Articles100
Is it helping? You wouldn’t stay by passively if someone else was beating you up. Perhaps we shouldn’t accept it when we do it.
The Decware triode amp is the best low-power stereo amp I’ve ever heard. And it’s a bargain. If you have the right speakers, it’s an extraordinary device. And there’s a two-year waitlist. 2000 people, 11 pages long. This approach to timing and production serves all the people that matter to the company. Employees are free […]
If you win an auction to get a click, you probably overpaid. Every other bidder stopped bidding, that’s why you won. Putting attention up for auction is a good business model—for the seller.
When your project, proposal or resume is rejected, it’s tempting to try to understand why. Scrutinize the rejection letter and turn the short sentence into a paragraph or an essay, then play it over and over in your search for how to do better next time. If you can simply answer this rejection, next time […]
Keith Jarrett on improvisation. When the artist is creating in real time, in conjunction with the witnesses in the room, “performance” goes away. It’s creation. Improvisation is a privilege, a chance to create without a guarantee.
There’s a village in Luxembourg that’s right outside the main metropolis. A farmer often ties up a donkey to the little bridge leading to town. The juxtaposition of international digital trading and donkeys is a reminder that as fast as the future arrives, the past also sticks around. We can measure the distance not just […]
You’re not a crow, neither is your project. To get from a village in rural France to Los Angeles, the trip to London might be a tiny fraction of the distance from London to LA, but it takes more than half the time. It’s easy to imagine that every step in our journey proceeds at […]
Is this where books go to die? There are about 7500 public libraries in the US, and until recently, more than a third of their transactions were for DVDs. What’s a library for? The media has changed, our needs have changed, but the dynamics of funding, architecture and expectation have largely remained the same. The […]
They’re often out of whack. A Hard Day’s Night took less than 15 hours from idea to finished record. More Than a Feeling, from Tom Scholz and Boston, took five years. Each pleased their audiences. One is not 1,500 times more valuable than the other. Sometimes, work that requires effort leads to scarcity, and that […]
People lie. They lie in focus groups, they lie on surveys and they lie to themselves. Culture can be seen as an organized lying function. Be aware of what other people are thinking and make choices about your preferences so you can fit in. Without this effect, we wouldn’t have trends, fads or hits. Part […]
It doesn’t have to be well-crafted, historically important or aesthetically unique. It simply needs to be famous. Celebrity art is famous, with a story and thus emotional resonance. It’s a souvenir for our eyes, a chance to have proximity without ownership. It conflates familiarity with scarcity, the power of in-person experience with the context of […]
“Working in the studio is like building a ship in a bottle. Playing live is like being on a rowboat in the ocean.” Jerry Garcia You probably need some studio time, but you definitely need to play live.
What if they meant it? What if your return felt special to the people behind the counter? What if they knew, without looking it up, or being told–what if they knew that you were here, again, a vote of trust and confidence. Returning home is one of the oldest human desires. It’s a feeling that […]
We transferred an idea from engineering to culture, but it’s incomplete. If you build a watch that doesn’t tell time, it’s fair to say it doesn’t work. But when a critic says, “that joke didn’t work,” after seeing a comic perform to a raucous audience, what they probably mean is, “that didn’t work for me.” […]
“How few people can we get away with?” That’s a question many bosses think hard about. Automate. Streamline. Improve productivity and take humans out of as many tasks as possible. It’s a time-tested way to create profits and to increase a certain kind of reliability. Claude Code is popular with many organizations for precisely this […]
We work so hard to have freedom and leverage and choice. And then, as soon as a social network, boss or cultural force instructs us to do something, we fold our tents and go along. Responsibility is scary. Sometimes it’s easier to find someone (or something) to blame. Just because AI tells you to put […]
When new creation technologies arrive, they make the best a little worse and the bad a lot better. Desktop publishing made every local garage sale sign a lot more legible, but can’t quite replace the hand-kerned and tweaked typography of the era before. A smartphone in your pocket takes far better video of the family […]
Organizations thrive on incremental improvement. They find a stable foundation and then build a feedback loop of relentless improvement. This leads to great efficiency, higher productivity and more profits. It enables more throughput and builds market share. Except things change. Optimized offerings are brittle. When the foundation shifts, all of that incremental improvement breaks into […]
