Month: May 2023

When you post a picture of your new car on Instagram, that’s not sharing. That’s bragging. You want a pat on the back for the accomplishment and the hard work it represents. That’s fair, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s important to be honest about it. You’re not “spreading the joy.” Your post will make some, maybe most, people jealous. And you will get plenty of back-patting, but not all of it will be genuine. That’s life. That’s social media.

Beyond the many ways we can use them to stuff ourselves with hollow feelings, however, there are some that truly deserve the “social” moniker. One of them requires little more than stopping to take a photo or taking a break from grocery shopping to quickly text someone on WhatsApp: Whenever something reminds you of someone you care about, let them know.

If you spot a car you used to salivate over with your third-grade bestie, send him a picture. When you find a chair at IKEA with your cousin’s name, tell her about it. And should you come across a delicacy you tasted on your Japan trip with a friend ten years ago, make sure to remind him how good it tasted. That’s true connection. That’s sharing. That’s spreading the joy.

Every brand, ad, and TikTok video now encourages us “to share” not because we care about the people we share with but in order to make a statement about who we are. In a world where everything feels unique but is actually average, where we all like the same food, clothes, and music, and where we can live just fine, even better, with an identity that’s muted rather than emphasized, that’s not the kind of sharing that matters.

Meanwhile, the moments that truly matter are easily lost in a sea of humdrum, everyday activities. Passing the canned beans isle without reminding your high school friend of your inside joke happens quickly, but regrets often last forever once we have them. “Hey! I saw this, and it made me think of you.” A single line, no effort. It barely feels like sharing, yet it can easily make our day. Don’t forget it — because that’s the kind of sharing that matters.

Every job posting nowadays claims you’ll have “lots of autonomy.” You should be “highly organized” and “self-motivated to get things done,” because there’ll be plenty of decisions for you to make with authority and responsibility.

The reality often looks different. The only responsibility that truly gets passed on is the one the person above you doesn’t want, and your autonomy is frequently limited to how you do exactly what your boss asked you to do.

My dad sits right below the c-suite level in his organization. He still gets told who to fire when. That’s fauxtonomy at its worst. “Why don’t we offer early retirement to the guy who’s been clamoring for it for years? Who picked the person who’s performing well and actually has fun doing it?”

Everyone loves handing out autonomy until they have to live with the consequences of other people’s decisions. That’s why, in big corporations, autonomy only exists on paper. The strings are pulled in the same tiny unit where they’ve always been pulled — it’s just the fallout that spreads.

As a leader, your job is to listen, not point. If you’re not willing to trust the judgement of those you ask to help you, you’re not really entitled to their help at all. A manager with her ear to the ground will always have a better impression of what’s going on in her team than some higher-up 17 levels above in the org-chart, yet all it takes is a little humility for the two to come together: “What do you think? How should we handle this?”

Fauxtonomy is a pandemic, but it still hasn’t reached every corner of the world. Best of all, unlike a real virus, all we have to do to eradicate it is to change our minds. Don’t settle where you’re not trusted, and don’t stop trusting when believing in others gets uncomfortable.

When MrBeast first started on Youtube, he did what plenty of kids his age did: He recorded his screen while playing some Minecraft, battling others in Pokémon, and going for epic shots in Call of Duty. After a few years of doing that with very minor success, he began showing himself on camera, making short films with his friends. His growth sped up, but it was not until they did crazy stunts, like wrapping himself in cellophane and toilet paper or counting to 100,000, that his channel really picked up steam.

Ever since, once question has been driving MrBeast’s ideas for new videos: “How can we make something even bigger?” That’s how we got videos of him giving away $10,000 to strangers, filling his friend’s house with Lego, and, more recently, a full-on replication of Squid Game in real-life.

When his production budget increased so drastically, however, the tone of his videos subtly started shifting. There are still the usual, larger-than-life MrBeast videos his more than 100 million subscribers have become used to, but suddenly, other types of videos have entered the picture. “I cleaned the world’s dirtiest beach,” for example. MrBeast gives $1,000,000 worth of food to people in need, opens a restaurant that pays you to eat there, and cures 1,000 people’s glaucoma, cataracts, and other vision-affecting conditions. What happened?

At some point, Jimmy Donaldson realized: From now on, bigger just means better. If you’ve already reached Netflix-level production value on your Youtube videos, there isn’t much higher you can go by spending more — but you can make content about more important causes. You can tell a different story rather than just a more expensive one.

