2020 has tested our patience. Did you pass?

Empathy is a choice. But, really, what other choice is there?

Experts agree that solitude is one of the key prerequisites for creative productivity. Here are 3 ways to find the solitude you need.

People who are open to seeing possibility have a powerful competitive advantage. What’s on your Wall of Possibility?

It may seem counter-intuitive that constraints spark innovation. But we might just be entering the most energized and accelerated period of innovation in recent history.

Children are innately curious. What if you questioned everything the way you did as a child?

Whether it’s the failure of a business or the end of a marriage, a personal health scare or a global pandemic, a crisis changes everything. But the capacity for reinvention is a hallmark of successful people, and a crisis can, in fact, be a powerful business accelerator.

This virus is a big old warning sign that if we’re going to continue as a species, we have to stop being so selfish. We have to cooperate, help each other, teach each other, and love each other, in order to survive.

The presentations we make at meetings could benefit from reading a bit more like Dr. Seuss. In the world of business, a good story may be your greatest strategic tool.

I recently read a Harvard Business Review article called “Why You Should Have (At Least) Two Careers,” written by a finance executive who is also a musician and author. As a brand strategist who is also a visual artist, it spoke to me.

My daughter recently finished a month-long musical theater camp, in which a group of middle schoolers devised and performed their own original musical.

Most days, I walk past a deli that has this sign in the window: “Make it a meal, Add a Pepsi.” The sign could have just said: “Pepsi.”

At the Cabbages and Condoms restaurant in Bangkok, the chandeliers are made out of condoms. The bowl where you expect to find dinner mints is filled with condoms.

My 12-year-old son is writing a research paper for school about the 18th Amendment. The other day, he homed in on what the gist of his thesis would be: Just because you make a rule doesn’t mean people will change their behavior.

The ability to control one’s own behavior is critical. But it’s hard. Really hard. Even when our lives literally depend on it.

Can you feel your heart beating? A recent study asked a group of Wall Street traders just this. The hypothesis is that those of us who are most in touch with our own hearts – physically as well as emotionally – are most closely in touch with those instinctual “gut feelings” that lead us in the right direction.

Six years ago when I first started writing these posts, there was vampires. Plants were fighting zombies, Twilight was hot, Game of Thrones was new, and winter was coming.

A few years ago I was asked to participate in an alumnae portrait project celebrating the 50th anniversary of women at HBS. The assignment was to write a piece about what you do and photograph yourself with a sheet bearing a one-word description of why you do it. This was my photo entry. (Thanks, Tim Leavitt, for the great pic.)

As a marketer, I’ve been trained to look for unmet needs. And sometimes it’s true that necessity is the mother of invention: a need exists, and a brilliant mind devises a way to address it.

But invention has other mothers as well.

In 1986, the Pleasant Company released a series of 18-inch dolls sold with accompanying books that told their stories from a personal viewpoint.