![ChangeThis ChangeThis](/globalassets/headers-page/changethisheader.jpg?preset=full-width)
ChangeThis
ChangeThis is our weekly series of essays from today's thought leaders that are meant to evoke conversation by bringing forth new and unique ideas.
ChangeThis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
The White Space of Life
By Porchlight
"Most of my career has been in advertising, branding, and writing. Over the years, I've seen hundreds of ads, letters, proposals, and commercials. In the past, I would judge these creative renderings based on their message and intended audience—still not a bad consideration within the process. But now, as I begin passing judgment, I find myself critiquing something else: the white space. Does it have enough white space? I can't say it enough: I hate being crowded, and I really despise crowded letters, crowded ads, crowded 60-second spots. They try to say so much that I can't hear anything. Like the train, like the highway, like my closet, these communiqus and radio spots are all calling out in one accord, 'MORE WHITE SPACE. PLEASE!'"
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
THE FASCINATION FACTOR (and how you can use it to write books)
By Mark Levy
"One of the hats I wear is that of writing coach. I guide businesspeople in writing books. During a typical first session, my client isn't sure what their book will be about, but they take guesses. They tell me about what they think the marketplace wants, what they believe they can sell, and what might elevate them to guru status. They start tossing around premises. I stop them. Books indeed need readers, so thinking about audience is important. Books also help writers achieve career goals, so thinking strategically about how a book can advance one's business makes sense. But looking at those things too early leads to a bland book. Why?"
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
Why the Future of Business Depends on the Young World Rising
By Rob Salkowitz
"More than half of the world's 6.8 billion people are under the age of 30, and most of them live in countries where the per-capita income is lower than $1000 per year. Meanwhile, projections show the average age of the United States, Europe, Russia, Japan and even China pushing dramatically upward, with declining numbers of young workers struggling to support mushrooming populations of elderly retirees. As the old centers of the global economy face aging workforces and declining fertility rates, the future increasingly depends on tapping into the energy and ideas of the rising Young World."
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
DREAM, DARE, DO!
By Porchlight
"Everybody has dreams regarding work, relationships, health and personal development... But what does it take to go from Dream to Dare and, eventually, Do? What are the secrets of real and lasting change? You know exactly how it feels: you are frustrated, angry and unhappy. It's time to make that change. It's time to improve your relationships, start your own business, get that promotion, lose that weight, get those abs tuned, stop smoking, see your friends more often, start saving for your kids education, start applying for a different job... etc,etc. Good luck! You will need it, because the odds are against you. Of all people who consciously start personal change, more than 80% will have returned to their old habits within two years. No wonder the world is filled with cynical people, that are still in the same job they have hated for over 10 years, still smoke 2 packs of cigarettes everyday and still spend too little time with their kids. It's time for change."
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
Intelligence Multipliers: Tapping Into Every Company's Underutilized Resource
By Liz Wiseman
"Multipliers liberate people from the inherently oppressive forces within corporate hierarchy. They liberate people to think, to speak, and to act with reason. They create an environment where the best ideas surface and where people do their best work. … They give people permission to think."
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
Plenitude: A Statement On Economics, Ecology & True Wealth
By Juliet Schor
Business-as-usual economics relies on stimulating GNP to solve virtually all problems. But GNP is increasingly de-linked from the well-being of most Americans. Since the mid 1970s, it has diverged from most social well-being indicators. So even if GNP does continue to grow, and the recession is officially declared over, the implications for most households are different from in the past.
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
Achieving Predictable Success
By Les McKeown
"As a serial entrepreneur who has personally launched over 40 businesses, and as a consultant and coach to hundreds of business leaders, I've come to realize that the 'growth code' is out there, in plain view for anyone who knows where to look. There is indeed a code, a pattern, a DNA if you will, to achieving predictable success. The difficulty is that because most business leaders work in a limited number of business environments during their career, they don't have the opportunity to see the pattern recur often enough to successfully decode it."
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
168 Hours: The Blank Slate of Time
By Laura VanderKam
"It is an unquestioned truth of modern life: we are all starved for time. With the rise of 2-income families, extreme jobs, and the ability to log on to the world around the clock, we can barely find time to breathe. At least that's the way the story goes. Yet there are some people who don't seem to feel this way. Not only do they have full personal and professional lives, they often claim they could fit more in if they wished! How do these people do so much with their time? How do they do so much and not even feel stressed about it?"
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
The Four-Letter Word That Makes You and Your Work Irresistible
By Porchlight
"Some years ago I wrote a book about an extraordinary individual who loves his work. My editor at the time deleted the word love every place I used it. Instead, he suggested using the phrase 'generosity of spirit.' 'Why not love?' I inquired. 'Because the word love freaks out businesspeople,' he responded."
Categories: changethis
-
Blog / ChangeThis
How To Shrink the Human Footprint: And How Going Back To Nature Would Be a Disaster For Nature
By Matt Ridley
"I am going to argue that the ecological footprint of human activity is probably shrinking at an accelerating rate and that we are getting more sustainable, not less, in the way we use the planet. In a nutshell, the most sustainable thing we can do, and the best for the planet, is to accelerate technological change and economic growth."
Categories: changethis
The original idea behind ChangeThis came from Seth Godin, and was built in the summer of 2004 by Amit Gupta, Catherine Hickey, Noah Weiss, Phoebe Espiritu, and Michelle Sriwongtong. In the summer of 2005, ChangeThis was turned over to 800-CEO-READ. In addition to selling and writing about books, they kept ChangeThis up and running as a standalone website for 14 years. In 2019, 800-CEO-READ became Porchlight, and we pulled ChangeThis together with the rest of our editorial content under the website you see now. We remain committed to the high-design quality and independent spirit of the original team that brought ChangeThis into the world.