I’m experimenting with a new format for Thought Dumpling this week that I’m considering turning into an ongoing series. Short of a clever name, I’m calling it 1-3-1. The premise is: One idea I’ve been thinking about, three related examples that help explain or expand on the idea, and a lasting question to help you apply it. I hope you enjoy reading it.

One idea

“You are not the customer.”

I was four years into my marketing career when my manager shared some fundamental advice that changed how I approached my work. He was giving me feedback on some website copy I had written. The page was marked up with helpful but also humbling comments and notes. There was one paragraph I’d written after a conversation with one of the product managers that included too much jargon and complex information. My manager highlighted the entire paragraph and left the feedback: ‘No one actually talks about the product like this. Customers won’t understand what any of it means... You are not the customer!’ It turns out there’s a term for what my manager was getting at: ‘market orientation,’ which is essentially the idea that once you’re on the inside working for a company, you’re too close to the product to be objective, and you can’t assume that the customers you serve think or behave or speak as you do.

Mark Ritson, a former marketing professor, puts it best: “It basically means you don’t know anything because you’re making the thing,” he says. “You’re producing it, you’re marketing it, and as a result, you are not the consumer and everything you think is biased and wrong.”

To counter this bias, good marketers orient themselves to the market by conducting research. Similar to how stand-up comedians refine their routines by testing material in front of live audiences, they want to see how the audience experiences a joke. Because it doesn’t matter whether a comedian thinks a joke is funny; it’s the audience—i.e., the market—that determines whether it actually is.

The concept of market orientation, and looking at things through the eyes of others, is the idea for this week’s 1-3-1.

Three examples

You have to hear what the audience hears

Sometime in the early 70s, Keith Richards was asked by a music journalist whether his guitar style had changed and whether he thought he was still improving as a musician. “Yeah, I think so,” Richards responded. “I’m not the sort of person who could carry on in the face of knowing that I wasn’t doing better than I was doing a few years ago.” Richards said the same for the rest of the members of The Rolling Stones: “Nobody could or would do it if they felt they were just going over the same old thing.” Creative stagnation was a challenge for The Rolling Stones at the time, who were at the peak of their popularity. Tours were long, intense, and exhausting efforts as they traveled the globe playing to sold-out crowds in stadiums and arenas. And the scale of the shows meant there were long gaps between tours. All of this afforded little opportunity for spontaneity or experimentation. Richards’ idea to ensure the band kept evolving was to break with the traditional tour model and reconnect with audiences in smaller, more intimate settings. He said that if they were going to play stadiums, they should also play in a small club the next day. “There’s no reason not to,” said Richards. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t play Madison Square Garden or play the Bottom Line and do a live stereo FM broadcast from there, to think about the audience in that way,” he said. “Because there’s nothing like it for a band to play in a small room. After all, that’s where we put it all together in the first place. In these large auditoriums, half the time you’re fighting the environment. In a club, you’re hearing what the audience is hearing, and there’s no middle man.”

Building something that has to work

Author Daniel Pink (Drive, To Sell is Human, The Power of Regret) learned that the way to write and deliver a good speech is to study the audience, not the presenter. “When I watch other people give speeches, I will position myself in a way that I can see both,” he said. “I want to see what the speaker is doing, but I also want to see how the audience is doing.” He takes a similar approach to writing plays, too. He analyzes his plays in great detail, using audience reactions to understand the flow and the “laugh density” of the story. In one of his plays, he noticed a section that was heavy on exposition and plot progression, but low on laughs. For a play meant to be a comedy, Pink was concerned the audience might get confused. “They’ve been laughing at a regular pace for the first four scenes, and suddenly, in the fifth scene, there are no laughs,” he said. “I gotta up that.” For Pink, this detailed analysis he does with his work is why he believes writing is “less of a kind of art” and more of a task of “engineering” where the audience and their reaction determine how it comes together: “You’re building something that has to work,” he said, “and you’re testing it, you’re stress-testing it.”

Disruptive work hides in the blind spots

When Brian Koppelman (Billions, Rounders, and others) was 21 and in college, he was leading a protest against his university for accepting donations from companies that support apartheid in South Africa. Through this work, he came across a young musician named Tracy Chapman and began working with her, leveraging his dad’s connections in the music business to try to get her a record deal. When pitching Chapman, Koppelman pointed to her moving lyrics, emotionally-charged songs, and the cult-like following she had developed among fans thanks to her performances at college campuses. But he struggled to get the major record labels to take her seriously as a commercial artist. “I would watch executive after executive watch her and be personally moved by it, sometimes with tears in their eyes because what she’s singing about was so important and her voice was so beautiful,” Koppelman said. “Then they would say, ‘Now you know, we can’t possibly sign her at Columbia Records’.” The record label executives were looking at Chapman through their own lens, which was blurred by bias and prejudice. According to Koppelman, they didn’t think Chapman would be successful because she was black and too masculine, and they disregarded her popularity among college students as “bullshit.” Even when Koppelman finally signed Chapman to a label, few people in the industry believed she’d sell many albums. Chapman released her first self-titled album on April 5, 1988. By July of that year, it would reach platinum status, having sold over 1 million copies. It later went on to sell over 20 million copies. Chapman would also win multiple Grammys for that album and become one of the most influential singer-songwriters of her generation. The executives, as Koppelman noted, couldn’t see past their own blind spots. “It was totally against what was going on in music at the time,” said Koppelman. “So, because they were on the inside, all the defenses they had up were actually valid defenses that usually you ought to have up. They just couldn’t understand that this was disruptive.”

One question…

What I like most about this concept of market orientation is how it brings clarity to a problem. Whether it’s removing the elements that stand in the way of you and the market, analyzing the reaction of a crowd, or acknowledging the internal defenses you’ve unknowingly put up, a simple change of perspective is how you get clarity about what to fix and how to get better.

Which leaves us with the question:

If you looked at your problems from another angle, what would you see, and how would it change how you solve them?

Actor and screenwriter Will Forte is on Hot Ones. It’s a YouTube interview show where guests answer a series of questions while eating 10 chicken wings, each flavored with a different hot sauce that gets progressively spicier.

Forte is chewing on wing number five.

