About a month ago, I wrote about the good kind of stress — the neuroscience of why hard things stick, why IKEA furniture you assemble yourself feels more valuable than identical pre-built pieces, and why Trader Joe's legendary parking lot chaos is a feature, not a...
There's a question I've been sitting with lately: When did we collectively decide that "good enough, but effortless" beats "excellent, but requires something of you"? Because if you look at how consumers actually behave — not what they say in surveys, but what they do...
What This Sunday's $7M Super Bowl Ads Reveal About Your Brand Every February, brands now spend around $7–8 million for 30 seconds of airtime. Most treat it as a gamble. Smart strategists treat it as the world's largest live experiment in emotional marketing. What...
I was one of those 1.1 million people. On New Year's Eve 2025, I sat in a packed theater watching the Stranger Things finale. I was clapping during the big reveals, gasping at the scary parts, and shouting at the screen during the final battle. And yes, shedding tears...
For two decades, most business advice about the paradox of choice has pointed in one direction: offer less. The famous jam study showed 24 varieties = 3% conversion, 6 varieties = 30% conversion. The lesson seemed clear. Trader Joe's built an empire on 4,000 SKUs...
The thing that's supposed to make us feel better has been making people feel worse. Fitness is one of the most reliable mood-regulation tools we have. The research is unambiguous: movement lifts mental state, reduces anxiety, generates energy, and creates a sense of...
Something interesting is happening in cities across the country - and the world. On Wednesday nights, strangers are meeting for dinner. Thousands of adults are waking up at 6 AM to dance sober before work. People are gathering in libraries and cafes to read silently...
If the memory of that first cassette resonates, you were born before 1996. Do you remember your first one? Not the one your parents bought you—the one you discovered. The one you saved for, hunted through record bins to find, brought home like treasure. You didn't...
Remember "Choose Your Own Adventure" books? Turn to page 42 if you want to explore the cave. Turn to page 87 if you run away. See content credentials I've been thinking about those books because of my ongoing war with streaming algorithms. I watch horror. Action...
CES 2026 and the Rise of Joyful Design Here's the shift CES 2026 made impossible to ignore: when products stop competing on features, they start competing on feelings. I've seen this pattern play out across industries for 25 years. When functional differentiation...
