The Curious Engineer

Seth's Blog

2011–2013

1,250 posts

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2013 411

December 2013

  1. Broken English
  2. The geek chorus
  3. Coming from “no”
  4. A choice is not an ultimatum
  5. No one reads a comic strip because it’s drawn well
  6. My most popular blog posts this year
  7. Thank you
  8. When you’re offered precisely what you were hoping for…
  9. “In an abundance of caution”
  10. “Am I supposed to like this?”
  11. Noise-tolerant media
  12. Pick three
  13. Which charity?
  14. A productivity gap
  15. What’s attention worth?
  16. The care and feeding (and shunning) of vampires
  17. Soft tissue
  18. The semiotics of type
  19. Getting lost on the shelf
  20. On the hook
  21. Does privacy matter?
  22. Eight email failures (and questions for those that want to do better)
  23. The sound of a small bell during a dark night
  24. Heroes of the revolution
  25. In search of the obvious answer
  26. Winner take all vs. local
  27. What kind of media counts?
  28. A legacy of Mandela
  29. The moderation glitch
  30. Coming to Australia, Denver, Turkey and Oslo…
  31. Trash talking important work
  32. The tribe or the person?
  33. Speaking in public: two errors that lead to fear
  34. It probably looks higher from up there

November 2013

  1. Is there a reason for the friction?
  2. Who’s left?
  3. What do we get when we give to a good cause?
  4. Culture and selfishness
  5. Resting smiley face
  6. Perfection or exploration
  7. Authority as an excuse for complacency
  8. Big promises can lead to better experiences
  9. Almost everything I don’t know about social media…
  10. The sound of confidence
  11. Looking for patterns (where they don’t exist)
  12. Who is this marketing for?
  13. #BlackFriday = media trap
  14. “How deep is this water?”
  15. The three toxic stooges of the project apocalypse
  16. Extinguishing the tantrum cycle
  17. Belief is more powerful than proof
  18. Salmagundi on offer is not the shortcut it appears to be
  19. The behemoth and the Acumen Fellows
  20. Not a gift
  21. Bullying is theft
  22. Evoking online trust
  23. Sure, but he’s our bully
  24. The generous skeptic
  25. The first lie…
  26. Your incoming–How do you process what’s offered?
  27. Every presentation worth doing has just one purpose
  28. What “no” means
  29. Victims of the Hollywood Paradox
  30. Holiday shopping head start
  31. The media needs a narrative
  32. Understanding critical path
  33. Unlimited mileage
  34. Tenacity is not the same as persistence
  35. Fear the fear, feel the fear

October 2013

  1. Godin’s first law of pizza
  2. On owning it
  3. Room at the top
  4. Naming tool of the year
  5. 1,000 bands
  6. Entrepreneurship => impact
  7. Patrons and assistants wanted
  8. Two kinds of loyalty
  9. When free collides with powerful
  10. Does anger follow the laws of thermodynamics?
  11. Our crystal palace
  12. The selfish cynic
  13. The problem with “just”
  14. The complaining customer doesn’t want a refund
  15. Ambassadors and treaties
  16. Marketing good…
  17. Post 3
  18. “I don’t get it”
  19. Time doesn’t exist until we invent it
  20. The opposite of ‘defenseless’
  21. Understanding luxury goods
  22. Is Google jumping the shark?
  23. Innumeracy and the power of choice
  24. Thank you, Jay
  25. Better than free
  26. Buying is selling
  27. Your hall of fame
  28. The easiest way to disagree with someone
  29. The Show Me State (of the art)
  30. Looking a gift card in the mouth
  31. Understanding marginal cost
  32. Learning from those that went first
  33. On going over your time
  34. Coordinate and amplify
  35. Decoding “art”

September 2013

  1. Q&A What’s the problem with weird?
  2. ‘Category of one’ is a choice
  3. The secret of the five top
  4. When to speak up
  5. The merchants of average
  6. Words. Sentences. Paragraphs. Stories.
  7. Beyond geography
  8. Deleting ‘must have’ features
  9. Q&A Poke the Box vs. meh
  10. Compared to what: Marketing and relativity
  11. The GIGO buffer
  12. Three questions to ask your marketing team
  13. Unreasonable clients
  14. The failure of the second ask
  15. The truth about the war for talent
  16. The conservation of drama
  17. Q&A: Linchpin: Will they miss you?
  18. What works?
  19. What if surfing was your job?
  20. The magic of a spec
  21. Your alphabet
  22. Edgecraft instead of brainstorming
  23. Cell phone cameras repel UFOs
  24. Actually, they’re not yours
  25. Q&A: All Marketers… and the challenge of telling the right story
  26. The closer you get to the front, the more power you have over the brand.
  27. Being found vs. being sought
  28. The trust brand
  29. What does the fox say?
  30. This isn’t going to work
  31. The Red Lantern
  32. The timing of El Greco
  33. Learn together
  34. Q&A: Tribes and the reality of worldview
  35. Scuff-proof shoes
  36. New for now

