Betterment

Optimization and automation can be useless and reckless, outmatched by systemic pressures and their trade-offs. Localized friction, hidden by optimizations, can hold the key to larger scale impact.

If you’re overworked, skipping gym and drinking too much – fret not. People had the same concerns some 2000 years ago.

Facts are important, but facts don’t create learning. Stories do. A story fits into (and changes) our understanding of the world. Good teachers are storytellers, and storytellers are teachers…

One of the big things I’ve learned over the last decade or so as a product manager and leader is that principles eat process for breakfas...

There's nothing you can do to make people trust you. Except saying only what you mean. Except doing exactly what you say you're going to do. Except

A friend found a knobby growth near his knee. After a few doctor visits, it was diagnosed as cancer. A cancer diagnosis is a self-sufficient catastrophe–few people need more than that to star…

Jason Rodriguez is a slightly jaded—but ultimately hopeful—tech worker. Working at GitHub.

In one corner of the parking garage near my office, there’s no reception for a car’s satellite radio. This is clearly broken, but it’s also not a problem. Certainly not a problem …

Doing the work you love is hard when teams don't hire for it.

In hospitality and customer service, perfect is elusive. Someone is going to miss a shift, have a bad day, or fail to understand a situation. But there’s a second kind of error, the one that&…

"The ability to influence others can set you up for success" at work, says Melody Wilding, so that you can advance more easily and have more of an impact.

We’ve forgotten how often society had an answer for that question. Perhaps our shift away from a dictated answer not only gives us freedom, it also creates ennui and fear. The culture of a ge…

On Christmas Night, 1776, George Washington’s Continental Army faced a choice. Hessian mercenaries hired by the British encamped across the Delaware

There are very few activities that are fully reversible. Ice sculpture might be one of them. Once the ice melts, all the effort and information is lost, and refreezing lets you begin again with a n…

There’s a lot of pressure to make things dumber. Better to make it dumb than to have someone simply walk away, apparently. With so much to consume, and an unlimited amount to learn, there&#82…

Every day you're in this place, you're two days nearer death.

Ethos, logos, and pathos can help you get buy-in from stakeholders.

I'm not really sure what to say. But phew, I sure as hell won't turn to ChatGPT to compensate, because my god, I'm grieving – "election grief is real" – and some advanced text predictor that promises to compensate for my "loss for words" is not going to do anyone any good

I love Zamboni machines. They’re ungainly, they’re slow but they’re also majestic. Like an elephant for ice hockey. After each period, when the ice is chopped up by play, the Zamb…

When companies with identical resources produce wildly different results, we all want to know the secret.  The recently announced Nobel Prize in

Productivity is the second foundation in my year-long project (and course) to improve the universal elements essential to a good life. As I write this, today is the first day of my month-long productivity challenge, although you’ll probably be reading this in the newsletter around a week later. I didn’t want to publish my month-end […]

There are lights, camera and action, but mostly there’s the unreality of making it fit. Happily ever after, a climax at just the right moment, perfect heroes, tension, resolution and a swelli…

The word “pro” gets appended to a lot of products, and that tends to simply mean some combination of more features and better build quality. But I think there are (at least) 3 aspects to products, both hardware and software, that make them good professional tools. 1. Reliability 2. Predictability

Gergely Orosz on how to stand out in the tough job market circumstances as a junior or senior software developer, and engineering manager.

Woman painting in the storm, Burano, Italy, 1977, Jean Gaumy Hi hi, Here's some art, internet, and ideas for you: I’ve never thought of myself as a person...

Laura Olin’s newsletter of “art, internet, and ideas” is a favorite of mine (subscribe here), and I appreciate

If you’re stuck dealing with a bug that you can’t seem to fix, there’s nothing wrong with getting some white space from it. No harm in that.

Note: The following is an excerpt from The Building of Boyhood: A Manual for Parents, published in 1933. “Some Reasons Why Some Men Are Successful Fathers” By Frank H. Cheley They Believe that being a father is the greatest privilege given any man, and so take their fatherhood seriously. They Believe that all boys are mostly good, […]

My calendar is already full 😱 this is how I included many other side initiatives!

Points aren’t just for games. Points are how we keep score and decide what to do next. Pick your scorekeeping wisely. Too much focus on the score can bend us or break us, pushing us to engage…