The host asks him about MacGruber—the 2010 film based on a recurring Saturday Night Live skit that parodies the 80s TV action show, MacGyver. Forte wrote and starred in the film alongside Val Kilmer and fellow SNL costars Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph.

When MacGruber was released, it was widely panned by critics. Parade Magazine put it at number two on its list of the biggest box office flops of 2010. But in the decade and a half since, it’s become a cult-comedy classic among fans, even spawning a spin-off TV series in 2021.

“I’m curious,” says the host, “what, if anything, do you learn from an experience like that?”

Forte’s eyes draw down to the table as he contemplates his answer, his mouth still chewing on chicken meat.

“We were oddly proud of that movie,” he says. “It bombed, and it was very hard, but knowing that it was the exact movie we wanted to make made it so much easier. After a couple of weeks, we said, ‘You know what? Fuck it. We love this movie. Let’s not let these headlines taint this experience for us. Let’s just be proud of what we did.’”

The late filmmaker David Lynch (Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, and others) often said ideas were like “fish,” swimming around us, ready to be “caught.” When you catch an idea, the job is to stay true to it throughout the creative process—this is how you create good work. But whether the work is commercially or critically successful is irrelevant. The real marker of success is whether you’re happy with it and proud of it.

“Money is the last thing a person should be thinking about,” Lynch said. “You fall in love with ideas, you get fired up, and you try to translate those ideas into cinema—it’s the love of doing it.”

Replace cinema with any creative pursuit, and the rule still applies.

Wednesday, July 12, 2023. 3:33 am—

I’m sitting at the desk in the spare room of my parents’ apartment in Queensland, Australia. The cup of instant coffee—my second—is softly steaming beside my laptop. On the screen are five faces in little squares looking back at me, each with a job title that begins with ‘Chief’. It’s a sunny afternoon where they are, and cold and dark where I am.

We’re all here to discuss one thing:

Is our marketing working?

This meeting is particularly important because it’s the first opportunity I have to show the new CEO that I’m on top of it. That I’m the guy for the job.

I’ve spent days preparing—working with my team to compile, analyze, and organize data from all our marketing programs into a presentation that’s currently showing on the screen.

I sip my coffee and begin—

I move through the opening slides quickly.

Then it’s straight to the meat of the presentation: the marketing funnel, where we show how many opportunities turned into paying customers, and which channels deliver the most customers.

I begin by talking through the most important data: how many leads we generated, which channels they came from, and how many of those leads converted into paying customers.

“—Allan,” says the CEO. “Is this data cohorted?”

I pause for a moment.

“Cohorted?”

“Yes,” she says. “Is this showing the same group of leads moving through the funnel over time—or is it just everything from last year mixed together?”

My stomach drops into my abdomen.

I look back at the slide.

“It’s everything together,” I say.

She nods, presses her lips together, and writes something on her notepad.

Two days later:

I’m in the same room, on another video call.

This time it’s just me and the CEO. We’re talking about the presentation.

“Honestly, Allan,” she says. “I wanted to end that call within the first 8 minutes.”

Recently, I read Steve Martin’s memoir, Born Standing Up, which covers his career as a stand-up comedian in the 1960s and 70s.

Martin’s story is one of perseverance more than anything else. By his own admission, he wasn’t naturally talented or gifted. He had many setbacks along the way—gigs where he performed to empty rooms, late-night TV spots that were meant to help him break through but never did.

Martin notes how his journey to success was more “plodding than heroic”, and how he took “incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.”

“I did standup comedy for eighteen years,” he writes. “Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success.”

I think Martin’s arc as a stand-up comedian is a useful way to look at any career.

Along the way, you’re going to make a whole lot of mistakes and f*ck up more than a few times. There’s probably going to be a few important meetings with important people that don’t go the way you want them to.

It’s going to make you feel like crap.

And you’re going to question if you’re good enough to make it. Or whether you made the right career choice.

I think that’s a good time to step back and acknowledge that most of the journey is made up of the learning and refining years.

And if that’s the case, then no matter how hard it gets, we’re better off trying to enjoy the journey a little more and not taking it all so seriously.

Right?

It’s Sunday afternoon, Maala and I are in the living room. I grab the TV remote and turn on the football.

“Daddy, can I watch a show?” She says.

“Later,” I say. “I want to watch the game.”

She groans and flops to the floor.

We ban TV during the week, so on weekends she binge-watches her shows until we say she’s had enough. Today, she’s had enough, and it’s a tough pill for her to swallow.

The game kicks off—it’s Buffalo versus Tampa Bay. I find my place in the corner of the couch and take a sip of my beer. Maala is sprawled out on the floor in front of me. She rolls from side to side, then onto her back. Her arms and legs are spread wide in a starfish, and she forces a heavy sigh from her mouth.

“Daddy,” she says in a whiny voice as she stares at the ceiling. “I’m bored.”

“Well, go find something to do,” I say.

She huffs and groans again. I take another sip of my beer and consider the branding on the can for a moment. After a bit of a while, Maala rolls up off the floor and walks to the corner of the room, where she sits on a stool at her table and hunches over some paper. I carry on watching the game.

Aaron Sorkin is an American screenwriter and filmmaker who wrote A Few Good Men, The Social Network, and The West Wing.

A few months ago, I listened to an interview in which he was asked how he began writing.

“There was this one night, I was sharing a tiny studio apartment, and everyone I knew was out of town,” he said. “It was one of those nights in New York where it just feels like everyone has been invited to a party you haven’t been invited to. I didn’t have three dollars to my pocket. But in this apartment was a semi-automatic typewriter. The TV was broken, the stereo was broken. The only thing to do was to put a piece of paper in that typewriter and start typing—”

“So it was just pure boredom?” Says the host.

“Pure boredom,” says Sorkin.

When we’re bored, a different part of our brain kicks into gear, called the default mode network. It activates the regions of the brain responsible for self-reflection, daydreaming, memory, and imagining the future. Scientists call this ‘wakeful rest’, and it’s typically when ideas start popping up. More than likely, it was the mental state Sorkin was experiencing when he was stuck in his apartment alone as a 20-something college grad with nothing to do but write.

I see Maala lift her head from the table.

“Daddy?” She says. “How do you spell meow?”

I tell her. She notes the spelling and returns to her work.

The second quarter begins.

