Betterment

Who benefits when we hesitate to look at money clearly? When we avoid doing a P&L, thinking about pricing, or creating a budget, we’re avoiding the fear that comes with these choices. And…

Starting at the top seems like great advice. Deal with the people with power and authority. Except… Power and authority aren’t often in the same place. The real power is usually foundat…

The simplest way to run a business is to have no also. We maximize profit, period. At least you’re being honest about it. If you say, “and we also care about the environment,” or …

If you apply for something with a 99% rejection rate (which is more common than it sounds–job openings, sales pitches, fellowships, journals, etc.) that’s pretty close to 100%. Somethin…

In one of the emails Oliver Burkeman, author of Time Management for Mortals, sent out to his subscribers, he talked about how we typically treat our to-do lists like buckets that we need to empty every day.  The problem, Burkeman observes, is that the to-do list is a bucket that never entirely empties. As we […]

Our lives are populated by rituals. Baptisms. Funerals. Graduations. Singing happy birthday, chanting cheers at a sports event, saying grace before dinner. When we perform rituals, there’s no causal link between the behavior and the hoped for effect; for example, there’s no causal connection between exchanging rings at an altar and becoming wedded to another […]

Working in small chunks is one of the most impactful things we can do as developers.

That might be true, but it’s worth being clear about it. Not that good for who? If you mean to say, “I don’t like it, it doesn’t appeal to me,” then that’s what …

Ten central ideas to keep in mind whenever you need to learn anything new.

How to inject more weirdness and randomness into the stuff you read and see

To find truly interesting ideas, step away from the algorithmic feeds of Big Tech

Without a North Star, all action is equal, and anything goes. But none of us believe that. And we certainly don’t act like it. Because we know we have a

We evolved to care about things that were close by or in the near future. That makes sense. It’s a useful survival skill in a primitive world. Today, though, our instinct for the close and th…

No one cares. That happens rarely. Someone cares. That happens all the time, and it’s at the heart of our work. Everyone cares. Almost never. Someone is enough. In fact, someone is the entire…

Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who is treated with dignity? You would think that this shouldn’t be scarce. When the pool of respect is widened, no one is harmed. And yet, cultural status …

Whenever someone says something like “____ aspect of modern society is worse than it’s ever been,” someone else will invariably jump in with: “Please. People have always wrung their hands about that. Even the ancient Greeks complained about societal decline and ‘kids today.’”   Person B offers their counter with a “case closed” finality, and it […]

In this video, engineer Jeremy Fielding drops a ton of wisdom on 26 strategies for learning a new skill, fast. Many of his tips might seem obvious (You must be motivated, mistakes will happen), but…

Humans are social animals.  Anthropologists argue that humans have been so successful as a species because we’re great at coordinating and cooperating.  This high degree of sociability allowed hunter-gatherer tribes to kill giant mastodons and modern societies to land people on the moon.  When human groups function in a healthy and coherent way, we can […]

When you were a kid, teachers and parents probably told you to concentrate. And as an adult, you likely often think about how much more productive, present, and happy you’d be if only you had better focus. But despite how much we think about our desire to improve our focus, no one ever gets any […]

“If only” is a soothing refrain. If only the constraints were lifted, and the things that are scarce were abundant. If only the barriers were lifted and there was more time or fewer obs…

Avoiding problems is faster than solving them

I get to lead a monthly session with Calm’s staff engineers. Some months that is mostly a Q&A, but I find the best sessions have at least some component of directed learning. For example, we’ve done one session on presenting to executives, which is an area that can accelerate or disintegrate your impact. To be totally honest, we’ve done sessions on most of the operating at staff topics from Staff Engineer, and I’ve been trying to find new themes and exercises.

If you do anything at the last minute that takes more than a minute, you’re not organizing your project properly. The last minute is not a buffer zone, nor is it the moment to double-check yo…

If you leave your cheese out and the mouse eats it, the mouse is simply being a mouse. While it might be nice if the mouse didn’t wreck your dinner, that’s his job. Often, we show up wi…

When you have a kid, there inevitably comes a time when she not only wants you to push her on the playground swing, but to swing beside her. And as you pump your legs towards the sky for the first time in a couple of decades, you think to yourself, “Hey, this is fun.” Swinging […]

This email is inspired by Episode #141 of The Knowledge Project podcast, featuring serial entrepreneur and incisive business thinker Kunal Shah.

A Zettelkasten is a personal tool for thinking and writing that creates an interconnected web of thought. Its emphasis is on connection and not mere collection of ideas.

Using XSLT to filter feeds.