The Curious Engineer

Seth's Blog

2017–2019

1,136 posts

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2019 380

December 2019

  1. Things unknown
  2. Two sides of the internet
  3. Top speed is overrated
  4. Slow is relative
  5. Distracted by wide funnels
  6. On seeking a category
  7. Toward peace
  8. Is optimal the point?
  9. The travel agent’s problem
  10. The real scam of ‘influencer’
  11. Nothing is one thing
  12. Making your case
  13. On writing a spec
  14. Successful creatives
  15. What if?
  16. The thing about elephants
  17. Best in category
  18. “I don’t know how it could fail”
  19. Making fairness convenient
  20. The gap between good and famous
  21. Learn from what you find, if it helps
  22. Secession vs. commitment
  23. Go outside
  24. World tour 2020 (coming to a town near you)
  25. Irritated is a choice
  26. Water towers
  27. Only the hits
  28. The thing about hot button issues
  29. Losing with style
  30. Attention vs. the chasm
  31. Deep connection
  32. The attention crisis is real

November 2019

  1. The transition to leadership
  2. Book list, Fall 2019
  3. Better/worse
  4. Discontinuous thought
  5. A chance for better
  6. If every day were Thanksgiving
  7. The uncomfortable combination of effort and acceptance
  8. Knowing the answer before you ask the question
  9. Golf or surfing?
  10. The uses of Kickstarter
  11. Which signal?
  12. The Google tax
  13. How do you know when it’s ready?
  14. This might vs. this better
  15. Break the lecture
  16. Compared to what?
  17. Allies and accomplices
  18. Tell a better story
  19. Busy is a choice, productive is a skill
  20. Off stage
  21. Maintainers
  22. The difference between memorization and learning
  23. “As a technologist…”
  24. 741741 — To be seen
  25. The right tool
  26. What are the margins for?
  27. Slack rules of life
  28. All or some?
  29. Annoyed
  30. A year from now…
  31. The process vs. the outcome

October 2019

  1. Which change?
  2. Bread and books
  3. “Get what you want without compromise”
  4. On quitting a freelance gig
  5. “Where does this bus go?”
  6. Short and funny
  7. “What’s the hard part?”
  8. All or nothing
  9. Two buttons on offer
  10. Up and to the right
  11. The limits of technique
  12. The simple dynamics of failing retail
  13. ‘Not good enough’ is an easy place to hide
  14. The enthusiasm correlation
  15. What did you expect?
  16. Hope for the best
  17. Freelancing is a brave act
  18. “This is mediocre”
  19. Open the cookies
  20. “I’m sorry” takes guts
  21. Better than it needs to be
  22. Initiative
  23. Projects vs tasks
  24. Use your best judgment
  25. The Big Fish theory
  26. Narratives about modernity
  27. Security superstition/Security theater
  28. How much is that piece of paper in the window?
  29. Getting to the truth
  30. Facing our fears
  31. If you want to change minds…

September 2019

  1. Don’t buy cheap chocolate
  2. Learnable
  3. Ways to grow
  4. The race to the bottom
  5. A ratchet with leverage
  6. We don’t call portraits people
  7. You might have a marketing problem
  8. The rip saw
  9. On knowing what you’re doing
  10. Danger, real and apparent
  11. “I know it’s bad – but everyone’s doing it”
  12. Creative people
  13. Artists and freedom
  14. If you’re lost, go faster
  15. The relationship with the customer
  16. Placebo blindness
  17. More (or less)
  18. A useful definition of art
  19. Approaching the limits
  20. Memories of memories
  21. The wind at your back
  22. Being stuck is reasonable
  23. On becoming an acquired taste
  24. One of the above
  25. Two kinds of 9 to 5 job
  26. The room where it happens
  27. The end of reputation
  28. What do you own?
  29. And then we stop seeing the world
  30. This one simple trick makes everything faster and easier

August 2019

  1. Everyone else, also
  2. Online marketing vs. marketing online
  3. Politics vs. governance
  4. Lottery logic
  5. Arithmetic true
  6. Confusing effort, preparation and performance with the outcome
  7. The shunning
  8. Where’s the freakout line?
  9. Reckless, fearless and generous
  10. What does it feel like when you say “later”?
  11. Sooner or later, the shark gets jumped
  12. Ask a busy person
  13. Widest common denominator
  14. “What’s their phone number again?”
  15. Make a habit/break a habit
  16. The anatomy of annoying
  17. Responsibility and the power of ‘could have’
  18. Leadership
  19. Toward full stack
  20. The never-ending ratchet of conspicuous consumption
  21. Innovation is guts plus generosity
  22. The downside of possibility
  23. Abnormal
  24. Words that matter
  25. The old media/new media chasm
  26. Streaks
  27. When will we learn?
  28. What’s your podcast about?
  29. Seriously/Personally
  30. Impossible
  31. Rules and responsibility
  32. Fooled by reputation
  33. Living in surplus

