Here’s a Christmas story about the frugality of the Greatest Generation. When I was a child my siblings and I would race down the stairs to see if Santa brought gifts. My parents would be waiting, my father with a red Swiss Army knife. The point of...

In 1968, my parents bought a bungalow at the Jersey Shore. They paid $19,000.  It was a great deal not just because of the low price but because the place came fully furnished. There was a rattan sofa, two chairs and a coffee table. The kitchen came...

Stephen Robinson is a reminder that you can seize opportunities, and they can change your life.  In 2020, Stephen was working full-time at Cheddar, selling digital ads and branded content. On the side, he had a hobby he’d enjoyed since growing up in...

Some people can’t claim a single friend. Then there is Rob Lawless.  In a bid to find friends, Rob has met with 7,254 people. It’s part of a quest to meet a total of 10,000. Rob celebrated the 10th anniversary of the journey last week. He shared...

From 37signals Communication Guide It’s hard to do deep work when you are constantly being interrupted. One of the ironies of the modern office is we’ve created instant messaging systems such as Slack to drive efficiency, but they end up causing...

No one would be shocked to hear profanity on Wall Street from the trading floor to the boardroom. Everywhere that is except the main avenue of communication: the Bloomberg terminal. For more than 25 years the platform that investment professionals use to...

I gave a speech at the annual meeting of the Professional Speechwriters Association in Washington, DC last week. It seemed both presumptuous and absurd to accept an invitation from David Murray to speak to professional speechwriters.  I have only written...

WALL STREET STOCK AND BOND TRADERS USED TO WRITE EMAILS AND MEMOS TO ONE ANOTHER IN UPPERCASE LIKE THIS.  It seems hard to imagine now, but in the early 1990s the Bloomberg terminals that Wall Street used to communicate didn’t have lowercase....

The internet – especially social media – can be a den of cruelty.  We are regularly reminded how it can stoke hatred and division.  But it can also connect people and be a source of joy. I was reminded of that this past week by a package I got in the mail. ...

Jason Alexander, the actor who played George Costanza on Seinfeld, wanted to play Hamlet when he was studying theater at Boston University.  Sophomore year, he got some career advice that changed his trajectory.  One of his professors at Boston...