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It has been common practice to say that, in this new digitized and customized world, the smart people are choosing experiences over things. And, certainly, the adage that we should love people and use things—rather than the inverse—remains true. But I have to push back that there isn’t value in things.
Read MoreHave you ever heard the story of how I went from being an artist and entrepreneur to being an attorney for artists and entrepreneurs? It's discussed a little in my book, but I discuss it more in this video, and also express my gratitude for clients who trust me with the future of their hopes and dreams.
Read MoreIn celebration of gratitude and in anticipation of Thanksgiving, and to celebrate the success of Michael Prywes, Esq.'s bestselling entrepreneurship book "The Gasp: How To Seize That A-Ha! Moment and Turn It Into a Winning Business" (Amazon Countdown Deal up to 90% Off! HERE), Prywes, PC is hosting ANOTHER raffle, but THIS time it includes a Kindle FILLED with the "20 Books Every Creative Entrepreneur Should Read" PLUS a signed version of "The Gasp!" Please enter below!
Read MoreI prefer reading on my phone than I do the newspaper nowadays, but I still love having Newsday waiting in my driveway every day. When I lived in the city and commuted into Manhattan, I used to have a ritual of buying a “New York Newsday,” to remind myself of my Long Island roots.
Read MoreIf you knew nothing about breaking into the entertainment industry, and didn't graduate from Harvard, and didn't have rich parents, what would you do? If you were from a place where most people returned home after college, got married young, and lived the 9 to 5 life, how would you convince your loved ones that going off to Hollywood was a good idea?
Read MoreDavid Draiman, the lead singer of the metal band Disturbed--yes, they did that Grammy-nominated cover of “Sounds of Silence”--had once planned to be a cantor or even a rabbi. But he was also rebellious, kicked out of three Chicago yeshivas, and, as a teenager, blew up a rabbi’s van. I’ve been thinking about him a lot during these “Days of Awe.” I imagine that the yeshivas that didn’t kick him out (and maybe those that did) now proudly claim him as their own.
Read MoreMy colleague Gordon Firemark used a phrase recently that I think could be a mantra: “Reframe Adversity.” He and I just finished teaching an online pilot program for other attorneys who want to be the “go-to” experts in their field, and seek to leverage 21st century tools to reach clients. We know we have tapped into an important issue--not just for lawyers--that can be summed up as “the art of turning lemons into lemonade” through personal introspection.
Read MoreThere is an ancient story of an old man who looked too feeble to be planting a tree, but, nonetheless, he planted a carob tree, which takes decades to produce fruit. It was pointed out that he would never live to see the literal fruits of his labor. He replied, “When I came into this world, there were already fully-grown carob trees; as my forefathers planted these for me so I too plant these for my children.”
Read MoreThere is a video game that most video gamers have never heard of that I used to spend hours playing as a kid. It was called “Astrosmash,” it was the flagship game for the Mattel Intellivision game system, and it was a competitor to Atari’s “Space Invaders.” It was a missile defense kind of game where you shot falling meteors out of the sky. It started off slowly, but, as the game went on, it would go faster and faster and you would accrue more points, and increase in levels. It was immensely satisfying to improve, until there was so little room for improvement.
Read MoreThere is a level of sophistication to the data collection on the Internet that I think most of us cannot fathom. Incisive conclusions can be drawn by the amount of time between purchases or inquiries or any given number of "inputs" that are recorded. This is why I have to take a deep breath whenever a client or potential client or a friend tells me of an intriguing deal that "might make all the difference." I take that deep breath to imagine all the whys and what-ifs that might justify a great deal falling into a talented person's lap like manna from heaven. And then I think of all the why-nots.
Read MoreThere is an old riddle that has stuck with me for years: “What becomes bigger whenever you take away more of it?” The answer is: a hole. Holes have a bad reputation: the finest linens when moth-eaten are rendered worthless by holes, the quickest way to deflate a child’s mood is to poke a hole in his balloon, surgeons earn their keep by sewing holes shut. Just today, Time Magazine reported on the exciting discovery of a mid-sized black hole in the Milky Way, but it was reported not with the wonder we have for total solar eclipses, but a sense of foreboding. Even the positive feelings we have towards things with “hole” in their name are not about the hole itself: a hole-in-one has more to do with the ball and club, and donut holes are exactly the opposite: they are the tasty morsel we want instead of the tasty morsel’s absence.
Read MoreI’m curious… where does “curiosity killed the cat” come from? I pause, and I Google that, of course. That’s what a curious person does these days, and I discover that it’s not clear if it derives from the older “care killed the cat,” which appeared in Shakespearean times, but definitively appears at the end of the 19th century. But now that I know that, now what?
Read MoreShe introduces you to people who grace the covers of magazines. The stars of pop culture suddenly become personally interesting (but so do anonymized guests at a chi-chi wellness spa, for instance). She gives you a front row seat, and her narration seems like the voice that's in your head, only smarter. People actually write about her writing, so you know she's on an out-of-this-world trajectory. And unlike most mystery women (link below), she is also heartbreakingly human and vulnerable. Likable, too.
Read MoreOn July 30th, Buck's Rock Work Camp, a Connecticut sleepaway camp for the arts with a working animal and vegetable farm, is hosting a celebration of its 75th Anniversary. The reunion page has welcomed the submission of photographs from the many preceding decades. I seized the opportunity to hunt down old photographs from almost thirty years ago. The experience hit me more emotionally than I expected.
Read MoreI fell for an Internet scam last weekend. Our key could unlock our deadbolt to the front door, but slid only halfway into the bottom lock. We were locked out. So I tried to break into my house without breaking anything. Luckily, our house was very secure. I decided to call a locksmith. And that decision, made in the heat of anxiety, was a costly one.
Read MoreA friend of mine develops curricula for a big company. He presented one such template for success and his bosses went crazy for it. The irony, he told me, was that he presented the very same curriculum two years before and the response was "meh." I have noticed this phenomenon throughout my personal and professional life. People need to be cognitively and--more important--emotionally available to explosive new ideas before embracing them. And the fastest way to make people embrace disruptive concepts is to make those concepts an actuality.
Read MoreThe iPhone arrived 10 years ago today. At the time, I was unimpressed. I had a smart phone in my pocket, a Palm Treo with a keyboard and stylus. I had resented Apple earlier in the 2000s for linking hardware with software (iTunes) in a manner I found to be monopolistic and fraudulent (customers thought they owned MP3s when they had actually licensed AACs). I even wrote a law school paper on the anti-competitive nature of the new Apple technology.
Read MoreFacebook has announced its intention to boost its Groups feature, and has committed itself to a mission of building community. I have loved Facebook Groups, as they have allowed me to meet and better know people all over the world. But part of me is ambivalent.
Read MoreLeading up to this past weekend, I had been seeing life in patterns. In the abstract. I like to structure my days through Google Calendar, which defaults for me on the desktop to a big 16x9 rectangle, filled with squares. When I reduce the calendar to a week, it becomes an elongated rectangle, and when I want to look at a given day, it becomes one long vertical scrollable rectangle. Throughout, I fill up two dimensional "blocks" with scheduled time, for personal errands, professional commitments, and opportunities for spontaneity.
Read MoreI woke up at 3 am and could not fall back asleep. I tried to read, but that didn't make me sleepier. I had a lot on my mind. I thought about my oldest finishing 4th grade. You get nostalgic when you can't fall asleep at 3 in the morning. When I was in 4th grade, we moved to a new neighborhood (the one I'm in now) and I would have gone to middle school in 5th grade if we had stayed.
In my reverie of those years, I reminde
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