August 2013

  1. “Get this over with” vs. …
  2. First review: Malcolm Gladwell’s new book
  3. Understanding natural monopoly
  4. Making costumes
  5. “If you don’t start, you can’t fail”
  6. Part of a community…
  7. Q&A: The Dip and knowing when to quit
  8. Great design = getting people to do what you want
  9. “When I grow up…”
  10. Misunderstanding quality
  11. No decisions, no responsibility
  12. Getting smart about the time tax
  13. 120 seconds (shipping vs. rushing)
  14. All good ideas are terrible
  15. Now it’s ruined
  16. Q&A: The 14 revolutionary trends and the Meatball Sundae
  17. “Do you have three minutes?” The conservation of mental bandwidth
  18. Mirrors, cameras and cultural evolution
  19. The self-defeating quest for simple and easy
  20. What did you do on your summer vacation?
  21. Will I see you tomorrow?
  22. An end of books
  23. Your first mistake might be assuming that people are rational
  24. Message amplification isn’t linear
  25. Q&A: Where is the free prize inside?
  26. Magic + Generosity = the brand crush
  27. Marketing driven or Market driven?
  28. Why not give?
  29. Choosing to be formidable
  30. The choke point
  31. “Oh, that’s just a hack someone put together…”
  32. The sophisticates
  33. Q&A: Purple Cows and commodities
  34. Colors or numbers?
  35. Words are hooks, words are levers
  36. Mumbo vs. Jumbo
  37. Death and Taxes, 2014
  38. The opposite of anxiety
  39. Stoogecraft

July 2013

  1. The fork in the road offers only two difficulties…
  2. Next for the hip
  3. Q&A: What works for websites today?
  4. Gardens, not buildings
  5. Perhaps you could just make something awesome instead
  6. Millions of words and only six emotions
  7. “People like us do things like this”
  8. Your permanent record
  9. The future is messy…
  10. Change the culture, change the world
  11. Q&A: The writing process
  12. Fake is a fairly new idea (and a not very good one)
  13. Principles for responsible media moguls
  14. Sort & search
  15. The sweet smell of success
  16. More people are doing marketing badly…
  17. Summer novels
  18. Not even once?
  19. Simple steps for successful partnerships
  20. Q&A: Controlling the Ideavirus
  21. Clients vs. customers
  22. The ludicrousness of embarrassed
  23. Basting the turkey
  24. All hyperbole is totally useless
  25. But it only works sometimes
  26. Proving the skeptics wrong
  27. Nature and nurture (professional edition)
  28. Q&A: The resiliency of Permission Marketing
  29. Canaries and coal mines
  30. Polishing junk
  31. How long between leaps?
  32. Freedom of information, act
  33. Magic beans (three steps to a successful marketing promise)
  34. The sea of strangers
  35. The cycle of media attention (fans to feeders)
  36. Can an audiobook change your life?
  37. Monday afternoon book Q&A
  38. Going straight and taking on water–the boat is slowly sinking

June 2013

  1. Thinking about money
  2. Less for less
  3. Who decides what you’re going to read next?
  4. Your call is very important to us
  5. Respect and love
  6. You don’t have to like new art, but it helps to understand it
  7. Different or remarkable?
  8. The perfect crime
  9. Fearlessness is not the same as the absence of fear
  10. The lab or the factory
  11. The curse of frequency
  12. Adopting the post-obedient mindset
  13. Quid pro quo (you can’t play ping pong by yourself)
  14. The confrontation waiting to happen
  15. The thermostat and the frying pan
  16. “I get it”
  17. Angry is a habit
  18. Ping me when it’s broken
  19. A handful of tools
  20. How do you want to die?
  21. Sure, but that’s not a plan
  22. Polishing perfect
  23. Memo to the modern COO
  24. Worst one ever
  25. America’s Favorite Mushroom
  26. The weird tail continues
  27. Reality is not a show
  28. The 5000th post*
  29. Self service requires information, which requires design
  30. The free-rider benefit
  31. Tried and false
  32. Measuring without measuring

May 2013

  1. Hoarding information
  2. What does your brand stand for?
  3. On teaching people a lesson
  4. A hierarchy of failure (from brave to shameful)
  5. Upcoming seminar/internships
  6. The illusion of choice
  7. Does it happen for a reason?
  8. On adding a zero
  9. Overcoming the impossibility of amazing
  10. Thoughts on education and the burgeoning trophy shortage
  11. Let’s start with “sorry”
  12. Levels of marketing magic, the placebo effects of desire
  13. You should buy the book
  14. No Signal
  15. Learning by analogy
  16. It’s Thomas Midgley day
  17. Every day is an investment
  18. The river guide and the rapids
  19. Applications open for a short summer internship
  20. Appropriate cheating in the nine-dot problem
  21. The reason they call it a browser
  22. Spend the day with me in New York in June
  23. The certain shortcut
  24. Life is full of holes
  25. Is this spam?
  26. Lead up
  27. Miscommunication
  28. Who do you know?
  29. How to write copy that goes viral
  30. Avoiding fear by indulging in our fear of fear
  31. Urgency and accountability are two sides of the innovation coin
  32. Remind you of anything? Simple typography for non-professionals
  33. Your best and your same (vs. your different and your truth)
  34. Blueberry pancakes and battleships
  35. The critic stumbles
  36. Writing tip: say it backwards

April 2013

  1. But I don’t want to do that, I want to do this
  2. Getting picked (need to vs. want to)
  3. The hard parts
  4. Competence vs. possibility
  5. In search of resilience
  6. How big is critical mass?
  7. Your manifesto, your culture
  8. You don’t have to pander
  9. Is this the best you can do?
  10. Committing to a cycle of honest communication
  11. Skeuomorphs = failure
  12. Frequency, repetition and the power of saying it more than once
  13. Majora Carter and Josh Hanagarne: leading underserved tribes
  14. Avoiding the custom bully
  15. Conservation of energy in conversation
  16. The easy trap
  17. The brand is a story. But it’s a story about you, not about the brand.
  18. Paying attention (to someone else’s agenda)
  19. 100 days later
  20. “One of us is wrong…
  21. We are not living in a movie
  22. First, do no harm–three rules for public interfaces
  23. Where are your assets?
  24. Degrees of freedom
  25. When you sell unlimited hope…
  26. Neophilia as a form of hiding
  27. Surprise!
  28. A field guide to the Meeting Troll
  29. The loneliness epidemic
  30. Is the new Kindle Zero the sign of things to come?

