Toniq

Why. Why do? Why does? Why would? Those questions that often get ignored tend to hang in the air until someone, or some study, finally answers them. Why has always been an important question to me, and it felt like the right time to dig a little deeper into it.

Not just politics, but every aspect of life could use a little bit of a history lesson. Especially brands. Yes, that’s right: brands need a solid understanding of history if they wish to continue into the future.

Safe from AI. Isn’t that a weird statement? Technology has given us this tool, this miraculous engine that will give us answers, talk to us like a friend, help us build a presentation deck, write a thank-you card, and more, and our first thought is, how do we protect ourselves from this thing we created?

I am sure that psychologists would have a field day with this pattern in my life. The desire to be organized, taking steps to get organized, and then being inundated by a lack of organization to the point of not being able to find the desk calendar.

Telling stories keeps us connected as humans.  Storytelling is vital for understanding ourselves and others, and moves us closer to universal understanding. Telling stories is a basic way humans connect.

The nap has gotten a lot of crap of late, mostly because being tired has become, like everything else, politicized. So now, for some reason, sleeping is a sign of weakness or a lack of leadership skills or something. I’m not sure what.

This piece, obviously, will be about tribal knowledge, the pros and cons of it in working in an office or a business, and how to handle it. But let’s first define it so we’re all on the same page.

Creatives take a bit of ribbing, the occasional mockery for being sensitive. Artsy-fartsy, as my mom used to say. Creatives are often seen as delicate, hot-house creatures who must have things in an exact way; they must be in the mood, all the planets must align before they can create!

An interview isn’t hard because it’s complex. It’s hard because it’s exposed. Someone is waiting on you. There’s a purpose attached to the conversation. There might be a recording light on. There’s a little clock somewhere counting down, even if you can’t see it. All of that pulls the task out of muscle memory and drags it into conscious thought.

Feeling safe in life, especially at work, is vital to helping employees do their best. Feeling safe also engenders feelings of peace and ease, trust and freedom to fail, because we all have to fail before we can do better.

Brands prefer the fantasy of continuity. The story where everything builds cleanly and logically upward. Where success compounds and mistakes become footnotes. Where the logo evolves, but the core never really has to.

Making a resolution puts pressure on us and then, if we fail, we feel worse, and usually we go deeper into our vice. If you resolve to drink less in the new year and you find yourself on the couch with a tumbler of bourbon on a Saturday afternoon, you may suddenly think, well, I failed at that, may as well go all in.

Once you start paying attention to the built world, it becomes hard to ignore what it’s telling you. Buildings don’t argue. Roads don’t explain themselves. Infrastructure doesn’t defend its choices. It just sits there, doing exactly what it was designed to do, shaping behavior day after day.

There are habits we repeat because we repeated them last year, and the year before that, and somewhere along the way, repetition began to masquerade as meaning.