The allure of “bigger” is that it promises to work. If counting to 10,000 is a hit, counting to 100,000 is almost guaranteed to get you even more fame. Most of us never max out on our “bigger” potential — and so forever stay stuck in a hamster wheel of mundane aspirations. When you look at people at the very top of the “bigger” chain, however — Bill Gates, Meryl Streep, MrBeast — you’ll almost always see them turning to “better.” Better ways to spend and donate their money, better issues to bring awareness to, better stories to share and spread across the world.

The lesson for us is that “better” is an option long before “bigger” runs out. You don’t have to make a million first to start selling a better digital product. You don’t need to retire to make a documentary about a town that’s dear to you. Often, “better” is the better way to go “bigger,” and we’re just scared to take a leap of faith.

For MrBeast, “bigger” first meant putting more of himself into his videos — often literally. Then, he had to up the stakes of what he was doing on camera, and now, the craziness of his next stunt is only limited by his imagination. Thankfully, Jimmy never forgot about “better” along the way. He remembered that “bigger” is only a means to an end, and once he reached that end, he began choosing “better” instead.

The world wants to reward us with more for more, but if we insist on getting more for better, usually, it is still happy to comply. For every next step, ask yourself: Is “bigger” really just bigger? Or does “bigger” actually mean “better?” Act accordingly, and whether it is views, subscribers, readers, fans, money, impact, or glory you seek, the spoils will never be in short supply.

My personal measure of inflation is what I call “the pretzel index.” When I first lived in Munich in 2014, a pretzel with butter cost around 50 cents. When I moved back here in 2016, prices were already closer to 70 cents, and after New Year’s Day in 2018, the fact that they now cost more than 1 euro sent gasps throughout the subway station. Another five years later, we went from 1.60 to 1.90 to 2.10 euros within a matter of months, and it does make you think: Not everything has quadrupled in price in less than a decade, but wages definitely haven’t. It is no wonder people can barely keep up, let alone dream of a utopian goal like owning a house or even an apartment.

My wallet, too, is bleeding, but, thankfully, so far, I’m still doing okay. I don’t do it as often, but in times when prices hurt more than usual, it is an even greater privilege and pleasure to say: “Keep the change.” If you want to make someone’s day today, these three words will do it. Of course, kept change, too, needs to be earned. Perhaps the bakery next door is consistently friendly, your hairdresser makes great conversation, or the lady at the coffee shop always adds an extra dash of cinnamon.

Whatever it is, wherever you’re being appreciated, try to mirror that appreciation back when you can. “Keep the change” is just an easy, universally understood way of doing so — and a financially efficient one at that. A cake store won’t know you’re buying an extra slice just to support them, but the 20 cents you gift them on top of the actual bill? On a rainy day, those will feel like 20 bucks.

Whether you use a simple tipping formula, round up to the nearest dollar, or offer words where your wallet won’t stretch, remember to appreciate those who appreciate you — and that gratitude, like everything, must be shown to truly be felt. As long as you do that, even when both you and your baker squirm at pretzel prices, you’ll still have something to smile about at the end of the day.

In the 1990s, people in Argentina spent their life savings to come see Michael Jordan play basketball. Folks from Taiwan would save years, then take a 24-hour trip, just to see “His Airness.” Wherever Michael went, people were queuing to look at him, talk to him, even touch him, hoping his greatness would literally rub off on them. It was as if Jesus himself was walking the earth.

Others tried to tap into Jordan’s fame a little differently: They published books about his ruthless discipline with colleagues and his gambling habit, spread dark rumors about his father’s murder in the papers, or tried to goad him into making sensationalist statements.

What nearly all Michael Jordan fans had in common, however, is that they chased a sliver of MJ instead of owning 100% of themselves. They’d rather shake Michael’s hand than make it to the NBA, because even though it feels similarly impossible, that’s a much easier way of checking off their basketball dreams.

Meanwhile, Michael himself never cared for fame to begin with. He only wanted to do one thing, his thing: play basketball.

Basketball is the only language Jordan spoke, and that’s why, through fame and speculation, through derision and mockery, basketball is how Jordan responded to whatever the world had to say about him. When he was cut from the varsity team in high school, he practiced all summer. When the Bulls won their first championship, he went right after the second one. And when the media mocked him over a casino visit with his dad the night before a playoffs game, he stopped giving interviews and started demolishing his opponent.

Whether they try to take it in good faith or in bad, everyone wants a piece of the people who are doing their own thing. But you only get one life — your life. So don’t be a fame chaser. Be more than a fan. Do your own thing.

Your thing might not be basketball. It could be pencil sketches, making beats with a saxophone, or organizing car meetups. You don’t have to take it as far as becoming a walking icon for it to matter, but life flows best when you’re speaking your own language, not trying to catch a few words of someone else’s — no matter how beautiful it may sound.