March 2013

  1. Just the good parts
  2. Urgent, please read asap
  3. “But what do people really think?”
  4. Create a vacuum, don’t fill it
  5. Toward zero unemployment
  6. Studying entrepreneurship without doing it
  7. Most people, most of the time (the perfect crowd fallacy)
  8. Fomo, joy, jealousy and the lizard
  9. Swagger
  10. Sometimes, more is not what you want
  11. Building your backlist (and living with it forever)
  12. Us vs. us
  13. Pitch your tent where it’s dry
  14. Communication is a path, not an event
  15. On feeling small
  16. Important, not very good, could get a lot better
  17. Habit #7
  18. “You’ve got ping, but they’ve got no pong”
  19. Choose your customers first
  20. The moment of highest leverage
  21. Never enough
  22. Connected, portable or aware
  23. What’s now?
  24. Macro trends don’t matter so much
  25. De-escalation
  26. The worst feedback is indifference
  27. Understanding local media
  28. “I’m making money, why do more?”
  29. Media voice vs. media company
  30. All boats leak
  31. You already have permission

February 2013

  1. You can’t change everything or everyone, but you can change the people who matter
  2. With a sure hand
  3. Signals vs. causes
  4. Rehearsing failure, rehearsing success
  5. Will you choose to do it live?
  6. Understanding internet genius
  7. Real-time news is neither
  8. Hooked on hacking life
  9. Actually, it goes the other way
  10. Dripping and syncing the buzz
  11. Should you work for free?
  12. Destabilizing the bullying power structure
  13. Planting, harvesting and your fair share
  14. Excoriated
  15. Is a famous thinker better than a great one?
  16. Confusing loyalty with silence
  17. Open, generous and connected
  18. The mirror and the periscope
  19. Those people
  20. Humanize it
  21. The simple form that could save your life
  22. The roller coaster of shipping
  23. Denying miscellaneous
  24. Scarcity and abundance in the digital age
  25. You’ll pay a lot…
  26. Getting a ridiculous behemoth (and two California gigs)
  27. “We don’t need to make it better”
  28. How to listen
  29. Why do we care about football?
  30. A diet for your mind
  31. Paracosms, loyalty and reality in the pursuit of creative problem solving
  32. For the one person who didn’t get the joke

January 2013

  1. Customers who break things
  2. Watching is not doing (confronting the spectator problem)
  3. Owning vs. renting
  4. Beyond showing up
  5. Eleven things organizations can learn from airports
  6. The long run keeps getting shorter
  7. Slow media
  8. Ideal, average and outlier
  9. On behalf of yes
  10. A legend in my own mind
  11. Exactly the same vs. exactly different
  12. Interesting?
  13. Possession aggression
  14. With great power comes great irresponsibility
  15. Two people you might need in your professional life
  16. When a conference works (and doesn’t)
  17. What’s it for?
  18. Understanding idea adoption (you’re not a slot, you choose a slot)
  19. For truly important problems
  20. The cost of neutral
  21. Four reasons your version of better might not be enough
  22. Help wanted: Designing for growth
  23. Who goes first?
  24. Podcasts, live events and more…
  25. Clean bathrooms
  26. Toward resilience in communication (the end of cc)
  27. Two kinds of mistakes
  28. What people buy when they buy something on sale
  29. Out on a limb
  30. What do you make?
  31. The attention paradox
  32. “Here, I made this,” is difficult and frightening
  33. Do you remember?

2012 415

December 2012

  1. Writer’s block and the drip
  2. Sooner or later
  3. The power of zero spend
  4. The pitfall of lock in
  5. Shipping Today: “V is for Vulnerable” (and a cool new poster bonus)
  6. Believing what we want to believe
  7. Doing what you love (but maybe you can’t get paid for it)
  8. Learning how to see
  9. True professionals don’t fear amateurs
  10. How to make a website: a tactical guide for marketers
  11. Question the question
  12. What you waiting for?
  13. But which is the sideshow?
  14. Win the behemoth
  15. The danger of starting at the top
  16. Utility vs. entertainment
  17. Ridiculous is the new remarkable
  18. The short head, the long tail and buying expensive scaffolding
  19. Empathy takes effort
  20. Most advice is bad advice…
  21. Design like Apple, but name like P&G
  22. London, Boston and sharing your art (plus the new iphone app, it’s free)
  23. Bigger vs. better
  24. Industrialism and the death of agency
  25. Beggars can’t be choosers
  26. Cold reading
  27. Too simple
  28. When everyone has access to the same tools
  29. The Icarus Session in your town, plus live with me in New York
  30. Confusing lucky with good
  31. Industrialists vs. the rest of us
  32. Would you consider pre-ordering?
  33. Soft and hard
  34. The cycle of customers who care