The problem these days is that the internet and smartphones have made boredom too easy to kill. Any moment where we used to sit alone with our thoughts, whether it’s waiting for the traffic lights to change, walking to work, waiting in line at the grocery store, working out, or cooking dinner, is now filled with opening our phone to watch, read, or listen to something.

I was like this. I spent any spare moment catching up on content I’d saved. Podcasts were my main crutch, but so was YouTube, the multiple books on my side table I convinced myself I was reading but never finished, and the bookmarked articles on my phone. I told myself I was being productive. If there was spare time in my day, I needed to fill it. And I happily avoided any feelings of boredom. But finally, one day, I noticed how little information I was actually recalling. I’d listen to a podcast and completely forget everything that was said. I’d get halfway through a book and couldn’t remember anything interesting about it. Worst of all, I struggled to think of any new ideas or develop existing ones. My head felt like it was full of gunk.

I’d wrongly assumed that being productive meant that the cracks in my day always needed filling. And up until a month ago, it had never occurred to me that leaving space for boredom was, in many cases, the most productive thing I could do.

Maala spins around on her stool to face me. She’s smiling, excited.

“Daddy!” She says.

She’s holding a card shaped like a cat’s face that she cut out of paper. It’s colored pink and blue and yellow and there are shiny gems stuck on it.

“Check this out!” she says, and makes the cat sing with a popsicle stick she glued to the mouth. On the bottom it reads, “HI lets play sum MEOWSIC!”

Yes, boredom is good for you.

SmartLess: On the Road is a documentary that follows actors Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes on the live tour of their podcast in 2022. Halfway through the first episode, we’re behind them as they walk into Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., to prepare for the first show.

We see the empty seats and the vastness of the concert hall.

“You’re telling me there’s going to be a person in each of these seats?” Bateman says to one of the crew off-camera.

We cut to Arnett, who’s walking through the first section toward the stage where Bateman is standing. “Dude, what have we done?” He says, “This is crazy.”

Then he turns and looks directly at us.

“I think we made a huge mistake.”

It’s a small interaction, and they’re half joking, but regardless, I find it reassuring.

Because I think that if three incredibly successful actors who have one of the most popular podcasts on the planet can experience imposter syndrome and these stinging moments of self-doubt, then it’s okay that I feel it, too.

Right?

I feel it most when I start a new project at work or sit down to write. That’s when I have to get the ideas and thinking from inside my head onto the page. And whether it’s a marketing budget or a 300-word blog post, the process is always painful. Knowing what to do and how to do it well isn’t ever as obvious as I assumed it would be by now, 15+ years into my career. So I’ll sit there for a while staring at the blank screen, cursing at my lack of ability while I twist the ends of my mustache and run my hands through my hair until I’ve finally had enough and I walk away.

The benefit of experiencing this almost every day for years is that I’ve learned the only way to get through it is simple: you have to get the damn thing done.

Which is why I always sit back down and try again.

It’s Friday night. Late. I’m seated at the kitchen table, hunched over the laptop and tugging at my hair. A blank Google Doc stares back at me.

I let out a sigh.

“You okay?” asks Mel.

“Yeah,” I reply. “Just some writing stuff.”

“What’s it about?”

I respond by talking in circles for a minute.

“...I dunno,” I finally say. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”

When I’m stuck like this, I’ll grab a book from the shelf and see if there’s something in it that can clear out the creative block in my head and spark an idea. Advertising books work well for this. I think it’s because copywriters are idea merchants. They develop new ideas every day, often under tight deadlines. So when I’m looking for a fresh way to approach a creative problem, I’ll usually start with one of the many advertising books I have and get to work. One of the best books for this is The Copy Book: How the Best Advertising Writers Write their Advertising by D&AD. It features 50+ copywriters writing about their creative process. My favorite advice in the book is less about writing and more about thinking and problem-solving:

When I ordered the book years ago, I remember hoping that all these brilliant copywriters would reveal the step-by-step process for thinking creatively and developing original ideas. I was naive then, and perhaps holding too high expectations for what one little book could deliver. But re-reading it, I’m surprised to learn there is a process after all.

It’s just not the one I was expecting:

You sit with the problem.

You think about it and work on it.

You work at it from every angle you can think of.

Until a glimmer of an idea shows itself.

And you catch it. And you work on it some more.

And think more about it.

When you’re stuck, you take a break.

When you come back, you keep working on it.

Thinking. Working. Thinking. Working.

Tinkering and shaping the idea into life…

And eventually you have it.

As far as I can tell, that’s the creative process.

I hear steps behind me.

It’s Mel.

“Maybe take a break,” she says. “Go for a walk or something?”

I sit back in my chair. The draft of the article is finished.

There’s more work to do. More thinking.

But it’s a start.

“Yeah,” I say. “Good idea.”

A surefire way to lose

“There are many ways to win in business,” writes James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. “But there’s one surefire way to lose: run out of money. Entrepreneurship is a game of survival.”

Clear’s referring to the game of business, but the same is true for life, work, and any form of creative hobby.

How simply surviving long enough increases your chance of success…

That’s what I’ve been thinking about this week:

Let the competition punch itself out

After the first round in the famous Rumble in the Jungle boxing match, Muhammad Ali knew he was fighting a superior opponent in George Foreman. Ali used all his skills to catch Foreman off guard, including throwing 12 right-hand leads in the first round, but none hurt him, or came close to knocking him down. It was clear that Foreman was bigger, younger, and simply more powerful than Ali.

“The nightmare he’d [Ali] been awaiting in the ring had finally come to visit him,” said writer Norman Mailer. “He was in the ring with a man he could not dominate, who was stronger than him, who was not afraid of him, who was gonna try to knock him out, and who punched harder than Ali could punch.”

In the ensuing rounds, Foreman anticipated Ali would try to gain an advantage by dancing around the ring in his usual style. But instead, to the surprise of everyone, including Foreman, Ali went to the ropes. As Foreman’s fists thundered into a weak-looking Ali round after round, everyone thought Ali was done. But with 30 seconds left in round 8, Ali spotted his moment. A wobbly Foreman was so exhausted after exerting all his energy hurling body shots into Ali that his arms began to sag. Finally, Ali came off the ropes and connected with three successive right-hand punches before unleashing a brutal combination that sent Foreman teetering over to the floor. Ali stood over him, victorious, while the crowd of 60,000 people went berserk. His strategy for beating the bigger, meaner Foreman was simple: let him punch himself out, and stay alive long enough to win.