For generations, the rules of Lego were simple: many pieces, all able to connect in many ways, led to many outcomes. That almost drove the company into bankruptcy, though. Lego kits saved the business. Each kit has just one way to do the work, follow the instructions carefully. Industrial indoctrination in a box. While it […]
Built into the concept of “interesting” is the unexplored. The temptation of discovery and the new. And so, by definition, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, it’s likely that there is something more interesting somewhere else. The people at the next table may be talking about something more fascinating than your date is… the only […]
Nailing it in the first take is a sign of preparation and professionalism. No need for two tries if you are clear about what you’re doing and how. The next take is where hope lies. This one was pretty good, but next time, we’ll bring it. And the last take is good enough. That’s why […]
One of the best traditional bakeries in New York has a kitchen you can see from the counter. People wait in line for their handmade French baguettes, and the confirmation that they were made right here and right now is reassuring. I noticed that the baker was using a mechanical gadget called a loader. It […]
Compared to what? 98% of the time, the state champ loses at nationals. Every billionaire but one isn’t the richest person in the world. Only one of the 300 people who direct a feature film each year will win an Academy Award. And only one public company has the greatest share price growth. Competition is […]
It’s a dance between workers, bosses and the market. The most stable quadrant happens when a thoughtful and consistent boss hires the right person, pays them fairly, creates positive working conditions and useful training. In return, the company gets extraordinary performance. That’s someone doing a good job who also has a good job. A particularly […]
Hank Green has an interesting take on the scientific method: We advance because scientists work to persuade others that they’re correct. Every paper, statistical analysis and experiment is nothing but an argument designed to persuade an intelligent critic. The method of argument is determined by the audience–if they require double-blind studies and useful statistical models, […]
The folks at TryAI put Fable to the test in directing a music video. The AI glitches show up from the start and continue. But it’s even more unsettling than this. When AI tries to create and direct joyous human dancing, it fails. The dancers look like retired accountants at a wedding. The stiff awkwardness […]
The nearest lightning was 1,200 miles away. At least that’s what the weather site reported. When lightning is that unlikely, we don’t worry about it much. It turns out that this is the best time to install a lightning arrestor on your home, though. The urgency of the moment might be the push we need […]
There are lots of things you can do, but it’s not clear you should. OpenAI has virtually unlimited resources. And in addition to building a chat-based AI, they chose to launch pretty good image generation, a basketball, a meme video generator (since cancelled), an upcoming speaker that actually moves around your house, and a myriad […]
The right words in the right sequence create information. Ideas that change our world. The first kind of word salad allows the writer to hide. Fancy words, carefully juxtaposed, saying nothing. This can serve a valuable function for politicians, academics and bosses–but there’s no real information for the reader. It’s simply a collection of words […]
Even though it’s invisible, easily transported and weightless, software used to stick around. It took years to architect and build a complex bit of software, and thousands of people to help maintain it. Even a complex website could be seen as a durable technical asset. Now, with Claude Code on everyone’s desk, new software is […]
The meeting is now broken. Even if you were actually engaging with the attendees before, it’s over. You took a new medium and stuffed an old one into it, changed the dynamic and ruined it. Zoom is a device that eliminates physical distance and enables a synchronized conversation. Interactions in real time. In particular, groups […]
When we upgrade something in our lives, the thing we used to be satisfied with is no longer satisfying. That’s the nature of an upgrade. After a certain point, the only thing we’re buying is the way the upgrade makes us feel in the moment, not our satisfaction going forward. Stereos, salt, art on the […]
This is a useful term. It helps us understand a topic or theory that can be considered from multiple points of view by people engaging with good intent. “Pluto is a planet” was a controversial statement among some people who study the solar system. On the other hand, it’s not controversial that Pluto actually exists. […]