July 2019

  1. The problem with sarcasm
  2. The perfect mustard
  3. Pivoting the education matrix
  4. People don’t change
  5. Sneaky surveys (and push polls)
  6. Too big to care
  7. Surrendering curation and promotion
  8. Comparing % and mass
  9. Three wishes
  10. Where will the media take us next?
  11. Two kinds of system risk
  12. Tailgating
  13. Say what you want
  14. Toward or away?
  15. Squeaky wheels
  16. Which sort of presentation is this?
  17. Paid to learn
  18. Judging a day by the weather
  19. What are you drawn to?
  20. Now with recipes….
  21. Principles and being let off the hook
  22. Next to the competition
  23. “Everyone draws the line somewhere”
  24. Open parentheses
  25. The $50,000 an hour gate agent
  26. “I wish I had more data”
  27. ‘Scrappy’ is not the same as ‘crappy’
  28. The irony of close competition
  29. Portion control
  30. Connection day
  31. Awareness or action?
  32. Horizontal leadership
  33. Everything is a compromise

June 2019

  1. Any metric you can buy your way out of…
  2. Leave stones unturned
  3. Smashing the piggybank
  4. The solo marathon
  5. Constraints and measurement
  6. The tyranny of small debts, compounded
  7. yesyesyesyesyesyesyesyes
  8. Fear of kohlrabi
  9. Eleven votes
  10. “That’s just semantics”
  11. The mythical “Head of Marketing”
  12. Of course it could be better
  13. Awkward memorization
  14. Book recommendations–present, future and past
  15. The appropriate medium
  16. Investing in slack
  17. Even if it’s not graduation week for you…
  18. There will be weather tomorrow
  19. Ten words per page
  20. The Learning/Doing Gap
  21. 100 compromises
  22. Overwriting
  23. But what is this question for?
  24. Junction City
  25. The key lesson from The Marketing Seminar
  26. Ahead of the curve
  27. “Don’t pee in the pool”
  28. Roads or buildings?
  29. Surrounded by yes
  30. Of course they’re wrong
  31. The key part of new media

May 2019

  1. Cognitive load and the convenience problem
  2. On winning
  3. Justifying mediocre work
  4. The timing of side effects
  5. Accountability vs. responsibility
  6. Organized crime
  7. On finishing well
  8. Defective apologies
  9. The mob fears the truth
  10. Blockbusters vs. building blocks
  11. It’s all horizontal (and books went first)
  12. Digital hygiene
  13. This will take two hours
  14. Bo Diddley
  15. Three kinds of ‘forever’
  16. Kinds of truth
  17. Reach is overrated
  18. Lifelong connection
  19. Toward abundant systems
  20. Trapped by the incoming
  21. Role models as a tool for decision making
  22. Time travel is exhausting
  23. Embracing your incompetence
  24. Selling insurance to your sister
  25. Do things get better?
  26. College confusion
  27. Might makes right
  28. Consider A/J testing
  29. When your project isn’t making money
  30. The minimizing coin
  31. Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time

April 2019

  1. An anecdote and a statistical analysis walk into a bar
  2. And your company will pay for it
  3. The first database rule
  4. Snooze is a trap
  5. A seat at the table
  6. On finding something to say
  7. The power (and risk) of charismatic ideas
  8. Rationalizing your project
  9. Anything you want
  10. The compass and the map
  11. “A good product at a fair price”
  12. The true cost of customer response
  13. Three deadlines (and Instagram!)
  14. Dancing with infinity
  15. Make things better
  16. Impermanence
  17. The gap between ‘have to’ and ‘get to’
  18. “You can hire just about anyone…”
  19. The elegance of nothing
  20. The second bowl
  21. Workshops are not courses
  22. The problem with unicorns…
  23. Cognitive load is real
  24. A job without a boss
  25. Rare QA video, a new workshop, and a path forward for entrepreneurs
  26. Mind the gap(s)
  27. The high cost of a little bit sooner
  28. Do you remember the frenzy?
  29. “I was wrong”
  30. The avocado principles
  31. More right
  32. Next to the competition
  33. This has gone too far