“If something lasts long enough, eventually it comes back to you.”

Ron Livingston’s big break in acting happened essentially because he was the last man standing. When Mike Judge was making Office Space, the Fox network wanted him to cast a big-name movie star in the lead role. Judge, on the other hand, wanted to cast a nobody. The two sides went through a long list of male actors in search of the right person, but neither could agree on who should play the role. As the decision dragged on, the executives at Fox grew impatient. Finally, thanks to Judge’s success as the creator of King of the Hill, which had become a massive hit for the Fox Network, the executives relented. Ron Livingston was the last name on the list of actors for the lead role, and with the network’s approval out of the equation, Judge cast him on the spot.

“There’s this thing that if something lasts long enough, eventually it comes back to you because they’ve run out of everyone else,” Livingston said of the experience. “On one hand, it’s serendipity because you’re in the right place at the right time. On the other hand, the reason you’re in the right place at the right time is you’ve been standing there in that place for 10 years, waiting for something to happen.”

The reason he’s so successful…

Having amassed a net worth of more than $150 billion, Warren Buffett’s investment strategy is one for the record books. His trades and stock picks are analyzed and scrutinized by both novice and seasoned investors alike as they try to replicate his success. The problem? Buffett’s astronomical success isn’t just about making smart trades. The real influencing factor is something else entirely: Time.

What most people don’t realize is that the majority of Buffett’s wealth was accumulated after his 60th birthday. A normal person is satisfied with a certain level of wealth—whether it’s $10 million, $100 million, or $1 billion. At that point, they’ll take their foot off the gas and enjoy the fruits of their hard work. Buffett, on the other hand, doesn’t operate that way. His desire to keep working, decades after accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars, is an inherently unique quality, and one that, according to writer Morgan Housel, “plays a massive role in his success.”

“The whole reason he’s so successful,” says Housel, "Is just endurance.”

Tilt the odds in your favor

So much of success is outside our control. There will always be someone who’s smarter, faster, stronger, or more talented than you. What can we control? Staying in the game. If you keep showing up—on the good days, the bad days, and all the days in between—the odds of success tilt in your favor.

Bill Burr started his career like many other aspiring comics—grinding his way through the clubs in New York City, taking any gig he could get, often performing to tiny crowds and for no pay.

In an interview with Tim Ferris in 2017, he recalled one particular evening that reminded him that he was on the right path:

“I was seeing this woman when I was in New York, and I remember she came over and I was making her dinner, and I had a spot at the comic strip, which where I was living was right around the corner,” Burr said. “She asked me, What do those spots pay? And it was like five, seven, eight dollars—basically, you’re just going up there trying out material. I went up there, tried out new material, and it worked. I was psyched. I came home, and I finished cooking the dinner, and I did this stupid dance in the kitchen and she was laughing. I was dancing because I had this new material—I was excited. Then she got this sad look on her face, and I was like, ‘God, did I dance that bad?’ And she goes, ‘No. I just wish I had a job where I got paid $8 and I came home and danced in the kitchen.’

…And I never forgot that.”

How do we find the work that’s worth more than it pays? The work we’re meant to do?

Motivational speakers and self-help gurus will tell you to follow your passion. They’ll say things like, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” But I find such advice reductive and dismissive of the reality most of us face in our everyday lives. It also assumes we know what we love and what we want to do, which, as I get older, I'm learning is far rarer than I ever realized.

Perhaps we need to change how we think about work:

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns never uses the word ‘career,’ preferring instead to say ‘professional life.’ This subtle yet meaningful change in how he refers to his work was instilled in him by the author Robert Penn Warren (All the King’s Men) when they worked together in the 1980s. Burns sought Warren’s advice on whether he should make a 5-hour film about the American Civil War—an idea which was repeatedly turned down by the Corporation of Public Broadcasting because “no one on the jury felt that anyone’s attention could be sustained across five one-hour episodes on a subject.” In response, Warren declared with “goggle-eyed, snapping turtle eyes” that “careerism is death!”

“Careerism is something that locks you into someone else’s determination of what’s best for you,” says Burns. “I just felt that if I could listen to that dictum—careerism is death—I could figure out how to make choices that were not about [my] career, but about my professional life, like, what did I need?”

Burns released Civil War in 1990. It’s nearly 12 hours and nine episodes long, and in 2025, it’s still the highest-rated program in public television history.

The very notion of a career ladder suggests that the best course of action is climbing the rungs as they’re laid out for us. It implies that progression is linear and follows a certain order.

The risk is climbing the ladder blindly without ever thinking about the ladder you’re on.

Whether we like where we end up or not is largely determined by the choices we make along the way. Thankfully, making the right choices is more straightforward than it sounds.

“It’s all about curiosity,” says Burns. “And how not to kill it.”

America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys is a documentary about Jerry Jones and the Dallas Cowboys. In the opening sequence, as he talks about the years leading up to the day he bought the team, we get a glimpse into how Jones approaches work and business.

After a string of failed business ventures, Jones was in massive debt. “In the 80s, I was really good at drilling wells, and I was really good at borrowing money,” he says. In debt to the tune of $50 million, and with a long list of creditors circling, he decides to put it all on the line by investing $800,000 into another oil well.

It’s the most money he’s ever put on a well.

When they turned the well on for the first time, it screamed, spat, coughed, and then “it roared like Niagara Falls.” It was a gusher. Jerry Jones’ gamble had paid off—That single well netted him $100 million, and put him in the position to fulfill his ultimate dream of buying the Dallas Cowboys.

These are circumstances and financial stakes that few of us can relate to, or even fathom. But numbers aside, this is a story about the value of taking risks.

“In the roughly 4.5 million years since our ancestors came down from trees and started walking on two feet, progress has always been made as a result of two things: Work and risk,” writes copywriter George Tannenbaum in his blog AdAged.

Very few people are willing (or able) to gamble $800,000 on an oil well like Jerry Jones. But that doesn’t mean we’re not capable of taking risks, because risk is relative.

Maybe it’s sharing your art with the world.

Or cold calling a prospect.

Or moving interstate for a new job.

Or launching a business before you feel ready.

Or saying no, when everyone expects you to say yes.

