The standards have changed a lot in the last few millennia:
The big man said it.
The book said it.
The newspaper said it.
I saw a photo.
I saw it on TV.
I read it on the internet.
That’s what the AI said.
There has always been room for doubt. But the last century has been about doubt at scale, due to mismatched incentives and the impact of media and tech.
84% of the statistics we read are manipulated for impact. And every story, every narrative, every photo is curated and edited. The map is not the territory, and the map maker has a goal. It might be the same as yours–but it might not be.
One danger is that a story not worth believing lets us off the hook. The other is that it manipulates us into taking action we’ll regret.
It’s impossible to function in society without consuming stories. You’re never going to the moon, and the only way it’s possible to know it’s not made of green cheese is to find a story you can inspect and trust, one that, if you drill down far enough, is based on things you can engage with in real life.
People in society are often driven by the desire to believe what everyone else in their circle believes–people like us do things like this. But the change agent has the desire to be early in embracing ideas that others don’t believe (yet).
The difference between poison and medicine often comes down to the dosage. Belief at scale, fueled by omnipresent media designed to seduce, is unlikely to help us get to where we seek to go.
A coherent culture is often built on a shared belief system. When the entire group believes something that collides with reality, though, reality wins.
In the long run, the Earth doesn’t care what you believe. Eppur si muove.
And, now and then, it’s fun to find something better. In the scheme of things, fancy foods are a bargain, a chance to have the best in the world for a few dollars.
Here are some persistent (and new) favorites. For those outside the US, I hope you can find even better local options.
Koeze makes the best peanut butter in the country. They make one batch a day, laboriously grinding for three hours. Zingermans often has it at a bulk discount.
Seed & Mill has a chocolate tahini sauce that’s mind-blowing. Imagine Nutella, but 10x better and just the good parts. Her cookbook is great, too.
Burlap & Barrel offers cardamom extract that will transform a glass of bubbly water into a sophisticated refresher.
Three chocolates from South America, from the rare porcelana bean and its cousins:
Heinde Verre offers two related varietals in one comparison pack.
Summer sophistication and deliciousness are easy with a good shaker. You put whatever you want to drink (I steam 100% cacao with oat milk) over ice and then shake and pour. I was a skeptic on this, but I’m converted.
A simple 7-question test helps us realize how diverse a population is. On this quiz, the highest possible score is less than 7%. No matter how common you think your answers are, no matter how normal you feel, you’re actually in sync with just 7% (at the most) of all citizens of the US. My answers put me under 4.
“People like us do things like this,” is a useful definition of culture. But which things? Billions of people believe things you don’t, are unaware of things that are easily demonstrated, or simply don’t care.
When you decide to reach the masses, you’ve made a significant (and probably fruitless) choice.
The backlist are the products already in the marketplace. Built earlier, still sold. The frontlist is the new.
Restaurants have regulars (backlist) and new patrons. Broadway shows are attended by people who see three to ten shows a year, as well as folks going to their very first production. Supermarkets sell staples (like milk and bananas) as well as new products. Software companies, farmers, even rock stars have backlist items.
Today’s post is the frontlist of the blog, the other 10,000 posts are the backlist.
Two things are true, in a surprising juxtaposition:
Publishers spend almost all their time on the new books. The frontlist gets attention from editors, marketers, salespeople, publicists, and the rest of the team.
More than 100% of their profit comes from the backlist.
That’s not a typo. Every viable publishing house loses money on the frontlist. They do it to build a backlist. to create a catalog that pays the bills over time.
The confusion starts with the name.
Let’s call it what it is. The foundation list is the backbone of the organization and the engine for sustainability and profits.
And the experimental list is just that. A chance to invest in things that aren’t sure to work (because no one knows anything for sure about the future), with a focus on adding to the foundation list.
Now that the confusion is cleared up, we can make smarter decisions about how to spend our time and invest our resources.
Make your experiments actual experiments.
Devote time and money and focus to your foundation.
Improving your foundation always pays off. And being bold with your experimental list is easier once you call it an experiment.
If you can swap your slogan with a competitor’s without changing the meaning of either brand, then your slogan is meaningless.
For example, “You belong here” is not a positioning statement for a college seeking new students. It’s just noise.
It also doesn’t help to mix weasel words with more weasel words and then add specifics. On charity’s pitch: “Your contribution can help up to 35 people.”
“Up to” covers a lot of ground, doesn’t it?
