If you like the Maven Game, you’ll love Doug Rushkoff—assuming you aren’t already familiar with his work. The world is a scary place and increasingly I prefer Doug’s lens for making sense of it. Read Doug’s most recent book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus,

It’s hard to sit and write. I clench at the very thought of it. Have you noticed this clenching phenomenon? I imagine it’s similar to standing in front of Tony Robbins’s 57° F plunge pool [https://www.tonyrobbins.com/health-vitality/the-power-of-cold-water/]. You can’t think about doing

First: I’m giving a lecture to a class at NYU about innovation in publishing in a few weeks. What should I talk about—whether we still need dust jackets in an age of robot vacuums? I’m lost. Help. Second: anyone coming to town for the 800-CEO-READ Business Book

Back in high school, I took a summer job at an insurance company based right off Times Square. It paid eleven dollars an hour and there was air conditioning—one of my better jobs overall. Mostly, I’d sit in the back room with the IT guy. Now and then,

Your environment profoundly affects your writing. You don’t pay enough attention to it. What do you read? What do you listen to? Where do you sit when you write? What’s in your field of vision? What forms the substrate of your work? It matters. I’ve curtailed my

When I was a young editor at St. Martin’s Press, I was invited to a meeting with Richard Saul Wurman, the founder of TED. Since I managed the Let’s Go series at the time, Wurman’s new travel guide seemed like a fit for me, so I was

This essay [https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-traits-of-a-proficient-programmer] , excerpted from a book on programming, applies just as much to writing as it does to code. The author, Gregory Brown, draws a useful line between competence and proficiency: > Competence means having enough experience and knowledge to get stuff done; proficiency

Men wear suits. Many women wear suits. Working from home, I  wear pajamas exclusively, but the point stands: suits. Suits  are uncomfortable, expensive, and boring. They’re designed to samify people, iron out pesky differences. Broad shoulders all around. Suits work so well because they comfort wearer and wearee. They

Writing is scary. Does the fear fade with experience? I don’t know. I’m only a few years back into writing as a full-time profession. It was scary the first time around. It’s even scarier now. Ask me in a decade—I’ll be the Renfield-looking guy arguing

I’ll start this by saying that coming up with stuff is hard. By “stuff,” I mean: ideas, assertions, advice, findings, etc. The juicy bits that get called out in bullet-points at the end of a chapter or summarized in those business book summaries for “busy and successful executives.” (Actual