Betterment

It changes. It changes as we age, and it changes depending on the situation. A second-grader might think that a boring class is never going to end. A bad cold might feel endless, unless we have the…

Surprising results about what matters for learning from a famous study.

Satsuki Fujisawa's motivational message was picked up on camera in Beijing.

There are ways to have a productive conversation with someone you disagree with.

Former Ogilvy ad-man and current Executive Creative Director at LG US, John Long, recently sent out a deliciously snarky tweet. It’s a photo of a famous

If you often find yourself saying “sorry” in a way that doesn’t advance the conversation, it might be interesting to substitute “thank you” instead. So, “I&#8217…

It’s tempting to imagine that mixing half a glass of milk and half a glass of orange juice might get you a hybrid that’s better than either. Alas, not so much. The goal is to find somet…

The wrong answer is, “it won’t.” If you buy a piece of tech, it will break. If you buy an asset of some sort, it’s likely to go down in value one day. If you start a project…

It is easy to think of founders as idea machines and first-time visionaries. Cue Bill Gates and the PC, Henry Ford and the assembly line automobile, and

Amongst supposedly monogamous couples, 23% of men and 19% of women have cheated on their current partner, and while studies have long found that men are more likely to cheat than women, that gap has significantly narrowed over time; in fact, married women between the ages of 18 and 29 cheat at a slightly higher […]

Toddlers don’t get afforded a lot of respect. They whine all the time about how unfair things are, and it’s difficult to take them seriously. Lately, in our quest for victory, we’…

“Happy employees, happy company” is a common mindset these days. It tells us to aim directly at organizational happiness. But aiming at happiness is

“Everything impinges on everything else… Everything is potentially everywhere.”

It’s autumn in North America, and that means that homeowners and contractors are busy removing suburban leaves. It’s almost impossible to avoid the deafening roar of gas-powered leaf bl…

Dwight D. Eisenhower started smoking cigarettes in his junior year at West Point. He would soon begin smoking them in a near-endless chain. He could smoke fifteen cigarettes in the course of a few hours, and regularly worked his way through two to three packs a day. In the weeks leading up to the Invasion […]

We usually think of militaries as rigid. But the best militaries operate with a fair bit of flexibility. Churchill once remarked that the Wehrmacht was

_______ is [Always/Never] the solution to a problem. In my experience, “always” and “never” are rarely useful ways to approach a problem. “Sometimes” requires nu…

This makes it your best opportunity to have a positive impact on the world. If you’re fortunate enough to be able to use your career for good, but aren’t sure how, we can help

The American showman P.T. Barnum published a book of rules for making money called The Art of Money Getting. Here are the 20 rules

“As soon as possible” is a trap if you focus on soon instead of possible.

Big tech layoffs and hiring freezes are all the rage these days. Meta (AKA Facebook) just announced major layoffs. Lyft has reported plans to cut staff by

While it’s tempting to view our days as an amusement park with unlimited rides, that’s not really true. It might not maximize our impact or enjoyment either. In fact, we each have a lim…

No can do. We drift. Our standards aren’t set in stone. They change over time, often based on the situation we’re in. This explains how cults or extreme views occur. Not all at once, bu…

What can we build for 2050? Thirty years ago this month, I created 18 Pine Street, a series of young adult novels with bestselling author Walter Dean Myers. He was a brilliant creator and a delight…

Your house contains products from hundreds of thousands of suppliers and craftspeople. The food you eat comes to you from a very loosely coordinated (not organized, not controlled) network of milli…

A brief guide to deliberate practice for coders.

It’s easy to imagine that they are, as it lets us off the hook as habits become negative, or even addictions. If someone else is thriving without the habit we seem to need, then it’s li…