March 2019

  1. Busy is not the point
  2. Choices
  3. Pretending to be stupid
  4. Bottlenecks
  5. The long run (and the short runs)
  6. It’s not your tribe
  7. Almost no one
  8. Data into information
  9. Clearing the table
  10. Dissolve it
  11. How big is your unfillable hole?
  12. The minimum viable audience
  13. Where are you headed?
  14. The invisible limits
  15. Resilience and tolerances
  16. Faucets and drains
  17. Unexpected yet totally plausible
  18. ‘Move fast and break things’ isn’t a worthy slogan
  19. “You made my day”
  20. The surprising secret of web headlines
  21. Monopoly is the opposite of capitalism
  22. People who don’t care…
  23. Everyone and no one
  24. Embracing externalities
  25. Time and money
  26. Concept cars
  27. Loud voices vs. important ones
  28. “We meet all Federal regulations”
  29. Truth in bots
  30. To vs reply vs bcc
  31. “I don’t like your work”
  32. On feeling incompetent

February 2019

  1. Choice and obligation
  2. The first piece of tape
  3. Lessons for telling time
  4. Five reasons you might want to start a podcast
  5. Experience and variation
  6. Fish in a barrel
  7. Telescopes and microscopes
  8. Work before passion
  9. Too important to have a fight about
  10. Skill vs planning
  11. Who’s in the room?
  12. The practical de-escalation of worry
  13. Some problems are easier to sell
  14. Mastering the medium
  15. A common trap fueled by tribal rivalry…
  16. Colors and numbers
  17. The trap of early feedback
  18. Workshop updates
  19. Hard work
  20. Cnp
  21. Productive choices (which?)
  22. What if you pretended, just for a little while…
  23. Digital peer pressure
  24. Are you being manipulated?
  25. The business of food
  26. When you’re over your head
  27. Getting the word out
  28. The honor code
  29. Data is expensive

January 2019

  1. Are you selling to a professional or an amateur?
  2. The $37,000 latte
  3. The repetition of stories
  4. Opportunity costs just went up
  5. Contractor yield
  6. Relentlessly lowering expectations
  7. Magical technologies
  8. Your customer service strategy
  9. The job interview approach
  10. The thing about the chickens
  11. Justice is scarce
  12. The fourth cycle of the hive mind (and what to do about it)
  13. Do you have a chocolate problem or an oxygen problem?
  14. Problems and boundaries
  15. How to be honorable
  16. Don’t steal metrics
  17. Asserting anthropomorphism
  18. Fads in belief
  19. Should you say ‘please’ to an AI?
  20. The instigator
  21. Good intentions (how to be on time)
  22. Do you have a marketing problem?
  23. Managing the leap reflex
  24. Managing reputation in the age of infinity
  25. The thing about arguments
  26. Meaningless
  27. Spindletop
  28. The exhaust fan
  29. The Spiderman Paradox
  30. Does an orchestra need the oboe?
  31. You can’t outtrain a bad diet
  32. What is marketing?
  33. InstaFreude
  34. The top 5%

2018 377

December 2018

  1. Hilbert’s list
  2. Creating a useful spec
  3. Installing the stupid filter
  4. Go find a ladder
  5. The Marketing Seminar returns
  6. If you don’t have time to clean up, you don’t have time to cook
  7. We are all poets now
  8. A commitment to possibility
  9. “Nobody dabbles at dentistry”
  10. In search of specific
  11. “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time”
  12. Do we value attention properly?
  13. Our fundamental attribution error
  14. The 10x lesson
  15. The digital swirl is real, it’s disconcerting and it’s loaded with possibility
  16. Chronic
  17. Working in a studio
  18. Where’s your cohort?
  19. Respect difficult problems
  20. “I didn’t do the reading…”
  21. Where’s your Reckless Daughter?
  22. Topping off the tank
  23. Everyone’s got their thing
  24. False limits
  25. Where are the Linchpin jobs?
  26. Perfect processes
  27. Seeing what’s right in front you
  28. Situational spending
  29. All the good words are taken
  30. Better enough
  31. 1,000 little steps

November 2018

  1. “But he paid extra”
  2. Three kinds of corporate mediocrity
  3. “People like us” — an update on This is Marketing
  4. 90% of coaching is self-coaching
  5. Is there a marketing person leading the IT team?
  6. String too short to be saved
  7. Where’s the edge?
  8. Denying the heart
  9. An inconvenient shopping list
  10. The race
  11. Diagnosis
  12. Avoiding the curse of the low-hanging fruit
  13. Signal to noise ratio
  14. The digital divide is being flipped
  15. “Be yourself, everyone else is taken”
  16. Two kinds of careening
  17. What’s inside THIS IS MARKETING
  18. One by one, the urgent goes away
  19. The magic of a book launch
  20. The magnetic generosity of the network effect
  21. Simply awake
  22. Get your memo read
  23. It’s not a bucket
  24. If what you’re doing isn’t working
  25. Understanding random testing
  26. Who cares?
  27. The steering wheel and the guardrails
  28. Persistence vs. consistent
  29. A note from 2030
  30. Hiding in plain sight
  31. Quality and effort

