Author: Franz Malten Buemann

As I write this, they’re laying a brick wall outside of my window.
Each brick weighs about five pounds. There are a thousand bricks in this wall. And every brick is moved, one by one, from the truck to the cart to the wall. Over time, any inefficient move is costly indeed. Watching professionals do it gives me more admiration than ever for their commitment and grace.
If we’re lucky enough to work indoors, with free snacks and podcasts in the background, we might not get physically exhausted the way we would moving thousands of pounds of bricks. But the cognitive and emotional toll of repetitive tasks is real, even if doesn’t leave callouses.
The discipline is to invest one time in getting your workflow right instead of paying a penalty for poor digital hygiene every single day.
Hacking your way through something “for now” belies your commitment to your work and your posture as a professional. Get the flow right, as if you were hauling bricks.

Harvard, Dartmouth and Stanford are always full. The value of their degree is largely based on scarcity. There are always more people who want to get in than they will allow.

That’s intentional. Artificial scarcity to create a credential that appears valuable.

Harvard has enough endowment and tech to offer 50x as many degrees as they currently do.

Now, though, online learning is upending the equation of scarcity.

Do students invest all that time and all that money because they believe they’re going to learn something, or is it simply that they’re going to be awarded a scarce credential?

Because sooner or later, learning wins out. The paper fades, but what you know and who you become lasts.

It’s March (wow) and a year of uncertainty, pain and unrest may be beginning to recede. And over the years, the team at Akimbo has seen that the March sessions of their workshops are often the best attended and most powerful. Something about spring (up here) and autumn (south of here) seems to challenge people to take action and to make a difference.

The Marketing Seminar is back for its 11th session. It’s the most powerful and most popular marketing workshop in the world. More than 10,000 people have been through it (that’s more marketing wizards than Harvard, Wharton and Stanford graduate in any given year) and now it’s your turn. Enrollment opens today and the first lesson starts soon.

The altMBA deadline for First Priority applications is next week, March 9. The August session is your chance to level up, and early applications are given priority.

Writing in Community is back as well. There’s plenty of room for your book in the world, but what you may need is a cohort to help you get it done. Kristin Hatcher leads a group that commits to writing together and publishing together. It opens for signups on March 16th and you can claim a spot on update list by visiting the site today.

And in just a few weeks, the fabled Story Skills Workshop returns. Bestselling author Bernadette Jiwa has taught the world about the magic of story–in branding, in leadership and in communications–and this workshop represents your best chance learn from her and from each other. It opens on March 23, but sign up today for updates.

There are tens of thousands of reasons that people just like you have decided to learn something. Akimbo (now an independent B Corp) is built to make it possible for people to lean into possibility, to connect and to learn.

These four workshops are the best way I know to make a difference. Each is different, each has a different pace, structure and purpose. But together, they represent a clear, powerful and proven vision for how each of us can level up and learn to contribute.

And there’s room for you.

PS here’s what a student posted just this morning as part of the 60th lesson in TMS10…