Classic avoidance behaviors are those things we’re doing when we say, “I really need to study”, or “I should be focusing on my writing”, or “One of these days I’ll get around to my marketing.” Students find reasons to do almost anything – the list is endless – which tells me that either school is [...]

First, let me say that the desire to make a living for oneself on the internet is a noble goal. The internet represents independence, freedom of information, free expression. That’s why there’s such a concerted effort to install cut off switches, blacklists, and bans in the US and China, because otherwise it’s the realm of [...]

Holy Rollers showed twice at the Tulsa United Film Festival 2011. We’ll talk about it here, because it’s a film, fundamentally, about work. ‘Rollers is about a large network of fundamentalist evangelicals that are professional black jack card counters. They have investors, managers, and players, and they take casinos for a lot of money. Now [...]

Sooner or later, if you’re in business, you’ll have to turn someone away. Business owners have lots of ways of doing it – some explicit, some less direct. They might set a price too high or stop going out of their way (if that’s what the client has grown used to). Other companies will just [...]

Facebook is the new AOL. The main differences are: 1. Facebook is ostensibly free (although 1-5% of users might buy something at some point – perhaps a game token of which facebook gets a cut, or maybe something from an ad on facebook, and facebook of course gets ad revenue. 2. Facebook has seamless integration [...]

In near the future, cloud fees will begin figuring into your monthly budget. You’ll pay for your accounting, invoicing, CRM, marketing more than anything, and a host of online services you need to operate a business, but also potentially to operate a household – because a household *is* a business, and increasingly we’re seeing a [...]

One of the most common things I hear about the decline of paper, CDs, DVDs, and other tangible media, and the corresponding rise of internet marketing, the death of big box stores and the transformation of cable TV into just a pipeline, and the corresponding rise of amazon.com and Netflix, is that “it’ll never go [...]

I once knew a guy who worked out of his enormous garage as a computer hobbyist. He didn’t make a lot of money at providing some technical expertise to other hobbyists, but he just loved computers, and it was like a warehouse in there, with every kind of part imaginable. He built a lot of [...]

WSJ reports decrease in fruit and vegetable consumption correlated to unemployment. Come on, we’re always hearing how the ‘poor’ in the US can’t afford fruits and vegetables, because crappy meat and junk food is cheaper. The hell it is. It’s cheaper by the pound for garbage meat, but not cheaper per food value delivered. And [...]