November 2012

  1. Non-profits have a charter to be innovators
  2. Anticipation vs. anxiety
  3. Thank you, Zig
  4. Avoiding “I’ll know it when I see it”
  5. Broken events
  6. Four questions worth answering
  7. Persuade vs. convince
  8. The decline of fascination and the rise in ennui
  9. In a hurry to be generous
  10. Vendor shout out
  11. Fall recommended reading list
  12. The fermata
  13. Wasted kindling
  14. What are professional reviews for?
  15. Freedom in a digital world
  16. “This is the best I can do”
  17. Accepting small promises
  18. Free coffee, next exit
  19. Effortless
  20. When you don’t know what to do…
  21. You can’t argue with success…
  22. Where do you go to trade in the points?
  23. Avoiding the false proxy trap
  24. To protect and serve
  25. How I broke my nose (for the second time)
  26. The whiner’s room
  27. Why vote? The marketing dynamics of apathy
  28. Bad performance, good performance and the other two kinds
  29. The best way to get unstuck
  30. “The best you can hope for…”
  31. I know what you should do

October 2012

  1. Getting over ourselves
  2. Harvest demand or create it?
  3. Association
  4. The bell curve is moving (mass geekery)
  5. The end of should
  6. A bias for trust
  7. The only purpose of ‘customer service’…
  8. Free range
  9. Toward a mobile app for this blog
  10. Everybody knows everything
  11. No one ever bought anything on an elevator
  12. Raise and lower (more for less)
  13. The beaten path
  14. Meeting expectations
  15. Two new videos to share
  16. Missed opportunities vs. poor execution
  17. The no-problem problem
  18. The easiest way to get people to do what you want them to do…
  19. Redefining productivity
  20. The Acute Heptagram of Impact
  21. I’ve been remaindered
  22. Civilization
  23. Beauty vs. specs
  24. Fighting with vs. fighting for
  25. Useful and believable promises
  26. Now in a handy audio format
  27. Cycle worse, cycle better
  28. The curious imperative
  29. The curse of incremental improvement
  30. Get the listing
  31. Waiting for all the facts
  32. Do the (extra) work
  33. Amnesty for latecomers
  34. Denying facts you don’t like
  35. The easiest way to thrive as an outlier

September 2012

  1. Instead of outthinking the competition…
  2. The wishing/doing gap
  3. How to downgrade
  4. Coming from a loud place
  5. Overstimulated
  6. Stepwise progress
  7. The simplest customer service frustration question of all
  8. “If you knew what I know…”
  9. From general to specific (or vice versa)
  10. Truth and consequences
  11. Organization has its effects
  12. Curiosity was framed
  13. The worst kind of clock
  14. Hurrying almost always makes it take longer
  15. The simple power of one a day
  16. Last reminder
  17. “Well deserved”
  18. The people who came before you
  19. I want to put you in a category
  20. Six audiences
  21. Two seminars in October
  22. If you want to get paid for your freelance work
  23. All the slow hedgehogs are dead
  24. Two questions behind every disagreement
  25. Memory and media
  26. Shorter
  27. What to obsess over
  28. Worth doing?
  29. A simple truth about photo albums
  30. Thinking about supermodels
  31. The soapbox and the city
  32. The best way to learn marketing
  33. Yield
  34. Slightly rewarded (slightly punished)
  35. Different genes

August 2012

  1. Advertising’s bumpy transition (and why it matters to you)
  2. First, connect
  3. “Buyer beware”
  4. As if your life depended on it
  5. Most people
  6. Persistence and possibility
  7. Questions we ask before we trust your new idea
  8. With an open heart and an open mind
  9. #1 in a small market…
  10. Tattoo thinking
  11. Crash diets and good habits
  12. The race to the bottom
  13. What if your slogan is true?
  14. How to run a problem-solving meeting
  15. Corporations are not people
  16. Stuck
  17. A figment
  18. Who decided to add the noise?
  19. You won’t benefit from anonymous criticism
  20. Buying the thing your project truly needs
  21. Converting viral traffic
  22. Conservation of anxiety
  23. The best way to be missed when you’re gone
  24. Impresarios
  25. A tacky mess: the masses vs. great design
  26. What’s your average speed?
  27. Analogies, metaphors and your problem
  28. Long-term manipulation is extremely difficult
  29. There isn’t one shark
  30. Time frames
  31. The difficult challenge of media alignment
  32. This or that?
  33. “But first I’ll try to make you feel really bad”
  34. It’s a long story

July 2012

  1. It could be one of two things
  2. The theater of the mind
  3. Improving your condiments
  4. Unanimous is not an option
  5. Two kinds of unique
  6. Feet on the street
  7. The circles of marketing
  8. Risk, fear and worry
  9. The school for startups (and an audio)
  10. Strategy matters more than ever
  11. Commander Obvious chimes in with Tip #3 for effective web marketing…
  12. What’s in the box?
  13. “A fire in South Buffalo!”
  14. The importance of going first
  15. Marketers with power
  16. Who let this guy in the building?
  17. Competition as a crutch
  18. It’s easier to love a brand when the brand loves you back
  19. What do you do when they don’t understand?
  20. Monetizing digital attention
  21. Two deadlines (and a read)
  22. Yesterday’s over
  23. The puzzle joint
  24. Happy birthday, Mr. Tesla
  25. Announcing a small-group college seminar (and a quick survey)
  26. The false choice of mediocrity
  27. Art fears business fears art
  28. Thinking about your shoes
  29. The declining problem of (Groucho) Marxism
  30. Entering sync markets
  31. Superman, Batman and worldviews
  32. Usually, a lot is insufficient
  33. Patina vs. shine
  34. “All we need is 250 votes…”

