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In other words: Out of sight, out of mind. Ever wonder why Sally Struthers needs to show us little Ethiopian babies before we’ll give away a bit of dough to them? Easy; it’s because we don’t care– until it’s right in front of us. Would those Ethiopian babies need feeding if their plight was broadcast [...]
I have a tendency to ignore the stuff around me. I wouldn’t say that I’m extremely focused, but I have been this way for a long time. Just now at the bank, the teller called my name three times before I looked up from my iPhone. Part of that is my hearing, but not everything. [...]
The way I see it, there are only two directions– up and down. I used to say that it didn’t matter how fast you were going, as long as the direction you were going was up. Keep moving up, as slowly as you want, and you’ll get to a good place in your life. Don’t [...]
It was a phrase my father used to say when I did chores around the house. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t trying to get away with something (like phoning it in or doing a half-assed job). I never did want to do the work, so he was right to do it too. Over [...]
I’ve been getting called Don Draper a lot recently. That’s probably a compliment. Never mind that it’s a guy with two different identities, who’s largely alone in the world– it’s also someone that people identify with (maybe for those same reasons). One of the reasons we identify with these people is because the ad men [...]
Do you see your friends as fellow conspirators? It’s weird to think that your friends might be hiding something from you, or that you might be doing the same from them. But you do, and they are. You and your network are a system. You keep the good stuff and let it be spread through [...]
In The Nature of the Graph earlier this week, I talked about friction– ie, transaction costs– inside groups and how they impact the efficiency of groups. A transaction cost within a financial relationship can be a lot of things: from a broker taking 10% to a lawyer drafting a contract. We have to pay these [...]
Have you ever noticed that, on almost all of the popular websites, the link colour is blue? Have you ever built a web page from scratch? If not, you may not know that blue is the default colour these links appear in. You may also not know that blue links convert better, cause people to [...]
Have you ever been asked to sign an NDA? Non-Disclosure Agreements exist because of lack of trust between parties that need to discuss a subject– in fact, that’s the nature of any contract– to provide legal recourse in the case of non-compliance. Here’s the thing though. You introduce a contract because there’s friction in a [...]
If I was creating a website right now that was designed to become popular, it would be The Oatmeal. It’s utterly brilliant. It combines interesting factoids with tons of illustrations. Each page is evergreen content, and will probably still be looked at years in the future. Remember those Top 10 List sites a few years [...]
The web has shortened your attention span. But that isn’t the problem. Did you ever consider that the hyperlink, by definition, reduces patience? It gives us unrestricted access to information, immediately, without intermediaries. That’s why Google is the most powerful site in the world; it points directly to whatever you want it to. And that’s [...]
Taylor Davidson called it “my phrase” at Tribecon, but it isn’t really mine– it’s been used many, many times before. I started getting interested in it when I began doing Alexander Technique, which attempts to return your body to a natural, relaxed state through re-training (or “un”-training) you out of your bad posture habits. But [...]
“There is no weakness talking about failure.” Man, I love this quote by Jon Favreau. He caught my attention at first last year while reading an article about Obama the day before I was on CBC’s Test the Nation. You know when you see these scenes in movies– almost every movie has one– where you [...]
Everybody needs a Craig Silverman. I’ve just started going to a neighbourhood Crossfit gym. My roommate had been into the system for a while (which is like an intense, military-style workout that pushes you FAR beyond your comfort zone), and I’d been once, but I was slacking until Craig called me up last month to [...]
I was stopped in the subway yesterday by some rent-a-cops. It was a bit jarring. It was at Square-Victoria metro around 2pm, and they were doing “random checks” of people’s subway passes. I don’t know if this has ever happened to you, but it can be a strange feeling getting stopped by people who think [...]
The other week I was hanging out at a bar with a few friends and someone asked me about a project. Basically the idea was this– how to build a community around a filmmaker so that they could thereafter fund a film project if they thought it had merit. (A little bit like Kickstarter does [...]
It’s so interesting. I try to discount the many reviews of the book Chris and I wrote (both positive and negative) because I think hype can really mess up your head. It’s always better not to read your own press; I do read it, I just try not to believe it. But this was an [...]
Have you guys noticed yet that I love birds? I’ve just gotten back from a few trips, including NOLA for Tribecon and up North in Quebec for BitNorth. Both were really cool events. It’s become pretty evident over the time I’ve spent at conferences that your level of achievement is intimately connected to your social [...]
