Betterment

It’s one thing to say that 7,000,000 people will die next year from smoking cigarettes. It’s a totally different thing to list those folks by name. When we confront risk, two things mak…

I'm not asking for superpowers. I just want emotional intelligence, to be a better writer, to grow old with grace and to increase my appreciation of other people's struggles.

Not enough time for the things you wish you could do? Here's how I find more time realistically.

If you talk to enough aspiring leaders, you’ll become familiar with the prevalent idea that they need to be promoted before they can work on strategy. It’s a truism, but I’ve also found this idea perfectly wrong: you can work on strategy from anywhere in an organization, it just requires different tactics to do so. Both Staff Engineer and The Engineering Executive’s Primer have chapters on strategy. While the chapters’ contents are quite different, both present a practical path to advancing your organization’s thinking about complex topics. This chapter explains my belief that anyone within an organization can make meaningful progress on strategy, particularly if you are honest about the tools accessible to you, and thoughtful about how to use them.

I’m now entering the sixth month of my year-long Foundations project. This month’s focus is on outreach. One of three socially-oriented foundations, outreach focuses on meeting new people and sustaining friendships with people you don’t see every day. Two related foundations, connection and service, will focus on improving close connections and finding ways to help […]

If you’ve ever tried reading an old classic written before the printing press was invented in the 15th Century, say, Homer or Milton, you may have noticed

I was sitting on the porch in the dark with a friend who had stopped by to tell me he was getting a divorce. No no no he didn’t want to come inside and disturb the kids he said. Out here is fine he said. I brought out a

For the maker looking to turn their project into a business, trying to price your widget can be a bit of a conundrum. You want to share your widget with the world without going broke in the process…

This is how we learn. An apple is a lot like an orange, but you can eat the skin and it’s not as sweet. If you know what an orange is, you’re most of the way to understanding an apple. …

Media theory pioneer Harold Innis saw it 70 years ago: Some cultures and ideas are built to spread across SPACE. And some spread across TIME. It’s the tension between space and time that lead…

Reinvention doesn’t happen in a single moment. It’s not a dramatic pivot or a sudden epiphany. It’s a process—one that demands clarity, discipline, and self-awareness. And in my experience, there’s no better tool for that than journalling.

https://startupsoup.substack.com/p/minimum-viable-startup-operations [Jean Hsu and Jen Dennard] This is a good inaugural post from two people who really have lived the startup operations life many times over: "We

Is there a purpose to midlife? Or is it just about working and buying stuff?

As AI serves up certainty like fast food, we're becoming intellectually obese—too full of answers to hunger for deep understanding.

a collective for change agents

Our instincts might not be as good as we hope. Going with your gut is thrilling. It’s personal, vulnerable and brave. And if it’s getting you what you seek, keep at it. But often, our i…

People have different styles when they cook. Some people are neat and tidy. After taking out and using an ingredient they don’t need anymore, they return it to the fridge or cabinet. After chopping up vegetables, they clean up the scraps left behind. When a dish has been dirtied, they put it in the sink. […]

This is how you can optimize system performance and ensure reliable SMS delivery during peak traffic events like Black Friday.

Getting to the conference in Santa Fe isn’t difficult. Someone will drive/fly you there. The hard part is deciding to go. And yet, it might take 8 hours to arrive. If they invented teleportat…

Failure is inevitable, but growth is optional. The leaders who thrive know how to turn mistakes into stepping stones.

“Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.” -PJ O’Rourke. As you probably heard already, NYC Mayor

It's not only on the President of the USA that questions have landed about the accuracy of his public statements (whether Zelensky is a “dictator”, who

Although it might seem that AI will make it pointless, I still think it's worth blogging.

Giles Thomas writing on his personal blog, which he’s been writing since 2006: It's Still Worth Blogging in the Age of AI If you want to blog to make a name for yourself, then you're going to have a hard time. Here's an example: if you're not a regular

We burned through savings and faced uncertainties, but our sabbatical year was worth it.

I’m wrapping up this month’s focus, reading, in my year-long Foundations project. Normally, I split my final posts into one covering the books I read during the month and one discussing my personal experience and habit changes in the month’s focus area. However, since this month was *about* reading, I decided to merge the two. […]