Last year, the recording session I did with Mel Robbins was going so well that her producers asked me to stick around–four hours later, we had recorded enough for two episodes. One never knows how these things will feel until after the fact, but part 2 is live now. I hope you get as much […]
The moment you start treating your customers as captives, they begin to make other plans. It might take a while, but they always end up leaving. The first step is warning away their friends. On the other hand, when we treat our customers like the free agents they are, they often choose to stick around […]
More than 345 riffs, worthy of a calendar, all in one place. They don’t fit in a blog post, so I made a page of them. Hit the refresh above to see another one, or see them all, and vote on your favorites, at sethsriffs.com On the riffs page, you can click the ? icon […]
The professionals you have the most in common with may be your competition. They wrestle with similar problems and have similar goals. And you can offer value by sharing what you’ve learned and what you know–and that value will often be reciprocated. I met Tom Rielly when was running PlanetOut in the 1990s. About forty […]
What’s this idea (book, meme, song, TV show, marketing campaign) for? Perhaps you want to reach the largest number of people. Or make the most sales. Or generate the most word of mouth. Or be notorious. Or change part of the culture. Or get good reviews. Or have people actually finish your book. You might […]
A hundred and fifteen years ago, Christian Larson wrote one of the first popular self-help manifestos. The Optimist’s Creed argued that it was a choice, and a useful promise. Not to promise the world, or the boss, or the market. To promise ourselves. Optimism is not a mood. It’s a discipline. Last week, Reid Hoffman reminded […]
The world is like this and therefore I feel like that. That seems right. It’s raining, so I’m sad. The person cut me off in traffic and so I’m angry. Ford makes better cars, so I like them more than Chevys. Occasionally, this cause and effect is what happens. But more often, it goes in […]
The more often we succumb to the urgency of the moment, the more urgency we create. The next minute is probably not the last minute, but when we treat it this way, it will be soon followed by another last minute.
Freedom is responsibility with a sexier name. 250 years in, democracy still matters. Click to upvote the ones that resonate and please share.
“I blame myself.” Said no one, ever. At least not the consumers I know. When a careless woodworker loses a digit on a table saw, they almost certainly blame the design and instructions of the device, not their lack of care. On a less gruesome note, the user who fails to read the website before […]
It’s difficult to ride a bicycle in the pitch darkness. We need to see where we’re going to avoid obstacles. And it’s hard to maintain our balance. When we choose to avoid the conversations that make us uncomfortable, we’re pedaling in the dark. Talk about it. Turn on the lights.
The standards have changed a lot in the last few millennia: The big man said it. The book said it. The newspaper said it. I saw a photo. I saw it on TV. I read it on the internet. That’s what the AI said. There has always been room for doubt. But the last century […]
Everybody eats. And, now and then, it’s fun to find something better. In the scheme of things, fancy foods are a bargain, a chance to have the best in the world for a few dollars. Here are some persistent (and new) favorites. For those outside the US, I hope you can find even better local […]
A simple 7-question test helps us realize how diverse a population is. On this quiz, the highest possible score is less than 7%. No matter how common you think your answers are, no matter how normal you feel, you’re actually in sync with just 7% (at the most) of all citizens of the US. My […]
The backlist are the products already in the marketplace. Built earlier, still sold. The frontlist is the new. Restaurants have regulars (backlist) and new patrons. Broadway shows are attended by people who see three to ten shows a year, as well as folks going to their very first production. Supermarkets sell staples (like milk and […]
If you can swap your slogan with a competitor’s without changing the meaning of either brand, then your slogan is meaningless. For example, “You belong here” is not a positioning statement for a college seeking new students. It’s just noise. It also doesn’t help to mix weasel words with more weasel words and then add […]
One of the nicest thing you can do for someone you care about is point them to an idea, a book, a talk or a tool that will amplify their work and help them get to where they’re going. It’s not easy. It means you understand their goals, see them for who they are and […]
They keep getting fancier. But you would benefit from investing in better lighting instead. It’s tempting to upgrade your computer processor, your frying pan or your sneakers as well. The thing is, once the foundational tools are good enough, technique and training outperform hardware. New snow tires are often more effective than a new car […]