June 2012

  1. What’s scarce?
  2. Big books, little books and the other kind
  3. Do we have to pander?
  4. What’s on your list?
  5. Take this simple marketing quiz
  6. Quick shortcuts (in search of)
  7. Opportunity cost
  8. Doing the big work (at the little table)
  9. Where does trust come from?
  10. Jumping the Olympic® shark
  11. Before you raise money (assets and expenses)
  12. One reason politicians (and some startups) are stuck
  13. A lesson from a great architect
  14. Outsmart
  15. Reflections on today’s Kickstarter
  16. This might work (my new book)
  17. Snark and fear
  18. Note for note
  19. Amplify the positive outliers
  20. “I don’t even know what I’m afraid of”
  21. Seven marketing sins
  22. Either, not both
  23. How to succeed
  24. Compared to magical
  25. Silencing the bell doesn’t put out the fire
  26. It’s not all in your head
  27. The unforgiving arithmetic of the funnel
  28. Forbidden to care
  29. The Dip, revisited, plus audio bonus
  30. Pest control
  31. Winning today (vs. winning tomorrow)
  32. The Milgram extension
  33. Understanding stuck
  34. Is more always better?

May 2012

  1. Where does this blog come from?
  2. Getting serious about experimentation
  3. “Perhaps your anxiety is specific to magicians”
  4. A hierarchy of business to business needs
  5. Thriving in a wet environment
  6. Emergency room doctors
  7. This is (still) broken
  8. What are you leaving behind?
  9. The tyranny of low price
  10. A book/gadget list for late spring
  11. “If I were you…”
  12. Dancing on the edge of finished
  13. Ranking for signal to noise ratio
  14. The endless emergency of politics
  15. You will be judged (or you will be ignored)
  16. A true story
  17. Where’s the heat?
  18. Not everyone
  19. The quickest way to get things done and make change
  20. Digital analogs are no longer sufficient
  21. Hard work on the right things
  22. Worldliness
  23. The reason the customer is always right…
  24. Dedicating the merit
  25. Naming things
  26. Free samples
  27. Why ask why?
  28. How to make money online
  29. Solving the problem isn’t the problem
  30. The flipping point
  31. Avoiding false metrics
  32. Mother’s day is May 13
  33. A simple antidote to a corporatized, unfeeling, profit-maximizing world
  34. Reconsidering decisions
  35. Multiplying or dividing?
  36. Is catastrophizing effective?
  37. Volatility and value

April 2012

  1. What’s the right size? The quantum mechanics of growth…
  2. Low prices
  3. Your dent
  4. The story of money is not a straight line
  5. Some reading without charge (worth way more than it costs)
  6. Do you have a people strategy?
  7. Don’t expect applause
  8. Needs and wants are often confused
  9. When smart people work for big companies
  10. If you think that’s what we want, why don’t you give it to us?
  11. The easiest and the best
  12. Selling to people who haven’t bought yet
  13. Ticket update for May 16
  14. Bandits and philanthropists
  15. Two ways to buy the expensive
  16. “I was just kidding”
  17. Come to New York on May 16th (Pick Yourself)
  18. All artists are self-taught
  19. Lessons from Caine’s Arcade
  20. Money scales but emotions around money don’t
  21. Better than everyone
  22. The end of the diva paradox
  23. Don’t give up (you’re on the right track)
  24. It’s easier to go faster now than it is to go faster later
  25. Is everyone entitled to their opinion?
  26. Twitch
  27. On making a ruckus in your industry
  28. In the palm of your hand
  29. Organized bravery
  30. When execution gets cheaper, so should planning
  31. Updated: new editions of Stop Stealing Dreams
  32. If your happiness is based on always getting a little more than you’ve got…
  33. The coalition of No
  34. Monetization and fairness

March 2012

  1. How much for a really small slice?
  2. “Too long”
  3. Nine ideas in search of a blog post
  4. The essential question to ask before extending your brand
  5. Why isn’t it better?
  6. Making big decisions about money
  7. Speechless
  8. “I don’t see it”
  9. Episode markers
  10. Extending the narrative
  11. Clearing the decks
  12. Confidence without guts
  13. Getting confused about causation and correlation
  14. ʎssǝɯ os ʇou sı lɐʇıƃıp
  15. When should we add marketing?
  16. The ironic truth about sincerity
  17. Fifty is the new thirty
  18. Specific promises, kept
  19. We say we want a revolution…
  20. Speaking when they care (reorganizing the economics and attitude of customer service)
  21. The mathematical impossibility of universal delight
  22. The extraordinary software development manager
  23. “It’s not business, it’s personal”
  24. Learning from four viral events
  25. Information density
  26. Conflicted
  27. Sovereignty and the new world–the end of nations?
  28. A habit of attention
  29. Doing it wrong, relentlessly
  30. Three masters
  31. Fear, scarcity and value
  32. Why lie?
  33. My first recommended book list of 2012
  34. Finishing well
  35. Sight reading
  36. Ashamed to not know

