Why you should fly Cubana

Carl Hoffman recently caught my attention by traveling the world using whatever means the local population used to travel, including rickety airplanes, dilapidated trains, and roach infested ferries. The thing that struck me about this relatively affluent American who traveled the world this way was that he...

It’s Easy When You Do It

It’s easy to over think plans—getting caught in a cycle of thinking instead of acting. Fears and doubts loom large because they are in the present, and any positive outcome is in some far off future. In that spirit, a bit of inspiration from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (affiliate...

The Short Trajectory of Prodigy

A prodigy is very young and highly skilled in whatever field they practice. The concept is demoralizing because it builds a wall separating prodigy from mortal. It’s like the superstar effect: what’s the point of even competing when you have toddlers running around juggling fire and reciting...

Transcend Your Tribe

Humans are tribal animals. We trust and mimic members of our group, while we distrust and malign outsiders. That worked 200,000 years ago, but it’s a bad strategy now, and one 1950s experiment is a fantastic case in point. In the Robber’s Cave Experiment, researchers pitted two groups of...

Pete Michaud Techzing Interview

I had a great interview with Jason and Justin at TechZing. Click here to listen to the interview → Click here to read a transcript of the interview → We covered quite a bit of ground in the interview: The details of the business that allowed me to “retire” at 25 My business strategy...

Equivocation Cripples Action

Readers frequently give me a hard time about some edge case in my writing as if I haven’t thought the subject through, and pared the word count down by half. I’m confident that those readers don’t write a whole lot. If they did write, they would realize that in order to produce a cogent...

Techzing Interview Tuesday March 23rd

TechZing, “News and views from the front-line of tech & startups”, was crazy enough to invite me to do an interview tomorrow at 6:30pm EST. I’m not sure when it will be available for listening, but I’ll be sure to let you know when it’s up. We’ll be talking about my...

Is Your Face Real?

“Is your patch real?” My eye patch is a conversation piece. Many people ask about it, a lot assume it’s either fake or temporary (it’s neither). “Do I need it?” some ask. Some people reflexively yell “Yarrr!!” at the sight of me, like their ancestors evolved...

Ira Glass on the Creative Gap

If you don’t know Ira Glass, you should. If you don’t know Ira’s show, This American Life, you should. This message is about how creative people need to really stick with what they are doing. He’s talking to people who work in TV, but it applies to everyone who produces. A few...

Don’t You Dare Waste Your Fucking Time

Gabrielle Bouliane, the woman in this video, was diagnosed with stage four cancer and died on January 29th, 2010. Funny how death washes away the...