Look around the room you’re in. There are dozens of electrically powered devices, each waiting for you to request their assistance. A toaster, six lights, an oven, the ice maker, stereo, TV, microwave… It’s a very long list. Silent and ubiquitous. Of course, electricity didn’t start this way. Using a washing machine to do your […]
Focus groups and informal feedback offer a trap: Asking someone in the target audience if they like something might get you useful feedback. But most of the time, the people you’re asking aren’t actually in the group of early adopters that are going to make your rollout work. They’re not the people who buy work […]
Promotion, activation, and conversation come together when the early adopters have a tool to share a new idea. My new book is out a few months, and it’s a chance to create a share package with swag. There are only 1,000 sets. Each includes 10 first-printing copies of The Knot (with the collectible mini-poster) + […]
I asked Google Gemini about the last decade of Google’s relentless push to make blogs less popular. It wrote: Your timeline is spot on. The systematic destruction of the independent web’s infrastructure didn’t start with modern AI; it began directly with the death of Google Reader in 2013, which fractured the RSS ecosystem that allowed […]
Birthdays are a little overrated. I’ve never met anyone who was more than a passive participant in their birth, but anniversaries represent a choice. Every year, we can commemorate a commitment we made and then decide to recommit. Anniversaries aren’t just romantic. The day you took the job, the day you started the practice, the […]
Thirty years ago, Cory Doctorow did an interview showing primitive inklings of the internet future (music, videos, etc.). At the time, it was easy to dismiss it as an irrelevant toy, and most people in power did just that. Around the same time, I wrote an article for Direct Marketing magazine outlining the future of […]
A 100-foot long boat that’s 99% complete is going to sink before it leaves the dock. That gaping hole is more than enough to do it in. On the other hand, a baked ziti that’s 99% as good as the best baked ziti ever made is exactly good enough to serve in any setting. Mediocrity […]
We have more agency and choice than we know. And sometimes, when the awareness of our freedom arrives, it’s too late to reclaim the opportunities we missed. Some of the walls around us are real—built by people who have no right to build them, who profit from our staying put. And some of the walls […]
[A long riff on book publishing with (perhaps) wide applicability to your work as well.] Publishing is different from writing—it’s the hard work of creating the conditions to help people get in sync, move forward, and get to where they’re headed. The best reason to publish a non-fiction business or how-to book in 2026 is […]
It’s pretty astonishing how far people will go to announce various forms of status: The list has little to do with money spent or money in the bank. Humans care about status and affiliation. We’ve spent our lives being very good at noticing both.
There are more than a million podcasts. The good news is that it’s easy to start one. The top 1% of all podcasts account for 99% of all downloads. That means that if your goal is reach, the long tail isn’t going to help much. The short head, even in a medium as wide open […]
When tech shows up, it offers a shortcut and convenience. You can use Google Maps to direct you somewhere without paying much attention to the surroundings. You can use Claude to write your marketing copy and get a better-than-mediocre result the first try. You can look for a gift on Amazon, pick the first match, […]
No one cares about it as much as the person who’s planning it. Some folks waited in line for the first iPhone, but not many. It’s tempting to try to bend the curve and put the ‘grand’ into ‘grand’ opening. But that usually creates disappointment. In any population, only a few folks get satisfaction out […]
There have always been trolls. Hecklers, jesters, and class clowns. The troll lives under the bridge and invents nonsense grievances in order to get attention. But, until recently, there wasn’t much of a business model to support this career choice. It’s said that William Randolph Hearst started a war to sell newspapers, but few people […]
Every day, about 16,000,000 hours of tennis are played. The percentage of that devoted to tournament play approaches zero. So why is informal tennis built on a zero-sum model? In a game, every shot is designed to have the opponent fail. The goal is to have your opponent miss the ball, hit it into the […]
When culture pushes us to measure things that don’t matter to us, our values are captured. Once the metrics turn a profit for corporations and those in power, they are amplified, and almost overnight, begin to matter to us, even if they run contrary to what we originally set out to do or become. We’re […]
