I love the case study of Casper mattresses.

Red Antler created brilliant branding and campaigns for the start-up, which quickly became a unicorn.

Whimsical, off-the-wall marketing helped the young mattress company stand out on billboards and NYC subways, defining a new era of shopping.

But now?

Casper is just another bog-standard e-commerce site.

As they grew, it appears that scores of new management systematically killed all the fun that made Casper unique and great.

Rare is the company indeed that can stave off the inevitable downward force of small-minded middle managers.

Alt title: My desktop is a dumpster fire.

We all know the wonders Marie Kondo can do for our physical spaces.

But how much digital junk is on our hard drives?

Files, folders, projects that we’ll never touch again, taking up our valuable digital real estate.

I’m sure someday I’ll want to re-read my college essay comparing circles in Moby Dick to triangles in The Purloined Letter. Cough.

We need AI for our hard drives, organizing, cleaning up, and categorizing our files, making it easier to find what we need and get rid of what we don't. Every OS must have this feature (but mostly just MacOS).

We need that space back.

Life is full of choices. And the decision to not make a choice is itself, a choice.

The courage to be ourselves is perhaps the greatest courage of all (and the most important).

When you're stuck at a fork in the road? There's always a secret, 3rd option.

The present and the future are full of digital noise and distraction. When you believe in something strongly, it's more important than ever to tune out the noise and focus on what matters most to YOU.

Make choices so that you're happy with the story of your life at the end of it.

Just you. It's your life, no one else's. Fight for what you believe is worth fighting for.

And what did I learn?

That these kids are amazing. So passionate, so courteous, and full of great energy. The future is in good hands!

Alt title: Why you look like a tourist.

Stage One: We bring our home country with us, take a few photos, and leave. We know nothing about the culture, norms, or values. We complain that their sodas/cars/roads aren’t as big as ours and go home relieved.

Stage Two: We are expats. We spend most of our time with other native speakers from our culture. We understand the country we live in on a deeper level, but we still compare it (often negatively) to what we’re used to. We start to see the aspects of their culture that we wish we had back home. It’s not all bad…

Stage Three: We are able to know their culture on a deep level. We see not just what they do, but how they think and why they do it. We see the rich tapestry of society options as a spectrum, in which their way of life is a data point, the same as ours. Some good and bad in both. We’re open. The world is now unlocked, and the quest for finding the perfect mythical place that has the best of everything we’ve ever liked (and none of the bad stuff) begins. This quest will never end.

Alt title: Mmmm... Doughnuts...

You want to know how to impress someone in a job interview, conversation, or presentation?

Bring the conversation full circle.

If we’re present in the moment, we’ll notice unusual words of phrases that other people use.

For example, when I was interviewed for my college scholarship, I was asked whether I had had any failures in my life. I didn’t have a prepared answer for that, so instead of bluffing, I just said “I’ll have to think about that and get back to you.”

They peppered me with many other questions after that one, and at that point, I felt like I might have cost myself the scholarship with my non-answer. But towards the end, someone asked a loosely related question. I had the presence of mind to say: “If I can take things back to Bob’s question earlier—Bob, you asked me about failure: I think the reason that question was so hard for me to answer in the moment was because I don’t look at the negative experiences of my life as failures, but rather as lessons to be learned and stories to be told. I’ve made it a point to incorporate those lessons as I go, and to turn failures into becoming a better person.”

And in that moment, I knew I had aced the interview and gotten the scholarship. If you file away key words, phrases, ideas, or questions, and then come back to them later, you'll impress everyone, all the time. Remember this.