“I’m calling Post-it.”

Derek Shepherd stands in the living room of the house he built for Meredith. He knows he screwed up while he was in Boston, putting his marriage on shaky ground. Calling Post-it is his way of invoking their vows and their commitment to each other.

He asserts his position: “I love you. I’m not going to stop loving you. Meredith, I can’t live without you. I don’t wanna live without you.”

Meredith responds, “I can live without you. (*pause for dramatic effect*) But I don’t want to. I don’t ever want to.”

If this were the first episode of Grey’s Anatomy you’d ever watched, you might be lulled into thinking that this was the beginning of a stronger relationship for these two. He’ll come back to Seattle, they’ll grow closer, and it will always be a beautiful day to save lives.

But if you’d watched the 236 episodes that preceded this one, you would know better.

.

What…

Read more

I love conversations that stay with you after they’re over, like the warmth on your hands after cradling a hot drink.

I recently had one of these conversations with a longtime collaborator after he reached out to catch up and share ideas.

He’s leading the marketing efforts at a growing nonprofit. That’s required getting buy-in, building trust, and cultivating the right team to get the work done, plus, of course, doing all of that work.

The big task on the docket is a website overhaul.

Now, if you’ve never had the pleasure of participating in a website overhaul, boy are you lucky. If you have, you know that it’s akin to capturing lightning in a bottle without getting too burned. Inevitably someone remains unhappy, and you’re exhausted (and if you’re me, you’ve sworn never to do it again).

He walked through his plan for the project, and I concurred with his approach: “Yes, I always do the homepage last because you don’t really know what to put…

Read more

In The Big Bang Theory, Penny is the beautiful blonde waitress trying to become a famous actress. It isn’t until season seven that she lands a small role on NCIS.

But when the gang gathers to watch the episode, they realize her scene was cut. She’s heartbroken and starts spiraling about her failing acting career.

Leonard, finally dating Penny after a lengthy courtship, tries to solve the problem. He sits next to Penny on her bright blue couch in the center of her perpetually messy apartment and (quite proudly) tells her that he got her an audition. She’s initially excited.

Then she learns he simply submitted an application online to be in the next Star Wars movie, something anyone could do. Leonard’s insistence that she has a leg up because she’ll be competing against nerds and geeks starts digging the hole, and comparing her to Luke Skywalker makes it deeper.

He ends the exchange by saying, “Wow, I can actually feel you hating me right now.”

.

Do you want me to listen, or do…

Read more

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a lawyer. With one exception: for a few years in middle school, I thought I wanted to be an interior designer.

It didn’t last. I returned to my original idea until my sophomore year of high school.

While it’s tempting to write this story as if I’d given great thought to either path, alas, that was not the case. I had no lawyers or interior designers in my family. In fact, I’m not sure I knew any lawyers in real life. I’m certain I didn’t know any interior designers.

But I felt I needed a good answer to the question, What do you want to be when you grow up?

So, I tried to find a good answer. I found law in the never-ending episodes of Law & Order. Interior design stemmed from my penchant for redesigning my room as a child (which I did quite a few times including one unfortunate version that rendered my room the equivalent of living inside a Pepto Bismol bottle).

It’s unsurprising that as adults we ask strangers, “What do you do?” right after we ask, “What’s …

Read more

As the metal ball starts to climb, Fender asks Rodney Copperbottom a question: “First time on the Cross-Town Express?”

From Fender’s bodily reaction and “ooo-wee,” we can tell that this will be an experience to remember.

That’s because the Crosstown Express has more in common with a roller coaster than it does with our real-world inner-city transit systems.

If you aren’t familiar with the movie Robots, the Cross-Town Express pays homage to a Rube Goldberg machine, a contraption that solves a simple problem in the most ridiculously inefficient way possible.

Rather than riding a subway in a straight line, Fender and Rodney move through the city like a giant ping pong ball.

Read more

“Damn.”

I took shelter when the sky opened up. I was in Epcot as part of a multiday trip to Disney World, where afternoon rain exists as a persistent possibility.

The squad (my family) was currently on a mission to secure nourishment. I had rejoined them after a side quest to upgrade my coveted Jedi badge. (The person guarding the area where you could make your own lightsaber was less than helpful, but I digress…)

Huddled under three feet of a roof overhang, my family debated what to do. Should we wait and hope the rain stops so we can continue on to the Food & Wine Festival? Or should we call it quits and head back to the resort so we can dry off and eat lunch?