October 2018

  1. The first 1,000 are the most difficult
  2. Just because you don’t understand it
  3. The problem with people is that they outnumber you
  4. Non-profit overhead
  5. Ambidextrous
  6. Stet
  7. The antidote
  8. Make better promises
  9. Lumpers and splitters
  10. Lottery math is human math
  11. Uphill both ways
  12. Social media is a symptom, not a tactic
  13. Triggers and cycles
  14. We are not the enemy (if we try)
  15. Work that matters for people who care
  16. Big software/lousy software
  17. Learning without doing
  18. “Here we go again”
  19. Mirror, mirror
  20. In and of itself
  21. Useful constructs
  22. Organized for browsing
  23. Podcasting is the new blogging
  24. Considering the vacancy tax
  25. Two money mistakes that founding CEOs make
  26. A fist in search of a face
  27. Gloom (and doom)
  28. Four roads we call customer service
  29. The red zone is for unloading…
  30. The myth of mirror magic
  31. Buyer beware?
  32. Letters and numbers

September 2018

  1. Inadequacy on parade
  2. “Zeige Deine Wunde” (show me your wound)
  3. The daily
  4. In search of your chord
  5. High value
  6. We learn as we go
  7. Today is the best day
  8. Kettle logic
  9. Like burning a hammer for heat
  10. Mistakes, failures and problems
  11. The struggle is real
  12. Diving boards
  13. Semi-public
  14. Toward the honest job interview
  15. How to run a better meeting (The conference series)
  16. Skiing out of bounds
  17. Zoom & Skype call tips (the secrets of video conferences)
  18. Profitable, difficult, or important?
  19. The risk of the Bixby button
  20. What are you organizing?
  21. Dumber angrier louder
  22. A solution to stalled
  23. A job without a boss
  24. Education needs to be inconvenient
  25. Processing the undeserved
  26. The trick question
  27. Bootstrapping: A new way forward and a new way to learn
  28. First, fast and correct
  29. The new Labor Day
  30. A good day for the backlist
  31. The ends and the means

August 2018

  1. The cereal entrepreneur
  2. After now
  3. Ignore the questions
  4. Sprints
  5. On one foot
  6. Emergencies cost extra
  7. The born salesperson
  8. No reason to be surprised
  9. March it down the road
  10. Two kinds of marketing
  11. Evanescent boundaries
  12. Just enough
  13. Making it political
  14. Transactions without conflict
  15. Ringing vs wringing
  16. The problem with coming attractions
  17. Community rank
  18. All other things being equal (simple contribution analysis for pricing)
  19. The exaggeration of small differences without a difference
  20. The two “Harvard problems”
  21. Difficult decisions
  22. Alcohol vs. cannabis marketing
  23. Price and satisfaction
  24. “Summer’s almost over”
  25. Reality-based reality
  26. Worth paying for
  27. The truth about logos
  28. The wrong bus
  29. The weather tax
  30. What gets maximized?
  31. The motor

July 2018

  1. A source of stress
  2. Old buildings on the edge of town
  3. Our engineering ratchet
  4. Smooth water
  5. Walking away from fast twitch
  6. Everything is an experiment
  7. Do you know enough?
  8. Books worth reading
  9. Business/busyness
  10. The time/decision gap
  11. Two ways to solve a problem and provide a service
  12. The problem with puffery
  13. Beyond posturing, placebos or belief
  14. Doing it completely and totally wrong
  15. Avoiding the GIGO trap
  16. Batting average is a trap
  17. Five ways to make your presentation better
  18. We’re still clueless about lifetime value
  19. First annual condiment showcase
  20. ‘Fountain’ matters now more than ever
  21. A catastrophe journal
  22. Shameless vs. shameful
  23. “You’ll pay a lot but you’ll get more than you paid for”
  24. 58 years ago
  25. But are you doing your work?
  26. Cheap shower curtains
  27. Things that are true are consistent
  28. Glaciers get a bad rap
  29. Throwing and catching
  30. Responsibility Day
  31. The perils of the discard pile
  32. Do-ability
  33. The thing about propellant

