Betterment

There’s a profound difference between 3 seemingly similar ways to spend time: sitting around and making things, either alone or with people you want to...

I just reread this 2023 post about a neighborhood Tokyo izakaya (and my related thoughts), spurred by a conversation w/ my friend Andrew about what makes for good work, a good life, and a good society. It dovetails with this podcast conversation between R

In 2018, legal scholar Tim Wu wrote in the New York Times that: Today’s cult of convenience fails to acknowledge that difficulty is a constitutive feature of human experience. Convenience is all destination and no journey. This piece well predates the current AI boom, but “all destination and no journey” is a pretty good explanation for why using AI to create art is mainly compelling to people who think about creativity in terms of producing content and generating intellectual property. They just want the thing they can market and sell for money or clout; they don’t care how they got there. I know you’re sick of talking about AI. I am too. This is only a little bit about AI, I promise. Like all my writing about technology, it’s mostly about people.

You need people to turn around and see you

Most of us grow up thinking of anger as a problem. We’re told it’s childish, irrational, and something to repress or rise above. As journalist Sam Parker, author of Good Anger: How Rethinking Rage Can Change Our Lives, told me on the podcast, that assumption has left a lot of people more anxious and depressed […]

“First, I studied this subject at this university. Then, I entered the corporate world as a consultant for this firm – but my work life felt hollow. I

I make the case for why you should focus on improving your "foundations" in life.

For many of us in the industrialized world, happiness is directly related to how big the container is. Overflowing vs. skimpy. Adequate vs. generous. Overloaded vs. slack to spare. We know that mak…

There’s “regular luck” and “earned luck.” When a stranger dies and leaves you $10,000,000, that’s regular luck. Undeserved, unearned, a bolt out of the blue. Som…

Before modern plumbing, drinking from your local stream was a coin toss with cholera. So civilizations got creative. The Germans brewed beer. The Vikings

If you want to make a change (or make a living) it might pay to find a topic that people hesitate to talk about. There’s enormous leverage in making the uncomfortable urgent enough to take ac…

There’s more software available for free than ever before, and a lot of it is really good. Handmade by real people, for real people. If we’re going to pay for it, it needs to be extraor…

A problem without a solution isn’t a problem, it’s a situation we have to live with. But most existing problems do have solutions. We just don’t like that solution. The solution m…

Friendship is part of it, but it’s mutual forward motion that transforms a group. The shared journey and mutual respect of a cohort can change the arc of our work and our lives. When we&#8217…

A couple of weeks ago I turned 50 years old, which is a sentence my fingers feel strange typing because in my mind I’m still somewhere in my late 20s. Age...

Something’s off at Starbucks.  You notice it the moment you walk in to grab your favorite drink order.  The Barista locks eyes, making prolonged eye

Rethinking productivity, motivation, and the path of least resistance

Why do I have to put up with all these computer shortcuts, which usually turn out to be longcuts? Now in my late 80s, time is running out, and I have no wish to spend it trying to connect with iCloud, writes Joseph Epstein.

In 1969, Fred Rogers appeared before the Senate to argue against cutting federal funding for public broadcasting. During his testimony, Rogers recited a song from his show, What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel? In this short video, Jon Lefkovitz ac

It doesn’t happen all at once. And it doesn’t work suddenly. A home pressure cooker doesn’t use more electricity than a hot pot. And it isn’t as fast as a microwave. Instead…

Writing is one of life's greater joys. It's a mental workout that often brings me a level of clarity that is hard to find elsewhere. I have never sat down to write for an extended period of time without coming away with a greater understanding of myself and the universe.

What’s the funniest number? Yale physicist Emily Pottebaum proposed the Perceived Specificity Hypothesis, which states that “for nonnegative integers 100, the funniness of a number increases with its apparent precision." She surveyed 68 acquaintances and found that: Among integers divisible by 10, 0 is funniest. Odd numbers are consistently funnier than even. “Furthermore, the most oddly specific numbers — odd numbers with a degree of specificity of 2 — are the most funny, according to the data presented here.” The degree of specificity characterizes the distance between an integer and the nearest multiple of 5: So 3, 7, 13,...

As part of my Foundations project, I read 102 books over the past twelve-and-a-half months. That includes seven textbooks and dozens of academic books, in addition to the popular science and self-help books I selected for each theme. Those interested in brief reviews of each book can check out my reading lists for each topic: […]

We talk about networks but we are rarely clear about what we mean. A specific sort of network is the grid, and even that idea is complicated by two competing meanings. There’s the benign and …

I live a full and active life. In fact, I’m probably more engaged than I’ve ever been, with faith that at least some of my ideas will play out in constructive ways over the coming years…

It’s easy to come to the conclusion that people with means and high cultural status choose things that are better. Organic vegetables instead of junk food. But there’s a long history of…

I’m visiting with American friends who are staying in a rural farmhouse in France’s Dordogne valley. The house, which might be several hundred years old, provides faster internet access…

When we win by having someone else lose, we set up a conflict. It’s clear, direct but not generative. But when we win by confronting our fear, everyone benefits. Often, people who choose to b…

“I’m applying to work at Disney, do you know anyone who can give me a reference…” “My two partners and I are planning a new company, can we ask you for feedback on our…