Or speaking up in a meeting with a contradictory perspective.

Or hitting publish on a blog post you weren’t sure you should share.

How much or how little you risk isn’t the point. The point is you have something to lose, and you choose to do the thing anyway. Because when there’s something to lose, there’s something to work for.

And that’s how you make progress.

“Work and risk. They’re hard. They’re what I believe in,” writes George.

So do I.

I like the way the late filmmaker David Lynch (The Elephant Man, Mulholland Drive) talked about ideas.

He said, “Ideas are like fish. You don’t make the fish; you catch the fish. Desiring an idea is like putting bait on a hook and lowering it into the water. There are no original ideas. It’s just the ideas that you caught.”

Catching ideas versus inventing them. This mentality makes ideas feel less intimidating. More accessible.

It’s like there’s a process to finding them when you think of ideas in this context. It’s not some gift or special talent that only creative people have. If you work at something long and hard enough, the idea will show itself.

The idea already exists; you just need to put yourself in the position to catch it.

“Trillions and zillions of ideas,” said David Lynch. “And they’re all there, bubbling and ready to be caught.”

After finishing the arduous task of writing a novel by hand, the late Paul Auster (The New York Trilogy, Leviathan) would turn to his old Olympia typewriter and begin the process of transcribing everything he’d already written. It would take him weeks to get a finished manuscript working this way, and leave him physically and mentally exhausted as he sat hunched over his machine typing up the handwritten pages of his novel line by line. It was “an incredibly tedious process,” according to Auster, and he recalled on many occasions, as he watched the finished pages pile up with “excruciating slowness,” how he wished he’d switched to a computer.

In 2003, he was asked why he persisted with the typewriter:

“It protects me against laziness,” he said. “The typewriter forces me to start all over again once I’m finished. With a computer, you make your changes on the screen and then you print out a clean copy. With a typewriter, you can’t get a clean manuscript unless you start again from scratch.”

Auster published 18 novels, five memoirs, and ten non-fiction books* before his death in 2024 at the age of 77. He used the same Olympia typewriter for all of them. The act of transcribing his handwritten pages, painstakingly typing up every word and sentence all over again, was how Auster refined and shaped his stories and narratives into extraordinary works of literature.

Beware the allure of shortcuts, quick fixes, and hacks.

There will always be an easier way available to us. But just because it’s there doesn’t mean we should take it. What’s more important—getting it done quickly or getting it done right? Doing the hard thing keeps you sharp. It forces you to think deeply about the task, to lose yourself in the details of the work. The hard way is the right way if it protects you against laziness because that’s what separates your work from everyone else’s.

In other words, it’s good that it’s a struggle.

*He also published eight poetry collections and four screenplays—Auster was highly regarded for his remarkable range as a writer.

“Are you crazy?” George said to Tommy. “It will take you 20 years to build a brand that way!”

“George” is the legendary ad man and creative director George Lois. The man behind brands like Xerox, MTV, and Jiffy Lube.

“Tommy” is Tommy Hilfiger.

It’s 1985, and the unknown Hilfiger is about to launch his own label, but he’s facing a huge marketing challenge: how to get noticed in a market dominated by established brands like Calvin Klein, Perry Ellis, and Ralph Lauren.

Tommy has the clothes; what he needs is attention, and his initial idea for the campaign is typical of what every other fashion brand does: Photograph young models on the beach in the Hamptons.

George isn’t buying it.

His belief is that big, bold, and audacious ideas are the way to build brands.

“Advertising is poison gas,” he once told a host on a TV talk show. “It should unhinge your nervous system. It should knock you out!”

George shows Tommy ads of top fashion brands with the logo removed from the artwork and challenges him to identify the brands. When he can’t, the point is clear:

Sameness and mediocrity make your brand invisible.

The Tommy Hilfiger brand launches in 1986 with a giant billboard in Times Square that reads:

THE 4 GREAT AMERICAN DESIGNERS FOR MEN ARE:

R _ _ _ _ L _ _ _ _ _

P_ _ _ _ E _ _ _ _

C _ _ _ _ _ K _ _ _ _

T_ _ _ _ H _ _ _ _ _ _ _

The provocative ad sets off a whirlwind of publicity in New York, and overnight, the question becomes:

“Who the hell is T_ _ _ _ H _ _ _ _ _ _ _?” .

A Newsweek article estimates the media budget is $20 million.

In reality, it’s $200,000.

The campaign works because it’s bold, audacious, and unlike anything else at the time.

It also serves as a reminder: trends are traps.

“In any creative industry,” writes Lois, “The fact that others are moving in a certain direction is always proof positive that a new direction is the only direction.”

Long before Jon Stewart became a household name with a nationally televised talk show, he was a struggling young comedian whose sole focus was to get “good enough” at stand-up that he could earn a few dollars. While comedians like Seinfeld and Rosanne had been plucked from obscurity and launched into the national spotlight with TV sitcoms, Stewart was still sharing a room as an adult, and asking the chef at the bar he worked at for free meals that he could pack in a tin and take home with him. What allowed him to endure all these “indignities,” as he called them, was his ability to focus on the milestones immediately in front of him.

“I didn’t think they’re going to discover me like they discovered Seinfeld and Rosanne,” Stewart said. “It was: ‘I hope I get good enough to pass the club.’ You think, ‘How am I going to get good enough at this so that they let me work here for the $15 I might be able to get?’ … Good enough that they’ll let me work on the weekend?”

I don’t share much in common with Stewart, but when I heard him tell this story on a podcast over the summer, it resonated with me. I started Thought Dumpling back in May 2020, with the same mentality as Stewart: I wanted to get better at writing. I wanted to get “good enough” that maybe one day it could lead to something (but I never defined what that could be). So on a weekend during the pandemic, I told my wife that I was starting a newsletter. I asked her to help me come up with a name (of which she deserves all the credit), and a few days later, I was publishing my first post. I had no idea what Thought Dumpling was meant to be, but I thought if I kept writing, I’d figure that out later. I published a post every two weeks for two and a half years, until one day in August 2023, I stopped.

After 60+ posts, I realized that later had arrived, and I still didn’t know what my newsletter was about. To me, Thought Dumpling was just a feed of pithy anecdotes and throwaway stories, which, while fun to write (and hopefully entertaining to read), were mostly pointless. So I stopped writing and started thinking about what the point of it could be.