June 2018

  1. Looking for validation
  2. Where’s the king of the ants?
  3. Bad sorts (and the useful ones)
  4. The shortcut crowd
  5. If you need deadlines to do your best work…
  6. But why does it take so long?
  7. The jerk fallacy
  8. Hollow inside
  9. Paper clips and string
  10. Shipping the work
  11. “Are you in a hurry?”
  12. The two simple secrets to good ideas
  13. Cold yeast
  14. The trap of insightful selection
  15. The danger of “not good enough”
  16. Better and different
  17. Better together
  18. How far behind?
  19. In defense of handshakes
  20. Learning from the factory/dealer divide
  21. Stretching
  22. On paying for software
  23. Synchronize your watches
  24. Get off the critical path
  25. Marketing sauerkraut
  26. “It’s not for everyone”
  27. What do you aspire to be?
  28. Rethinking graduation
  29. Misunderstanding the free market
  30. Throat clearing isn’t necessary
  31. Writing for people who don’t read

May 2018

  1. “What do I get?”
  2. More better math
  3. Up or out?
  4. Excellence
  5. After the hiccup
  6. You can’t please everyone
  7. Does it help?
  8. The order
  9. Big crew/little crew
  10. Before and after
  11. Unrequested advice, insufficient data, unexplored objectives
  12. Accessorials cost extra
  13. Mass personalization is a trap
  14. Are you a genius?
  15. The difference between time and money
  16. The triumph of everyday design
  17. “You were right all along”
  18. The problem with forced rankings
  19. Tactics without strategy is a scrum
  20. Easier said than done
  21. Monopoly is the goal, monopoly is the problem
  22. Putting a value on a story
  23. Considering the buyout
  24. Kurtosis is not a disease (but getting it wrong is painful)
  25. Bigger to feel safer
  26. The pre-mortem
  27. Failsafe tip
  28. How are you organized?
  29. Media out of balance
  30. Selling acorns at the lumberyard
  31. GDPR and the marketer’s dilemma

April 2018

  1. Two bits of fame
  2. How cold is the turkey?
  3. A clean sheet of paper
  4. The moment of maximum leverage
  5. Inciteful
  6. The trap of listening to feedback
  7. About that tantrum
  8. Entrepreneurship is not a job
  9. Missing from your job description
  10. After you raise your hand…
  11. Tighter
  12. The placebo ratchet
  13. A slow motion trainwreck
  14. The words that work
  15. Powerful metrics with hidden variables
  16. You’ll pay a lot, but you’ll get more than you pay for
  17. How to give a five-minute presentation
  18. Character matters (if you let it)
  19. What happened and what will you add?
  20. On taking a hint
  21. What do advertisers want?
  22. Why even bother to think about strategy?
  23. Speaking up about what could be better
  24. But what about the people who don’t care?
  25. Exit, voice and loyalty
  26. Words on slides
  27. Effort in the face of near-certain rejection
  28. We can do better than meeting spec
  29. Which is worse…
  30. Whose meeting is this? A simple checklist
  31. Happy Anniversary
  32. I used them all up (a warning to creatives)

March 2018

  1. What is and what might be
  2. The Podcast Fellowship (a summer program)
  3. Video/podcast roundup
  4. When your ideas get stolen
  5. It’s time
  6. Secure and respected and engaged and risky
  7. Don’t split the pot (at least not at this table)
  8. You will not be surprised by artificial intelligence
  9. How many hops?
  10. Overpinnings when the underpinnings go away
  11. Mobile blindness
  12. The beat goes on
  13. Getting the default settings right
  14. Yes, there’s a free lunch
  15. “What does this remind you of?”
  16. Everyone has an accent
  17. We make our own taste, and call it reality
  18. Hitsville
  19. 300 seconds
  20. When well-meaning people can’t see it the same way
  21. The big hill
  22. Where are the movie stars?
  23. Rubbernecking
  24. Your kitchen table
  25. Taking advantage of complexity and inconvenience
  26. Clark Kent’s shoes
  27. In defense of redundancy
  28. A flag or a constitution?
  29. The Bannister Method
  30. Why is this interesting?
  31. Is snacking learning?
  32. Delighting in sacrifice
  33. Bonnie’s rules for being a better client

