“There is nothing to writing. You just sit at the typewriter and bleed.” It’s said that that mic-drop line fell from the lips of Ernest Hemingway, but no one really knows for sure, so for today, I’m going to claim it as my own. After all, I’ve been invoking it since I became a writer, back when I was 14 years old and started scrawling away in my first diary with the volcanic energy of Sylvia Plath, albeit a very cheerful Sylvia Plath. Want some extra cringe? The first entry of that diary says, “I shall call you Vinnie.” Ugh, why? Anyway, I hate writing. Until it’s over. And then I love it. Love it more than anything in this whole wide world, except, maybe, Pierre. And my kids! Hi, kids! |
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So I am delighted to announce that this very week I finished my new book. That’s a photo of me, after I typed the last sentence and collapsed in the yard, marathon-like. It will be out in March 2027. Publishing, my friends, is the only industry that still operates as if it’s the 19th century. It’s crazy, indeed it is. But over the course of writing six books (and ghostwriting two books) since 1998, I have discovered it is unchangeable. Books don’t get published as much as they get birthed, that is, if labor took a year. |
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The book is an entirely new version of 10-10-10, about my decision-making system, which first came out in 2009. It sold a ga-jillion copies, spent weeks and weeks atop all the bestseller lists, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and found its way into 11 languages. Today, 10-10-10 is taught at Harvard and is featured in other books about decision-making. I myself teach it in my management course at NYU Stern. And yet, it needed a refresh. Scratch that, it needed a reinvention. The world has changed since 2009. You can’t even count the ways. And there’s this other thing too. I have changed. I’ve gotten smarter and wiser; I invented The Values Bridge, and for a values-driven decision-making system that is a rather revolutionary development. The new 10-10-10 reflects our new world and fully integrates my new knowledge about values. If there are 100 words left from the original, I’d be surprised. And the new version is 85,000 words long. I know, because I finished it this week. And once I manage to stand up again, I’ll probably start writing again. |
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Did I mention I hated writing? Here’s another hate for the week. AI-written thank you notes. People, please! Don’t get me wrong. I know all the things AI does well; it’s helped me with research and slide decks scads of times. It has made our software at Becoming You Labs faster to build and easier to use. And if it can expedite the cure of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's, I’ll cheer and weep with the rest of humanity. But it’s the end of the semester, and this week I received a whole slew of missives from students about what Becoming You meant to them. These kinds of notes are what you live for as a teacher. They make you cry. They make you forget grading. They make you pine for the summer to hurry up so you can start again. But this year, for the first time, I could easily tell most of the emails were written by Claude. It wasn’t just the em-dashes everywhere. It was the unmessy cogency of them all. They were all brain and no heart. I miss my students’ hearts! Fine, fine. I’m glad the students wrote regardless. I am! But when I wrote them back, the notes were from me. I hope they noticed, and took it as one last little (loving) lesson. |
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The question was raised in the family text thread about whether I will take a vacation this summer, now that the book is done. But before I could even answer, my daughter Sophia thought it was important to opine. “She will say she is taking two weeks on Nantucket. During that time she will work from her desk all day and only leave to find Pierre when he inevitably goes missing. After one week, she will decide she needs to be back in New York because it’s just too hard in Nantucket to run a company and the dogs are unhinged, and by the end of the summer will have taken approximately zero days off.” This comment received entirely too many “HA-HA” emojis for my liking. Look, I have Workcentrism as one of my core values. Work is one of the main organizing principles of my life and always has been. Is this unclear to anyone? My question is why I am still being judged for it. I object! Or maybe I should try some Eudemonia this July? Are balance and wellbeing, just possibly, worth experimenting with? Data from The Values Bridge would show that more than half the world thinks so. But I am torn! You tell me, ok? Until then, I’ll just be typing (and bleeding) away! As always, |
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What's coming?
→ June 2026 One-Day Becoming You Intensive here
→ Becoming You Certification Program here
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What If a Yellow Dress, in the Pages of Vogue, Told the Story of Your Life? Part 1
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A photo in Vogue. A 98-year-old mother's scream of joy. And a 123-year story that begins in a sulfur mine in Sicily and ends — somehow — at New York City's most glamorous luncheon. In Part 1 of this two-part series, I'm starting at the end with a yellow dress, handknit from silk ribbon by my immigrant grandmother. Next week, the scandal that changed everything. Your own origin story might look a little different after hearing this one. |
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