Emotion is information to the mind in your heart.
Energy in motion. E-motion.
How to think with your heart? Meditate.
Starting on May 1st, I'll be meditating for one more minute each day. Why? Because May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
The first day? One minute.
The second day? Two minutes.
And so on for fourteen days until I've locked in a fifteen-minute daily practice.
This is an easy on-ramp to meditation I built last year for a small group at Reddit. I recorded a 14-Day guided audio meditation journey called 'Inner Canyons' where I go full tilt into my meditation teacher voice 😂
It was fun to make! And also an excuse to record some music with that sitar my wife gave me for my birthday years ago.
This meditation journey is designed for beginners, as most all of us are to meditation. Unlike many other meditation methods that challenge you to run away from your thoughts, this method invites you to pick up your thoughts and play with them. Turn them around a bit, try to understand how they got there and why.
If you're looking for a way to mark Mental Health Awareness Month for yourself, consider joining me starting May 1st. I'll be sharing updates each day along the way.
If you'd like to know more about my approach to meditation, I've written the story behind my journey toward becoming a meditation teacher and creating this guide for beginners in the Which Way Is North newsletter (link in bio)
#mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mindfulness #emotionalintelligence #meditation #innerpeace #guidance #motivation #selfcare
4x revisions and somewhere around 300,000 net new words of writing condensed down to one ~60,000 word final draft.
The book is done and a new me begins.
Ah, the transformative power of creation. Here we go.
If you believe in this new me and want to support this new me, the absolute most impactful thing you can do is to pre-order the book right now at the link in my bio.
The second most impactful thing you can do is subscribe to my newsletter where many of those ideas cut in those 300K words will continue to be explored - this will be a fun space to watch because it's going to get weird: /
The third best thing you can do is to tell your friends...and your enemies too, why not!
The book is titled "Which Way Is North: A Creative Compass for Makers, Marketers, and Mystics".
It asks the question: where does creativity come from? In seeking answers, it explores the idea that that anxiety IS creativity ready to be transmuted. Those difficult feelings are the hidden engine we humans have that the machines don't. We just have to learn how to put it them motion.
It focuses on Makers, Marketers, and Mystics because it's directed at the vision keepers of modern culture who are responsible for managing meaning - and who, as experience has shown me, haven't fully realized the enormity of this role.
For months, I kept most of my biggest thoughts and feelings from the algorithms and carefully placed them into this book instead. I'm excited to begin sharing this creation with you. I'm anxious to see if my best shot at good has a chance at becoming something great. At least I know there's grace in trying, even if I stumble and fall.
Even a bad book is good enough to start a fire.
This is what I have to give. Thank you for however you receive it.
Stay tuned for more.
#creativity #writing #books #booklaunch #anxiety #marketing #mysticism #culture #author
Belief is the heart of culture.
Our modern minds have spent so much time questioning the merits of our ‘beliefs’ themselves, we’ve largely neglected the simple, observable fact that we humans need belief to keep going at all.
Wherever belief comes from, like a heart, we need it to keep beating for the body of our culture to move. Whose hands beat the drum of belief that you march to?
Continuing to lay the foundation of where creativity comes from, I share my beliefs behind the choice to specifically address Makers, Marketers, and Mystics in the title of a book about creativity in this latest entry to the Which Way Is North newsletter. Link in Bio!
Which of these would you be most comfortable identifying yourself with...A Maker? A Marketer? Or a Mystic? Why?
#creativity #culture #belief #spirituality
Former Reddit executive @willcady shares how he’s building a purpose driven culture through his new company @heal.mvmnt
#healmvmt #willcady #WorkCulture #TheFutureOfWork
Steve Huffman, Co-Founder and CEO of @reddit quotes @willcady ’s influence on how Reddit used ads to communicate with their users on @sourcerypod@mollysoshea
“People hate ads, but people love brands”
This is the tensions at the heart of modern marketing. Knowing how to navigate where culture and commerce meet means putting humanity first to meet people where they are at. The success of a business like Reddit proves the value of this principle and is core to how @heal.mvmnt , Cady’s newest company, operates and advises its clients today.
