Blog Category: Creativity

Because I grew up ugly, I was always insecure about first impressions. “Ugly” was my boot camp for bleeding as fast as possible. Vulnerability buys freedom. Freedom to look how I want, to say what I want, to do what I want. I like to study first lines. They have to be powerful: a few […]

I write 10 ideas a day to exercise my “idea muscle.” The idea of the “10 ideas” exercise is not to produce good or bad ideas but just to exercise the creativity muscle. To become an idea machine. They don’t have to be business ideas. Or actionable ideas. It’s just exercise. It’s just to get […]

Kamal went missing. Again. Kamal and I have been friends for over 10 years now. It’s one of the greatest things about the internet for me. No matter what the criticisms, the internet has given me a family, close friends, great business partners. And, with Kamal, all of the above. But he was gone. I […]

You decide to plagiarize one of the most successful books ever. You take a book that won the National Book Award and you retype it from scratch and pretend it’s yours. You submit it to 20 publishers. You put a fake name on it. 100% of the publishers send back rejection letters. They hated it! […]

Will Smith desperately needed advice. He was terrified about something he was about to do. So he said, “I have to visit the master.” He called Dave Chappelle. His challenge: to do three minutes of standup comedy at a comedy club. I get it. When I had to do six minutes the first time, I […]

Ted Geisel cheated on his wife with his neighbor. Then his wife killed herself. He then married his neighbor. Ted is one of the bestselling authors in history but because of the above I almost didn’t want to write this. But I learned so much from his books. I still live by what I learned […]

Maria had a crush on Mark. But Mark was going out with Jen. And I had a crush on Maria but I thought I was too worthless for her. Mark wanted to be a writer. He read James Joyce and could quote Thomas Pynchon. He had a beard. He wanted to write “The Great American […]