Betterment

In a seminal study on critical thinking and education in 1941, Edward Glaser defines critical thinking as follows “The ability to think critically, as conceived in this volume, involves three thing…

You probably brushed your teeth this morning. And will do so tonight. And 730 more times in the year to come. As soon as the last load of laundry is folded, it’s time to put in another wash. As soon as you’re done eating and cleaning up one meal, it’s time to start making the […]

Walt Whitman said it best back in 1855: “I contain multitudes." We all do. We all carry different identities around with us, often in competition with

The science behind how (and when) to mix things up in order to accelerate your improvement.

Some problems lend themselves to reexamination. A second, third or even fourth thought is productive, because our initial impulses might not reflect our best effort at understanding the nuances of …

Michael Abrashoff took the worst-performing ship in the Navy to the best without changing a single member of the crew. Learn how he did it.

It is much harder to predict foreign policy outcomes, especially in times of turmoil when there is no “nothing happens” default path, than it is to predict the results of economic policies.  There is no coherent model, no causal identification in the data, and the data are not very good or well-partitioned to begin with. […]

It’s hopeful to believe that the NFT, baseball card or even car that we next purchase is going to go up in value. It probably won’t. The secret is to only acquire things where the resal…

Understanding how to create value as a principal. Why do we do it? What does it mean? How to think about it. How to execute and sustain it.

Change without listening doesn’t happen.  Why is this true? When you don’t listen, it signals that you think you already know enough. And if you think

Objections are helpful. We object by holding back action or support because we question one or more pieces of data. But the other half of this is the obligation: if the data ends up meeting the sta…

I’m a big fan of getting strong.  Physical strength improves all areas of life, and hoisting heavy weights is just plain fun. At least, I think it’s fun.  When I first embraced the gospel of the barbell with the zeal of a new convert seven years ago, I pretty much gave up on any cardio […]

You may have heard that life is not a dress rehearsal. That you can’t wait for your “real life” to begin. You get this idea. You understand it. But you are still waiting, aren’t you? Even as you get on in age, even as more and more of the things you thought about when you […]

Marshall Goldsmith started his career out as a business school professor but ended up as one of the world’s top executive coaches. In Episode 142 of the

Recently, we listened to Marshall Goldsmith's interview on The Knowledge Project, Episode #142. Marshall Goldsmith is one of the top executive coaches in

Truth, relevance, usefulness, beauty, simplicity: the 5 aspects of an idea.

Someone said that to me the other day and it was heartbreaking. The number of tasks in our culture that require someone who was born with off-the-charts talent is small indeed. Just about everythin…

That’s what it said on the side of the tractor-trailer on the highway. Since 1924, they’re almost 100 years old. But it’s unlikely that it’s everyone’s favorite. Being…

I have learned a lot about influencing the way people think about APIs. I am not always successful in influencing people the way I desire, but I have had a significant amount of success in shaping the way people do APIs across a number of industries, government agencies, and enterprise organizations. One of the more influential tactics I have in my toolbox involves rarely directly telling people to do things, and opting to indirectly shape how people think through telling stories and planting seeds over time across an increasingly number of relevant channels they are tuned into. You see, most people prefer believing that something was their own idea. You can see an example of this in the fact that many folks believe they are “self-taught”, when in reality, none of us are self-taught, and we all depend on learning, borrowing, and often stealing from other people’s work and making it our own.

Big companies act like big companies. We don’t take them seriously when they say they care, because there is no “they.” When they send a holiday card or an email, we don’t r…

Without a doubt, the world has become more connected, noisier and more complex. But along the way, we’re still applying our instincts from a century ago, from a planet of villages and differe…

In the beloved sitcom, The Office, the main character Michael Scott drives his car into a lake. Why? Because he followed his GPS. He focused on the map.

Voter registration ends today in most states. That means the beloved American tradition of the “I voted” sticker is right around the corner. This simple

I’m not sure we have a common word for this. “Yes” can mean, “yes, I’m prepared to do the minimum” or it could mean, “yes, this commitment is something I w…

Almost twenty million self-help books were sold last year. But the popularity of self-help literature is hardly a modern phenomenon. Some of the writings of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers arguably fall into the personal development category. So do pieces of literature that were written every century after their time. In a way, this can […]

Satisfaction is often driven by the story we tell ourselves. How does this rank compared to what I expected? Compared to what I used to have? Compared to the person sitting next to me? The richest …