This morning, I was looking for a white pair of long socks. Eventually, I managed to pull one out of the closet. I unfurled the socks and put them on.

“Ugh. Again?!” One sock was shorter than the other. It felt twisted, out of shape, and the portion that’s supposed to cover my heel wouldn’t fit. It must have shrunk a while ago while drying.

I know these socks, of course, and that’s why I went, “Ugh.” This was the third time I unsuspectingly grabbed and wore them, only to realize they wouldn’t do. Finally, I did the right thing: I took them off and threw them in the trash.

From 2014 to 2018, I wore a festival bracelet that was dear to me. One day, I wanted to play volleyball, so I cut it off. Parting with tradition requires the right timing. Parting with something broken that’s replaceable does not.

If you don’t want to worry about minor issues longer than you need to, don’t turn 30 seconds of responsibility into a month-long weight on your shoulders.

When the socks don’t fit, you can put them back, punt the problem, and set yourself up for another unpleasant surprise — or you can throw them away, make a note to buy new ones, and move on with your day.

When Nike first courted Michael Jordan for a sponsorship deal in 1984, they could barely get MJ to listen to their pitch. Nike founder Phil Knight thought salesman Sonny Vaccaro was crazy for even pursuing him, let alone the terms he wanted to offer the then-rookie, who had just signed with the Chicago Bulls a month before — and not played a single NBA game.

To be detailed in the upcoming movie Air, part of the story is already told in The Last Dance, a documentary following His Airness and the Bulls through their meteoric rise to legendary basketball status. David Falk, MJ’s agent from 1984 on through his entire career, remembers: “I couldn’t even get him to get on the damn plane and go visit the campus.”

Jordan loved Adidas, but they didn’t have the resources to build a shoe line just around him. Converse was the #1 NBA shoe supplier, and they already had Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Dr. J, an all-star roster of ambassadors — and yet, Nike still had to fight tooth and nail for Jordan. Falk was so desperate, he called Jordan’s mom, who made him “go listen.” “You may not like it, but you’re gonna go listen.”

Against their own better judgement, Nike pulled out all the stops. They offered Jordan his own shoe line using their latest technology, “air soles.” They paid him more for longer — $500,000 per year for five years, a sum three times higher than what even legends like Magic Johnson could command at the time. And they even named the shoe after him: Air Jordan.

All in all, it was the longest of long shots. An upstart company making mostly track shoes trying to tailor a shoe around a single player in a team sport who hadn’t yet won any trophies. As soon as they inked the deal, I guarantee you, everyone involved at Nike went: “Let’s pray this is gonna go well.”

“Nike’s expectation was, at the end of year four, they hoped to sell $3 million worth of Air Jordans,” Falk recalls. “In year one, we sold $126 million.” The rest, as they say, is history. Over the last 40 years, the Jordan-Nike collab has made tens of billions of dollars, making Jordan the first billionaire basketball player in history and generating billions in profit for Nike. What Nike initially wanted to sell in four years, they now sell every five hours.

The next time you catch yourself thinking, “I hope this is gonna go well,” remember: It could go well or not so well — but it might go even better, and that’s the hoop we’re truly shooting for.

Starbucks has been selling you the same cappuccino since 1986. Every time you go there, you get the exact same thing and, contrary to our expectations, that’s why it’s valuable. Starbucks is a $100 billion company not despite selling the same old boring coffee, but because of it. The average Starbucks customer spends $14,000 there over the course of their life. $14,000, one $5 cup of coffee at a time.

When people walk into your store and say, “I’ll have the usual,” that’s when you win. The problem is it’s hard to keep handing out the usual — with coffee, yes, but especially in the arts. Big franchises have a high churn of employees towards the bottom of the ladder. Front-line workers get burned out. There are only so many venti caramel lattes you can make before you want to pour the hot milk into your own face.

Now transfer the necessity to sound like a broken record to a deliverable that requires brains, not beans, like essays, music, or a software tool, and you have the perfect recipe for irreconcilable tensions: Humans want to be creative, and, on the one hand, making something new is exactly what gets us noticed by the crowd. On the other hand, that crowd then demands more of the same, and if we give in to their impulse, we’ll accrue more rewards but lose the satisfaction we felt from that initial act of creation.

Some people are good at this. They churn out article after article, repeating a few messages that resonate again and again. It doesn’t matter that they still sound the way they sounded five years ago because, while a fraction of the old readership remains, new fans constantly enter their circle, and that’s how they grow. The price is the ability to reinvent themselves, and the longer they wait to take it back, the more painful the eventual rebirth will be — but at least they’ll have the financial comfort to endure it.

