Colin Wright's Blog, page 32

Pre-Order Considerations

My new nonfiction book, Considerations, will hit shelves on November 1, and is now available for pre-order through Amazon, Kobo, iBooks, and Gumroad. Considerations is a book about asking questions, attaining new perspectives, figuring out what you believe, and determining how these beliefs can help guide your actions

Because of my coffee pricing policy, the book costs a whopping $2.99.

If you pre-order the book and email me a receipt or some other proof-of-purchase, you’ll also receive 30 Days...

Stack for Serendipity

I’m sometimes told that I published a piece of work at exactly the right time. A new book, blog post, or newsletter arrived at the very moment a reader was thinking about the same topic, and I helped provide the right words, insight, or even just a kick out the door to motivate them toward their next step.

I love when this happens. Not because I think I had much to do with them taking those next steps — I might help strike a spark, but they provide the fuel and stoke it into a fire — but becau...

Somethingness

I teach an online design class from time-to-time, and one of the things I try to instill in my students is that whitespace is their friend.

Whitespace looks luxurious. Look at a pennysaver-style ad sheet or tabloid, and you’ll see the every available inch has been utilized; filled with words and images and whatnot.

Look at a high-end fashion magazine or design publication, however, and you’ll notice that many of the pages are barely utilized. There are far fewer images, few less text, and a who...

Public Pianos and Amplification

There’s a piano in a park not far from where I live in Prague. The park is the hub for a bustling tram station and metro line, and stretches out in front of a beautiful cathedral that people crowd around to photograph all day long.

But my favorite part of the square is one of the walkways leading toward the cathedral, where a piano has been placed. There’s an unadorned stool in front of the piano, and the instrument itself is somewhat gritty and aged. Yet that walkway has brought immense joy t...

Philosophical Fluidity

It’s possible to have a preference, act counter to that preference, and still have a good time.

A high-end chef, for example, needn’t dine on the finest cuisine in order to enjoy food. She’s equally likely to savor a feast at a four-star restaurant, or relish one served up by her local Denny’s, so long as she’s in the proper frame of mind to do so. And neither experience is more or less legitimate than the other, in terms of her own satisfaction, so long as she is, indeed, satisfied. Thankfull...

On Message

The main difference between a person and a well-known person is the story they tell about themselves.

This applies to celebrities, internet thought leaders, and even sports stars and the like. The ones with the better stories tend to be the ones who capture the world’s imagination; or at least that of a measurable segment of the world.

‘Better story’ in this context means the story with the clearest message. Some of these people have million-dollar marketing budgets to help promote them, but al...

Threats and Opportunities

There’s a tool in the entrepreneurial utility belt called a ‘SWOT analysis.’ The acronym stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. The idea here is that by identifying which factors — internal and external — fit within these four different boxes, it’s possible to get a better view of the environment in which you’re playing.

The SWOT, like any other tool, can be useful if applied correctly. I would argue, however, that we quite often (whether formally through a tool of this...

Not Our Histories

When there’s conflict in the world — and sadly, there very seldom is not — it’s important to remember a few things.

First, recognize that the people catalyzing conflict are generally not the majority in any given instance. It’s usually a militant group, a collective of extremists, or government officials who decide which outsiders are allies and which are enemies. They decide who is good and who is bad, and when and where violence will be used as a tool for political/economic/philosophical gai...

The Relativism of Advice

Good advice can be a difficult thing to acquire, though you wouldn’t know it from perusing the how-to section at a bookstore, reading the opinion section of the newspaper, or browsing just about the entire internet.

There’s advice everywhere. Advice on money, on work, on relationships, on food. Advice about how to spend your time, how to raise your kids, how to travel or work out or edit a photograph.

And some of this advice is good. For someone, at least.

Because although it’s wonderful to have...

Outdated Limitations

I love learning about industries outside of my own. There are many parallels to be found, and those parallels can make aspects of my work more clear because of their distance from my immediate concerns.

It’s rumored that the CD can play back 74 minutes of music because when it was developed, the president of Sony’s favorite symphony was Beethoven’s Ninth, which was 74 minutes long. He wanted to deliver a format that would play his favorite symphony in its entirety, and that determined the size...