February 2012

  1. Leap year meditation
  2. Fade or gain?
  3. “It’s not prime enough”
  4. www.stopstealingdreams.com is ready to read and share
  5. Stick to what you (don’t) know
  6. Perfect and impossible
  7. The Trip Advisor tail wagging the real world dog
  8. Ad agencies don’t run many ads for themselves
  9. Engaging with criticism
  10. The map has been replaced by the compass
  11. Too far from the center?
  12. “How’d it work out?”
  13. Transparent or translucent?
  14. The illusion of privacy (and what we actually care about)
  15. We can handle information density
  16. The fifth Beatle
  17. Time doesn’t scale
  18. Meeting vs. making
  19. Spout and scout
  20. The sad irony of selfishness
  21. People who know what they’re talking about…
  22. It’s never too late
  23. The Weird interview
  24. Inaccurate labels and why we need them (and need to improve them)
  25. How do they know you’re not a flake?
  26. Horizontal marketing isn’t a new idea
  27. Who is your customer?
  28. In search of a timid trapeze artist
  29. Will energy consumption stay private?
  30. Rightsizing your passion
  31. Can I see your body of work?
  32. 80% off while they last
  33. You will be disappointed
  34. An endless series of difficult but achievable hills

January 2012

  1. The waffle paradox
  2. (What you get) – (What you were hoping for)
  3. Prepared to fail
  4. Faux familiarity is worse than none at all
  5. The honest broker
  6. Reconsidering Gartner’s Cycle of Hype
  7. Who cares?
  8. Solving problems (vs. identifying them)
  9. “It’s completely up to you”
  10. The pricing formula (S&S)
  11. Trading favors
  12. Worth a million words
  13. Insatiable
  14. The problem with reassurance
  15. Over your head
  16. Good news about Amit (thank you!)
  17. Learning leadership from Congress
  18. When the world changes…
  19. Access to access
  20. Straight up
  21. The play by play and the color commentary
  22. Declaring victory
  23. The TED imperatives
  24. Your voice will give you away
  25. The first thing you do when you sit down at the computer
  26. Sold or bought?
  27. One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you’re in the room…
  28. Out on a limb
  29. Simple thoughts about fair use
  30. I was wrong
  31. Joel and Clay don’t write often enough
  32. Walking away from “real”
  33. “How much are you going to tip?”
  34. Direct response and the coarsening of culture
  35. Trading in your pain
  36. On creating a hassle
  37. The artificiality of time

2011 424

December 2011

  1. The chance of a lifetime
  2. The reason productivity improvements don’t work (as well as they could)
  3. “It’s always been this way”
  4. A hundred little things
  5. Qa 2
  6. The more or less choice
  7. An empty Kindle…
  8. Gift wrapped
  9. Merry
  10. Firemen, donuts and meetings
  11. Unexpected turbulence
  12. Trustiness
  13. The new lazy journalism
  14. Subscription update
  15. No one ever bought anything in an elevator
  16. The difference between a failure and a mistake
  17. The simple first rule of branding and marketing anything (even yourself)
  18. On buying something for the first time
  19. Santa and the mob
  20. Assorted tips, hope they help
  21. “WATCH THIS!”
  22. Insulate yourself…
  23. The most important page on the web is the page you build yourself
  24. The trap of social media noise
  25. Getting the OS right (for the iPhone, the iPad and the Kindle)
  26. Well rounded (and the other)
  27. No choice
  28. “I am here”
  29. Getting serious about the attention economy
  30. Tools vs insight
  31. The economics of Christmas lights
  32. The erosion in the paid media pyramid
  33. Didn’t get the joke
  34. Four stages of the game

November 2011

  1. Preparing for the breakthrough/calamity
  2. The last hardcover
  3. Who comes on opening night?
  4. The Confusion of Logistics and Strategy Problem
  5. A decision without tradeoffs…
  6. When Google comes calling…
  7. Pre digital
  8. A great way to give thanks…
  9. Please consider WEIRD
  10. The marketing of conspiracy theories
  11. The problem with amortization
  12. Your competitive advantage
  13. Moving beyond impressions
  14. Optimistic enthusiasm as a form of realism
  15. No.
  16. The largest independent content sites
  17. Self truth (and the best violinist in the world)
  18. Worth it?
  19. After you’ve done your best
  20. Change worth reading about: update
  21. Adversity and the route to success
  22. Independence and subjugation
  23. Lifetime value of a customer/cost per customer
  24. The unreasonable customer
  25. The starfish and the long tail have trouble getting along
  26. The extraordinary revolution of media choice
  27. There’s nothing wrong with having a plan
  28. Six questions for analyzing a website
  29. What do you do when you don’t know the answer?
  30. When “minimal viable product” doesn’t work
  31. What good interview questions are actually trying to discover
  32. Invitation to a three-day session with me in New York
  33. Are you doing math or arithmetic?
  34. The fall reading list
  35. Accentuating differences
  36. How many baskets?

October 2011

  1. How to get a job with a small company
  2. The paradox of expectations
  3. Questions for a new entrepreneur
  4. If committees told the truth
  5. Arguing with success
  6. Your agenda
  7. Memories of bitterness
  8. Shubh Diwali and digital lights
  9. Buying earned media
  10. Form and function
  11. When is it okay to start worrying?
  12. The difference between management and leadership
  13. Cities don’t die (but corporations do)
  14. Stupid and lazy
  15. The power of visualization
  16. The new frontier
  17. The problem with pandering
  18. The math of favors
  19. Yelling and whispering
  20. Gala economics
  21. Skinnier
  22. The atomic method of creating a Powerpoint presentation
  23. First, make rice
  24. Open conversations (or close them)
  25. Which are you?
  26. “…but what really blew me away…”
  27. Marketing to narcissists
  28. Eliminating the impulse to stall
  29. Roads not taken
  30. A eulogy of action
  31. Failures and the dip
  32. Expanding the circle of ‘missed’
  33. Squidoo launches magazines
  34. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
  35. What to do next
  36. “Have we spent enough time focusing on your issues?”