February 2018

  1. Short-attention-span theatre
  2. Low & Slow (vs. fear)
  3. “You can’t be curious and angry at the same time”
  4. Fun, urgent or fear-based
  5. Totaled
  6. The rigor imperative
  7. Noticed vs. missed
  8. “Is the noise in my head bothering you?”
  9. Status roles
  10. “The Luckiest Lottery Store…”
  11. A changemaker’s triangle
  12. Building, breaking, fixing
  13. Quick or smart?
  14. “I’m not selling anything”
  15. Looking for seekers (who are looking for you)
  16. Akimbo, my new podcast, launches today
  17. Born to paint?
  18. The first law of organizational thermodynamics
  19. What is extraordinary contribution worth?
  20. Worth a special trip
  21. What do you see?
  22. Reversing Alinsky’s rules
  23. The respect of ‘why’
  24. Ignore sunk clowns
  25. Empathetic doesn’t mean doormat
  26. The Super Bowl is for losers
  27. Everyone’s watching (no one is watching)
  28. What motivates you to take action?
  29. Falling out

January 2018

  1. Your corner of the sphere
  2. A country for con men
  3. The other kind of customer service
  4. Would you vs. will you?
  5. Surfing vs. coal mining
  6. “Where did you go to school?”
  7. Beginning is underrated
  8. Never smooth enough–a modern addiction
  9. Working with a designer (four paths)
  10. Hope and reality
  11. The gap
  12. Listening clearly
  13. Your social thermometer
  14. Freedom, fairness and equality
  15. Perfect vs. important
  16. Please don’t kill the blogs
  17. The four elements of entrepreneurship
  18. Justice and dignity, the endless shortage
  19. Fake wasabi
  20. Before you design a chart or infographic
  21. The witnesses and the participants
  22. First, de-escalate
  23. Charisma, cause and effect
  24. Getting paid what you deserve
  25. Stuck on what’s next
  26. Hiding from the mission
  27. What sort of performance?
  28. Your theory
  29. Why we don’t have nice things
  30. “We don’t do rabbits”
  31. Today’s the day
  32. A sprint

2017 379

December 2017

  1. Acknowledgments
  2. Granularity
  3. New habits
  4. Are you day trading?
  5. The power of the possible
  6. How much is ‘smarter’ worth?
  7. Kindness scales
  8. Waste and the new luxury
  9. Start small, start now
  10. Choosing without deciding
  11. “Are you trying to sell me something?”
  12. Make better tacos
  13. Local scarcity
  14. Open or closed?
  15. Slow and steady
  16. Experiences and your fear of engagement
  17. Better instincts
  18. Different people hear differently
  19. Actual shortcuts often appear to be detours
  20. The drip
  21. More like us
  22. A point of view
  23. Rules for working in a studio
  24. Where would we be without failure?
  25. Modern laziness
  26. The minimum critical mass
  27. The big squeeze
  28. Reading at work
  29. How does the ball know?
  30. Your soft skills inventory
  31. The most important journeys come without a map

November 2017

  1. How much does it cost?
  2. Two kinds of practice
  3. The unfair advantage
  4. Better than who you know
  5. Do they celebrate on Saturn?
  6. Getting clear about risk
  7. The last Black Friday
  8. Thank you means two things
  9. Best practices
  10. Yelling upstairs
  11. Persistent stability
  12. The boss goes first
  13. Like Mary Shelley
  14. The simple truth about net neutrality
  15. Five contributions
  16. The confusion about competence
  17. Outsiders
  18. Meaningful work
  19. Full vs. enough
  20. Been done before
  21. Speakerphone voice
  22. Everyone else is irrational
  23. Cancelled
  24. Winning a yoga race
  25. Disastorino
  26. This is post 7,000
  27. Cheap symbolism
  28. The overflowing outbox
  29. The real law of averages
  30. Samizdat is in the writing
  31. The work not yet done

October 2017

  1. Machine unreadable
  2. The thing about maps
  3. Impostor syndrome
  4. On being a good driver
  5. Money for nothing
  6. Important, popular or viral
  7. Reverso g-h-o-s-t (off topic)
  8. Degrees of freedom
  9. Date certain
  10. Stuntvertising
  11. Decision making, after the fact
  12. What will you do with your surplus?
  13. A publishing master class
  14. Processing negative reviews
  15. On leveling up
  16. What makes your sirens go off…
  17. Price vs. cost
  18. Look around
  19. On speaking up
  20. Seeking sonder
  21. Distance to the top
  22. Oppositional
  23. The problem with high expectations…
  24. The engine of our discontent
  25. Confusing signals
  26. Technical skills, power and influence
  27. If you can’t see it, how can you make it better?
  28. Defining authenticity
  29. The pre-steal panic, and why it doesn’t matter
  30. Change is a word…
  31. “You’re doing it wrong”
  32. The pleasure/happiness gap

