Betterment

Tortilla chips made with “love.” (Though that likely isn’t among the top five emotions experienced by the worker who churns out those chips on the factory line.) Companies that refer to their employees as “family.” (Because dear kin will terminate your relationship without warning and give you fifteen minutes to pack your stuff and vacate […]

We’d probably be better off if we could simply say, “I’m afraid.” Our culture has persistently reminded us that the only thing to fear is fear itself, that confessing fear i…

Twenty years from now, you will have new skills. New customers. A new title and a new kind of leverage. All of this forward motion requires a less celebrated element–all the things you’…

The first mindset is pretty common. Take good notes. Make tiny changes. Repeat. Improve. Incrementally move along the asymptote. Test and measure. The other mindset is rare indeed. Do things that m…

Focus sounds limiting, but it results in more getting done. Here's how to stop day-dreaming and finally make progress.

We’ve talked before about the power of using the principle of via negativa to improve your life. Instead of focusing on what you should start doing to make your life better, it often pays to think about what you can stop doing. It’s addition by subtraction. Some of the things you should eliminate from your […]

Every day around 3 pm, my dog takes a nap. As far as dogs go, he has a ton of available options. He could hang in the backyard, chase a squirrel, whatever. But in that moment, every day, the choice…

If you have a million Twitter followers, that means that 99.9% of the people on Twitter are ignoring you, which, with a little rounding, means you have 0%. If you write a book and it sells a millio…

Self-management skills let you manage your thoughts, actions, and emotions to achieve maximum productivity.

A simple rule that every good, veteran programmer seems to follow with respect to managing their time.

My current project is a deep dive into the science and philosophy of learning by doing. (Which, ironically, has me reading a lot of books!) Since my last post sharing interesting books was surprisingly well-received, I figured I’d share some more. Here are ten books I found thought-provoking: 1. Metaphors We Live By by George […]

While embedded on an Army outpost in one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan, journalist Sebastian Junger recorded many incisive insights into the nature of martial living, including this one on the soldiers’ nightly routine: “At eight o’clock the generator cuts out and everyone goes to their bunks; after that, the only men awake […]

Ten years ago, if you were as good at using networks and software as you are today, most of your peers would have considered you some sort of wizard. The question isn’t whether or not each of…

Akimbo, an independent B corp., continues to show us how cohort-based learning can change lives for the better. I hope you’ll check out what my friends at Akimbo are up to: The Early Decision…

Shifting your mindset about self-control can increase your willpower.

The thing about major innovation is, it comes in waves. These waves historically have lasted about fifty years, thereabouts. Along came the railway

It was with great surprise and delight that we saw Tom Peters had quoted our Chief Creative, Hugh MacLeod in his new book, “Extreme Humanism”, so

Ah, the good ol' days! We recently participated in a session for the UK National Health System (NHS), on a subject that isn't discussed

We’d rather not claim luck. Good luck feels like something was unearned. And bad luck sounds like an excuse. The false promise of meritocracy decries luck in all its forms. And yet… Amo…

The all-in-one tool is a great way to organize your work.

to never miss a deadline to be the last to speak up or offer help to learn something new every day to be helpless in the face of a technology to give others the benefit of the doubt to ask for help…

These little-known tricks will eliminate annoyances and make your agenda infinitely more manageable.

When it comes to happiness at work, title and industry don't matter. These two things do.

It’s so much easier to see and process the world if we divide it into discrete bits. This is non-fiction, that’s fiction. This is a good restaurant, that’s a bad one. This person …

“Just how charitable are you supposed to be when criticizing the views of an opponent?”

In an expert-run industrialized economy, there’s a lot of pressure to be the one who’s sure, the person with all the answers. Far more valuable is someone who has all the questions. The…