September 2011

  1. Welcome to infinity
  2. The forever recession (and the coming revolution)
  3. “No one goes there any more, it’s too crowded”
  4. Maybe he means it
  5. Invitation to a teleconference for We Are All Weird
  6. Run your own race
  7. Marketing of the placebo: Everyone gets their own belief
  8. Post-mortem or pre-natal
  9. Talker’s block
  10. Like you mean it
  11. Forward or back?
  12. We Are All Weird
  13. “Please complain”
  14. Can’t watch your parade if the house is on fire
  15. Yet
  16. Lousy tomatoes and the rare search for wonder
  17. “But what if it works?”
  18. Why wait?
  19. Merging/Emerging
  20. Confusing obedience with self-control
  21. The alternative to failure
  22. It’s different here
  23. Mass elite
  24. “Do it tomorrow”
  25. Getting serious about your org chart
  26. Tote bag marketing
  27. That buzzing in my ear didn’t mean I was about to die
  28. Talent and vendors
  29. Back to (the wrong) school
  30. People looking for ‘more of the same’ aren’t actively looking
  31. Not fade away
  32. The shower of data
  33. Thursday bonuses
  34. Should the New Yorker change?

August 2011

  1. The web leaders hate typography (but not for long)
  2. Waving to myself
  3. The warning signs of defending the status quo
  4. Form design
  5. More or less
  6. The facts
  7. September 13 session in my office
  8. A little empty
  9. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t Mark Zuckerberg
  10. Two earthquake-related thoughts about human nature
  11. The obligation of the adjustable display
  12. Short-term capitalism
  13. When ideas become powerful
  14. Twice as much doesn’t always mean twice as much
  15. Is your anger killing your art?
  16. Webinar today with Al Pittampalli and me
  17. “I’m your singer…”
  18. “I’m under a lot of pressure…”
  19. Three things clients and customers want
  20. Dig yourself a hole
  21. The inevitable outcome of marketing fear
  22. The filter hierarchy
  23. Wasting time is not a waste
  24. Herbie Hancock is not a Pip
  25. Avoiding the pips (and the MGs)
  26. Can and should
  27. R&D in public
  28. Consumers and creators
  29. Selling the benefits of charity
  30. Bypassing the leap
  31. Set the alarm clock the night before
  32. History doesn’t always repeat itself
  33. The heckler
  34. Delivering on never
  35. When the truth is just around the corner
  36. Responsibility and authority

July 2011

  1. Difficult conversations at work
  2. “It will be good exposure”
  3. Easy vs. do-able vs. impossible
  4. Just a myth
  5. Celebrating Zig Ziglar
  6. Now you are a celebrity
  7. Defining quality
  8. No such thing as business ethics
  9. Interesting & Interested
  10. Has the speed shortage been averted?
  11. Domino Project update
  12. Day old news is fresh enough
  13. Building a job vs. building a business
  14. Embracing constraints
  15. Confronting stupid
  16. From Asimov to Zelazny
  17. What you should worry about
  18. A definition of a leader…
  19. Naive or professional?
  20. Half life
  21. Articulating your preferred use case (what’s it for?)
  22. The invisible crossroads
  23. Waiting for the fear to subside
  24. When did you get old?
  25. Put your name on it
  26. Time for a workflow audit
  27. The arrogance of willful ignorance
  28. Every successful case is a special case
  29. Paying attention to the attention economy
  30. Give and get
  31. Bad poetry
  32. The overwhelming fear of being wrong
  33. “Why wasn’t I informed?”

June 2011

  1. Unbetterable
  2. Anything You Want
  3. When is it due?
  4. Are you wow blind?
  5. A relentless race to the bottom
  6. Writing naked (nakeder than Orwell)
  7. The ethics of sunscreen
  8. Show me the (meta) data
  9. Dependency on external motivation
  10. How do you know when it’s done?
  11. The Grateful Dead and the Top 40
  12. Adopt vs. adapt
  13. Dangerous (in a good way)
  14. Coordination
  15. Excuses are easy to find (but worthless)
  16. Who pays for the news media?
  17. The last minute (a case against brinksmanship)
  18. Giving umbrage
  19. Summer reading, 2011
  20. In praise of programming
  21. Organization vs. movement vs. philosophy
  22. The professional’s platform
  23. Getting funded is not the same as succeeding
  24. Synchronicity, intimacy and productivity
  25. Email checklist (maybe this time it’ll work!)
  26. Disaster tolerance
  27. The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap
  28. Which of the four are getting in the way?
  29. The taskmaster premium
  30. Subscribing (and a color bonus)
  31. Irrational vs. unreasonable
  32. Are you a scientist?
  33. If you’re going to work…
  34. Selling nuts to squirrels
  35. “Don’t tell me what I can’t have” (unraveling a paradox)

May 2011

  1. How to be interviewed
  2. The hard part (one of them)
  3. Agency 754
  4. All economics is local
  5. Bar gymnastics
  6. Caring 965
  7. Looking for the right excuse
  8. Kingmaker
  9. Legacy issues
  10. Underextended
  11. A marketing lesson from the apocalypse
  12. Busker’s dilemma (busker’s delight)
  13. How else are you supposed to take it?
  14. Coming to Seattle for a half-day Road Trip session
  15. Easy and certain
  16. The privilege of being wrong
  17. Just imagine how much you’d get done
  18. The future of the library
  19. An end of magic
  20. What (people) want
  21. Cool new tool for finding and perfecting phrases
  22. Brand exceptionalism
  23. Who is making you uncomfortable?
  24. Self directed effort is the best kind
  25. Marketing to nobody
  26. Selling vs. inviting
  27. In search of six major brands
  28. Share your confusions
  29. How long is your long run?
  30. What’s high school for?
  31. Seeing the truth when it might be invisible
  32. Worldwide Linchpin Meetup is coming Wednesday, May 18
  33. What’s the point of popular?
  34. Hard work vs. Long work
  35. On the day everyone is pleased…
  36. A game theory of NFL negotiations
  37. The $20,000 phone call

