Today was my last day at my day job. From now on, I’m a full-time freelancer, working from home, working on projects with clients all over the world. It’s no exaggeration to say that this is one of the happiest days of my life. Other than meeting my wife and getting married, other than becoming a father, this is the most excited I’ve ever been. This has been a long and winding journey, to say the least. I’ve been thinking about making this move for quite some time. I had to wait for our new baby to be born (which happened in May), then I went on FMLA leave for 10 weeks to take a...

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated my site. I apologize to my regular readers who might have been wondering, “whatever happened to Ben Gran?” In my defense, it’s been a pretty crazy month. First I got really busy with freelance work. Then one of my friends committed suicide. Then my wife and I welcomed the arrival of our second child. So I’ve been busy, and thinking about other things. I’m reconsidering what I want to do with this blog. I’m hoping to make it a little more freewheeling, a little more fun, a little more funny and irreverent. One immediate...

I read a great article awhile back about procrastination, and how we need to think differently about procrastination. Some people who think they’re procrastinators are actually “incubators.” They still get the work done, and with a high level of quality – it’s just that they need some time along the way to let the ideas percolate. So are you a procrastinator, or an incubator? Maybe you should stop worrying about being a procrastinator. Embrace it. Maybe you’re not really “procrastinating” after all… “Procrastinators may have a habit of putting...

Does it have to be? Too often, people in positions of power tend to become remote. They lose touch with the people who are affected by their decisions. They start keeping their guard up all the time – everyone starts to be seen as a supplicant, rival or potential threat. Power can be isolating. It can undermine the best part of people – it can make people lose touch with what they wanted to accomplish by gaining power in the first place. I have a mentor who is a high ranking executive. But he’s incredibly generous with his time, he’s connected, he’s engaged, and he’s...

As you get older, there are fewer and fewer people to impress. When you’re young, you have so many people to impress: teachers, classmates, your parents, your friends, parents of friends. You get a little older and you go to college. You’re constantly meeting new people, trying to make an impression, making snap judgments about whether people are “your kind of people” or not, trying to be liked, trying to fit in, trying to find your place. You finish college and go out into the real world. Now you have to impress your boss, your co-workers. After work you go to bars, parties,...

Circling back to the Tonight Show once again… I know this is old news, but I was rather surprised to read that Conan O’Brien had 190 people on his Tonight Show staff. (I’ve read that Jay Leno has a similar number of staffers on his show.) This seems like a huge number of people. Why do they need 200 staffers just to put on a 42-minute TV show? (Half of which is taken up by musical acts and celebrity interviews.) I’m sure that the Tonight Show staff are working hard, but how many people do you need to put on a comedy show? How many writers does it take to write a late night...