Failure Is An Option
If you're doing anything that matters to you, it has to be. The problem is that the best way to steer clear of failure is to play it safe. You avoid taking any risks whatsoever. You mitigate yourself right into mediocrity.
If you refuse to let it be an option, then you're setting yourself up for failure.
Making Tomorrow
Ten years ago, I sat down with someone who knows a whole hell of a lot more about computers than I do and asked him about the increasing use of mobile phones for targeted advertising. The way he saw it, he told me, was that since cell phones came equipped with GPS, they could figure out where people were and deliver ad messages via SMS text message. So, if they detected that you were getting...
Finding the Fans
Last week, I was looking at the tour dates and locations for a popular music artist. It was pretty clear to me that her manager just booked her at large venues in the most popular cities in the country. LA, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and so on. You've probably heard of most of them. This is common with big name acts. My question: are the big cities where a lot of the fans actually live?...
Magic and Mud
Professional magicians tend to agree on this point: Houdini was not the greatest magician who ever lived. If you base your judgment on technical proficiency, he didn't even come close. And yet, if you ask almost anyone to name the greatest magician of all time, they'll probably say Houdini. This is because Houdini was bold enough to use himself as a large part of his own act. He was one of the first magicians to...
Picking a Muse
If there's one thing I've learned in life, creativity is not based on your level of intelligence, but rather on how you choose to inspire yourself. I've had long stretches of months where I was determined to be creative on my own, without any inspiration, because I felt that using any input would be cheating. If I sought out any ideas from other people, that would be cheating, and I'd never be able to claim...
How Higher Education Got High
Has anyone else sensed that something about a college degree has changed fundamentally in the last 30 years? People in my parent's generation were in college and decided to attain a degree in liberal arts, with the knowledge that they'd (probably) struggle the rest of their lives to find steady work. Majoring in philosophy has always been pretty speculative. That's not what I'm talking about. The more certain degrees, like engineering, business, or anything else...
High-Tech Hotel
I was in Las Vegas last summer for a friend's bachelor party. We stayed in a hotel that was fairly new; it had just opened up a few month's prior to our stay. There were a lot of very cutting edge features in our hotel room. Light switches have always represented an interesting design challenge. If you have a bank of light switches in your home or office, chances are good it took you a...
An Ear for Change
When was the last time you changed your mind about something significant? Take a moment to think about it, because the answer isn't quite as straightforward as it might seem. We like to think that we're rational creatures who change our minds when we're presented with better information or facts. But this ignores the fact that we're human, and that we have ego issues. I can remember the last few times I changed my mind...
Being the Critic
I don't lend out or give books to people very often. Not because I'm stingy when it comes to my book collection; I often take books that I'm done with and leave them on benches in public places. Interestingly, in my town, this is a common practice: when people are finished reading a book, they leave it in public for someone else to pick up and read it, and then return it to the benches...
Raindrops
Do you know what a falling raindrop looks like? A lot of people think it looks like a sphere with a pointed top, but in reality, droplets of water only look like that when they're dangling off of something or sliding down a vertical surface. In mid-air, drops of water become completely spherical. That doesn't make sense to us, because it's not the way we see things. There's a small problem with the moment we're...