Here’s the story of the creation and launch of a completely brand new, from-the-ground-up website in 10 lines of dialogue: ME: This is going to be hard. TEAM: It should be pretty straightforward. ME: I like this font. TEAM: OK. ME: Let’s plan for a mid-March launch. What could go wrong? (Enter Pandemic.) ME: I

Have you met Annie Dillard? Probably not in person, but met her, as in, on the page. She’s one of the most unusual writers you’ll ever read. Her words leap to the surface and surprise you with their compact moving parts, their stunning clarity, how they make magic of everyday things. I found this piece on

Do you know how much more effective positive feedback is to negative attention? What do you think. Twice as much? Ten times at most? Try 30. Positive attention is 30x’s more powerful than negative attention in creating high performance on a team. (That comes from Marcus Buckingham & Ashley Goodall.) Oh, so that means we

You already know the first rule of fight club. But do you know the first rule of Gateless Writing? No. Most people don’t what that even is. The first rule is: Do not disclaim your work. It’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever do: Say something WITHOUT qualifying, defending, explaining away, or basically telling

Quick story: Years ago, I went on a writing retreat in Rhode Island. I knew one person (my friend Becky). The retreat leader, Suzanne Kingsbury, explained the method we would be using: We’d write together, then read what we wrote out loud. And then we’d give feedback on what we liked about what we heard.

I didn’t catch a football until I was in my 40s. Mainly because no one had ever thrown me one.  I was encouraged, invited (cajoled! Forced!) by my friends from improv class to be part of their coed touch football team in this actual league where you had matching t-shirts and everything.  No. Way.  You

Look, messaging is hard enough ON A GOOD DAY WHEN THE WORLD IS NOT BURNING.  But during highly charged moments like this one, it’s worth thinking real hard about what you want to say, yes, but also why you think you want to say it.  Anything you say can get a response you didn’t expect

Years ago I went on a Segway tour of Austin. I was rigid with fear when I got up on that thing. It felt like standing on a vacuum cleaner and attempting to ride it.  We all have some inherent understanding of what makes things go: A swing? Easy. Pump and pull. A bike? Work