What’s the difference between generosity and strategy?

In this issue: 4 approaches to relationships, what makes a good visual metaphor, a friendly reminder, and how genius is different than talent.

Author

PJ Milani
December 16, 2025

In partnership with

🤔 INTERESTING

What’s the difference between generosity and strategy?

Or more precisely, what connects your actions and your expectations? (whether it’s spoken aloud or a silent understanding)

  • “I’ll help you ONLY WHEN you help me" → Transactional

  • "I'll help you BECAUSE you helped me" → Reciprocal

  • "I'll help you SO THAT you'll help me later" → Manipulative

  • "I'll help you." → Unconditional

Some relationships are meant to be transactional. That's okay. It’s how most of the world works. In fact, many of our closest and longstanding relationships fall into the reciprocal (there’s nothing wrong with that).

But the relationships that hit different are the ones that don’t keep score.
And it's worth knowing which kind you're in and which kind you're offering.

So here's my question for you this week: When was a time you wanted to be unconditional but then found yourself transition into one of these other modes? (or vice versa)

Reply and let me know. While I can't answer every email, I read every single response!

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📐 DESIGN

What makes a good visual metaphor?

The best visual metaphors reveal an insight that feels new, but still oddly familiar. They remind us of something we quietly know in our mind, heart, or soul, but due to the frantic hustle & bustle of the day to day, we forget!

A visual metaphor showing the gap between what's familiar and what's unfamiliar.

The key is using what’s familiar to act as the relational bridge between what we know and what feels foreign. Usually the bridge connects (or corrects) a behavior or belief.

A visual metaphor showing how to bridge the gap between the familiar and unfamiliar.

For example, if you’re struggling to find pockets of happiness in your life and I just said “fix your environment and you might be a little happier,” it doesn’t feel very insightful.

So instead, I start with an assumption of what you might familiar (and it’s helpful to point out no assumption holds true for everyone). But what if I assumed you might know what it feels like to chase a butterfly?

Illustration by milaniCREATIVE.art showing the concept of happiness. On the left, a person tries unsuccessfully to catch a butterfly with a net, labeled ‘You can’t catch happiness.’ On the right, the same person waters a garden, attracting butterflies, labeled ‘…but you can create a space for it to visit,’ symbolizing how happiness comes from nurturing the right environment.

Somehow it feels familiar (even if you may not have framed chasing happiness like this before). Chasing butterflies becomes the relational bridge.

Note: There is a continuum here. The colder your audience (social media), the shorter the gap between the unfamiliar and familiar needs to be to grab attention. A warm audience (book, presentation, newsletter) grants a bit more grace (and time) to deliver your insight.

By the way, if you enjoy deep diving into how visual metaphors are made, enrollment for Thinking in Visual Metaphors, Cohort 14 is now open!

🔮 ENCHANTING 

Friendly reminder ☺️

🧠 ANALOGY

Difference between talent and genius.

🤓 WHAT I’M READING NOW

Last week, one of my high school students gifted me this book, “100 All-Time Favorite Movies of the 20th Century” by Jürgen Müller. I’m always looking for visual inspiration anywhere I can find it and this book beautifully lays out 100s of iconic movie moments, behind the scenes pics, and film posters.

A still from the film "Face Off"

A disturbing but interesting visual from “Face Off” (John Woo)

A movie still from the film Chungking Express

A cool pose for a mirror reflection from “Chungking Express” (Wong Kar-wai)

I love using books like this as references for not just interesting visual strategies but as a tool to raise my visual IQ on what might “feel familiar” to potentially leverage in a future visual metaphor.

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