Betterment

Anthropologist, Margaret Mead, once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only

But that’s not why it’s your project. Lots of things are important. Countless problems need to be solved, people need to be connected, a living needs to be made. But this work you&#8217…

TL;DR / Summary G.K. Chesterton was an early 20th century English writer known for his clever paradoxes. He once wrote: “There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more

Nearly every conversation I’ve had over the past month has involved some variation of this question: What are you reading right now? The question isn’t about fiction, or even books &#82…

An expensive watch isn’t purchased to tell time. We already know what time it is. The food at a wedding isn’t really there to keep guests from going hungry. A cookie could do that. Our …

Those three words unlock our understanding of innovation and of biological evolution. Successful outcomes often follow unpredicted actions. If we allow ourselves to do things that might not work, w…

If you want to be a great painter, perhaps you could reverse engineer what made the Mona Lisa such an important painting. You could move to Italy. You could learn about shadows and light and techni…

Rabbit Waves

Purpose-driven leadership applies in the business world too.

Completing the Blog Questions Challenge

The tenured philosophy professor at Princeton might not even be half as effective a teacher as the adjunct at the community college. The head of surgery might be relatively better at meetings and p…

Last month, I shared the reading list from my month-long effort to better understand nutrition. After reading about a dozen books (including two textbooks), I frankly admit there’s a lot I still don’t know. And also, I feel like I gained a decent understanding of the current mainstream scientific perspective. Predictably, and disappointingly, a lot […]

Is it possible to develop innovative ideas when you're not part of the institutions where the expertise resides? In this article we examine perspectives.

15 hard lessons learned from a Software Engineering Director at Oracle!

Some facts and assertions about healthcare (particularly in the US) and then an outline of a change agent that could improve health, perhaps dramatically. We spend an enormous amount of time and mo…

Doing what? When we choose which job to apply for, what career to commit to, which business to start, it might be worth a moment (or a few moments) to get at the heart of what a day well spent prod…

Brian Marick posted on Mastodon the other day about resilience in the context of governmental efficiency. Reading that inspired me to write about some more general observations about resilience. No…

The tough reality of being a "glue person":

There’s a delay between the time something goes wrong and when we notice it. Sometimes, it can take years. Part of the art of project management is noticing things more quickly. And it helps …

It’s just a week until Valentine’s Day, a multi-billion dollar spending jamboree. As often happens, the people we depend on for much of it get the short end of the deal, but a little mi…

Of course you’re going to get wet, that’s part of the sport. And yet, only the hard core surfers show up in the rain. If your project is about making things better, organizing the disor…

Here’s a fun game: Here are four lines from four famous speeches. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears…” "Four score and seven years ago our

Once life gets busy, it’s sort of inevitable that we begin to sort the work to be done. And the most natural sort is to focus on the urgent. After all, if that plate is about to break, it&#82…

This quote pretty much sums up what happens to successful people as they grow older. They lose the ability to risk it all. The more successful they are, the more they want to protect what they have…

What’s the best speed to drive? I was caught in a snowstorm the other day. Visibility was low, so I was going about 25 mph. Someone passed me on the highway, doing 30. Not 55 or 75, but fast …

Somebody just gave the 31st upvote to my answer to the Quora question “What do you regret as you get older?” So I thought it might be worth repeating. Here’s a short list: Not learning …