Or more aptly, I started overthinking. I convinced myself I needed to nail down a good topic or theme for the newsletter, something that’s clever, original, interesting, and also uniquely me. Without that, there was no point in writing. I spent hours mind-mapping and brainstorming new ideas based on my interests and experiences in search of a niche. I developed a new logo and branding because maybe that would spark something. I tinkered endlessly with my About section and bio to find the right summary. I started and stopped dozens of drafts that never saw the light of day, copying other people’s writing styles as I tried to develop mine. I analyzed what others were doing, subscribing to over 30 newsletters, just to see if there were any structures or themes I could borrow and apply to my own. I even started a new newsletter focused on marketing because I thought a fresh start might be the answer. Nothing helped me, and I spiralled further into this state of despair and self-doubt, which was entirely self-imposed and completely ridiculous.

That’s what I’ve been doing for the past two years. Of course, in hindsight, it’s easy to see I was avoiding the only work that would’ve helped me move forward: writing and publishing.

Which brings us to now.

I’ve spent enough time sharpening the pencil. It’s time to take it to the page. Let it be known, there are still lingering questions, and I still haven’t figured it all out. But I am happy to write that Thought Dumpling returns to your inbox starting Monday with a new focus:

Every week, I’ll share something that’s helped me be more creative, work smarter, or live happier.

Like how important it is to get out of your own head and focus on the milestones immediately in front of you.

I hope you stick around and join me for the new Thought Dumpling. If you do, I encourage you to leave your thoughts and feedback in the comments about the stories and ideas that resonate with you. And if you’re looking for ways to support my work, the best way to do it is by sharing it with others.

See you next Monday.

Subscribe now

Nothing tears through the tender pre-dawn hours like a stand-off with a rat. 

But there I was. 

And there it was. 

With its fleshy tail and toothy overbite.

It whiskered around the fridge and looked up and winked at me before it scurried back to the safety of its hiding place in the crack beside the dishwasher. 

I gasped for breath and picked up my heart from the floor. It was caked in hair and dust and felt slightly sticky, but was still beating at a furious pace. 

Who do you call when you have a rat problem? 

A local company named Terminix paid handsomely to appear at the top of my Google search so I obliged and booked a consultation. 

Hours later in the mid-morning a Terminix man wearing cargo pants and a polo and driving a company Prius called to say he was promptly on the way. The troops have been summoned. The experts are en route.

“Mornin’ sir, what’s the situation?” the Terminix man said. 

I blurted out my retelling of the frightful encounter and gestured with wide arms to show the size of the rodent. 

“Well, sir, don’t you worry about it. I’ll take a look around and let you know what your options are.” He winked and smiled and went about his business. 

I smiled, too, as the calming presence of hired expertise washed over me. My rodent foe stood no chance against the Mighty Man from Terminix. 

He went about surveying the whole property, armed with his poker and a hand-held wheel like a modern-day knight. 

He tapped the outside walls. 

And took photos of the roof and the ceiling. 

He stepped through the garden and made notes on his tablet about the back of the laundry where the washer emptied into the yard. 

He checked the windows and the doors.

He inspected the fence and the holes dug underneath it. 

He scanned the sliding doors, putting his nose close to the joints as if he too had whiskers. 

His eyes darted across all the nooks and crannies outside the house from which unwelcome rodents could begin their insurrection. 

He looked everywhere except in the kitchen behind the dishwasher. 

Finally, he shared his diagnosis. He showed me the photos on his phone and the notes on his tablet. 

Then he sighed deeply and said, “So here’s your problem, sir. You have squirrels.”

I stared back at him. 

“Here’s where they’re coming in—,” he showed me some scuff marks on the ceiling underhang by the driveway. “We gotta get one of our guys out here to seal the whole place from the outside.” 

He showed me the quote on his tablet for $2,100.

“This will sort it all out real quick,” he said. 

“And the rat?” I replied. 

“Oh, there’s a rat? Hmm.” He tapped a few buttons on his tablet before showing me another quote for $1,950. “This will sort out the rats, real quick.”

I looked at him.

He looked at me. 

I looked at Mel.

He looked at Mel. 

The room felt heavy under the weight of a great con. 

Then he looked at Maala with a slimy smile and desperate eyes, and said, “Hey, little girl don’t you think your parents should sign this to get rid of the rats?” 

I’ve heard people lament that good help is hard to find. And in times like these, it’s hard to disagree. But if you ever need help getting rid of a rat, there’s a very handy device on Amazon. 

It’s $25. 

And it’s good. 

One might even say it does the job of the experts.

Thanks for reading. Show your support by liking and sharing this post. Or by meditating in solitude. Whichever feels most appropriate.

Until next time,

*Chef’s kisses*

It went on for weeks. The relentless and unforgiving sun pummeled the hard ground as the June days turned into July. At the bars, mister fans sprayed relief and in some ways hope but they were like small children yelling to be heard against the deafening roar of a Super Bowl stadium. 

The heat’s angry persistence only gave up in the hours after midnight, resting for a little while like it too was exhausted from its own fury. But then in the morning it awoke and covered the landscape in a fever and even in those early hours we marveled at the sun’s merciless sting. 

Despite the long hot days, we persevered with the grilling. Around lit charcoal or flaming gas grills, we gathered and sweated and set off smoke alarms on a march toward the communal dining table. 

Cheeseburgers and ‘dogs. 

Wings with hot sauce. 

Corn and peppers. 

Smoked brisket. 

Chicken thighs. 

Ribeye steaks. 

Racks of ribs. 

In the calm years before we had kids, the dining table played host to long and uninterrupted discussions of nights out, new friends, movies, new restaurants, overseas vacations, weddings, new jobs, old jobs, and on rare occasions, politics. 

But now gnawing and nagging children pull us in and out of conversation, interrupting our back and forth with intermittent whining and desperate pleas to find a lost toy or for a glass of milk. Meanwhile, the dogs lay at our feet, hopelessly waiting for food scraps and a belly scratch. 

Around the dining table is where we’ve made many of our friends. We’ve moved four times in the last five years and in every new home, in every new city, our dinner parties represent the perfect opportunity to cultivate new friendships or maintain old ones. 