What’s the structure of your project? Here are three paradigms to consider: Video game development is expensive and risky because you’re on two frontiers at once. The tech frontier, trying to do something with hardware that hasn’t been done before, and the game mechanics frontier, perfecting and polishing new forms of interaction that last. So […]
Steinbeck points out that the stars shine in the sky, regardless of the drama here on Earth. Perspective fools us into believing that our point of view is primary, but it’s not difficult to imagine a more distant (or closer) one that would change everything. The service at table 7 might not matter much to […]
If a machine makes a painting that no one ever sees, it might be well-crafted or match some objective form of beauty, but it’s not art. Art changes the creator and the viewer. Art requires participation. Art is a verb. Decoration is important. Beauty matters. But decoration and beauty are insufficient to create art. Music, […]
Bookkeepers do important work. But a bookkeeper is not the head of accounting. Marketers are responsible for anything the organization does that touches the market. But many people with ‘marketer’ in their title simply go to meetings and do tasks after the real work of marketing is already done. Some tech companies have hundreds of […]
Real artists do all the painting themselves, not like Rembrandt Real artists use brushes, not technology like Cartier-Bresson Real writers write it out by hand, not like Jack Kerouac Real musicians record it live, not like Steely Dan Real singers sing without processing, not like Kanye West and Daft Punk Real directors do the prep […]
Trick title. There are at least three kinds of “marketing” we ought to be teaching: Most organized marketing instruction is about the first or second, with some online courses teaching hustle and hype, which I don’t count as marketing. My best work is about the third kind, the one where it all began. More here.
In simple situations with obvious metrics, transparency earns trust. Voting, for example, benefits from audit trails and inspectability. But transparency can also undermine trust. Walking through the typical restaurant kitchen on the way to dinner probably won’t increase the typical diner’s trust in the experience. The restaurant isn’t hiding anything; it’s just that they know […]
We evolved words on top of our primordial ability to have feelings. Words allow us to be specific, to understand a situation more completely and to teach. Our hunches and feelings still matter, but professionals choose to be able to talk about their work. Learn the words and then make the choice to use them.
Paul McGowan makes stereos. To paraphrase his insight: The musicality isn’t a feature you add to an amplifier. It’s what’s left when you stop ruining it. To expand: Customer delight isn’t something we add to our projects. It’s what’s left if we don’t ruin it. Curiosity isn’t simply what’s left after a complete education. It’s […]
Even if you’re not applying, this thought experiment gives a glimpse into how the world is about to be rewired. The top 10 most selective colleges in the US admit about 5% of those who apply. They’re not selling education as much as a label, a rare chance for someone to slot themselves into a […]
Any gathering of more than two people involves compromise. Embracing this fact actually increases the utility of the event. It’s a trap to commit to making it perfect for everyone–we end up sacrificing what the event could be and creating mediocrity instead. A surprise party might be designed to make the host feel good, or […]
If you’re not sure of the difference, you’re probably just doing your job. Perhaps, if you’re fortunate, your job is in sync with your work. But most of the time, our work is something we have to fight for. It’s not something we’re given, or apply for. It’s what we choose to do. The change […]
If we choose you based on price, please don’t be surprised if we leave the moment someone else uses the same tactic on you. Low price is a temporary refuge for a marketer who has run out of useful ways to improve the experience and deliver more value.
It took me thirty years to populate the bookshelf that’s behind me in most of my videos. Most of us don’t have the time or patience to do that. At the same time, the wonky computer-generated background many people use on Zoom calls undermines the impact and authority you might be seeking. I just discovered […]
It’s possible you use social media to grow your business. Or to enhance your career. Or maybe it’s to find delight and joy. When you add up all the tikking, tokking, tweeting and clicking, what’s the return on that investment? Is your vacation more fun when you spend it taking photos for your Instagram followers? […]
Not, “what do you think you can get?” Not, “what you’d be willing to live with…” Instead: If you were willing to be on the hook for the responsibility (if it works out) and the disappointment (if it doesn’t), which one do you actually want? It’s harder to answer than it sounds.
