Josh Bowen

Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception of it. An example I love that is not mentioned in the book: for years, few people bought “death insurance.” Then some genius changed the name to life insurance and grew the industry by many billions of dollars. After all, life insurance sounds so much better than death insurance.

It’s a rather simple question that quickly gets to the core of someone’s sense of well-being and legitimacy: did your childhood leave you feeling that you were – on balance – OK as you were? Or did you somewhere along the way derive an impression that you needed to be extraordinary in order to deserve a place on the earth? And, to raise an... See more

You’re doomscrolling because you’re looking for something to transform you but you can’t stay with one thing for long enough to be transformed by it. You have short attention span on an existential scale. You’re gliding past thousands of small worlds in minutes, laughing at one post, feeling dread at the next, tempted to buy something right after.... See more

This is the paradox of our time: the very tools designed to free us from labor are trapping us in an endless cycle of escalating work. As our productivity increases, our standards and expectations rise even faster, creating a psychological Jevons Paradox that threatens to consume our humanity in the pursuit of ever-greater output. We become victims... See more

Just think about how much effort you have to put into maintaining the facade of being an Expert — how much effort it takes to always appear as “the one who knows”… and compare that to the freedom and flow and playfulness that can open up when you really allow yourself to sink into not knowing, when you no longer care if you make mistakes or if you... See more

If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life.