Avoiding the purity loop
Some vegans don’t eat avocados. They’re concerned that the bees that are trucked in to pollinate the trees are mistreated, and so they choose to not support this practice. But we live in
Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect
Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect
Settling
Sometimes it pays to accept and celebrate what we get. And sometimes, we only get something because we settled for it. It helps to be able to discern the difference between the two.
“Even”
There’s a difference between telling someone their work can become better and saying it can become even better. When we say even better, we lock in a foundation — we’re affirming that something
Creating the conditions for magic
If you’re hoping for this meeting or this performance or this engagement to produce something extraordinary, why are you setting it up as if it’s ordinary? The hard work of a brainstorming
Attention and effort
The door-to-door salesperson had no leverage. If he was at your door, he wasn’t at anyone else’s door. Every minute you spent with him was a minute he had to spend with you. While it was a tough
The ecard virus
Three of my friends got hacked this week. You get an ecard and click. It asks you to log in to your email. Boom, done. It hacks your email account, steals all of your contacts and then sends itself
The right answer
Engineers, scientists, and most of all, businesses are looking for the right answer. It’s such a common quest that we take it for granted, but it’s new, and it continues to cause stress. The
All the letters
Every writer has all of them. 26 in most Western languages. But no writer knows all the words. That’s the gap where creativity, effort and possibility lie–between the universal letters and the
Kinder than necessary
If it’s just the right amount of necessary kindness, it’s not really kindness. It’s pleasantness. If the people in our circle begin to experience behavior that’s kinder than necessary, the
Plumbed
If you want to drink more herbal tea, get a hot water dispenser that keeps it handy and on tap. On the other hand, if you want to watch less television, disconnect the TV after every viewing session.
Where do bad choices come from?
We all make them from time to time. You might not know what you need to know. This is where experience is created. You might have an identity that pushes you to make those choices. If you’re
“There is no alternative”
TINA! This is what Margaret Thatcher said about her draconian free market policies. It’s an easy thing to tell ourselves about compliance to any dominant system. But it’s incomplete. The complete
Who sets your agenda?
It’s a question so rarely asked it almost feels silly to ask it. Some situations and some jobs work to eliminate our freedom of choice. Prison, medical school, 8th grade–there are settings where
A persistent sense of being correctly located in time
Word salad is actually nutritious when consumed in small amounts. Placebos are real, they’re effective and they often help us find solace or perhaps to heal. If they do no harm, there’s no
Rehearsing possibility
Most of us would like to live with wonder, grace and optimism. Perhaps it pays to practice this in advance. When considering any given moment, is there a glimmer of good worth focusing on, even
Redundancy and resilience
If it’s important, don’t ask the team to try harder. Instead, create the conditions for ordinary effort to produce redundant outputs that reduce crises. If quality is a problem, look at the
Long odds and unseen differences
“The odds of winning the lottery are the same whether you buy a ticket or not.” This seems nonsensical at first. Obviously, there are lottery winners. Therefore, the odds aren’t the same.
Systems and the default to yes
Joseph Brandlin is a scofflaw. After months of fighting to get the city council to put a stop sign on the corner of the dangerous intersection near his home, he simply did it himself. A first-rate,
What’s in the status bottle?
It’s often mislabeled. Sometimes the contents can make us ill, especially if we drink too much. Status is easy to sell. But despite how often people buy the promise, it rarely delivers.
The end of the content shortage
You can be fashionable without reading Vogue. You can be informed without watching the nightly news. You can be smart about science without going to MIT. It’s possible to be a great chef without