I think a lot about the question of how to spend one’s time. My life consists of three main things: writing, speaking and Board work. I write to hear an idea unfold. I need to write with space because what I think will come out and what comes out are not the same and it’s [...]
Tag Archives | Personal Entrepreneurship
Creating Commandments
Blub, blub, blub. That seems the sound track of life right now. As #SocialEra (my new book) has been released into the world, the world has shouted back with enthusiasm. But some days and hours, I’ve felt like the surfboarder being battered by waves as they are flung beneath the surface, not knowing which way [...]
3 Must-Reads for this Weekend #12
Welcome to start-of-work-season, otherwise known as post-Labor-day energy. If I could, I’d send you some freshly sharpened pencils. But since I can’t, let me share, some must-reads of the week. Enjoy the weekend. Solving the Personal Innovators’ Dilemma. This essay is chock-full-of-insight. Breaks down what learning and innovating actually looks like vs. what we mythologize [...]
It’s Not Bragging if You Back It Up
If Sunday’s night news taught us nothing else, it was a reminder of how you behave when you have a success is as important as how you behave when you’re failing. Do you pump your fists, take credit, and smile a lot when things are going really well? Do you act like a beat puppy [...]
Curing the Yackity Yack Disease
At Apple, my best boss* once walked out of a room, after calling a bunch of us “Yackety-Yakers”. Even though I’ve lived in the Bay Area of California since I was 5 years old, I definitely miss a lot of cultural references. I like to blame this on the fact that I don’t watch television, [...]
What Surrounds Us, Affects Us.
We are all connected. We mostly know that. Do we also realize that who we hang with affects our moods, what we think about as valid, it shows up in our decisions, and it affects what we create? Maybe. This week, I worked with an editor to create my first post for the HBR (Harvard [...]
Living the Dream
An entrepreneur & CEO wrote me an email around the holidays that sounded just a bit desperate; enough for me to take time out of family time over the holidays to take a meeting. It took her nearly an hour to unveil her dilemma, slowly revealing what she no longer wanted and then, finally, sharing [...]
Who Influences Your Awesomeness?
She’s a Queen Networker. That’s how someone described me. Adding, “she knows everyone you need to know.” Quite an introduction, yet also rather lame. Who cares if I know people? “Networking” isn’t really the point. It’s who we connect with us so we do better. Rather, each of us should meet the people who can [...]
Perfectness
When I first worked at Apple, most of the people leading change were perfect. Perfect as in: went to a great prep school, ended up at an ivy league, had gone onto Harvard, got recruited by this hot fruit company in Silicon Valley, the place where the 1984 ad was written by Bill Cleary and [...]
Avoiding Depression
Don’t we all have an aspiration? I believe we all do. Perhaps many. But we can deny them. Sometimes we ignore them, to believe they really don’t exist. Sometimes we allow them to be, but refuse to act because we think the aspiration is unrealistic. Most often, we see our dreams or aspirations as something we [...]