Our systems are not failing, they are just failing us.
Right now, even the briefest amount of time spent flicking over social media posts or channel-surfing news networks is all that’s required to make us feel the world we live in is in serious trouble. The “Culture of Broken” we encounter is not new and I’ve written extensively about it before, citing both the reasons behind it and offering possible solutions.
Yet here we are, nine years out from the time I touched upon those ideas and we’re all experiencing a reality that reveals the gaping holes of inadequacy in…
It helps to think of technology as clothing. In the past we killed animals and wore their skins to protect ourselves from the elements. As our knowledge and skills evolved so did our needs. Just like with clothes, we use technology not only for practical things but also for social signalling.
Just like with almost every kind of technology we’ve used in the past, from the spinning jenny and its Luddite detractors to coffee and refrigeration and those who resisted them the “new” both excites us and frightens us. …
Today I am going to teach you a lesson. Depending on your own experiences, memories, background, assumptions, knowledge and perception; my opening line will either excite you, anger you, turn you off me or intrigue you. All of these responses are appropriate, and justifiable, when the context of the person who feels them is taken into account. This means that no response is quite without justification when context is considered though; some may not be appropriate.
Let me explain this last line in the paragraph above before I go back and unpack the full meaning of the opening line of…
Back then when linking things up in a tangential way that stripped back hidden connecting layers and generated deeper thought The Sunday Read was born.
Over the course of seven years it came out each Sunday, evolving and changing as we did, until it couldn’t (or at least I was unwilling to make it change further).
This is no attempt to revive it. I already write articles and opinion pieces on several different platforms, I am still writing books (because I feel I have something meaningful to say) and I am still bringing out videos and podcasts. …
Let’s run a thought experiment: Suppose I invite you to a business dinner to discuss something of great professional importance to both of us. I set up a beautifully arranged, delicious-looking meal and seat you opposite me on a plush chair with an amazing cushion. We are now set to have a great meal and memorable, mutually beneficial conversation for the next two hours.
There’s a catch: neither of us can move from our seats until the dinner is up. Should that happen it’ll be a potential professional deal breaker. It seems a ridiculously easy bar to beat of course…
I know you know that everything is changing. We all feel it in the way consumer behavior is changing and in the way responses to traditional marketing methods are changing. We feel it in the way things feel different, the disparities that emerge when we compare what we perceive. What others perceive. And what we perceive that others perceive. It’s like we no longer have a common language as people, let alone marketers.
Understandably, faced with this challenge and its bewildering attendant list of effects, we fail to understand its depth and breadth. …
Really, if I am being honest, there are three things you need to survive any century and they are always the same three things. But you are reading this today so you are unlikely to be around when the 22nd century comes and anything that’s in the past is already beyond our ability to change so the title of this piece stands apt. Which totally gives you an idea of how pragmatism works.
Before I give you the three things you need, it’s worth dwelling a moment on that thought: pragmatism, which means responding rationally to a set of current…
What it gives us and why we truly need to use it.
There are more than twenty-five years separating the concept in my head that became “Brains, Minds and Hearts” from “The Sniper Mind” that is about decision-making under pressure. Yet both books are part of the same personal development arc and deal with the exact same thing in different ways.
Writers are the result of their own preoccupations and obsessions and I am no different. The things that catch my attention are the things I care deeply about and spend most of my waking time thinking about. …
At the time of writing most of the world is in lockdown. America hasn’t yet reached the peak of the coronavirus (Covid-19) infection point and we still don’t know what will happen by the end of the year in terms of a resurgence of the virus or re-infections should either those who have acquired some immunity begin to lose it or the virus itself mutates. Both possibilities are on the table.
As you probably noticed I only just started to post content again after a brief hiatus. As the pandemic unfolded it was hard to decide just what was really…
In any given week I get up to 100 emails asking for help from people who want to become writers. The fact that I keep a blog on Goodreads on writing that acts as a how-to, even though it’s a little introspective and the fact that I give public speeches at industry events and to high-level company heads somehow greenlights this steady influx of help requests.
I tend to discount them and almost never reply. Not because I am a heartless bastard who doesn’t remember his own struggle to become a writer (I am not and I do), nor because…