I think back to the hot sauce party we hosted in our one-bedroom apartment in New York, and the spoonfuls of ghost pepper sauce that were shared around to a roomful of giddy guests. Trays of chicken wings adorned the kitchen bench and the apartment buzzed with burning mouths and wide eyes as Maala, then 10 months old, slept peacefully in the only room with a door. 

In St Croix, we had a queue of friends lining up at the dining table for a serving of Mikey’s French Dip, complete with all the trimmings. The hefty chunk of roast beef looked mighty and unimpeachable on that table but still it was no match for the 12 hungry mouths waiting for it to be plated and served. 

In Philadelphia, we hosted smaller groups and cooked heartier meals like braised short ribs and homemade pizzas and that was how we made it through the winter. 

Now we’re in Austin and there’s a distinct familiarity to this moment. It’s an unremarkable Friday but we’re surrounded by friends again, nursing full stomachs and tired minds. 

Our bodies slump into chairs with backs supporting our heft and our glasses are full with chilled rose wine, and we return to our musings. Religion, a TV show, something about aliens, something else about in-laws. 

We laugh slowly and deeply. Exhausted from the heat and the day. 

Eventually, that day melts deeper into the evening and soon it’s time to leave. 

And so we do. 

There was blood. Rivers of it gushed from my middle finger into the sink, spilling over the kitchen bench and flooding the floors, and painting the kitchen a crimson fury.

The sudden pain and then the shock sucked me into the moment so that it was all I knew. The muted sounds of Melanie and Maala asking what happened. If I was okay? I squeezed and choked my finger and tried in vain to pull the digit right off to end this whole ordeal right now.

Curly leaf parsley proved too great a foe once again. In fact, it was the ingredients of the whole event that made it a symphony in utter madness. 

A bunch of garden-picked parsley. 

The new knives. 

A hangover from a long day’s work. 

Wine.

The knife working the herbs.  

Schunk. Schunk. Schunk.

The hot sting of an angry blade slicing clean through nail and the tender flesh beneath.

And then the blood. 

In Ancient times, they’d write about such acts of great torture. They’d chip and scrape and chunk the stone from the walls as they illustrated for generations to come the courage amid the pain. A man grinning like an idiot in the red face of doom. 

But the house shook in my rage despite the courage, and I stormed through the hallways and rooms cursing the Gods for mercy. Maala’s panic filled the air. 

My wife dialed the phone and then I was at the emergency room signing insurance forms and probably my life savings away. They couldn’t stitch it back up because there was nothing to stitch. The skin and meat sliced right off. My quick-thinking wife sandwich-bagged the discarded piece of flesh and stuffed it into my shorts pocket like it was a snack for later. “Just in case they can stitch it back on.”

The nurse calls me honey. And she says everything will be alright but this is going to sting. It does and I wince. Not at the pain but the feeling of liquid on an open wound. 

A few millimeters deeper and further up the finger and the nail would be toast she tells me. But the nail will grow back. They jab my right arm with a tetanus shot and wrap my finger in gauze and bandages and hand me a metal finger protector so I can still work my at-home desk job. 

I’m handed my forms and guided back to the reception where the lady who had me sign tomes of paperwork smiles and looks at me with pity. 

“Make sure they look after you,” she says, gesturing to my friend Omar who drove me here. “And welcome to Texas!”

Back in Australia this past December, doing the dance between families we haven’t seen since the pre-pandemic days, and we had the chance to drive the eight or nine hours down the coast to visit Mel’s family. 

I jumped at the opportunity.

Why? Because I love road trips.

There’s something about driving long distances, tapping the steering wheel to bangin’ tunes, sharing stories and ideas, debating topics, and reminiscing on memories old and new that makes the whole experience therapeutic. 

Plus, having lived car-less for the last 10 years, the long and enduring, butt-numbing journeys have been non-existent, so this would be a special 

I stocked up the car with supplies—Allen’s Snakes, Strawberries and Creams, some choccies, and a few other classic Australian confectionary choices. Mel rode shotgun as chief navigator and DJ, Maala was strapped in the backseat, eyes wide at the sky. 

The Stormons hit the road. 

I’ve made this drive twice before. Once with an ex-girlfriend when I left Brisbane for Sydney in 2012—a fine trip but nothing overly memorable about it.

The other time was with my Dad over 20 years ago when my Nan passed away. 

I was maybe ten or twelve years old and didn’t really know what was going on at the time but I remember Mum suggesting I join Dad on the fourteen or fifteen-hour drive south from Brisbane to his hometown Moruya.

I don’t necessarily remember what we talked about on that trip. But I remember laughing a lot. Singing, too.

In fact, it’s the music I remember most of all.

We’d each take turns playing from our collection of CDs.

I think I played some Red Hot Chilli Peppers, probably Creed (lol), and of course a burnt CD mix or two with Blink 182 and The Offspring. But mostly it was Dad’s collection of classic rock, folk, and Australian country music that featured. 

We bobbed heads and swapped lyrics to the likes of John Williamson, Slim Dusty, John Denver, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and more.

But one album stuck out above all: Roy Orbison’s Black and White Night. The grooving live band and Orbison’s vibrato voice paired so elegantly with our open-road journey south. 

We listened to the album back-to-back, over and over again. Air-guitaring the twangy riffs, tapping our feet and hands to the beat, screeching our voices to hit the high notes, and fumbling over Orbison’s slow and delightful grooowwwl in Pretty Woman (I still don’t know how he did that). 

To this day, when I hear the album, I’m transported back inside that car and can sing along to every track. 

Dad turns 70 today. 

A milestone birthday in many ways.

Naturally, I’ve been reflecting on our relationship. Thinking about everything he’s taught me, both directly and indirectly, about life, fatherhood, money, family, living well, and, of course, appreciating a well-aged scotch (served in a heavy glass). 

Here’s a man who’s provided so much for me and set me up for success in more ways than I could imagine.

I’ve also been wracking my brain about a gift. What do you get someone who’s turning 70?

It just so happens that Dad's celebrating with Mum and a few close friends in the luxury of a Thai resort, so I can’t exactly send him anything. And maybe that’s not the point, anyway. 

Because if the memory of that road trip has taught me anything it’s that stuff and things don’t matter so much in life as time spent with the people you love.

