So many options, so little time.
A friend asked if he should put his podcast on YouTube.
After all, that’s how many people are consuming this sort of content, it’s low cost. The comments and subscriptions offer interesting tools for engagement, and it could grow their base.
But just because something might be worth doing, that doesn’t mean you should.
More always comes with a cost.
If you can’t do it as well as the medium demands with the resources you have, you should either find more resources or take a pass. And if the not-silly thing you’re considering is going to add more metrics, not better ones, then walk away.
Annoyingly, yet productively, we keep coming back to, “who’s it for” and “what’s it for.”
October 19, 2025
Luxury goods are special: they are scarce and expensive, and they earn us status with some folks because it shows that we paid more than we needed to.
Luxury isn’t about quality, suitability or performance. Luxury isn’t a more accurate watch or a faster processor. Luxury is a marker that we can afford to do something others might consider wasteful.
A Birkin bag is a luxury good, and so is reading an entire non-fiction book, listening to a public radio broadcast or attending a concert when we could stay at home and listen for free.
By ‘wasting’ our attention on nuance, narrative, experiences and everything except the checkbox takeaway, we’re sending a message to ourselves and others. A message about allocating our time to something beyond optimized performance or survival.
If you’ve signed up to offer an attention-luxury good, you undermine it when you also try to make it quick and convenient.
October 18, 2025
Enrico Fermi found a paradox: If there’s intelligent life on other planets, why haven’t we heard from them yet?
Perhaps the answer is this:
Any civilization sufficiently advanced to travel great distances will have to work in community.
This pro-social behavior, combined with the tech they develop, will inevitably lead to some sort of social media.
And once social media arrives, the civilization will struggle to survive.
I’m more optimistic than this ‘law’ would have you believe, but it’s worth acknowledging that we become the stories we tell, and the social media algorithms we live with cause us to tell stories we might regret.
It’s not our job to be used by social media, or to become tools of the algorithm.
Hat tip to Hugh.
October 17, 2025
Even though it’s possible to design an oral thermometer that measures body temperature to a hundredth of a degree, there’s no reason to do so. In fact, 98.6 is overkill. 98 is enough information.
More digits don’t give us more information, they simply distract or confuse us.
The same is true for time. Knowing what happened in a one-second snapshot interval is useful for judging a horse race, but hardly interesting if we’re measuring interest in a new Broadway show.
Just because we can add more digits doesn’t mean that it’s significant. We can intentionally ask for less.
October 16, 2025
A powerful metaphor from a long hike:
Every hiker is intimately aware of their backpack. They picked it out, choosing from dozens of options. They know which straps are loose and which are digging into their skin. They can tell you if it’s lopsided, and what is in each pocket.
And yet…
Even after days on the trail, they probably couldn’t tell you a thing about anyone else’s backpack. Except, perhaps, that everyone else has one.
That’s the first step toward empathy: Realizing that everyone else has a backpack, and that it’s different from yours.
October 15, 2025
Most people do the obvious thing, that’s why we call it obvious.
A new product, idea or technology is rarely obvious, at least at first.
So the work of scale is to be seen as inevitable. The stepwise process of becoming the obvious choice.
Skipping steps requires insisting that we’re the obvious choice, but that rarely works. Instead, we work to create the conditions for others to decide that we are.
October 14, 2025
Create a document, several pages long, that explains who you are. What sort of learner are you? Do you have degrees or expertise? What sort of change are you making, who works with you, what are your standards? How do you want to engage?
Periodically, upload the doc to the chat you’re having with an LLM. Let it know you’re offering a reminder of how you want to work together.
One size doesn’t fit all.
Also: Don’t look to AI as a source for verified facts. The phrase, “That can’t be right, please double check and offer sources,” is not going to hurt the AI’s feelings, but it might save your project.
Human beings are used to being productive by decreasing the amount of time and effort we put into something. Computers don’t work that way. Give them instructions on how to take the long way around and you’ll both come out ahead.
October 13, 2025
If you want to make a change (or make a living) it might pay to find a topic that people hesitate to talk about. There’s enormous leverage in making the uncomfortable urgent enough to take action on.
One of the easiest ways to improve public health and reduce cancer is by increasing the adoption of colonoscopies. No scientific breakthrough is needed, just a cultural shift.
The same sort of impact happens when we prioritize women’s health, or retirement savings or drunk driving.
Culture works hard to maintain its status quo, and persistent community action can change our standards.
October 12, 2025
There’s “regular luck” and “earned luck.”
When a stranger dies and leaves you $10,000,000, that’s regular luck. Undeserved, unearned, a bolt out of the blue. Someone is going to win the lottery and it might be you.
The other sort of luck happens after a lot of focus and effort.
This is the third novel that becomes a bestseller, or the hard work that turns into a promotion to VP of sales.
It’s easy to imagine that earned luck is well deserved, because it is. But quite often, earned luck, while earned, doesn’t arrive.
Acknowledging the boost from our good luck doesn’t diminish the hard work we put into the project. In fact, it celebrates it.
It’s hard work to stick around long enough to get lucky.
October 11, 2025
Friendship is part of it, but it’s mutual forward motion that transforms a group.
The shared journey and mutual respect of a cohort can change the arc of our work and our lives. When we’re in sync, we can find the courage to build something important.
Fifteen years ago, I ran a three-day seminar in my office for about 12 women. The FeMBA cohort took a life of its own, and last week I was lucky enough to join them for their reunion. My role in this cohort was tiny–I was simply there at the beginning.
Entrepreneurship isn’t about building a giant company that makes money. Instead, it’s the attitude of solving problems, creating leverage and building something bigger than one’s self. When people are enrolled in this journey, they’re open to possibility and optimism.
The internet has put millions of people a single click away from each of us, but too often, it simply confuses us with the endless blur of ‘next’. When we take the time to commit, it turns out that there are people right here, right now, eager to connect and join us on our journey.
I’m going to do another FeMBA session in December, joined by Jessica Quinn, one of the original members of the cohort. If you’d like to apply, all the details are right here. The event is free, and lunch is provided as well. It’s in person, in my office, December 2, 3 and 4. We’re looking for people who are early in their journey who have already shown a commitment to making a difference and leading.
Of course, you don’t need to apply to be part of cohort. You can simply start your own.
October 10, 2025
