Blogs

Toy Story 2 was a disaster. Four months before release, Pixar screened an early cut for the leadership team. It was bad. The story didn’t work. Characters felt flat. Jokes landed with thuds. John Lasseter, Pixar’s creative chief, said: “This isn’t working.” Most studios would have panicked, blamed the director, or shipped it anyway. Pixar did something different. They convened the Braintrust. A group of Pixar’s best storytellers sat in a room with the director. For hours, they picked apart every scene. Brutally honest. No sugarcoating. ...

Deeply Personal Current: Zero Waste on a Budget Co-op Games Can Save Your Relationship All Posts Dopamine Fasting 101 Zero Waste on a Budget: 5 Swaps That Actually Save You Money I’ll be honest: when I first heard about “zero waste living,” I pictured expensive bamboo utensils, artisanal glass jars, and $40 reusable produce bags sold by Instagram influencers with minimalist aesthetics and trust funds. ...

Romance is the most structurally demanding genre in fiction. Not because it’s formulaic-though it is-but because readers come with expectations about emotional experience. They’re not just reading for plot; they’re reading to feel specific things at specific times. Miss a beat, and you’ve broken an implicit contract. Deliver the beats with skill, and readers will follow you anywhere. The Non-Negotiables Before we dive into beats, understand the two absolute requirements of romance: ...

Deeply Personal Current: Co-op Games Can Save Your Relationship Analysis Paralysis All Posts Next Co-op Games Can Save Your Relationship (Or Ruin It) My wife and I play video games together. ...

Stephen King, in his nonfiction book Danse Macabre, identified three distinct types of fear that horror can evoke: Terror - the finest emotion Horror - one step down Gross-out - the fallback when all else fails This isn’t a value judgment about quality. It’s a recognition that different types of fear work on different psychological levels and serve different purposes. Understanding this hierarchy-and when to deploy each-separates effective horror from cheap scares. ...

In 2012, Spotify released a video about their engineering culture. It showed autonomous “squads,” aligned into “tribes,” supported by “chapters” and “guilds.” It looked amazing. Teams working independently. No bureaucracy. Innovation everywhere. The video went viral. Suddenly, every company wanted squads and tribes. Management consultants sold “Spotify Model transformations.” Books were written. Certifications created. There was just one problem: Spotify doesn’t use the Spotify Model anymore. The model that everyone copied was a snapshot of one moment in Spotify’s history. A work in progress. An experiment. ...

It’s 9 AM. You walk into a conference room at Amazon for a major product decision. No one is talking. Everyone is reading. For 20 minutes, the room is completely silent. Executives, directors, engineers-all reading the same six-page document. No PowerPoint deck. No bullet points. No presenter standing at the front of the room. Just reading. Then, after everyone finishes, the discussion begins. Welcome to Amazon’s most powerful cultural practice: the 6-pager. ...

Deeply Personal Current: Analysis Paralysis The Uncanny Valley of Empathy All Posts Co-op Games Can Save Your Relationship Analysis Paralysis: The Psychology Behind Why We Can’t Make a Move My wife and I are experts at one thing: overthinking ourselves into complete paralysis. ...

October 2018. A successful SaaS company with: $10M annual revenue 20% profit margins 200 happy customers Growing 30% year-over-year Filed for bankruptcy. How? They were profitable on paper but bleeding cash in reality. The problem: They paid suppliers in 30 days Customers paid them in 90 days Meanwhile, they needed cash for payroll, servers, and growth The math was simple: For every $100 in new sales: They spent $60 upfront (servers, onboarding, support) They got paid $100 three months later Net: $40 profit… eventually But “eventually” requires cash to survive the wait. ...

Brain Series Current: Earworms Cocktail Party Effect All Posts Next It’s been three hours since you heard that song. You’re trying to focus on work, but there it is again-playing on an endless loop in your head. ...