Betterment

Ever notice how the most beautiful promises come with fine print? Today’s Effective Altruists and Silicon Valley tech utopians, say: "A perfect society is

There are two ways for an artisan or professional to see the world: Scarcity. This is the idea that if there were fewer photographers, more people would hire me to do wedding pictures. That if the …

Here’s a stylized model of work processes and outcomes. I’m going to call it “Model I”. Model I: Work process and outcomes If you do work the right way, that is, follow the …

…but it’s often overlooked. A farmer might yearn for twice as much land. But it’s far more efficient to double the yield on the land he already has. Marketers often hustle to get …

In 1940, as Nazi forces overran Europe, Winston Churchill faced a nation on the brink. He did not recite troop numbers or production figures. He offered

In the age of AI, it’s better to know a little about a lot than a lot about a little

Not a lack of power, but feeling as though we have none. Some people have been indoctrinated to prefer a life with no agency, as it also brings no responsibility. At the other extreme, some folks h…

Has a strategy behind it. Often unsaid, undiscussed and hidden. It’s easier to simply play with the tactic of the moment. Tell me what your tactic is trying to accomplish and I’ll be ha…

Have you ever made a video that was seen by someone you didn’t know? Or written something that got shared outside of your inner circle? The odds of either of these things happening a generati…

“Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; And thy want as an armed

From a passage of Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, the three types of specialists needed for the success of any revolution. Slazinger claims to have learned from history that most people cannot open their minds to new ideas unless a mind-opening team wit

There’s a well regarded pizza maker we know, Ronnie, who is a totally old school, Rhode-Island-style pie man. People literally drive for hours to try out

One is far more important than the other. Sorting puts our options into two piles. One pile is the don’t-like, not-good-enough or wrong stack. These are the flavors we don’t enjoy, the …

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We might deserve something. We might be entitled to it. But expectations are a story we tell ourselves, and that story is up to us. The simple life hack is to lower your expectations, regardless of…

As part of my job running Terraform Industries, I get to build an amazing team of super smart people, and that involves interviewing hundreds of people. Over time certain patterns have become obvio…

When the investment committee is unanimous, it’s unlikely that the idea is a brilliant one. Significant division and strong opinions (and widespread skepticism) don’t cause great ideas,…

A lot of people have asked for it.

The ideas aren’t uncomfortable, we are. You don’t have to like the weather to acknowledge that it’s raining.

There are two ways of thinking about doing more than is necessary. It can become a really useful marketing tactic. When you deliver more than people expect, your overdelivery creates connection. Th…

Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune is filled to bursting with amazing lines. “The slow blade penetrates the shield” is my personal favorite.  Weapons master Gurney Halleck delivers…

If you were popping around here on Nexwlelexwm (Bowen Island) over the past couple of days, you might have remarked to folks that the weather seems a bit weird. We’ve had a volatile week of s…

There is a strange moment that hits sometime deep into the note-taking journey.

On the factory floor, productivity increases are relentlessly implemented, often without regard for worker satisfaction. For people working with a laptop, though, they are often seen as optional li…

by Priya Malhotra “How are you?” asked my aunt about a year ago in my living room in New Delhi, her tone languorous and inquisitive, her gaze perched on my

Once upon a time, in a sleepy alpine village, a bored shepherd boy with a flock of sheep and far too much free time alone, cried “Wolf!” Villagers came

For years, the body’s largest lean tissue—skeletal muscle—has been underestimated in its role in managing metabolic health. Despite its size, it contributes surprisingly little to blood sugar and fat breakdown when you’re at rest. But now, new research is revealing that one small muscle buried deep in the calf might hold an outsized key to better health. And all it takes is a simple movement while sitting. Marc Hamilton, a health and human performance professor at the University of Houston, has

With some regularity, kind-hearted Technical people tell me that I Can Be Technical, Too. This usually happens when I’m asking us to define what we’re calling technical in a software environment. I understand why it happens. I am a psychologist of software environments and that is something of

I still remember the day I met Sam, a former Navy SEAL who had pivoted into the corporate…