story wins. Not the best idea. Just the story that catches people’s attention and gets them to nod their heads. Something can be factually true but contextually nonsense. Bad ideas often have at least some seed of truth that gives their followers confidence. Tell people what they want to hear and you can be wrong indefinitely without penalty. Woodrow Wilson said government “is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton.” It’s a useful idea. Everything is accountable to one of the two, and you have to know whether something adapts and changes over time or p...

Remember this mental model the next time someone upsets you.

On Needing to Find Something to Worry About - Articles from The School of Life, formally The Book of Life, a gathering of the best ideas around wisdom and emotional intelligence.

Charlie Munger, the partner of Warren Buffett, offers a practical two-step process for improving our thinking and making better decisions.

Ted Williams taught Warren Buffett that to improve the odds of making good choices, you must know your circle of competence and wait for the perfect pitch.

It's often easier to avoid stupidity rather than trying to be brilliant. Read this article to learn when to avoid stupidity and when to pursue brilliance.