Category Archives: Creativity

Showing Up

As you go through life, you’ll meet the people who have it all figured out. The girl who, in 8th grade, starting taking zoology classes at the local junior college because she knew she wanted to be a Giraffe veterinarian. … Continue reading

Posted in Advice, Art, Business, Creativity, Food For Thought, Inspiration | 4 Comments

First Principles: Mindset

The worst thing my parents ever told me was that I was smart.  When they bought me a toy piano when I was four, my dad tried to teach me to peck out the notes of Mary Had A Little Lamb.  … Continue reading

Posted in Advice, Books, Creativity, Food For Thought | 3 Comments

Declare Victory or Failure

Whenever you start a project, you should have a plan for finishing it. One outcome is to declare victory, to find that moment when you have satisfied your objectives and reached a goal. The other outcome, which feels like a … Continue reading

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How to Say Nothing in 500 Words

Paul McHenry Roberts (1917-1967) taught college English for over twenty years, first at San Jose State College and later at Cornell University. He wrote numerous books on linguistics, including Understanding Grammar (1954), Patterns of English (1956), and Understanding English (1958).  Paul also wrote this essay, which … Continue reading

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Unreasonably Remarkable

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw Most of us live our lives as if we’re in … Continue reading

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On Plagiarism

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. – Salvador Dali Or, as Mark Twain explains in more fervent prose: Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that ‘plagiarism’ farce! As if there … Continue reading

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Changing Tides

Digital delivery and consumption has completely changed the publishing industry.  For thousands of years, reading was something you did by yourself.  Unless you announced it, nobody knew if you even opened a book you bought, let alone finished it.  Now, … Continue reading

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Lazy, Weak and Dumb

People overwhelmingly think they’re smarter, stronger, more industrious and better looking than they really are.  To some extent, this is healthy.  If most of us realized how ugly and dumb we really were, we’d have trouble leaving the house, landing … Continue reading

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Compared to What

It’s easy to convince yourself that you’re doing well if you compare yourself to your peers who are doing worse than you.  Unfortunately, this is a recipe for mediocracy.  Eventually, your self-induced laziness lets your peers catch up and then … Continue reading

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Hard Work Is Never Wasted

In school, a lot of kids ask “When will I ever need to know this?”  Why do I need to know how to solve for x?  Who cares whether Amenhotep or Ramesses ruled Egypt first?  When will I ever need … Continue reading

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Good Point

The only Powerpoint advice you need, from Seth Godin, reproduced in part here, in case a meteor hits his server and this gem is lost forever: Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them … Continue reading

Posted in Advice, Aesthetics, Business, Creativity, Marketing, Persuasion, Quotes, Relationships, Seth Godin | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The $144,146,165 Button

Tiny changes can have massive results. Need proof?  Three buttons in a cab can increase tips 220%.

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Possibilities

We have more tools available than ever before to accomplish whatever it is we want to accomplish.  And technology changes so fast that you can expect to have access to tools you might not have even dreamed of every few years. Just … Continue reading

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Sell Before You Build

Derek Sivers describes a marketing genius’ approach to writing: Marketing guru Jay Abraham, in the pre-internet days, would run classified ads in newspapers and magazines. If he wanted to write a book about something, he’d run a classified ad, taking … Continue reading

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Spin

[Tom Sawyer] had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. – … Continue reading

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