I ask most people, "Do you love what you do for a living?"
Many people pause. They blink. "Well..." they start... Enough said.
I know it's not a perfect world. Sometimes we all have to make compromises. But even if you can't do what you're most passionate about at work, don't bury that passion. Take it seriously.
It saddens me to hear someone say, "I used to paint, but that was years ago." Or any one of a thousand variations on abandoned passions.
You have more time than you think. Dump something that doesn't excite you and start nurturing your passions, even if it means changing how you spend your nights, weekends and vacations.
Stop Managing Others
The number one management mistake is to focus on managing other people, instead of on managing your own energy.
This is true whether you are leading a company or trying to get your kids to clean up their rooms.
It's astonishing how many people skip the step of managing their own energy. Instead, they...
—say one thing and do another
—tell you to remain calm, while they overreact
—fail to listen and/or understand
—demotivate
—intimidate
—destroy their health (and yours, too)
If you bring positive energy, you will shift the people round you to be more positive. If you bring clarity and focus, you will encourage others to move in those directions.
When you manage your own energy, it become crystal-clear what it takes to succeed: good habits, a growth mindset, curiosity, calm focus and persistence.
Don't Be a Smartypants
Intelligence isn't the Holy Grail; clarity is.
I know a lot of smart people, including virtually all of my clients. Many find it difficult to focus on one idea at a time. They get so excited by new insights and opportunities, that the words can come racing out.
But even a series of brilliant ideas are bound to confuse others. People don't want eight genius ideas. They want one actionable, understandable and useful insight.
The tough part isn't finding something of value to say; it is limiting yourself to one such gem.
As you wander across social media today (and then the rest of your world), stop and consider the different communications you encounter. How many of them have one powerful idea, instead of a mishmash of thoughts? My guess is that you won't find many offerings with one solid idea.
If you want to reach and help others, resist the impulse to impress. Instead, just offer one clear and simple message.
Only One Thing Matters
I do not care about your power, wealth or intelligence.
What matters most is whether you are willing to do the things you ask others to do, to change when you ask others to change, and to care when you ask others to care.
Cherish Time
Albert Einstein is reported to have said, "Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."
But when you dig a little deeper, it turns out that Einstein created this anecdote to help his secretary deal with the vast volume of inquiries pouring in asking for explanations of his theory of relativity.
So, to better manage his time and that of his secretary, Einstein came up with the shortest, simplest, and most engaging sound bite possible. The man who understood time better than any other human also knew how precious it is.
Don't cherish money, power, or fame. Cherish time, and figure out ways to protect the time you are able to devote to what truly matters to you.
Growth is Hard
Growth is HARD. Anyone who tells you otherwise is almost certainly not growing.
Growth requires discomfort and hardship. For periods of time, you might feel like a moron, or at least an absolute beginner.
It's natural to question your sanity. Why did you leave your cushy existence to tackle a new challenge, learn a new skill, or reboot your entire career?
You did it because you are capable of more. Much more. You did it because you are brave and strong and willing to endure hardship.
You don't need it to be easy. You just need it to work.
Try Simpler
The crazier the world around you gets, the more valuable it is for you to be simple, clear and focused.
When everyone else is getting hysterical about paralyzing complexity, share a simple strategy for making steady progress.
When others descend into negativity, be positive and proactive.
There is always room for clarity. It separates nonsense from usefulness.
There is always a simpler way to share true wisdom.
And—no matter how much discipline or sacrifice it requires— it is always best to know what matters most and to remain focused on it.
Life is chaotic, but you don't have to be.
Why You Incorrectly Think You’re Not Creative
Art is made up of two parts; creativity and craft. Craft is the artistic skill to make the art, while creativity is the imagination behind it.
Craft is how you do stuff. It is the byproduct of working hour after hour, week after week, year after year. It is something you acquire by learning a skill. If you want to develop your craft, put in your time.
Creativity is the way in which you use craft. You can be creative without being a great craftsperson. If you are creative and busy, or creative and affluent, you can hire someone with craft to execute your creative ideas.
