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Author Archives: AJ Kessler
Invite, Don’t Sell
Windows and Orbitz provide totally open experiences: you can have whatever you like, anything is possible, but you’re going to have to work for it. Apple and Abercrombie & Kent chose a different direction: both provide totally tailored, curated experiences. … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Business, Food For Thought, Inspiration, Persuasion
Tagged Advertising, Apple, Marketing, Microsoft, Persuasion, Sales, Selling
1 Comment
Time Tracking, version 3
I was turned onto time tracking a few months ago by Sebastian Marshall. Overall, I’ve found it tremendously helpful. It’s a fantastic system to not only keep you on track, but it really does increase (my) productivity. But, the my … Continue reading
Posted in Advice, Creativity, Inspiration, Productivity, Self-Improvement
Tagged Productivity, Self-Direction, Template, Time Tracking
4 Comments
Games > Music
In Delivering Happiness, Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh recounts how he, and every other Asian kid he knew, was forced to practice multiple instruments, often for hours each day. No TV, no playtime, no games, until homework was finished and music … Continue reading
Posted in Advice, Creativity, Food For Thought, Inspiration, Self-Improvement
Tagged Bobby Fisher, Brain, Chess, Development, Garry Kasparov, Kids, Mind
1 Comment
How to E-mail
E-mail is the single greatest time-waster in modern life. –Tim Ferris Tim Ferris, of Four-Hour Workweek and Four-Hour Body fame, is on a one-man mission against e-mail. Check out some of the results for a search of “Tim Ferris e-mail”: … Continue reading
Posted in Advice, Business, Productivity, Quotes, Tips
Tagged Gary Vaynerchuk, Help, Never Eat Alone, Reach Out, Tim Ferris
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Why Creativity is Scary
What is creativity? Is it spawning new ideas from whole cloth? Is it wild discovery and clear innovation? Where does creativity come from? Is it that Eureka moment, that flash of inspiration that comes out of the ether? Is it, … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Creativity, Food For Thought, Inspiration, Quotes, Self-Improvement
Tagged Fear, Mark Cuban, Steve Jobs
1 Comment
You’ll Never Be Rich
How much money does it take to feel rich? Throw out a number. Ten million dollars? Fifty million dollars? One Hundred million dollars? Interestingly, when you ask people that have actually made that much money, the average answer seems to … Continue reading
Posted in Food For Thought, Rationality, Self-Improvement
Tagged Framing, Perception, Psychology, Wealth
2 Comments
How To Get Smarter
For years, people thought intelligence was genetic. It was thought that your intelligence potential was more or less fixed at birth, that at best, you could make yourself dumber by huffing paint or drinking booze. This was actually confirmed by … Continue reading
Posted in Advice, Food For Thought, Inspiration, Productivity, Self-Improvement
Tagged Brain, Fluid, Get Smart, Intelligence, IQ, Mind, Working Memory
4 Comments
Being Frugal Makes You A Loser
I’m all for saving money. I get as much pleasure watching my bank account grow as I do from buying things or taking trips. But, people often take frugality too far. I don’t care if you’re poor, and if you’re … Continue reading
Posted in Advice, Food For Thought, Inspiration, Productivity, Tips
Tagged Cheap, Do Yourself a Favor, Live Rich
118 Comments
That’s Not Fair
What revolves around the Earth? “Henri looked down in concentration as the answer choices were read aloud: (A) The moon, (B) The sun, (C) Mars, (D) Venus. Henri reread the question out loud and mulled the choices over in his … Continue reading
Books Are Souvenirs
People used to read books for two reasons: to gain some knowledge or to be entertained. For a few hundred years, bound books were about the only good way to store a large amount of information. People still had voices, … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Creativity, Food For Thought, Future, Inspiration, Rationality
Tagged Books, Future, Piracy, Publishing, Viral
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The Point of the Internet
The web is chock-full of information but what we are really after as people is not information but other interesting people. –Chatty’s About Page Is that really what people are after? An awful lot of the internet has been built … Continue reading
Posted in Business, Food For Thought, Inspiration
Tagged Broker, Business, Humanity, Internet, Matchmaker, Togetherness, Web 2.0
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Outside the Quotes
For years, kids in America were taught that punctuation marks go inside the quotation mark, regardless of whether you’re actually quoting the punctuation. “Why?” I have no clue. Rosemary Feal, the queen over at the Modern Language Association (MLA) claims … Continue reading
Posted in Aesthetics, Food For Thought
Tagged Aesthetics, American, British, Culture, English, Language, Logic, Punctuation
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Why Poker Is Like Business
In Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness, he discusses life after being bought out of LinkExchange for $265 million, of which his share was around $20 million. While searching for what he was going to do next, he became intensely focused on … Continue reading
Posted in Advice, Business, Inspiration, Quotes
Tagged Delivering Happiness, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Hold 'em, Poker, Texas, Tony Hsieh, Zappos
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We Are All Followers
Obesity is spreading like a disease. If a person becomes obese, the likelihood that his friend would also become obese increased by 57 percent. If a person’s sibling became obese, the chance of another sibling becoming obese increased by 40%. … Continue reading
Posted in Food For Thought, Inspiration, Persuasion, Rationality, Self-Improvement
Tagged cookies, Goal contagion, Irrational Behavior, Psychology
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