After I finished my session on creativity at the How Design Live conference, a woman approached me and handed me a note. “I know now that I was meant to be here,” she said, dreamily. “I mean, I’m not even part of this conference.” Wait…what? But before I had time to call security, she was…

During a recent interview on SiriusXM, Howard Stern asked Lady Gaga if she listens to what the “kids are into these days” so that she knows what to do next, if she’s calculated and preplanned each phase of her career. The answer? No. Sure, she likes to listen to music and know what’s going on—in…

I’m not an incredibly patient person. I have a short fuse and I bore easy. It’s bad. I think it makes me good at a few things, like keeping people entertained and engaged, but makes me bad at other things, like coping with slow restaurant service. Over the holiday break I turned away from the…

When she was eight years old, Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat Pray Love) was so upset by the ocean that she begged her parents to get everyone out of the surf and back onto their towels, where they belonged. She was, by her own admission, afraid of everything—the dark, the deep end, babysitters, board games, grass,…