Others, like my friend Zulie and I, struggle so much to be Starbucks, we’ll commiserate about our “boring stuff burnout” in two-month intervals. “Alright, focus, focus, focus,” we’ll say, find little pockets of freedom to get our creative fix, and then get back to work on our websites.

The creator’s bane is jumping from project to project, always hoping to strike gold yet never digging deep enough anywhere to actually find it. “Alright, cool, this worked. Now let me go do something else.” No! Do more of the same! At least until you can comfortably afford all of the “something elses” you pursue — if you are honest with yourself — not because you need a new approach but because you are bored.

When someone pays you $5 for a coffee, you don’t ask: “Okay, how can I make $5 from something else?” Business is not a creativity game. It’s a money game. The metric on the scoreboard is dollars, not colors. The goal is to earn the dollars so you can play with the colors, and until you do, the question is: “Can you repeat it?” The answer is a matter of grit, discipline, and focus much more so than logistics, but each time you manage to say “Yes,” you’ll be one step closer to financial — and therefore creative — freedom.

If you want to get a feel for how big Star Wars truly is, consider the Youtuber “Star Wars Theory”‘s apology video. It’s an apology shared with three million people — all fellow Star Wars fans. Theory can live well off his channel. The video is filmed in his Lamborghini. It’s a million-dollar lifestyle, all thanks to Star Wars.

But the subject of the apology reveals even more: Vader Episode 2, Theory’s long-awaited sequel to a 2018 live-action short film he produced with donations and channel earnings, is delayed yet again. The budget? $500,000.

That’s how big Star Wars is — fans raise serious money to produce their own indie movies to add to George Lucas’s original trilogy and sequels, and that’s to say nothing of the millions of comments, ideas, quotes, and opinions being shared every day.

In the comment section of Theory’s video, two themes emerge: People criticizing him for talking about budget constraints while obviously being well off, and people who claim they are happy to wait for a better result, offering advice on how to make Vader Episode 2 better.

The first group got sidetracked. Theory reveals very little about his personal life. For the first two years of growing his channel, he didn’t even show his face. He only offers details when they add to the message, and in this case, it was: “You don’t have to worry about me, but producing a budget movie is hard.”

There’s little worse than a sideline-hater. The commenters now complaining about their $10 donations potentially going into Theory’s gas tank have forgotten what they are experts on: Star Wars. They know next to nothing about Theory’s life, but that’s the part they choose to criticize — and it makes them look petty and little else.

The second group remembers: Star Wars is what we are here for. We can either rally together to get this thing done, or we’ll never see this universe go where we want it to go. When they offer criticism, it’s about the subject matter. “Go this direction with the episode.” “I would love to see…”

In one of his watch party live streams, Theory agrees with a fan: “When people say no one hates Star Wars more than Star Wars fans, [that’s] because we possess the appropriate level of understanding to call out the Star Wars BS when we see it.” “Finally someone gets it!” Theory yells.

It’s a theme worth adapting well beyond the confines of fandom: Earn your right to criticize.

Unless you invest serious amounts of mental and emotional energy into something, don’t throw shade from afar. It’s easy to critique something you know nothing about, but that’s exactly what makes your critique flimsy and easy to dismiss. If you want to give feedback that can actually change outcomes, you’ll have to work for that power. Otherwise, you’ll only look like yet another jealous commenter, complaining about the man in the arena from the stands.

May the Fourth be with you, and may you choose work over words on most days.

Yesterday, I was fully stuck in my head, ruminating about my own affairs, for the first few hours of the day. Even my usual fun-sprint down the spiral staircase at work couldn’t break me out of my shell. Only what happened next did.

“Good morning!”

“Good morning!”

“What can I get ya?”

“One cappuccino please.”

Whether it was because he had just cranked out 20 lattes already during the morning rush or for some other reason, I don’t know, but this time, I held my warm, comforting beverage in my hands within 30 seconds.

“Wow, that was light speed man, fantastic. Thank you!”

“Just normal,” he said and shrugged, but in the corner of his mouth, I could see the slightest smirk, and I knew: Here’s a human being who’s happy to have just received a compliment — and that, in turn, made me happy. That did the trick.

From that moment on, I became less self-conscious and more other-conscious. I finally started doing my tasks instead of thinking about them, because I remembered who I was trying to do them for.

It turns out, just like our work, compliments are for everyone. They warm the giver as much as the receiver — and both more than even the best cup of coffee. Give more compliments.