Betterment

Every kid knows that no two are the same. The thing is, at appropriate magnification, if we’re paying attention and deciding to care, that applies to just about everything in the natural worl…

Martin Tingley with Wenjing Zheng, Simon Ejdemyr, Stephanie Lane, Michael Lindon, and Colin McFarland

It feels odd to hear the flight attendants remind us to put on our own mask before helping others. That’s backward, isn’t it? The theory is that if you can’t breathe, it’s p…

Doing work well, for its own sake, is a surer route to satisfaction than worldly success. Some meditations on C. S. Lewis's The Inner Ring.

No one is going to steal it. Not if it’s actually a big idea. One thing that big ideas have in common is that they’re almost impossible to give away. You could have bought Amazon stock …

From ancient times til the present, the ideal warrior has been celebrated as a man of both thought and action, with a mind as finely honed as his sword. Since the 19th century, the Marine Corps has directed its members to pursue that ideal by issuing a list of recommended reading to members of its […]

Ask any graphic designer or architect, and they’ll tell you that, much to their chagrin, clients have a much easier time expressing what they don’t like about a draft or mock-up than conveying what they’d rather have it look like instead. Individuals often evince this same dynamic in designing the architecture of their lives. “I […]

We generally adopt a posture of optimism or pessimism as a response (or reaction) to external events. We see how things are unfolding and make a decision about what to expect. We feel like we need …

Editor’s note: The following excerpt was taken from the chapter “How to Make Habit Your Friend,” included in The Technique of Getting Things Done (1947) by Donald Laird.  “A place for everything, and everything in its place,” is one of the simplest ways of putting habit to work for you to get things done. Consistency is the […]

In the end, our numbers will always be wrong. It is our choice whether we want to blindly believe or continue to test and refine them.

No matter what anyone says, simplicity is anything but simple.

Seek simplicity, but distrust it.

Complexity in business is a natural occurrence. Read on, and we’ll show you how simple it is to alleviate your business’s complexity.

Do you know someone at work who seems almost immune to the chaos around them? These three focus areas can help you effectively manage complexity as well.

There are two confusions. The first is that the next big idea must be fully original. The second is that it have no competition. This is almost never the case. Henry Ford didn’t invent the ca…

Daily habits or intense, one-off projects? In this article I explain why both are necessary to do great things.

Have you been waking up early, writing in your journal, meditating, exercising, drinking eight glasses of water a day, and planning your week religiously for months and months, but aren’t seeing any real progress in your life? What gives?  Since we were little kids, haven’t we been told that if we exercise discipline, we’ll be […]

It’s such an odd thing to say. The benefit of the doubt is withheld from many of us, options are unevenly distributed and indoctrination is real. And yet… no matter where we begin, we e…

It’s something of a cliche to observe that Westerners typically avoid thinking about death, and live their lives less meaningfully, and urgently, as a result. Less commonly explained are the subtle ways this avoidance takes place, beyond simply averting one’s eyes while driving past a funeral home. Our denial of death can be seen in […]

The best way for a movie studio to outperform is to attract and encourage creators with vision, drive and commitment. And yet, the key executives might be spending their time and focus and effort o…

The University of Tasmania recently awarded an honorary doctorate degree to Hannah Gadsby, who then gave an address to the gradu

For collaborative, multiplayer, spatial products, the performance of the prototype is key — you need to deliver a smooth experience.

Quality is defined as consistently meeting spec. A measurable promise made and kept. Effort is what happens when we go beyond our normal speed. When we dig deep and exert physical or emotional labo…

A feeling of entitlement is hard won. You suffered to get to this spot. You were mistreated. You worked hard. You paid your dues. You were treated unfairly. It’s your turn. Justice demands it…

Life is a series of projects. Well chosen projects can help you achieve your ambitions, and life a better, richer, and more meaningful life.

We each have an inner critic. And they can be paralyzing. Still, as Scrum Inc.’s Brian Hackerson explains, we must learn to listen to that inner critic in order to change it to an inner advocate. Reducing the time it takes to make that switch works the same way as reducing decision latency in a Scrum Team or Agile organization.

Editor’s note: Our podcast this week on the benefits of forgetting reminded us of this excerpt — an even more philosophic take on the subject — from The Crown of Individuality (published 1909) by William George Jordan. For more WGJ, we highly recommend picking up a copy of The Secrets to Power, Mastery and Truth: […]

What happened to the once venerable tradition of the army surplus store? In this article we chart its rise and fall.