Learn to Think in Color

How much impact does the holiday season have on US retail?  Holiday retail Why two hyper-charged months matter more than the other ten High-level framing The  holiday season impact on US retail  is massively out of proportion to the calendar: roughly  one-fifth of annual retail sales  and an outsized share of profit are packed into November and December. That makes these weeks a stress test for pricing, inventory, e-commerce performance, and consumer confidence. If you work in or around retail, understanding how concentrated this demand is — and how fragile it can be — is key to reading results, planning strategy, and managing risk. The 20% that decides the year The short answer: the holiday season is a big deal. In a typical year,  November–December accounts for about 18–20% of annual U.S. retail sales , even though it’s just one-sixth of the calendar. For some chains, especially toys, hobbies, and seasonal goods,  25–30% of y...

How many ancient stories are layered into today’s Christmas? Unwrapping the hidden myths, festivals, and symbols inside one “simple” holiday  Big-picture framing Your Christmas tree is a Norse pagan. Gift-giving has Roman fingerprints. The feast is medieval. And that’s before we even get to Jesus. Modern Christmas isn’t one story—it’s several old stories sharing a stage. Over centuries, Rome, the early church, northern Europe, saint legends, and modern commerce all contributed symbols and customs that fused into something familiar. Seeing those layers doesn’t “ruin” Christmas; it gives you vocabulary for how traditions absorb meaning over time—and why this holiday became such a powerful global magnet. So…how many ancient stories are we really talking about? If you want a neat number like “three,” you won’t get it. History doesn’t separate cleanly. But we  can  name the major narrative layers that show up again and again. A useful working answer:  five...

  Why do we feel anticipation? How “not yet” wires your brain for excitement, stress, and action Framing the question Why do we feel anticipation so intensely—sometimes as a thrill, other times as dread? At its core, anticipation is your brain’s way of running the future in advance and deciding how much it matters. That pulls in memory, emotion, culture, and biology all at once. When you feel anticipation, your nervous system is predicting what might happen, weighing the stakes, and reacting to uncertainty. Understanding why we feel anticipation helps you design better experiences, support others through waiting, and manage your own mix of hope and anxiety about what comes next. The brain’s prediction engine: why “next” feels so alive Anticipation starts with prediction. Your brain is constantly guessing what’s about to happen so it can prepare you—like a movie studio cutting a trailer for the future. Based on past experience and current cues, it builds expectatio...