Betterment

Everyone needs more chances, more benefit of the doubt, more opportunity. But what turns a chance into a big break is what we do with it once the chance arrives.

On Thursday, we learned the devastating news: Absolute Bagels had closed. Suddenly and, apparently, for good. A Saturday morning trip up to the bagel shop on the Upper West Side has been a weekly ritual for Kin since we moved here. He'd buy a dozen bagels – a couple for Saturday

Like all good metaphors, it might be practical too. Your ‘shoes’ are the point of greatest leverage. The spot where you have traction and engage with the world most directly. For a free…

If 2023 felt odd then 2024 felt even weirder. My theme was “Frequency” and in 2024 it proved hard to tune into the right frequency.

The Ancient Greek philosopher Democritus is credited with coming up with the theory of atoms (the Greek word for “indivisible”) circa 400 BC. In the end,

That’s the tempting question. How much hustle, hoopla and initiative do we need to get this idea ignited in the marketplace… But the much better question is: How much kindling do we hav…

If attention is what you seek and attention is what you measure, it’s likely you’ll create drama. And drama is inherently short-lived. The managing director of Jaguar said, “We&#8…

Casey Newton on Platformer: The Phony Comforts of AI Skepticism The most persuasive way you can demonstrate the reality of AI, though, is to describe how it is already being used today. Not in speculative sci-fi scenarios, but in everyday offices and laboratories and schoolrooms. And not in the ways

No project is going to exactly match every hope you have for it. And even before you ship the work, you’ve already succeeded. No project is totally worthless. So, given that failure and succe…

The more you try to show, the less people see. The more you try to say, the less they hear. The more you try to explain, the less they understand. The

One of the things that happens during moments of crisis is that people look to existing institutions—whether governments, nonprofits, churches, or the like—for guidance on what to do.

We spend a lot of time in our own heads, certain that our path and our method make sense. We often become more certain in the face of criticism or even suggestions. This confidence is essential, as…

Coming to the end of the year is always a time for reflection. This has been an interesting year for me … with more highs than lows, but the lows have been very low. Getting older is often about th…

In The Dispossessed, the people of Annares—a moon colony founded by exiled anarchists—speak a language called Pravic. It is an invented language, created by the first settlers, who the protagonist ...

Writing in Practicing New Worlds, Andrea Ritchie documents a pattern of crisis response that, far from interrupting the crisis, merely serves to lengthen it. I will quote at length here:

There are many ways to ask and answer this question. Authorship used to be rare, but now, all of us write something. If you’re putting your words on a social media platform, you might be surp…

Tom Brady is an elite athlete. Few have even approached the stats he had playing football. And Catherine Walker, NSTA Science Teacher of the Year, is an elite, because her pedagogy and understandin…

In this clip from my favorite Werner Herzog film, Encounters at the End of the World, the director muses about the mental health of penguins and observes a lone penguin heading in the wrong direction. From an appreciation of this penguin scene written b

Between this newsletter, my podcast, my books, and my New Yorker journalism, I offer a lot of advice and propose a lot of ideas about ... Read more

With a 13 billion year head start on evolution, why haven't any other forms of life in the universe contacted us by now? (Arrival is a fantastic movie. Watch it, but don't stop there - read the Story of Your Life novella it was based on for so much additional

America is facing a “boy crisis.” The statistics are stark: Boys are far more likely than girls to fall behind in school, die by suicide, and end up in jail. When experts offer solutions to the problems facing the male population, most push for a fundamental reimagining of masculinity — urging boys to reject the […]

Proverbs from around the world: Don’t buy someone else’s problems. (Chinese) Strange smoke irritates the eyes. (Lithuanian) The poor lack much, but the greedy more. (Swiss) It is the mind that wins or loses. (Nepalese) The point of the needle must pass first. (Ethiopian) God did not create hurry. (Finnish) When you go, the road is rough; when you return, smooth. (Thai) If you want to marry wisely, marry your equal. (Spanish) Where is there a tree not shaken by the wind? (Armenian) Wherever you go, you can’t get rid of yourself. (Polish) Money swore an oath that nobody that...

There are some things that offer you a lifetime of service, and, more often than not, you get what you pay for. That’s why today, we’ll go over 16 items that

A little faster is a market advantage. A step change in speed changes the market entirely. Fedex was faster mail. It allowed them to grow and profit. Email, on the other hand, completely changed co…

Robot owls: "The question that remains in my mind," writes Imogen West-Knights in the latest issue of The Dial, "and in the minds of many of even its most dedicated users, is: what is Duolingo actually teaching you?" (Emphasis mine.) What indeed? Duolingo won't make you fluent in a foreign

Remember the iPod? The missing link between the Sony Walkman and the Apple iPhone that changed how we experienced music forever. Back in 2006, a viral

Learn how to organize your digital life in seconds. Stop wasting time looking for information and gain greater focus on what matters most.

5S is a workplace organization method that uses a list of five Japanese words: seiri (整理), seiton (整頓), seisō (清掃), seiketsu (清潔), and shitsuke (躾). These have been translated as 'sort', 'set in order', 'shine', 'standardize', and 'sustain'. The list describes how to organize a work space for efficiency and effectiveness by identifying and sorting the items used, maintaining the area and items, and sustaining the new organizational system. The decision-making process usually comes from a dialogue about standardization, which builds understanding among employees of how they should do the work.