Armchair Sociology
How to Find a Goal Worth Pursuing
How to stop going through the motions and actually get somewhere.
Armchair Sociology
Why Procrastination Is Good for You
Why almost completely screwing up is actually a good thing, and why doing it often is a super power.
Armchair Sociology
The Three Ways to Get Whatever You Want
Life is complicated. You have hopes, you have dreams, and you have desires… … but you also have all these doubts and fears and worries keeping you awake at night, insisting that you should be bigger and better and richer and more successful than you are now, be farther ahead Read more…
Armchair Sociology
3 Steps for Building Your 21st Century Career
How to adapt your career path to the realities of the new economy.
Armchair Sociology
Everyone Has the Same Tragic Flaw
Here’s why everyone else is doing better at life than you.
Armchair Sociology
The Meaning of Life According to Don Draper
Autonomy is a major theme on Mad Men. Who has more power to control your story and your life — is it you, or everyone else? For example, when the execs at ad agency Sterling Cooper learn their ad agency is about to be sold (again) at the end of Read more…
Armchair Sociology
The Other Guy Didn’t Win; You Just Failed to Convince People
In politics, business, love and war, we’re tempted to reduce all conflicts to a winner and a loser. By doing this, we imply that one side’s argument (or army) defeated the other soundly. In reality, this rarely happens. That’s because the margin between victory and defeat is often just a Read more…
Social Media
How Social Media Destroyed Itself
To everyone who’s ever created something and shared it online, I’d like to say one thing: I’m sorry. See, those of us who’ve been doing this for awhile now — we’re the ones who invented blogging, and tweeting, and YouTubing, and social networking, and we’ve been preaching about “the digital Read more…
Armchair Sociology
The Commencement Speech I Wish Someone Had Given at My Graduation
I don’t remember a word from my graduation. I don’t even remember who spoke at it, much less what they said. That’s partly because I was exhausted (our art school staged our portfolio review and our graduation on the same day), but also because people rarely say anything memorable during Read more…
Armchair Sociology
Q&A Interview with Frank Rose, Author of “The Art of Immersion”
From the audience’s impact on the making of LOST to the eerie web promotions for The Dark Knight Returns, our media is becoming more immersive by the day. WIRED contributing editor Frank Rose noticed this trend and embarked on a years-long voyage to connect the digital dots. His goal was Read more…