Betterment

Have you ever had one of those weeks disrupted by sick days, or snow days, or both? You probably felt discombobulated, unproductive, and out of sorts.  It’s easy to notice the effect of these kinds of macro disruptions and recognize why they’ve thrown you off your stride. But the very same dynamic you experience with […]

In the US, [next Sunday] is a major holiday. The Superb Owl, with nachos, commercials and beer. People who don’t even watch football watch this game, and it’s one of the largest audienc…

Along the way, folks have talked about “niching down” as a way to help a project find focus. But that’s backward. When we identify and embrace the smallest viable audience, we&#82…

“Why did the chicken cross the road” tells us a bit about jokes. It’s a joke about jokes. The first half is a setup, reminding us that an absurd question creates tension, which is…

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If we’ve got tenure, a lifetime appointment or simply a really secure gig, what should we do with it? One option is to race to the bottom, to chase short-term self-focused outcomes and to see…

Matt Zigler is the author of a new book for educators titled "3 Modes of Making." He talks about imitation, modification and innovation as three different modes of student projects, which develop different maker skills. Matt is an artist and educator who has been running the makerspace at Bullis, an independent school in the DC area. He brings a background in art and creative practice to the makerspace and his school. it's not that every student is going to be an artist but every student should develop a creative practice, regardless of subject or area of interest.

I walked by a psychic’s storefront studio. The window said that this person had been reading palms and predicting the future since 1989. It was a large space on a vibrant New York City corner…

There’s a fine line between sounding smart and trying too hard to sound intelligent. Certain words in our daily conversations might actually be doing more harm than good to our perceived intelligence. It’s not about using big, fancy words, but using the right ones at the right time. In fact, avoiding certain words can make … Continue reading "10 words you should stop using if you want to sound intelligent"

New research by psychologists demonstrates a peaceful walk through a natural setting enhances attention.

At first, this stop sign sign makes a lot of sense: Lives are at stake. Break the rhythm, turn something ignored into something noticed. The challenge with “highlighting” is that it fad…

When it comes to fitness, the words “exercise” and “training” are often used interchangeably. A guy who regularly goes to the gym and randomly does some weight machines and a little cardio might say he’s training. This same guy is frustrated that he’s not making any progress with his strength or appearance despite his regular […]

Napoleon had a paradoxical leadership style. Instead of organizing his army into one huge mass, he organized his army into semi-autonomous divisions of

Shoplifters lurk in the shadows. They realize that they will have an easier time if they quietly steal stuff, because speaking up about it won’t help their cause. Sometimes, though, some peop…

A List Apart founder and web design OG Zeldman ponders the moments of inspiration, the hours of plodding, and the ultimate mystery at the heart of a creative career.

In 1826, John Stuart Mill had an existential crisis. He fell into a deep depression and contemplated suicide for a year. Mill was only 20 years old. What made his existential malaise so perplexing was that since the day he’d been born, his entire life had been designed to generate the utmost happiness. Mill’s father […]

Brain research could help find the right mix between handwriting and new technologies, researchers claim

Engineers can optimize a bridge. There are some bridge designs that satisfy aesthetic, financial, durability, safety and efficiency needs better than others. The work of optimization is finding the…

The soul or spirit has been variously defined. It can be described generally as that eternal element of the human makeup that seeks higher, nobler, life-giving aims over lower, baser, life-deadening impulses.  When most people think of developing this aspect of themselves and becoming more spiritual, they think about adopting practices that have to do […]

If you don’t realize that you have power, you might not be able to exercise it. The power to speak up, to participate, to invent, to lead, to encourage, to vote, to connect, to organize, to m…

One way to look at power is “you get to tell people what to do.” But an alternative is that the most powerful institutions, brands and people are the ones who are in alignment with thei…

Could you tell the difference between someone who’s genuinely friendly and someone who’s being nice to you so that they can manipulate you?  Manipulators are incredibly hard to spot, especially […] More

In some pockets of the industry, an axiom of software development is that deploying software quickly is at odds with thoroughly testing that software. One reason that teams believe this is because a fully automated deployment process implies that there’s no opportunity for manual quality assurance. In other pockets of the industry, the axiom is quite different: you can get both fast deployment and manual quality assurance by using feature flags to decouple deployment (shipping the code) and release (enabling new functionality).

For everyone on the team… Do you care enough to do great work? Can we agree on what great work looks like? When the world changes, do we have a process to redefine great work? Do you have the…

I’ve just started reading Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life by the historian of science Theodore Porter, and so far it’s fantastic. The first chapt…

Why isn’t this enough? There are plenty of good ideas, easy to learn from and copy. There are countless projects, well executed, with the steps on display. Any entrepreneur could find a local…

In Seth Godin’s “Tribes” book, he shares a story about a nonprofit who conducted a vaccination campaign in Rwanda. It spent its resources creating

The writer Kyle Chayka recently had a piece in The Guardian called “The Tyranny of the Algorithm: Why Every Coffee Shop Looks the Same.” The article is, as the title suggests, about the way online algorithms have homogenized culture.  One part of the piece that particularly stood out is an exchange Chayka had with Trevor Walsh, who does marketing […]

Over the past few months I've been having many conversations with people who all have a particular set of skills but whose job titles are all over the place. I believe that we form a more coherent group than we realise, that this novel role exists for a good reason, and that we would benefit from making that known.

Why the 10,000-hour rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell, does not provide practical value in the pursuit of mastery.