Betterment

AI is here to help. It shops for us, orders our food, plans our diets, writes our reports, answers our emails, and preps our meetings. It’s becoming the

This is an understandable sentiment. As jobs push people to be automatons and often offer little in the way of respect, it’s easy to quietly quit. But perhaps, they’re not paying you en…

Tactics are tempting. We can lean into them, invest, build our skills and count on results. Strategies are more elusive. And a mismatch between strategy and tactics leads to wasted effort. In this …

There’s a difference between ‘rich’ and ‘richer’. And ‘fit’ and ‘fitter’. The problem with a pre-amp that goes all the way to 11 isn’t th…

More what? Less what? 90 years ago, Bucky Fuller gave his answer. There is a different one now.

Research roles, craft standout applications, and ace interviews

In a huge bag of chips, each individual chip isn’t worth as much as if there’s only a few. On a long vacation, each day might feel less precious than on a short one. This is an invented…

The site gives movies two scores on a scale from 1 to 100: One is from critics, and the other is from typical viewers who are taking the time to chime in. Many movies have virtually the same score …

You have a friend who constantly tells you how awesome you are, how amazing you look, and that you’re the best person ever. Wow. This friend is more

Jony Ive's Philosophy of Design

We expend effort. We create value. It’s easy to get confused about which one we’re going to ultimately be compensated for.

Dan Maloney and I were talking on the podcast about his memories of the old electronics magazines, and how they had some gonzo projects in them. One, a DIY picture phone from the 1980s, was a monst…

It was probably Montesquieu who coined the proto-hacker motto “the best is the mortal enemy of the good”. He was talking about compromises in drafting national constitutions for nascent democracies…

Go to the store, look at the five kinds of mustard on offer, and pick the one that’s best for you. This is not controversial. Go to Amazon and search for wireless headphones. There are more t…

It’s impossible to communicate everything. The map is not the territory, it’s an abstraction, a summary and most of all, a conceptual framework. When we share an idea, we can work to ma…

Once a man was tasked with building a mezzanine bed - seven feet high, handmade from wood, with an angled ladder and boxed shelving beneath it - but with

Ever notice how the most beautiful promises come with fine print? Today’s Effective Altruists and Silicon Valley tech utopians, say: "A perfect society is

There are two ways for an artisan or professional to see the world: Scarcity. This is the idea that if there were fewer photographers, more people would hire me to do wedding pictures. That if the …

Here’s a stylized model of work processes and outcomes. I’m going to call it “Model I”. Model I: Work process and outcomes If you do work the right way, that is, follow the …

…but it’s often overlooked. A farmer might yearn for twice as much land. But it’s far more efficient to double the yield on the land he already has. Marketers often hustle to get …

In 1940, as Nazi forces overran Europe, Winston Churchill faced a nation on the brink. He did not recite troop numbers or production figures. He offered

In the age of AI, it’s better to know a little about a lot than a lot about a little

Not a lack of power, but feeling as though we have none. Some people have been indoctrinated to prefer a life with no agency, as it also brings no responsibility. At the other extreme, some folks h…

Has a strategy behind it. Often unsaid, undiscussed and hidden. It’s easier to simply play with the tactic of the moment. Tell me what your tactic is trying to accomplish and I’ll be ha…

Have you ever made a video that was seen by someone you didn’t know? Or written something that got shared outside of your inner circle? The odds of either of these things happening a generati…

“Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; And thy want as an armed

From a passage of Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard, the three types of specialists needed for the success of any revolution. Slazinger claims to have learned from history that most people cannot open their minds to new ideas unless a mind-opening team wit

There’s a well regarded pizza maker we know, Ronnie, who is a totally old school, Rhode-Island-style pie man. People literally drive for hours to try out

One is far more important than the other. Sorting puts our options into two piles. One pile is the don’t-like, not-good-enough or wrong stack. These are the flavors we don’t enjoy, the …

Alley Lede is the publishing platform and growth program for the next generation of journalism startups and news media organizations.