Think you aren’t creative? You probably just lack the craft.
Don't, Don't, Don't Be Average. I Mean It.
I use AI, and have even done a few remarkable things with it. But many entrepreneurs now use it to communicate, and that’s a problem.
AI was trained on huge bodies of human output, much of it scraped from the Web. Mix it all together and you get a pretty good representation of the day-to-day output of average folks. They didn’t take the top 10% of all human output and stop there. They didn’t only use A-student work; they also used D-student work.
The second that AI becomes your primary creative partner, you are headed for average.
Honesty without Compassion is Cruelty
by Bruce Kasanoff
I am a Creative Partner to entrepreneurs. Reach out to schedule a complimentary introductory call with me.
While in a meeting several years ago, I saw the words "honesty without compassion is cruelty" posted above the other person's desk. It so struck me that I paused the conversation for a moment to absorb the intent.
People like to say that honesty is the best policy, and many segments of society are increasingly focused on getting at the truth. Schools are obsessed with standardized tests. Companies want better metrics to measure, well, everything. Nearly everyone is connected to everyone else... and these connections produce data that provide an honest picture of reality.
I'm worried that these honest snapshots of the truth could lead us to a far crueler world.
For example, think about the last couple of years and ask yourself whether our public discourse is getting kinder or harsher?
(I rest my case.)
In a civilized world, honesty and compassion need to go hand in hand. You must use honesty to help other people, not to hurt them. And you must be extremely cautious not to accidentally harm others.
When you meet up with a friend you haven't seen in a year, you wouldn't immediately say, "You are 17 pounds heaver than you were last year."
Why not?
Doing so would be tactless and cruel, so instead you say something like, "It is so great to see you again," while you might think to yourself that your friend looks a bit on the heavy side.
Technology allows us to gather massive amounts of data on human beings. If you take a test online, a system is theoretically capable of not only revealing how many answers you got correct, but also whether it took you more time (or less) to take the test versus others.
You don't need to know that you were slower than 42% of the people who took that test... and neither does anyone else.
If we are going to gather more data about our collective lives, we will also need to muster more compassion.
What can you do to move us in the right direction?
Be discreet. Resist the movement to document every aspect of your work or personal life. There are true advantages to preserving gray areas in which people can let their hair down and relax.
Be human. Recognize that humanity is more important than the absolute truth. Use facts to help another improve his or her life, rather than to do something that might destroy their life.
Be cautious. Recognize that the "truth" is always subjective. Each of us sees "facts" through a haze of beliefs, attitudes and experiences. No single test can judge the worth or potential of another human being.
Be generous. Ask more of yourself. The best skill is bringing out talent in others, so rather than judging others, do your best to help them.
Intuition Is the Highest Form of Intelligence
This is an expanded version of an article I first published on Forbes; that piece has been read over 1.3 million times.
Intuition, argues Gerd Gigerenzer, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, is less about suddenly "knowing" the right answer and more about instinctively understanding what information is unimportant and can thus be discarded.
Gigerenzer, author of the book Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious, says that he is both intuitive and rational. "In my scientific work, I have hunches. I can’t explain always why I think a certain path is the right way, but I need to trust it and go ahead. I also have the ability to check these hunches and find out what they are about. That’s the science part. Now, in private life, I rely on instinct. For instance, when I first met my wife, I didn’t do computations. Nor did she."
I'm telling you this because recently one of my readers, Joy Boleda, posed a question that stopped me in my tracks:
What about intuition? It has never been titled as a form of intelligence, but would you think that someone who has great intuition in things, has more intelligence?
My "gut instinct" is to say yes, especially when we are talking about people who are already intellectually curious, rigorous in their pursuit of knowledge, and willing to challenge their own assumptions.
Let me put this a bit simpler. If all you do is sit in a chair and trust your intuition, you are not exercising much intelligence. But if you take a deep dive into a subject and study numerous possibilities, you are exercising intelligence when your gut instinct tells you what is - and isn't - important.
