Betterment

The drive to be your best can be hard to muster right about now. Here are some ways to get your mojo back.

Each phase of innovation presents unique challenges. Companies and employees that intend to last long-term will survive not by hoping for a sustainable state, but through continuous reinvention.

Typically when we imagine ourselves in a fight, we visualize ourselves pummeling our opponent, while somehow emerging from the melee unscathed.  The reality is that in most fights, the other guy will give just as much as he takes, which means you’re going to get hit.  So how do you take a punch so that […]

We talk about risk like it’s a bad thing. But all forward motion involves risk. You can’t find a risk-free way to accomplish much of anything. Appropriate risk has two elements: The odd…

If you have one, take a look at your pet cat or dog. These animals descended from wildcats and wolves, but today live pretty sedate lives, walking around your house and yard, waiting for you to deliver some kibbles to their bowl. My guest today says that modern humans are, in a similar way, domesticated […]

Anxiety can be good or bad. It turns out that it's really up to you.

Having a kid around has changed my perspective on many things, among them wanting to get more consistent in how our family approaches financial decisions. This is an area where I’ve spent a fair amount of time educating myself over the past decade, and I thought it might be useful for folks to see how my thinking has developed over my career, particularly given I started out knowing absolutely nothing on the topic.

Syncretism is the act of integrating new cultural ideas into the ones that already exist. It’s very common in the evolution of religious practice. Instead of ‘this’ or ‘that…

If you’re a longtime reader of Tedium, you might wonder how I manage to uncover so many strange stories. Well, let me tell you. Hopefully it’s inspiring.

Thought leadership is innovative thinking full of insight, information, and inspiration. To be a thought leader is to demonstrate you have an expertise in a particular area within your field.

As a keynote speaker and executive leadership coach I am constantly asked by my clients what is thought leadership. Today I will share how to

American Marketing Association CEO Russ Klein on the importance of taking original, principled stands to inspire others.

When I talk about thought leadership, people often ask me a few key questions. So, I thought I'd address them all right here. If you have additional ones, please contact me. I work with executives, entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders and their teams who are on the journey from leader to thought leader and/or creating

Unbeatable Leadership Skills that can Help You Champion Every Course. Being a leader is hard but being a good leader is harder. The role of a leader is

Unlike most of the sciences, astronomy is always done at a distance. You can see the stars, but you can’t do anything about them. Sometimes the media would like us to believe that we’re…

We’ve spent 130 years indoctrinating kids with the same structure. Now, as some of us enter a post-lockdown world, I’d like to propose a useful (though some might say radical) way to re…

Many of us feel that the current intellectual climate is difficult to bear. When I first noticed the phenomenon, people told me that it was because of Donald Trump. He just made it impossible to debate calmly. But now that Trump is gone, the climate is just as bad and, if nothing else, much worse. … Continue reading How I debate

Posted on Thursday 9 Sep 2021. 639 words, 2 links. By Matt Webb.

You want to perform at your best during your workday. You want to feel that brain fog lifted. And you want to try to bottle if you can that feeling of being bright-eyed and fresh and mentally capable to take things on. So get started with this.

They’re related. Management isn’t. Management uses power and authority to get people to do tasks you know can be done. Management is needed, but management is insufficient. Leadership i…

Culture doesn’t change (much). Elements of human culture have been around for 100,000 years, and it persists. In fact, its persistence is a key attribute of why it works. People like us do th…

Why other people’s emotions might not be about you — and your emotions might not be about them

“Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” — Richard Feynman “A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.” — Samuel Johnson “Read what interests you. If Scott does not interest you and Dickens does, drop Scott and read Dickens. You need not be any one’s enemy; but you need not be a friend with everybody. This is as true of books as of persons. For friendship some agreement in temperament is quite essential.” — Lyman Abbott

Somewhere, perhaps nearby, it went well. A family gathering happened and all the details were right. A project launched on Kickstarter and it succeeded. A person was hired and they were a good choi…

Good ideas feel early. And late ideas are acclaimed by most of the reviewers with opinions that don’t actually matter. Part of our challenge is that the lousy ideas get a very similar pre-lau…

Learning is an investment. Which skills will pay off? Here are seven, frequently overlooked, abilities worth mastering.

If you want to grow, you need to invest in yourself

When we think about fads, we typically think about things like clothes and toys. But ideas — from those around diet to entire philosophies — can also ride the waves of cultural fancy. Keto, jiu-jitsu, and Stoicism will one day seem as outmoded as low-fat eating, taekwondo, and 90s-style evangelical Christianity do now. Social issues […]

For a month now I’ve been doing a very successful experiment in orienting my time to what matters to me most, without beating myself up with incomplete to-do lists. I track my successful focu…