Betterment

Simply say it. The first minute of a speech, the first paragraph of a novel or the tuning of the orchestra before they begin… The performance improves if we skip that part. Sometimes, our thr…

Cutting Growing Grinding Pruning Irrigating Sanding Cultivating Grafting Pressuring Polishing Shifting Feeding Bending Welding Celebrating Melting Burning It works better when we choose with intent…

It’s easy to be distracted by the wave that’s crashing on the shore. On the other hand, the tide is inexorable. It’s the long-term trend, the one that is quietly happening, over t…

Want to hear just how irrational you are? (How irrational we ALL are?) It’s a cold, nasty world, and nature plays little tricks on us to keep us alive. We

Why loneliness is akin to smoking, democracy depends on bowling leagues, and how to make new friends as an adult.

"Taskmasking" or whatever you want to call it. I got you some strategies.

It’s not unusual to encounter conflicting weather reports. One site says it’s going to rain, the other insists it won’t. On the other hand, you don’t need a weatherman to kn…

If you’ve ever caught a ball, you’re a physicist. You might not be trained in it, but your intuitive sense of where the ball is going to land requires having a theory about gravity. And…

We are shokunin.

The ramblings, thoughts, and channeling of Kin Lane.

It hadn’t happened in such a long time that I hesitated to respond. As I was walking through town, a driver pulled up, rolled down his window and said, “is this the way to Irvington?&#8…

Perhaps you’ve encountered a sink with two taps, not one. One for hot, one for cold, without a chance to mix them before you scald or chill yourself. It seems absurd that the folks who figure…

There are two major cities in business.  The first is called “Care More.” It’s where you get ahead by caring more than the other guy.  The second is

When Congress Surrenders to the Executive

My Conversation with Andrea Hiott

The more common, easier to execute sort: Instructions to remind people who already know what to do, what to do. The more essential and harder to create kind: Instructions for people who don’t…

No one knows the name of the maternity nurse who helped with the delivery of Marie Curie or Esperanza Spaulding. You might grow up to be a genius, but the team that helped your mom give birth don&#…

Tanks teach us a lot. During WWII, Germany and the US had two radically different approaches to tank warfare.  Germany built tanks like works of art – a

The Harrington has been my go-to spring jacket for several years now, and I heartily recommend adding one to your own wardrobe.

The phone book was a groundbreaking innovation. For the first time, you could actually look up the person you were seeking to reach. At about the same time, the department store arrived. You could …

Andy Sylvester wrote me asking about my digital garden: I followed links to your site from Dave Winer’s Scripting News site, your digital garden site is cool! I am interested in what theme yo…

Posted on Thursday 13 Mar 2025. 1,319 words, 12 links. By Matt Webb.

This book’s introduction started by defining strategy as “making decisions.” Then we dug into exploration, diagnosis, and refinement: three chapters where you could argue that we didn’t decide anything at all. Clarifying the problem to be solved is the prerequisite of effective decision making, but eventually decisions do have to be made. Here in this chapter on policy, and the following chapter on operations, we finally start to actually make some decisions. In this chapter, we’ll dig into:

It's commonplace when something breaks to throw it out and buy a new replacement. But there's a lot of value in learning to repair and maintain the things around us.

Should you stick it out or give up? Here's four ideas you need to know to correctly make that decision.

This is, after all, a philosophy blog.

You have a strategy. Perhaps you didn’t even choose it but you have one… and it’s not working. The dominant question is, “what do I do now?” Which tactic do we use? How do we get …

While it’s tempting to compare suffering, inconvenience, unfairness or general no-goodness, it’s not helpful. Someone else’s trauma doesn’t diminish yours. In fact, when we …

Who Defines Reality?