September 2017

  1. Looking for a friend (or a fight)
  2. Facing the inner critic
  3. The crisp meeting
  4. The under (and the over) achiever
  5. Unbridled
  6. On the danger of saying something for the first time
  7. #perfect
  8. Constructive dissatisfaction
  9. Your fast car
  10. In search of competition
  11. Can you live in a shepherd’s hut?
  12. Selling confusion
  13. Beware of false averages
  14. Selfish marketing doesn’t last
  15. Fitting in all the way
  16. Appropriate collusion (organizing the weaker side)
  17. Impossible, unlikely or difficult?
  18. Building on maximized systems
  19. Optimized or maximized?
  20. Toward cooperation
  21. The musclebound baby
  22. The power of community learning
  23. First aid matters
  24. Common traps, worth avoiding
  25. Airbrushing
  26. Everybody is a marketer
  27. Compulsory Education is an oxymoron (back-to-school rant)
  28. Irresistible is rarely easy or rational
  29. Getting serious about remarkable
  30. One step at a time
  31. “Nothing matters more than results”

August 2017

  1. Resilience and the high end
  2. Fear of escalation
  3. “I got it!”
  4. Marketing about power and with power
  5. The toxic antidote to goodwill
  6. What you know vs. what you do
  7. Did you publish?
  8. Don’t forget the second step
  9. Rejection (and the four paths)
  10. The market for used eclipse sunglasses
  11. Valuing hygiene factors
  12. Preparing (for the test of time)
  13. The problem with direct experience
  14. Faux intimacy
  15. “I have fear”
  16. On being discovered
  17. Sloppy science
  18. “But we needed the eggs”
  19. Questions for the underinformed
  20. Waves are free
  21. An audience of one
  22. Seeing and believing
  23. Appearing to care
  24. Bought
  25. On beating yourself up
  26. When in doubt, connect
  27. The taxi or the cruise ship?
  28. The money maximization distraction
  29. The Peter Possibility
  30. Feels risky
  31. The management of whales

July 2017

  1. Anti-glib: Knowing what you’re talking about
  2. You’ve arrived
  3. “My side, right or wrong”
  4. Ocellate
  5. He deserves it, but do you?
  6. Sham surgery
  7. Last call for The Marketing Seminar, summer edition
  8. Cultural density
  9. Be the different one
  10. Instead of the easy numbers…
  11. All deals are handshake deals
  12. Upcoming speaking and teaching schedule
  13. How much does a ton weigh?
  14. Toward dumber
  15. The express and the local
  16. Gaztelugatxe
  17. The ethics of FTD
  18. In search of enrollment
  19. Strength through peace
  20. Permission abused is permission lost
  21. The two fears of voluntary education
  22. In search of the minimum viable audience
  23. A shared and useful illusion
  24. Drip, drip, drip
  25. But what if you’re doing it wrong?
  26. Caring is free
  27. The rationality paradox
  28. Does it help?
  29. Simple approach to the things you check
  30. The cost of independence
  31. Whose business are you minding?
  32. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
  33. Your Bob Dylan story

June 2017

  1. Two confusions
  2. Four ways to improve customer service
  3. Creating discomfort
  4. Worth reconsidering?
  5. Training customers
  6. Better than it needs to be
  7. You are more powerful than you think
  8. “Is judgment involved?”
  9. Staring at the numbers
  10. Worth being afraid of
  11. All it takes is effort
  12. Winner take all
  13. A professional stumbler
  14. Blame Charles Mochet
  15. Make two lists
  16. Mental load and the worry cache
  17. Gorilla marketing
  18. What 99% looks like
  19. Accelerating revolutions
  20. “But what if it works?”
  21. Living in dissatisfaction
  22. The long, slow, deliberate, all hands on deck method is the best we’ve got
  23. No way out
  24. Off the hook with Milton Friedman
  25. Your instincts are better than you think they are
  26. The critic, the mimic and the clown all have one thing in common
  27. The right effort of generosity
  28. Greatest hits are exhausting
  29. Thinking clearly about quality
  30. There is no right answer

May 2017

  1. Do we have a choice?
  2. Choosing your spot
  3. An overlooked secret to effectiveness (and happiness)
  4. In search of familiarity
  5. Predicting or inventing…
  6. Microcopy in the age of the glance
  7. “What about endogeneity?”
  8. Lowering the bar
  9. Facts are not the antidote for doubt
  10. Choosing your fuel
  11. Just words
  12. Say one thing at a time
  13. Three ways to add value
  14. Emotional labor
  15. What Henry Ford understood about wages
  16. The waitlist for the altMBA
  17. Stinginess in the connection economy
  18. Groucho runs deep
  19. The middle of everywhere
  20. When time catches up
  21. “It’s not my problem”
  22. Catching up with podcasts
  23. Possibility
  24. Tension vs. fear
  25. Without a sail
  26. In defense of the tree emoji
  27. Pre-existing conditions
  28. And we just had a winner
  29. Defending myself (vs. offending my self)
  30. The self-healing letter of complaint
  31. Introducing The Marketing Seminar
  32. When we understand
  33. The thing about bananas

