Soft Skills for the Apocalypse

Hey! I’m Karla Starr

Behavioral scientist. Author. Hypercurious ADHD-haver.

From my brain to your pixels to your brain—writing is like magic 😮

I was born in Buffalo, New York at 5am on a Monday at some point in the past; now, I’m typing this from a warm desk in my brother’s condo in Portland, Oregon. My first book, Can You Learn to Be Lucky?, was a Fast Company best book of the year; I wrote my second book with Chip Heath, who wrote Made to Stick and Switch.1 I came up with the title: Making Numbers Count. (Clever, this one!)

I learned a lot about myself — and my work — while working with Chip. I also realized that my “squirrels on crack” brain needs frameworks and systems to make sense of everything.

I spent the first part of this Substack’s life bitching about self-help advice and deconstructing modern systems. Now that I’m getting ready to write another book, I’m adding a “helpful” layer to the whole thing.

I map systems and frameworks in real life to help this chaotic world make sense.

The first step in any change is to make sense of what you’re working with — an honest self-appraisal. Currently running The Experiment: using my life as a case study for seeing what’s actually happening beneath the story. Not here to fix you. Just here to show you what you’re actually working within. Spoiler alert: it’s weird.

You’re alive, dammit. So read something that’s clearly not written by ChatGPT.