Betterment

Kindergarten teachers matter more than you think. Chess isn’t a talent, it’s a learned practice. We’re sorting for head starts, not growth. And that’s just the first chapter…

Forty years ago, Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote about emotional labor. The work that frontline employees had to do (especially women) in managing and expressing emotions as part of their job. She t…

Water flows downhill, and tech solves the easy problems first. After the launch of Amazon and Google, when smartphones reached critical mass, an easy problem to solve involved bridging information …

Complicated problems have a solution, and the solution can often be found by breaking the complicated portions into smaller pieces. And complicated problems often have an emotional component, becau…

A recent article from the New York Times highlights a growing trend in corporate team building: extreme activities. Some companies spend up to $100K on

How do we know if we’re doing a good job? In some fields, it’s always been pretty easy to tell. Either the building falls down or it doesn’t. Either the car starts after you charg…

There I was, standing in the middle of a buzzing tech event that our company organized, feeling like a fish out of water. The room was filled with

Obsidian, the indie darling of notetaking apps, rejects everything you know about modern software. And it's working.

I’ve spent the past year losing 80 lbs and getting in shape. A lot of people have been asking me how I did it; specifics like what diet I…

Here’s a simple XY grid to help you think about your next project, freelance career or startup: All too common are ‘fun’ businesses where someone finds a hobby they like and tries…

I lost a cookbook the other day. After twenty more minutes of searching, there it was, right on the cookbook shelf. But the spine was much more subtle than the cover, and it hadn’t been what …

Ever since we did our in-depth series about the seasons of a man’s life (truly some of the most interesting articles we’ve written — I highly recommend reading them!), I’ve continued to think about human development, particularly in adulthood. Most books and articles on development focus on the transition between childhood and adolescence and adolescence […]

Write what you like to read, and regardless of what others think, you’ll have something you can be proud of.

Archimedes of Syracuse, an Ancient Greek mathematician, engineer, and inventor, was obsessed with the idea of leverage. “If you give me a lever and a

AI pushes us to do what we actually get paid to do: make decisions. Craft used to drive our hours or even days. Get the pen lines just right. Source the Letraset. Get your instrument in tune. Sweat…

Documentation and guides from the team at Fly.io.

Perhaps they were chosen a very long time ago. Or with very little thought. It could be that the constraints that led to the default are long gone. They might be perpetuating bad choices, injustice…

In the critically acclaimed TV series, Mad Men, the main character, a troubled advertising Creative Director named Donald Draper, gets into an argument

It’s a tempting shortcut. Different kinds of people prefer pop tarts to pizza, or prefer expensive wine to beer, or prefer amusement parks to bowling. Except everyone is the same and everyone…

You may be familiar with the famous object lesson Stephen Covey used to reveal the importance of priorities. Imagine an empty jar, a bucket of big rocks, and a bucket of gravel. If you put the gravel in the jar first, it fills the jar’s capacity, and the big rocks won’t fit. But, if you […]

When I first graduated and was looking for a job, I never thought about what I want from a manager. I probably selected the highest paid job at the time. After years of working and having experienced both good managers and toxic ones, today I put the heaviest weight on the quality of my employer/manager when considering the next move. I'd take a pay cut for a better manager and more interesting work.

Good pizza is rare, even though the method to create it is well known. Any efforts to make it more convenient, cheaper or easier will almost always make it worse. If you think this post is about pi…

How is history made? How does change happen? There are two main schools of thought. First is the “Great Man” theory, which was popularized in the 19th

We can give instructions to a fellow human by: Talking to them Handwriting a note Typing a text Waving a flag Triggering a traffic device Sounding a siren Sending a memo Choosing from a list of cho…

I spent time this week with two authors who are showing up to share their lives, their insights, and their generosity in the form of books. A good book will change the reader, but it makes an even …

What is self-efficacy and the three most important takeaways to succeed with challenging goals

With her record-breaking “Eras” Tour, Taylor Swift was recently re-released onto the cultural landscape the way humidity is unleashed on Atlanta every

Failing to acknowledge a favor or a courtesy is a triple mistake, and it’s becoming more common. ChatGPT is now promoting the idea that it can write a thank you note for you, and a text is a …

We have the chance to build something that creates connection and generates value. On the other hand, a system that diminishes agency and dignity is inherently unstable. When we seek to create scar…