And while it’s a shame I can’t be there today, indulging in a scotch (or six), you better believe I’m raising a glass to the man who’s made me the man I am today.

There’s a legacy there that’s undeniable.

The road trip in December last year is a perfect example.

I vividly remember looking back at Maala asleep in the backseat and thinking about how I could make similar memories with her, that I made with Dad on our road trip all those years ago. And all it took was something as simple as sharing the same music together.

“I miss listening to CDs,” I remember saying to Mel at that moment.

“Ugh, me too,” she said. 

“Let’s listen to whole albums instead of playlists on these long drives,” I said. “It could be cool for Maala. Like a tradition.”

“Good idea,” Mel said. 

I handed her the phone. “I’ve got the perfect album to start us off.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, ever heard of Roy Orbison?’” 

***

Happy Birthday, Dad. And thanks for everything. 

Especially the music. 

The look on the butcher’s face says it all. I’m about to cop an earful.

“Waddit you say? Ssnittsel?”

He was a middle-aged Italian man with tough hands and a boisterous, unshaven face.  

“Chicken schnitzel, yeah.” 

We were in the Italian Market, at Cannuli Bros. It’s pork shop and I was stupid enough to ask for chicken. 

“Sssnitsel?” He says, mouthing the word like it’s a crossword clue. 

He turns to face the rest of his crew. Eight butchers all dressed in traditional garb, hats, and all. 

“Aye, Paulie! We got any ssnitsel left back there?” 

“You say sssnitsel??

“Ssnitsel, yeah.”

“Shh-nitzel,” I interject with.

“Oh, it’s a shhhnitzel, Paulie! We got any?”

“What’s a shhnitzel?” Paulie yells back. 

“Funny word, ain’t it? Shhnnitzel.” He turns to face me, “How do you say that?” 

“Schnitzel. You know, it’s German.” He just shrugs before turning back to Paulie. 

“Paulie, the shhnitzel! We got any??” 

“No shhnitzel!” yells Paulie. 

“We’re all outta SHHnitzel, eh? NO MORE SHHNITZEL! WE’RE ALL OUTTA SHHNITZEL EVERYBODY”

“NO SHHNITZEL!” They all yell at once. 

You know, seventeen months ago we moved from St Croix to Philadelphia, swapping sunscreen for cheesesteaks. 

Since that move, Philly has enjoyed a sports renaissance. A World Series birth for the Phillies, the 76ers hovering at the pointy end of the NBA standings, and the Eagles are playing in the Superbowl this weekend.  

If you think this is all coincidence, think again. I’ll tell anyone who’ll listen that our little Stormon clan rolls into town like the Kings of Nasareth, bringing riches and gifts and hopes and dreams. 

The resurgence of Philadelphia sports is testament to that. 

One would think that being the bearer of such fortunes that I’d get a little more respect from the folks around these parts. But no such respect could be found at the butcher’s counter. 

Billy’s still chuckling when he sighs and hands me the rest of my order. “I haven’t laughed like that in weeks,” he says. “Go next door, they do the chicken there.” 

I say thanks and take my change. 

“And make sure you ask for cutlets, not schnitzel, ya jabroni.” 

Two sips of vibrant wine and my caboose finds its mold on the couch. 

That’s it, that’s the post. 

Or it would be if it weren’t for this pesky blog deadline. A few hundred of these words must fill the page before the night is done. 

My focus fights between a basketball game and writing.

Four-time champion Steph Curry bangs a three while falling out of bounds. 

I write a sentence that feels as if it’s falling off the page, clinging on for hope and only barely making it to the end. 

The announcers share their benign thoughts, filling the audio with hyperbole and play-by-play breakdowns of the jukes, shimmies, and slam dunks. I fill the page with false starts and equally vapid thoughts.

But still, I keep writing.

I’m an athlete in my own right tonight. 

While they run, I type. 

While they sweat, I ponder. 

While they grouch and yell and howl at each other, I wince and cringe and struggle through another stodgy line.  

I tinker with the words and all the thoughts in my head like a basketball player breaks down his opponent. 

“Here’s Curry… To Poole, open for three… GOT IT!” 

Timeout.

The players sip electrolytes. I sip sulfites. 

The Warriors have it easy tonight—the defense feels empty. Open shots and driving lanes to boot. Free-flowing offense at its best. 

I, on the other hand, face a tenacious foe: an empty page. 

So who’s the real MVP here? 

Shoot your shot. Say hi in the comments.

As always, thanks for reading. Catch you next time.

Onion rings… Who’s the bellend who decided they were a good idea? A useless exploration in deep-fried excess. 

It hasn’t stopped the chefs at this Philly sports bar from adding them to an otherwise tasty brisket sandwich. They added two big and greasy rings to one side of the bun and used melted cheese as the glue to keep them in place.

Once upon a time, they’d burn people at the stake for such culinary crimes. 

Good thing the hops of this pale ale are kicking in. Another sip reduces the firey thoughts to a simmer. 

I breathe in. 

Then out. 

Then in again. 

I sneak another look at myself in my new Phillies hat. The red is gorgeous. Bright and stubborn like a stop light. I like to think it was a freebie but really it was bait. A savvy salesperson read my blog and found a pretty good way to get me to say yes to hearing their pitch.

A text from Zane breaks my train of thought. He’s asking for new music recommendations. Little does he know I’m enjoying my annual Fleetwood Mac obsession so I don’t have anything new to share. But how can you go wrong with Seven Wonders? In fact, that’s the track for this post. Stop reading, click the link, and return to finish. I’ll wait.

While I’m waiting, a thought: why do people live in the northeast? These winters are miserable. We’re merely killing time in this kid-friendly bar when you’d be a daft prick to ever think there’s ever enough time on this planet to kill.  

I need the sun, sand, and breathless heat. 

Maala howls at me from atop the playground pirate ship. She’s exhibiting all the behaviors of a tired child. But so am I, dammit. Papa Stormon needs a nap!

I’ll take the check, please. I turn to Mel and signal with my eyes the following: I’ll corral the kid, and you finish the mimosa.

A good deal cause I know when I get home I’m angling straight for the couch and I’ll be rendered useless for the afternoon—playoff football starts in two hours. The birds play in four.

Time to wrap up this hoopla.

Fly eagles fly.

Thanks for reading.

Keep living a chef’s kiss life.