Betterment

Your marriage is struggling. You’ve invited your wife to do couples therapy, to go out for date nights, to spend more time together in general. But she’s refused all these invitations.  Your daughter has the potential to be a champion swimmer. But she isn’t into the sport, and getting her to go to practice is […]

When a resource can be used more efficiently, we end up using more of the thing, not less. So, when cars get better gas mileage, people drive more, and consumption can actually go up. When AI learn…

It’s tempting to hand it to other people. If someone else takes the blame, if they accept the responsibility, then we get satisfaction and we’re off the hook. Alas, this doesn’t w…

During a recent interview over on the Dwarkesh Patel channel, Professor Sarah CM Paine (who teaches Geopolitics  over at The US Naval War College) gave a

Apparently, we were a lot happier last year than we are this year. At least that’s what the studies say, (and we all know they’re right). The United

Fear is self-focused. Day to day, our fear is about us. What will happen if we give that speech, launch that project, get stuck in traffic, are eaten by an alligator… And generosity is about …

When it comes to our native languages, researchers already have a pretty good idea of how we learn words, and it’s not through studying vocabulary lists. Here's what it takes.

Why is that? The new diet. The fundraising after a natural disaster. The relationship. The hype cycle of a new technology or the media frenzy around a hot new fad or candidate… It always feel…

Hack the Motivation Trap: Protect Your Team

Explore the balance between strategic and tactical mindsets in the field of engineering. This article discusses the importance of both perspectives in problem-solving, goal setting, and planning for the future. It also highlights how the focus shifts from tactical to strategic as engineers advance in their careers. Ideal for engineering leaders and team members seeking to improve their productivity and strategic thinking.

Some people go to the gym for health and energy. Some go to lift more weight than they did yesterday (or more than the person next to them). You can start a company to make an impact and surround y…

Thoughts on searching out your co-founder online.

Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash hobby: a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation obsession: a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unrea…

Courage is a generous act that involves risk. It’s not courageous to hang out with friends and make a crank phone call. The risk involved might be actual risk (it took courage to go to the mo…

This post is an idea inspired by the Dr Pippa Malmgren interview over at the Infinite Loops Podcast #167. According to Dr Malmgren, because certainty does

There’s no such thing as work life balance. There’s simply life. And you spend part of your life at work. One way to change the pressure of work is to expand or contract the size of the…

For the last couple of centuries, ever since the Enlightenment (and even well before that), we’ve been enamored with the idea of being ruled by reason and

Activities like writing, gardening and knitting can improve your cognition and mood. Tapping, typing and scrolling? Less so.

Questions people ask themselves when looking at a web page aimed at businesses (B2B). They are rhetorical, but should give you a place to begin: Is it my job to deal with this? Who sent me here? Wi…

I appreciate Mr. Zakharchenko’s extensive critique of TDD even as I have some reservations regarding his language. He tried TDD. He thought about it. He put his thoughts out there. He knew he was going to get a reaction & he did—300K views, 160 comments, 190 reposts, 1000 likes.

If we’re going to come together and invest the time in conversation, in research or in analysis, we should begin by understanding what would be required for you or I to change our minds. If y…

Belonging at scale is an age-old problem. When your company is just a wee startup with a few people renting desks in a coworking space, it's easier to

I've written, prescriptively, that money shouldn't buy anything that matters: not healthcare or education, for example. Anything we can do, we can afford But at the top level money can't buy anything you couldn't do anyway. Anything we can't do, we can only buy from others. The Britian of the thirties was still, despite all…

The idea of self-explanations took off and became a studying meme that has since gone far beyond my own audience. Here are 5 ideas you must keep in mind to get the most out of it.

Michael Lopp helped coin an important term. When you’re a skilled craftsperson with high market value, there may be recruiters knocking on your door. An employee who has ‘shields up&#82…

“Household management” has become something of an interest and a watchword for me this year, due to the coincidental confluence of two books coming into my life at the same time. The first is Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. Several months ago, two friends, one male and one […]

As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed by the taste of the founders moves toward the mean. Over time, things get more average. That’s b…

As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed by the taste of the founders moves toward the mean. Over time, things get more average. That&#82…

The only reason we need to go into detail about our resume, the details of our new idea or the features of a product is to cause action to happen. And action is the result of tension, status or aff…

Humans have a strong impulse to see things that are arbitrary or conventional as natural and essential – especially language