Your guide to writing the first sentence of a novel, speech, pitch or screenplay. A great first sentence opens the door, sets the stakes, triggers your curiosity, and gives you a reason to care. A great first sentence wins you over as a reader and causes you to root for…

You’ve been asked to give a toast. Do it well and everyone will love you. Mess it up and you’ll lose the trust and support of everyone in the room. High stakes, high rewards. Sounds like fun, non? Here’s a structure you can put to work immediately for your next…

Setting the scene… If you were to use generative AI to blend the French new wave star Jean-Paul Belmondo with American jazz performer, Chet Baker, the result would look plausibly similar to the person sitting in front of me, Etienne Genvrin. He was explaining to me his radically inverted theory of learning languages…

Traverse the streets of New York or Paris and you’ll notice galleries appear about as often as dogs — at least a few every block. Tokyo, however, hides its art just around the corner. To help future travelers, I put together a list of galleries, museums, and few art-related shops…

Gone are the toll-bridge collectors on the Golden Gate Bridge. Gone are the checkout clerks from your favorite grocery store. But what about us artists? Writers? And thinkers of any stripe? Are we about to get gone too? AI will not mean the death of artists, intellectuals, or anyone else…

Recently I trained an AI on my own paintings and then had it create a few more back for me in my own style. The results are both familiar and strange. I’ve been painting my whole life, not as a way to pass the time, but as a central part…

How to design the story of your life with ten sentences. Use this guide to help figure out who you are, what you love, and what life you hope to create. Step by step Take out a piece of paper or a blank doc and make a list that is ten lines long. Don’t fill in anything yet, just ten blank lines. What we’re…

Use design to defeat the ticking clock of Customer-Product Fit When designing a product… ask yourself this terrifying question: How long does it take to get to WOW? How long does it take for a potential customer to go from initial awareness to fully believing that your app or service…

A few months ago, I gave a lecture at Stanford’s d.school on the terrifying (yet thrilling) call to do your life’s great work. Excerpted here is the emotional heart of the lecture: How to Battle the Problem-Monster. Read this when you need a boost. It starts out rough and dives…