Betterment

Your biggest mentor isn't someone else. It's the person you used to be.

I’ve been studying the early history of electricity’s discovery as a map for our current discovery of artificial intelligence. The smartest people alive back then, including Isaac Newton, who may have been the smartest person who ever lived, had confident … Continue reading →

Big company customer service has evolved to be pointless, a useless shadow of its former self. Big companies can’t take responsibility, only humans can. And when we depersonalize our interact…

This is the last month in my year-long Foundations project. The focus of this month was service. In this post, I’d like to share some takeaways from the ten books I read this month. Next week I’ll share my reflections on trying to improve this foundation in my own life. Those interested can also check […]

Plato – ever heard of him? Of course you have. He’s arguably one of the most impactful philosophers who ever lived. Without getting into the metaphysical

Some projects run in silence for months. Status reports aren't enough. Real momentum comes from small wins, demos, and milestones that show your team is moving forward.

Organizations built on heroes eventually break. You don’t need a 10x engineers — you need a 10x organization that scales sustainably.

This, in itself, is a compromise. When we insist that our vision be accepted, completely, without alteration, we’ve already compromised. It might be that we’ve settled for a much smalle…

Someone should write a book: “Everything I Need To Know About Life I Learned Twenty Thousand Years Ago.” Everything that makes us tick was hardwired

Talk to a clear-headed 107-year-old today, and you could expect to hear stories of adolescence in the Great Depression, or — if you're lucky — the Jazz Age seen through a child's eyes.

Systems allow for more complex analysis, further from direct experience, using longer chains of reasoning.

You wrap up your tour of the Burj Khalifa and step out into the hot Dubai heat. A supercar passes. License plate: “1.” Just “1.” You shrug. To you, it’s

A lot of learning is unlearning. Here's some beliefs I unlearned after reading 100+ books for my Foundations project.

There’s a button in Wordpress that initiates a new post. And another that publishes it. That’s a clear and practical metaphor for what we do, all day, every day. The ‘post’ …

The pre-work involves important choices: Am I willing to be wrong about the fact that I’m a person who doesn’t know how to do this? Am I open to feeling incompetent as I discover a new …

If you’re taking the wrong medication, that’s not going to help. It doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you’re headed in the wrong direction.

How did we meet? What were we doing when we shifted from acquainted to friends? Who else is in our circle? How do we make space for each other and how do we dance together toward our center? You&#8…

We tested multiple AI tools for synthesizing discovery output and found the best insights come when machines find the patterns and humans connect the dots.

Verifying magic on the jagged frontier

There was a story in the WSJ (syndicated without paywall to MSN) about six friends. All Type-A. All trying to plan a more or less straight forward

The approach I've used to quickly assimilate the best advice in a domain (and actually use them to change my life)

In an oft-quoted speech, Winston Churchill said: Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good se…

Worth noting that there’s no ‘w’ in reckless. We imagine there might be, since a wreck is entirely possible. There’s the recklessness of creative generosity. This happens wh…

It’s easy to announce that we don’t have time for a new skill or a generous act. But the truth is we probably could find the time. What we don’t have is energy or motivation. Find…

A frog has no trouble grabbing a fast-moving fly in midair. But the same fly, sitting on a leaf, is safe, essentially invisible to the frog. We’re a lot like frogs sometimes. We choose to pay…

…might not be the same as making an impact. Making a point doesn’t take very long and it can be gratifying in the moment. Making an impact happens over time, and rarely brings the same …

If you’re going to build a conference, a newsletter, a podcast, an AI service or even a tennis tournament, please pause before you decide to be ad supported. (Ads are not the same as sponsors…

For Richard, a crazy idea was an opportunity to either prove it wrong or prove it right.