Some consulted their weather apps, noting conflicting predictions. Others tried to find something, anything, to support their case, including pointing to the food cart a few feet from us and saying, “There’s a food stand right across from us — it must be a sign.”

We could have easily waffled until we were thoroughly soggy.

.

What’s t…

Read more

Raise your hand if you’ve watched or heard of the show House.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, the show follows Dr. Gregory House as he solves medical cases no other doctor could solve. The show pays homage to Sherlock Holmes (complete with archetypal sidekick, Dr. James Wilson).

In the first season of the show, Ed Vogler, a billionaire pharmaceutical executive, donates a large sum to Princeton-Plainsboro Hospital and becomes the new Chairman of the Board. The major string attached to that money? Total deference to Vogler’s will.

House doesn’t bend.

After a few tussles, Vogler moves to fire House to demonstrate his dominance. Lisa Cuddy, Dean of Medicine and Chief Hospital Administrator, manages to protect his job, but Vogler has a new game: House has to fire one of the people on his team under the guise of saving money.

So it’s fire someone and stay, or fire no one and be forced to leave.

Or is it?

.

What’s the third o…

Read more

asserts there are two types of problems: strong-link problems and weak-link problems.

When you have a strong link problem, you want to focus on getting more of the best of the group because these outliers have the greatest effect. When you have a weak link problem, you want to focus on eliminating the worst of the group because those outliers have the greatest effect. Like this:

Read more

You’ve likely heard the adage “One bad apple spoils the bunch.” Have you ever asked why?

I did.

Imagine ranking a bushel of apples on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is rotten and 10 is perfection. After evaluating each apple on a bushel, you give all the apples a ranking between 8 and 10 and have an average ranking of 9.2. Adding anl apple that ranks 10 will increase your average, but the impact will be modest because it’s only slightly above your average. On the other hand, adding a bad apple with a 2 rank significantly impacts your average because the difference between your average and this bad apple is large.

I learned that a bad apple pulls down the rest because it’s typically further away from your current average. Moreover, that one bad apple often has a greater effect than a good apple because the good apple isn’t as far away from your average as the bad apple.

This principle applies to your business in three ways:

.

1. People

Your bad apples have an…

Read more

Your team and the people you serve are two sides of the same coin. One cannot succeed without the other.

Let me explain.

*dramatic pause*

With a slight build and common attire, the figure walking into the city wouldn’t register among the other people going about their business inside the castle walls.

The figure turns out to be Merlin. We’ve followed him into Camelot in the first episode of the BBC series that bears his name.

Seeped in Arthurian lore, the twist lies in telling the story from Merlin's perspective (as the name of the show might suggest).

The show wastes no time revealing Merlin’s unique capabilities. For those of you playing for the home team, Merlin has magic — great magic unlike any seen before. *jazz hands*

We also meet Arthur in the first episode. Blond, broad-shouldered, and clad in chain mail, we find him knocking a servant about while practicing his fighting skil…

Read more

We Live a Hard Life in an Easy World

By

“These aren’t trade-offs but revelations about what we lose. Every convenience we gain leaves behind some essence, some strength, some human need that gets numbed out. The more the world does for us, the less we can do for ourselves.

And then, life shows up. And we break.”

This short piece beautifully captures how easy our world has become — and how flat that has made our experiences. The motions don’t prepare us to deal with our own mind, understand ourselves, or navigate life in all its messiness and complexity.

Yet this is the stuff that matters most and requires the most from us.

.

What Military Strategists Can Learn From Buddha

By Steven Weber

“When decisions respond to a mental model more than they do to the real-world situations that the mental model represents — imperfectly — the outcome is surprising, and o…

Read more

Read more

Why I’ve Become More Mindful About What I Delegate

By Moshe Bar

“When the outcome is what matters, delegation is acceptable, but when the experience itself is important, you should do it yourself.”

I’ve considered writing a piece on a related question: in a world constantly encouraging us to delegate so we only do what matters, when do we find that we’ve lost touch with the world we’re supposedly living in?