How does a company know if their North Star is purpose or profit? @willcady has the answer on The Startup Show podcast with host @philliplanos on @gritdaily !
#healmvmnt #willcady #reddit @heal.mvmnt
Almost every human culture carries a warning about non-human beings who impersonate real humans beings to break into our homes and steal our lives.
As old as these figures of folklore are, we would be very wise to talk about them now in these troubled modern times. Whether or not you believe in fairies, demons, or evil spirits of any kind, the material threat of nefarious imposters has become our reality.
There’s a legion of forces out there trying to steal your mind. It is your responsibility, now more than ever, not to lose it or give it away. Fortunately, our old stories can show us the way.
My latest article in the latest print issue of @spinmag . Pick it up (almost) anywhere magazines are sold.
#culture #deadinternettheory
Could AI agents one day manage people?
It's Possible, but do we want that world?
Will Cady breaks it down: Strong, aligned culture self-manages. You shift from
'managing' to spirit-checks. But automation has limits—human in the loop is
non-negotiable.
Extreme example: Stanislav Petrov in 1983 ignored false nuclear alerts, trustedinstinct over system, and saved the world.
As AI scales, how do we protect human judgment? Listen to the full convo on Grit
Daily Startup Show Podcast.
In 2023, I released a book called Which Way Is North.
It was written at a threshold moment—at the close of a particular creative era.
It belongs to the last group of books written before artificial intelligence became a native presence in the creative process. Before machine intelligence entered the room as a participant in meaning-making.
At the time, I could feel something approaching but its shape wasn’t yet clear.
The book carries that tension. It is a closed and complete work free of AI’s influence and yet….it openly ponders the immensity of change that at the time was visibly coming.
It explores human consciousness and creativity under pressure. It offers orientation for when familiar reference points dissolve. It interrogates why human judgment matters as powerful systems reshape how decisions are made, how value circulates, how meaning forms.
I wrote it while working deep inside the tech ecosystem watching culture, incentives, and intelligence converge. One question kept returning:
What remains uniquely human when speed, intelligence, and pattern recognition are no longer ours alone?
Since then, a small number of people have found the book. Quietly. Some have told me it changed how they decide, how they create, how they orient themselves.
That reframed my responsibility to the work and my belief that it matters. The context of its creation has become clear as they context of its audience has rapidly changed.
I packed the book with exercises, frameworks, and tools designed to reveal the deeper structure of human consciousness and creativity. These are tools meant to be used, revisited, and lived with over time. Outside the book’s pages, I haven’t really shared them widely.
So this is what I’m doing now. I’m going to promote the lessons of the book more and, poetically or ironically or both, I’m going to do that part by working with AI.
I’ve uploaded the manuscript and am now asking an AI to help me unbundle its exercises, surfacing its patterns, and translating its practices into forms that can move through the world with clarity and momentum.
#creativity #artificialintelligence #authors
My name is Will Cady. I’ve been Internetting since the nineties, including years studying online communities and building culture strategy teams at platforms like Reddit.
Scroll with me as we explore corners of the internet that reveal humanity at its most curious, creative, and occasionally strange.
Today’s stop is…Reddit’s Astral Army
#astralprojection #reddit #culture #scrollwithme
How does innovation ACTUALLY happen? Is it just a buzzword or can it really mean something when put into practice guided by professionals?
Ask Chris Denson. He doesn't just have the receipts on an incredible career of leading innovation programs, he is generous about sharing his methods.
Marking the return of the 'Which Way Is North' podcast after my baby-raising hiatus (also: still happening, that won't be stopping for another mmmm ~20 years) with a wonderful conversation with a wonderful human.
Listen and subscribe at the link in my bio. Let me know what you think in the conversation below!
#innovation #podcast #strategy #marketing
