Betterment

Reading is the art of attention.

Every commitment you take on is another border you have to defend

Recently, I dug into the data on exercise and showed that, even if you really hate exercise, you would probably still be better off doing more than you do right now. But, of course, we already know we should exercise. We just don’t always do it. This is problem goes far beyond exercise. Life is […]

A list, in no particular order, of things I think more people should try or know about.

What happens when people stop reading books? We’re starting to see what a postliterate society looks like—and it’s very lame.

How to Feel at Home in the Modern World:

When culture pushes us to measure things that don’t matter to us, our values are captured. Once the metrics turn a profit for corporations and those in power, they are amplified, and almost o…

The Agenda Problem

A practical folder structure for developers and solopreneurs to organize projects, client work, and business documents with less friction.

Steinbeck points out that the stars shine in the sky, regardless of the drama here on Earth. Perspective fools us into believing that our point of view is primary, but it’s not difficult to i…

What’s the structure of your project? Here are three paradigms to consider: Video game development is expensive and risky because you’re on two frontiers at once. The tech frontier, try…

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Here are my terrors: First, monsters. Mostly the deep ocean variety, unfathomable, unseeable, likely lurking beneath me as…

Do you tell people you blog? I was reflecting on this recently, after I inadvertently mentioned to a colleague that I had blogged about a topic

So you want your team to figure out how to use AI for the benefit of your company?

Paul McGowan makes stereos. To paraphrase his insight: The musicality isn’t a feature you add to an amplifier. It’s what’s left when you stop ruining it. To expand: Customer delig…

We evolved words on top of our primordial ability to have feelings. Words allow us to be specific, to understand a situation more completely and to teach. Our hunches and feelings still matter, but…

In simple situations with obvious metrics, transparency earns trust. Voting, for example, benefits from audit trails and inspectability. But transparency can also undermine trust. Walking through t…

Trick title. There are at least three kinds of “marketing” we ought to be teaching: Marketing from the point of view of the consumer. This is something every student should be taught, b…

Real artists do all the painting themselves, not like Rembrandt Real artists use brushes, not technology like Cartier-Bresson Real writers write it out by hand, not like Jack Kerouac Real musicians…

Bookkeepers do important work. But a bookkeeper is not the head of accounting. Marketers are responsible for anything the organization does that touches the market. But many people with ‘mark…

If a machine makes a painting that no one ever sees, it might be well-crafted or match some objective form of beauty, but it’s not art. Art changes the creator and the viewer. Art requires pa…

Any gathering of more than two people involves compromise. Embracing this fact actually increases the utility of the event. It’s a trap to commit to making it perfect for everyone–we en…

If we choose you based on price, please don’t be surprised if we leave the moment someone else uses the same tactic on you. Low price is a temporary refuge for a marketer who has run out of u…

It took me thirty years to populate the bookshelf that’s behind me in most of my videos. Most of us don’t have the time or patience to do that. At the same time, the wonky computer-gene…

It’s possible you use social media to grow your business. Or to enhance your career. Or maybe it’s to find delight and joy. When you add up all the tikking, tokking, tweeting and clicki…

A brief explanation of my pessimism about efforts to radically improve education.

If you’re not sure of the difference, you’re probably just doing your job. Perhaps, if you’re fortunate, your job is in sync with your work. But most of the time, our work is some…