Like it or not, we’re hardwired to engage. According to Bar, “Brain research confirms that cognitive involvement in process-based activities increases brain plasticity, enriches connections between neurons, and lowers neurodegeneration. This helps explain why retirees who stop working but don't fill their days with other demanding activiti…

Read more

What Sexual Liberation Really Looks Like

By

“So, the evidence doesn’t suggest that today’s young women are reveling in sexual liberation. Instead, it suggests that a lot of women are having unpleasant, crappy sex out of a sense of obligation. And to add insult to injury, this doesn’t actually increase women’s value in the eyes of men.”

Engaging in no-strings-attached sex has long been presented as the more intellectual choice, and certainly the right choice if you were a forward-thinking woman. What those pushing this type of relationship have failed to notice is that most women don’t value this type of relationship (if you can even call it that), while most men do. The result is a culture where women cannot win. They are either labeled backwards for wanting a relationship, or they’re having empty sex they don’t enjoy — which, despite our promotion of hookup cu…

Read more

Hey there and Happy Thursday to you.

This is the first issue of 3 Things Worth Reading (or 3TWR if you will). I’m going to publish an issue every month with the three things out of all the things I’ve read recently that I think are worth your time to read.

Now onto the show:

.

Read more

No one set out to create the Dust Bowl.

Americans ventured west to make a life for themselves and their families. An abundance of rain provided a good life, which inspired an unrestrained pursuit of growth that could not continue indefinitely.

When the rain stopped, we crashed onto hard, flat land — a land whose soil turned to dust and suffocated the very life it used to give.

The Dust Bowl remains one of the worst man-made ecological disasters in American history. Our choices created the conditions that threatened to render the Great Plains uninhabitable.

In much the same way, our choices have created an economy unfit for people. We must now recenter it or risk our own destruction.

.

How did we create the Dust Bowl?

We often call the Great Plains the breadbasket of the nation because it produces a bountiful wheat harvest. In the 1920s, many years passed with ample rain and golden wheat, creating the illusion that nothing could go wrong.

Then, land development companies used the concept “rain…

Read more

There are things in life you do not control. The weather tends to dominate this category for me. I also don't control how other people respond to me, nor do I control how the management team takes care of the building in which my apartment exists.

I struggled with that last point this year. I started with a positive attitude. I moved to addressing issues on my own. But when the unit started leaking from every orifice again this spring, I accepted the situation was beyond my control and chose to leave.

I then decided to capitalize on my move and turn this year into The Year Of Cutting Back. Like when you cut back a plant so that it will grow fuller and stronger.¹

I have eliminated every unessential physical item in my home. I have whittled down my tech stack. I even chose to close one of my companies.

We often see cutting back as a failure. A retreat in the battle of life.

I don’t. I see subtracting from life — whether that’s removing objects that are no longer es…

Read more

I came across this Note on Substack last week:

I agree with his point. This isn’t a good sign for our culture. I went further and asked, “Is it the culture that’s stagnated, or is the industry stagnating the culture?”

The TLDR answer is: it’s both.

.

What's creating this stagnation?

I want to put forth three¹ primary drivers for what studios currently produce and the resulting list of top grossing major motion pictures:

.

1. The industry is minimizing its risk.

It costs an average of $100 million to produce and market a major motion picture. Google AI (still experimental) says that the average is $120 million in 2024 with “a significant portion of that budget allocated towards marketing costs, often exceeding the production cost itself.”

The folks investing the money to produce a motion picture want to see it turn a profit or at the very least, not lose the studio any money. The emphasis on marketing spend reeks of fear — fear that …

Read more

You’ve chosen to subscribe to WTP. What's more, you take the time to open my emails and read what's in them. 

It's my intent to make that investment of time worthwhile. 

To help me better understand who you are and what you care about, I’ve put together a survey. Your feedback will directly shape the future of this newsletter and everything else I do under the WTP banner.

You can share your thoughts here: https://forms.gle/H32qEKetrjxu8ipx8 

Here’s what to expect:

• The survey will take about 15 minutes to complete.

• Your responses will remain completely confidential.

• The survey will close on December 12, 2024.

If you have any questions or encounter technical issues, feel free to email me directly at katie@askwtp.com.

Understanding the value you seek makes all the difference to me. I'm excited to use what you share to create an even better experience for you.

Thank you for your time.

Best,
Katie

P.S. If you have trouble with the link, please copy and paste it into your web bro…

Read more

Read more