One question I hear often is “what can I do right now?”. Well, it turns out there are lots of things to do if you want to become an innovator, and in many cases it’s not very hard.

Check it out:

Essay #58 - How to innovate right now.

(Note: This essay was commissioned by the U.S. State department).

Posted in Essays, Innovation, Myths of Innovation | 1 Comment »

Genius is one of those tricky words that gets used often, without anyone knowing quite what it means. Well, I’m taking the word, and advice on how to be a genius, head on in this fun and entirely wild run through genius history.

#57 - How to be a genius.

Posted in Essays, creative thinking | 5 Comments »

Here’s a short, fun, hack-centric essay on creative thinking. It’s loosely based on the course I taught recently at the University of Washington.

Essay #56: Creative thinking hacks.

Posted in Essays, creative thinking | 5 Comments »

In case you haven’t noticed, my essay how to detect bullshit hit the top 10 on digg today, and the site is struggling to keep up.

The fine folks at duggmirror have a mirrored copy available.

Posted in Essays | No Comments »

At the last Seattle Ignite event, I did this talk, based on this essay, about the changing nature of human attention and how great creators have controlled their attention spans. Check it out.

Ignite seattle uses the following talk format: you get 5 minutes, but most have 20 slides and each slide can only be on screen for 15 seconds. I hacked the format, as you’ll see in an interesting way.

You can find other videos from Seattle ignite here.

Posted in Essays, philosophy | 1 Comment »

Anyone who does anything year after year has the same challenge: keeping up intensity when the energy, and novelty, fades. This essay is my primary list for staying in the game.

How to stay motivated

Posted in Essays | 3 Comments »

To my delight, every now and then the fine folks at slashdot or lifehacker mention an essay of mine, and waves of people swing by, read something, and send feedback mail through the contact form.

I respond to as much of the interesting and thoughtful as I can - but it’s the internet, and some of it’s creepy, incomprehensible or just plain bizarre. I don’t fully know how to respond to many of these little notes I receive.
So for fun, here’s some highlights from the mailbag for the popular essay Why smart people defend bad ideas:

“You sir, are clearly a case of bad person defending a bad idea. You should practice what you preach before preaching to the choir.”

“THIS IS AMAZING. So MANY CLEVEr Things. SO NOW CAN YOU TELL ME HOW TO DECIDE WHAT TO DO WITH MY PARENTS?”

“I liked the essay but smart people are just better, right? So why shouldn’t they just defend whatever they think is best?”

“…loved this. Really loved it. Made me want to get a shotgun and shoot all the asshats.”

“Hey. If you’re so smart why don’t you know that spark plugs can’t cause fires? eh? Tell me that tough guy. You suck rat ass. I want the 5 minutes it took to read your turd back.”

“I printed this in big font and slid it under the doors of the executive floor. But it had no effect. What do I do now you think? Bigger fonts?”

“Perhaps you can help with this. I’m dating two girls at the same time, and keep thinking I want one, but then the other… well I don’t know how to LOGICALLY choose. Write an essay on this! yes!”

“How much can I pay you to stand in my boss’s office with a megaphone and read this essay every time he opens his mouth?”

Posted in Essays, humor | 3 Comments »

The series of O’Reilly hacks books is tons of fun. Despite how you don’t want to hear about hacks for certain things (Brain surgery, Nuclear weapons, etc.) the idea of sharing the high leverage little tricks is awesome.

So here’s Part 1 of what will be a series on writing hacks: this first one is about getting started.

Writing hacks, Part 1: Starting

Posted in Essays, On writing | 21 Comments »

We all like to think we’re good at spotting BS, but how is it done? and why do people make stuff up to begin with? I take a shot in 2000 words.

Essay: How to detect bullshit

Posted in Essays, Management, philosophy | 3 Comments »

In part one, I hit on the topics new managers need to know before they shoot themselves, or others, in the foot. Here in part two we get into tactics, from getting acclimated, learning the team and setting the tone.

Essay #52: Advice for new managers, part two

Posted in Essays, Management | No Comments »

At e-tech 2006 the theme was the attention economy - but the conversation was mostly technocentric despite attention being a 100% human resource.

In this essay I discuss a view of attention that’s centered on people - attention is the most precious thing we have and I explore why we’ve lost control of it, how to get some control back and the role of desire and intimacy in how we spend our time.

Essay #51 - Attention and sex.

Posted in Essays | 8 Comments »

Someone on the ask Berkun forum requested an essay for new managers. It’s a huge topic - there are entire books on this! - but I took a good swing and here’s what I came up with.

Advice for new managers, part 1

Part 2 will be more on tactics and specific things to do in the first few weeks.

Posted in Essays | 5 Comments »