James Clear is known by many as the New York Times bestselling author of Atomic Habits, a book that has sold more than 3 million copies.  But what few people know is, before building his career as a writer, Clear trained in college baseball and, in particular, strength training. One day, Clear’s strength and conditioning coach, Mark Watts, […]

In 1990, Jerry Sternin, the then US Country Director of Save the Children, traveled to Vietnam to fight malnutrition. The condition was at an all-time high, with one Vietnamese in three suffering from malnutrition and one in four facing starvation. [1] Sternin traveled to rural villages and learned from conversations with local groups of mothers […]

In a previous edition of Words Into Works, we met author Steven Pressfield, who went to extraordinary efforts to write a novel. But we didn’t discuss what happened after—after Pressfield had said no to everything else. One morning over coffee, Pressfield shared with his friend Paul Rink, a fellow author, that he had finally finished his book. […]

Steven Pressfield felt like a fraud. For years, when asked what he did for a living, he told people he was an author. But in truth, he had never finished a book.  It’s not like he hadn’t tried. He had, several times in his life, in fact. But he could never finish what he started. […]

In 1980, Scandinavian Airlines was facing $20 million in losses. To avoid bankruptcy, SAS executives decide to take drastic measures and reposition the airline as “the business traveler’s airline.” [1] The naysayers had their concerns. “What, and sacrifice tourist travelers?!” But the executives won their plea, and the airline was repositioned as planned. In his book, Selling the […]