It’s true that the copy we use can be noisy decoration, not often read or fully understood. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t put in the effort to make it useful and powerful.
One of the nicest thing you can do for someone you care about is point them to an idea, a book, a talk or a tool that will amplify their work and help them get to where they’re going.
It’s not easy. It means you understand their goals, see them for who they are and care enough about their work to amplify it.
That’s why filling in the missing piece with a complement is worth much more than an empty platitude or compliment.
They keep getting fancier. But you would benefit from investing in better lighting instead.
It’s tempting to upgrade your computer processor, your frying pan or your sneakers as well.
The thing is, once the foundational tools are good enough, technique and training outperform hardware. New snow tires are often more effective than a new car at getting to work, because traction matters more than horsepower.
Sharpening your saw or building resilience might be the best way to improve.
Look around the room you’re in. There are dozens of electrically powered devices, each waiting for you to request their assistance. A toaster, six lights, an oven, the ice maker, stereo, TV, microwave… It’s a very long list. Silent and ubiquitous.
Of course, electricity didn’t start this way. Using a washing machine to do your laundry required unscrewing a lightbulb and then screwing in the Edison mount cord.
When the web arrived, we treated it as one more appliance, an electronic library. When you wanted something, you went to your browser (the name gives it away) and found what you needed. A billion web pages, all on standby, waiting for your arrival.
AI presents itself to us in this way, at least for now. When you have something you need, the chatbot’s ready, the LLMs are built, and the data center is powered up, all waiting for you to ask.
This is changing. Right here and right now. It’s not something we’re expecting or ready for, but it’s an inevitable consequence of our reliance on tech and the detailed cocoon of data we’re weaving.
The systems will notice and intervene before we ask them to. In matters large and small. This will be unsettling until it’s not only normal, but something we depend on.
If you had experts in health, productivity, leadership, efficiency and community action following you around all day, speaking up when it would be helpful, offering tools and insight when you needed them, often before you knew you needed them, what would your day be like?
It won’t always be delightful, and we don’t get much of a say in whether it happens, but that’s the path we’re on.
Two opportunities, then:
Be intentional about which interventions will help you get to where you hope to go, and put them in place early.
Be aware of which interventions the systems are pushing on you that don’t help you with your goals. Draw a line and don’t get lulled by convenience or social pressure.
We’re headed to a divide between amplifying agency and becoming a cog. Where do you want to go?
Focus groups and informal feedback offer a trap: Asking someone in the target audience if they like something might get you useful feedback.
But most of the time, the people you’re asking aren’t actually in the group of early adopters that are going to make your rollout work. They’re not the people who buy work from artists before they’re famous, or wait in line to get an iPhone on the first day. They’re part of the crowd, not the lonely early adopters.
And people who are part of the crowd generally don’t have a lot of empathy for the nerds who go first. Since they have trouble imagining what drives those folks, they’re going to do a terrible job of giving you feedback.
“I don’t like this (yet),” is not the same as “the people you hope to serve won’t like this.”
You don’t have to be a toddler to work at Fisher-Price. Professionals work hard to imagine what others might want. But your friends and neighbors might not have put in the work needed to have this professional skill.
Promotion, activation, and conversation come together when the early adopters have a tool to share a new idea.
My new book is out a few months, and it’s a chance to create a share package with swag.
There are only 1,000 sets. Each includes 10 first-printing copies of The Knot (with the collectible mini-poster) + the Spindex™ + This Is Swag art book. The best swag box I’ve done in a while. Remarkable and even a little ridiculous.
Why ten copies? To share. To create conversations. The book works better when we talk about our problems.
And it includes the Spindex™. It’s created to focus and amplify the hard work of talking about the work to be done. Here’s an explanation:
There are ten copies of The Knot, first printing, including the two-sided cover with the collectible mini-poster inside.
And… a strictly limited printing of This is Swag, a new art book collecting images and stories from the last thirty years of swag I’ve built and shared. Images are below. It’s the most meta piece of swag I could envision. Not listed with an ISBN, simply a limited collectible.
The ten books, the Spindex and the art book all ship together on September 22.
Here’s the collection.While supplies last. Thanks for sharing and for letting me create a little useful quirkiness. [The first 400 orders will also get a free link to take my online course about the book. I’ll email the link to purchasers in July.]
PS if you want to pre-order a single copy of the book, here’s the link.
Problems can be solved.
June 23, 2026
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