In some respects, intuition could be thought of as a clear understanding of collective intelligence. For example, most web sites are today organized in an intuitive way, which means they are easy for most people to understand and navigate. This approach evolved after many years of chaos online, as a common wisdom emerged over what information was superfluous and what was essential (i.e. About Us = essential).
Theo Humphries argues that intuitive design can be described as "understandable without the use of instructions". This is true when an object makes sense to most people because they share a common understanding of the way things work.
You might say that I'm a believer in the power of disciplined intuition. Do your legwork, use your brain, share logical arguments, and I'll trust and respect your intuitive powers. But if you merely sit in your hammock and ask me to trust your intuition, I'll quickly be out the door without saying goodbye.
I say this from personal experience; the more research I do, the better my intuition works.
Although this may be a paraphrase of his thoughts on the subject, Albert Einstein has been widely quoted as saying, "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
Sometimes, a corporate mandate or group-think or your desire to produce a certain outcome can cause your rational mind to go in the wrong direction. At times like these, it is intuition that holds the power to save you. That "bad feeling" gnawing away at you is your intuition telling you that no matter how badly you might wish to talk yourself into this direction, it is the wrong way to go.
Smart people listen to those feelings. And the smartest people among us - the ones who make great intellectual leaps forward - cannot do this without harnessing the power of intuition.
Wharton professor Adam Grant, author of numerous bestselling books, recently observed that, “Writers and physicists report that 20% of their most important ideas happen during mind wandering—and those ideas are more likely to be ‘aha’ moments.”
He then suggests, “Time set aside to daydream is an essential part of a creative day.”
Is this how your company works? Does it carve out time for people to be creative and to explore?
In many cases, the answer is no. That may be why large companies often hit a wall and stop innovating, or growing. Small companies hit this wall, too, whenever a leadership team gets too rigid or regimented.
There are limits to what discipline and data can produce. Our increasingly “data-driven” world has severe limitations.
Writing a few years ago in The New York Times, Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis pointed out that "A big data analysis might reveal... that from 2006 to 2011 the United States murder rate was well correlated with the market share of Internet Explorer: Both went down sharply. But it’s hard to imagine there is any causal relationship between the two."
In other words, big data does some things very well, but it is a long way from a magic solution to, well, anything. And yet we are increasingly surrounded by leaders and organizations that want to make every decision based on data.
But there's another problem, and it's a significant one: big data can be just as biased as your stubborn old uncle who thinks everyone who disagrees with him is an idiot.
According to the Irish Times, "researchers at Eurecat — the Catalonian Centre for Technology — in Spain and the Institute for Scientific Interchange in Italy, agreed that 'algorithmic bias exists even when there is no discrimination intention in the developer of the algorithm'."
This does not mean that the programmers were biased; it could also be that the data sources contained certain forms of bias.
The antidote to such flaws and weaknesses is not more data. Instead, we need to raise the amount of respect given to the very human skill of intuition. Mind you, I'm not talking about blind hunches or a "feeling" that comes over you one Sunday night while you watch House of Cards.
In the context of professional organizations, intuition literally means arriving with confidence at an answer without being able to explain how you got to that answer. In the big data era, being unable to explain your logic is a huge liability, and yet this is exactly what happens with expert intuition.
In the years ahead, artificial intelligence and automation are going to kill millions of jobs, maybe even your job. You're not going to be able to protect your job simply by acting more like a computer… because every computer will be able to out-computer you.
Instead, you need to foster uniquely human skills, such as intuition. The same is true for your organization. Human qualities will become more important in the years ahead, not less.
I'm a realist. Many leaders and professionals will read this article and scoff at my conclusions. They'll argue that gut instinct is the realm of biased, lazy workers. They'll say that facts and logic rule today, nothing else.
Time will tell. I'd still bet on the judgment of true experts — actual human beings — who know how to study the data, apply rational thoughts, but ultimately also trust their intuition.
In far too many cases, the facts tell you to do one thing, but your intuition screams the opposite. When that happens to me, I never ignore those screams.
My best invention is Ikigai Explorer, which stops you from wasting any more of your precious life. You can find it here.