A successful entrepreneur told me earlier this year, “Never look back. If you look back, all you see is that you were an idiot.” He sold one of his companies for $1 billion, so I took some comfort in his words.
That said, I do look back, and I yield much gratitude from reflecting upon my […]
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I’m heading to London for Christmas and Boxing Day, then to Ireland to see some right nutjobs and lovely people, then back to London. Back in the office on New Year’s Eve.
It’s strange, having been away from the UK for so long. I guess I was more over it than I thought when I fled […]
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Two weekends ago, I had the pleasure of attending TEDx Silicon Valley, the local TED event, at Stanford University. I was thrilled that Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and other notables were giving talks that day. But the one that really stood out for me was a presentation by Samasource founder Leila Chirayath Janah. I could […]
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Obviously gift cards are very much on my mind these days. I posted this as a discussion on the Gift Cards Group on LinkedIn, and thought I’d cross-post it here. Any ideas?
Spotting a gift card for the Stanford University stores last night in a local (Palo Alto) supermarket, I wondered about the feasibility of gift […]
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Demanding credit and recognition is a loser’s game… It is a way of saying that we don’t believe good work should be done for its own sake, but rather for the applause that goes with it.
The real kicker is that people who demand recognition never get enough of it.
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Excellent piece by my friend Michael Jennings on how the ubiquitousness of mobile phones is changing Africa - and the utter ignorance of this on the part of people who, somehow, have credibility and are considered experts in how poor brown people suffer. It’s a positive story, with some infuriating points:
[A]bout three years ago I […]
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Pretty much every time I have been chronically unhappy, it was because I was convinced somebody else was “making” me that way. Because once you give up control over your own happiness, you’re just blowing with the wind, influenced by other people’s actions and moods.
Plus, you can start to stubbornly cling to your anger […]
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1. Love
2. People
3. Time
4. Thanks
So, what are yours?
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Several months ago, I quit sugar and wheat flour. This has been one of the best choices I’ve made, for mental reasons as much as for physical ones; I don’t have to put all that effort into attempting to be moderate (I failed most of the time, anyway). Eating a cookie or a piece of […]
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Just over a month ago, I wrote a post on Twitter, Foursquare, and mobile coupons while I was in Hawaii. For a simple guide to Foursquare, check out the Chicago Tribune’s piece published today, which echoes my post in positing that the money-making potential for this app could be huge.
As soon as I left Hawaii […]
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What a fabulous day: no alarm clock, a few hours of baking and cooking, and then dinner with Chris Yeh’s lovely family. It was a bit United Nations around the table: Chinese, Puerto Rican, and Polish, which made for a diverse spread, including Puerto Rican turkey, fried plantains, rice and beans, and traditional American Thanksgiving […]
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Those who know us less well require constant reassurance but those who understand our lives know that life ebbs and flows and let us be without taking offence or feeling ignored etc. The rest, I am afraid, really does not matter.
Shefaly Yogendra, longtime commenter here and one of the nicest minds I’ve met online, left […]
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One of my prized possessions is a drawing Hugh MacLeod did for me, based on what I was saying to him while he drew it. The man is a genius with one of the best hearts I know.
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I’ve been really bad about keeping up on correspondence with people for the last, oh, month or two. So I’m going to tread carefully and update a bit about what’s going on in my world. (I have revised my rules about what I disclose about my personal life online - hence much less specific talk […]
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