April 2011

  1. Dreams, princesses and the Disney-industrial complex
  2. Headroom
  3. The paperback choice and my video dilemma
  4. The flip side
  5. Changing personas
  6. Shopify contest launches today
  7. The bully-victim cycle
  8. Alignment
  9. The opportunity is here
  10. The realization is now
  11. Improving the trains
  12. Hungry or guarded
  13. Do the Work is out today
  14. Get better at buying
  15. Bringing interesting businesses online
  16. Economies of small
  17. The internet as envy amplifier
  18. The four horsemen of media–here comes tiny media
  19. The agenda
  20. Buying an education or buying a brand?
  21. Why you might choose to be in favor of transparency
  22. Turning the habit of self-criticism upside down
  23. In search of a biz monkey (why bother?)
  24. Wasting the digital dividend
  25. How to fail
  26. The free market
  27. Why makers should think a little bit more like managers (and vice versa)
  28. Insist on the coin flip
  29. Limited (and unlimited)
  30. Perfect vs. interesting
  31. Who’s responsible for service design?
  32. The difference between blueberries and apples
  33. Moving beyond teachers and bosses
  34. The worst voice of the brand *is* the brand
  35. Ten years of changing the world
  36. Dancing faster than ever, but why?
  37. Don’t be a fool
  38. Introducing white space links

March 2011

  1. Compared to perfect: the price/value mismatch in content
  2. A slow news day
  3. Small screens and big decisions
  4. Initiative isn’t given, you take it
  5. Accepting false limits
  6. Faster, Better and More
  7. “How much can I get away with?”
  8. Impossible in theory
  9. Originality
  10. Are you making something?
  11. The triumph of coal marketing
  12. Un essaim de puces
  13. Reject the tyranny of being picked: pick yourself
  14. Idea tourism
  15. Better than it sounds
  16. Coughing is heckling
  17. Protecting the soft spot
  18. Kraft singles
  19. Live in New York City
  20. Are you doing a good job?
  21. Bring me stuff that’s dead, please
  22. Seven questions for leaders
  23. Your SXSW agenda (or any conference, for that matter)
  24. Relentlessly smaller
  25. Unskilled labor
  26. Assuming goodwill
  27. Herbs
  28. Famous to the family
  29. Empathy
  30. Cascade of broken promises
  31. The limits of evidence-based marketing
  32. Important/Measured
  33. broken link, fixed
  34. Initiators #2 [and a free workbook]
  35. The worst moments are your best opportunity
  36. The thing that makes it popular…
  37. Jumping the line vs. opening the door
  38. Initiators #1 [PTB]
  39. Who will say go?

February 2011

  1. The simple two-step process
  2. Wonder and anger
  3. A linchpin hierarchy
  4. 30%, the long tail and a future of serialized content
  5. Making a straighter ruler
  6. An atomic theory of business size
  7. A flip side: the asymmetrical gift
  8. Asymmetrical mass favors, a tragedy of our commons
  9. Date certain
  10. Bankruptcy
  11. What’s a slogan for (banal on purpose)
  12. Art is what we call…
  13. Two paths for successful group events
  14. On pricing power
  15. Make big plans
  16. No one plays the lottery if there are no winners
  17. An acre of attitudes
  18. Treating best customers better
  19. Familiarity breeds respect
  20. Evil plans, Enchantment and Orange County, California
  21. The danger of repeating signals
  22. Ethical placebos (stunning, but not actually surprising)
  23. What’s the use case?
  24. You don’t need more time
  25. Autarky is dead
  26. The new craftsmanship
  27. How should you treat your best customers?
  28. Are $300 headphones worth it?
  29. Protecting the work
  30. Pleasing
  31. The space matters
  32. Unreasonable
  33. All abstract strategy discussions are useless

January 2011

  1. In and out
  2. Texting while working
  3. Bill James and you
  4. When was the last time you bought a tie?
  5. Why I don’t sell Kimchi
  6. The shell game of delight
  7. Eight Lessons from the life and work of Jack LaLanne
  8. Three ways to help people get things done
  9. The pleasant reassurance of new words
  10. Treat different customers differently
  11. Misjudging risk (and bad decisions)
  12. Timing rewards
  13. Launch it like Google
  14. One way to look at the internet, mobile, web and tablets
  15. Cashing the check
  16. Self-destructive instructions
  17. The certainty premium
  18. A culture of testing
  19. Raising expectations (and then dashing them)
  20. Obedience and the GPS
  21. Sarah Jones and me
  22. “I’ve got your back”
  23. Lost in a digital world
  24. Consider the category of ‘without apology’
  25. The sure-fire recipe for business success
  26. Two truths about juggling
  27. Soles
  28. Five ingredients of smart online commerce
  29. In defense of RSS
  30. Making meetings more expensive
  31. It’s just better ketchup
  32. That’s not the way we do things around here
  33. Insurgents and incumbents

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