April 2017

  1. The unfairness (and wisdom) of paint
  2. Empathy is the hard part
  3. Taking it for granite
  4. You go first
  5. Save as draft
  6. And then we got bored
  7. You look like you’re lying (when you’re nervous)
  8. What does “science” mean?
  9. The best time to study for the test
  10. Who are we seeking to become?
  11. There is no ‘the industry’
  12. Complicated problems rarely require magical explanations
  13. Avoiding the good/great chasm
  14. Compared to what?
  15. The bingo method
  16. Being wrong until you are right
  17. ‘Sort by price’ is lazy
  18. How thin is your ice?
  19. Cursing gravity
  20. With the sound off or on?
  21. Guardrails
  22. Who cut down the last tree?
  23. Like riding a bike
  24. Sharp knives are safer
  25. Opportunity triage
  26. On pie
  27. 23 things artificially intelligent computers can do better/faster/cheaper than you can
  28. The invisible fence
  29. Can I trust you?
  30. On getting worked up
  31. Misbelief

March 2017

  1. Merely transactional
  2. All we have to do is be the person we say we are
  3. Nickels and dimes are worth less than that
  4. What if scale wasn’t the goal?
  5. Unselling
  6. Toward civilization
  7. Holding your breadth
  8. Seriously vs. personally
  9. The reason we need the FDA (hint: it’s marketers)
  10. To tell the truth
  11. Counting beans
  12. Three simple and difficult steps
  13. Showing up
  14. Fear, failure and shame, oh my
  15. The half-life of a near miss
  16. Is ignorance the problem?
  17. The thing you can’t have becomes a powerful placebo
  18. Agency
  19. The best of us (the worst of us)
  20. Our pre-judgment problem
  21. Emotionally attractive
  22. Writing the review in advance
  23. What’s on tonight?
  24. Obedience and inquiry
  25. When does the water get hot?
  26. The last copies of my big book
  27. Cost reduce or value increase?
  28. “We’ll keep your resume on file”
  29. Lazy but talented
  30. “It doesn’t sound like you”
  31. Drip by drip and the thunderclap
  32. When tribal adherence becomes toxic
  33. Who are you playing tennis with?

February 2017

  1. “And then what happens?”
  2. Fast, easy, cheap, delicious and healthy (a food bonus)
  3. What bureaucracy can’t do for you
  4. The why of urgent vs. important
  5. The smoking lounge
  6. “Hit the red button”
  7. Over/with
  8. Drawing a line in the sand
  9. Squeezing the last minute out of a session
  10. Our worldview casts a shadow in the words that resonate
  11. The opposite of “more”
  12. Interesting problems
  13. Power and reason
  14. “Nothing wrong with having standards”
  15. The pact
  16. Maybe your customer isn’t trying to save money
  17. Making change (in multiples)
  18. The two vocabularies (because there are two audiences)
  19. Proximity and intimacy
  20. Smartening up
  21. What’s the next step for media (and for us)?
  22. Bring your point of view and your active voice, or let’s not meet
  23. They’re raising the weather tax
  24. Working for free (but working for yourself)
  25. What posterity has done for us
  26. Losing by winning
  27. “But that’s not what I meant”
  28. It’s almost impossible to sell the future
  29. Pole vaulting on Jupiter
  30. altMBA update
  31. But when will you abandon it?

January 2017

  1. Missed it by that much
  2. Make believe problems
  3. Friction and traction
  4. Just the right amount of data
  5. Shared reality, diverse opinions
  6. Appropriate complexity and risk
  7. A listening device
  8. Hoarding doesn’t work
  9. Almost no one
  10. Long-term strategy: Don’t be a jerk
  11. You can look it up
  12. Rights (and responsibilities)
  13. Everyone is better than you are…
  14. How to be heard
  15. How long is now?
  16. Economics is messy
  17. … and it bends toward justice
  18. Pavlov’s in your pocket
  19. How to make a sign
  20. Showing vs. telling
  21. But where did the algorithm come from?
  22. Fixing the buffet line
  23. Entitlement is optional
  24. More and less
  25. Maps and globes
  26. Good taste
  27. Levelling up in 2017
  28. Is kindness a luxury?
  29. The candy diet
  30. Crossing the awareness threshold
  31. Wondering—past and future
  32. The choice

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