Every year, on the first weekend of the year, it's probably worth replacing the dried spices in your pantry. The best, freshest spices still taste like the spice that's on the label, but they taste more like themselves. That's what successful brands and freelancers do as well. They relentlessly do the work to act more like themselves. First, we have to figure out what we are, what we stand for, and what people expect. Then we get a chance to be more like that.

By the time you get around to embracing the fashion of the moment, it's almost certainly too late. The leading edge is defined by the fact that most of us aren't on it.

An essential feature of every bottle is the neck. No neck, no bottle. There are bottlenecks in every process, every project and every method. Something is limited. We can pretend that's not the case and avoid the discussion. Or we can see it as an opportunity. Successful organizations are good at embracing and working with their bottlenecks.

If you went back 45 years, the built world would be eerily similar--the clothes, the cars, even the haircuts. Except you'd quickly notice that there were no personal computers and no smart phones. That for seven or ten hours a day, every day, people were interacting in real life, not with their screens. Many of us can't remember what we did all day.

If you buy an Ikea table, you'll need 8 bolts to put it together. 7 is not enough. This is functional sort of 'enough.' It can be critical to our survival. "I have enough medication to last through this illness." "We have enough food to feed our family." But this isn't the stress that we often feel in social or financial settings.

Perhaps this has happened to you: You're at the reference desk of the library, with the answer to any question available--and you can't think of anything to ask. And there's the vegetable blindness that occurs at a really good farmer's market. After a few stalls, it's hard to imagine what to cook. Shortly after high-speed internet arrived, this mind-blanking set in for many people...

On poison and high voltage wires, the label clearly informs us that this can kill us, right away. For obvious reasons, these are important labels, and generally quite effective. On cigarettes, it's clear that if you smoke long enough, you're going to die, and probably not pleasantly. The warning labels haven't been nearly as effective as taxes in curbing smoking, but they made the issue clear.

At some point, anything we buy feels like a bargain. Something needs to be worth more than it costs or we wouldn't buy it. So, what makes what you offer a bargain? Is it that you've lowered the price, or have you increased the value?

The Method: Everyone who disagrees with you is right to do so--based on who they are and what they see Attention is priceless and trust is worth even more Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers Permission is the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages…

"Feels So Good" and "Chuck E's in Love" were megahits. They transformed the careers of their creators. But any fan of Mangione or Jones will tell you that it's far from their best work. Not even close. And yet, that's what the crowds came to hear. In a long tail world filled with browsing, it's easy to confuse "popular" with "great." It's more productive to aim for great.

Not just similar. Cavendish bananas (the usual kind here in the US) are all clones, each from a tree grafted from a tree grafted, all the way back, from the first tree of the species in the UK. There are problems with this. Sure, the banana is the most reliable fruit. The banana marketing folks don't have to worry about uniformity.

They seem like they'll spread to everyone and stick around forever. This almost never happens. In order to spread to everyone, they need to move beyond the people who are looking for a new idea. And that happens when existing users have a powerful reason to tell their friends. Not only that, but the idea has to solve a real problem for people who weren't sure that there even was a solution to that problem.

Under each post on my blog there's a button that says RANDOM. I'll confess that reading posts I wrote ten or twenty years ago is often a surprise. I wrote each one, but I have no recollection of doing so. We can no longer expect that others will experience an introduction to us and our work in the order we would like.

Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, "with great power comes great responsibility." Some people, hoping to avoid responsibility, insist that they don't have great power. That's a choice, but it might undermine what we're capable of.

If it takes three to five years for a project to gain traction, it probably doesn't pay to start a project that the world knows it needs right now. The challenge is picking something the world will need then. And the hard part is patiently and persistently sticking with it despite the fact that it's not on everyone's agenda (yet). The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The next best time is tomorrow.

Extraordinary organizations have this is as their employee handbook. Resilient ones. Human ones that can thrive in the face of automation and AI. Organizations that are built on customer service, hospitality and flexibility. Of course, this means you'll need to treat your team with respect and offer them training and dignity. It means you won't be able to simply write down every single step in the manual, or work as fast as you can to replace people with uncaring software.

Some pits are infinitely deep. Problems that, once addressed, always get worse. N +1. For some folks, the acquisition of money or power are like this. A little needs to a desire for more. Other problems have known solutions. The tank only holds 8 gallons and then you can move on to filling the next one. A third ice cream cone isn't as good as the first one. Effort leads to satisfaction. It pays to decide which sort of hole we're trying to fill.

What do you do regularly? Where do you show up, what do you publish? Who do you ask, and what do you answer to? What gets better because you persist? Are there systems you support or work to change? What do you do when you don't feel like it? Especially then. The ocean is made of drops. And our practice turns those drops into something of significance.

In a typical tournament, you don't score any extra points for winning with the fewest number of moves. Quickly isn't the point.

We don't use the same language or ideas with an in-law that we do with our bar buddies. When the internet was young, people often chose to filter themselves online. We didn't know who was on the other end of the pipe, and we knew it would be there forever. And typing feels more permanent and official than speaking... Over time, the algorithms rewarded people who were guttural, hurtful, profane and, to use an overused and inefficient word, "authentic." And so it flipped.

Frozen pizza changed the game for many pizzerias. If you couldn't offer something better than what I had in my freezer, what do I need you for? If the wedding photographer can't deliver more magic than the phone in my guest's pocket, no thanks. Does working with your non-profit make me feel better than putting a dollar in the violin case of the busker down the street?

It's an odd term, worth a look. We don't notice that the tree we planted a few years ago thrives just a bit more each day. We don't notice that the mail shows up when it's supposed to, that our civilization persists in the face of chaos, and that the lights (usually) go on when we flip a switch. Granted?

And shiitake mushrooms, spaghetti squash, ginger and even packaged tofu? In the 1960s, the culture changed, and so did the supermarket. Small markets with fifty or sixty kinds of fruits and vegetables transformed into supermarkets carrying hundreds of varieties. Cooking shows and cookbooks raced to teach home cooks about the new, interesting and exotic. And Frieda Caplan showed up to orchestrate a connection between a desire for novelty and unknown international foods.

There's a face on Mars. Ever since Viking took this photo fifty years ago, some people have been sure--certain--that it clearly shows a face on the planet's surface. Of course, once we had a high resolution image from a later mission, all resemblance to a face went away. Human beings need a story, especially when we're trying to understand something we haven't already classified.

The simple rule: Nine shortcuts take longer and are less productive than simply doing the work the right way the first time. When we look for one-quick-tip and the lazy hack, we're wasting time we could have spent on the direct path instead. When a shortcut becomes the best way to do something, it ceases to be a shortcut. It's simply the direct path.