Moore’s Law was stated 60 years ago, but it only became a law once its predictions came true. The reason that your laptop doesn’t cost as much as your house is that computer chips get relentlessly cheaper and more powerful. Just as Gordon Moore predicted. But perhaps it wasn’t a prediction. Perhaps he wasn’t imagining […]
If that’s not happening, it’s possible you’re not being bold enough, generous enough or creative enough. It might be teenagers, competitors or that stranger down the street, but generous creative leadership always creates skeptics.
To quote the great Steve Wozniak, “Actual Intelligence.” The kind we’re born with and can develop if we choose. It’s worth more now than ever before. Alas, it’s rarely taught in school. The difficult work of making choices. The act of curation. The responsibility of putting your name on it. The judgment to ask the […]
If your toaster isn’t working, this is the first place to start. A combination of an easy first step and also the likelihood that it’s the problem. The troubleshooting for things not working in our interactions with others isn’t as obvious, but we can think about it in a similar way. The first question: Is […]
It’s useful and satisfying to have people go along with your wishes and your taste. But hoping that they’ll be delighted to do so and thank you for pointing out their previous errors might be asking for too much. It’s one thing for people to act as if you’re right. It’s a whole other thing […]
We create a job whenever someone with the authority to hire decides the value created is greater than the wages paid. In my lifetime, we’ve invented 7 billion or more jobs, which is great news. Great for the people who were able to earn a living, and productive for everyone who experienced some of the […]
Another unique German word. Umfunktionierung. Functional transformation. Most of us take the tools we’re given and use them as instructed. We follow the manual. We color inside the lines. We accept the functions as defined by those who came before us. But the ruckus maker asks: What if this tool could do something else? Umfunktionierung […]
At 2:30 in the morning, the night clerk at the hotel is a great help if you’ve locked yourself out of your room. But if you want to complain about the hours of the gym, the hotel’s environmental footprint or even their late check-in policy, you’re almost certainly wasting their time. And yours. Every organization […]
On a beautiful Sunday in Central Park, you’ll see thousands of people out for a jog. Each person has exactly the right running style–and none of those styles are the same. Each is wearing what they think of as the right clothes, listening (or not) to the right sort of music, going in precisely the […]
We can search for the perfect option or settle for something better than we have right now. The search for perfect never ends, and it’s a great place to hide. Would you rather wait for the perfect job, or take this new one, which is better than the one you have? The perfect leader is […]
Highlighting the non-existent negative is confusing. “Don’t be late,” isn’t as useful as, “We’re going to leave on time.” “I don’t want to be rude, but…” can easily be replaced by simply saying something that isn’t rude. And of course, “with all due respect…” is often the preface to something said without due respect.
Professionals take their work seriously. Hobbyists can take it personally. We arrive and make a promise. We do it on behalf of the client, and that promise has little to do with what we might want to do–it’s what they need us to do. And so we make our promises carefully, and keep them with […]
A dog gets fed and thinks his person is an omniscient, benevolent being. A cat gets fed and thinks it is. How we see ourselves in this analogy is actually up to each of us, every day. It also tells us a bit about how we think about customers, vendors, and partners.
You’re flying over Mount Rainier and a hole opens up in the bottom of your airplane. In that moment, you think hard about what you’ve done, what you’re doing, and what matters. My friend Ty actually had this happen. In that moment, she decided to stop wasting her days on a career that pleased her […]
Long after the fact, these are the best kind. They remind us of how far we’ve come. They’re proof that not giving up was a good idea. They are fuel for the next thing. But, at the time, they’re pretty hard to live with. All we can do is remind ourselves that it’s an unskippable […]
Runaway selection happens when organizations compete with each other far beyond the point where it’s rational to do so. We see this in species as well–peacocks have ungainly and inefficient feather displays because, as Alice’s Red Queen said, “It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” In organizations, there’s […]
It requires skill and effort. It can be taught. And it’s worth prioritizing. When we wing it, allocate little time to it or assume it’s a side effect of our work, we diminish the effort and blur our focus. “I wonder what it’s like to be you” is part of what makes us human, but […]