Betterment

In this clip from my favorite Werner Herzog film, Encounters at the End of the World, the director muses about the mental health of penguins and observes a lone penguin heading in the wrong direction. From an appreciation of this penguin scene written b

Between this newsletter, my podcast, my books, and my New Yorker journalism, I offer a lot of advice and propose a lot of ideas about ... Read more

With a 13 billion year head start on evolution, why haven't any other forms of life in the universe contacted us by now? (Arrival is a fantastic movie. Watch it, but don't stop there - read the Story of Your Life novella it was based on for so much additional

America is facing a “boy crisis.” The statistics are stark: Boys are far more likely than girls to fall behind in school, die by suicide, and end up in jail. When experts offer solutions to the problems facing the male population, most push for a fundamental reimagining of masculinity — urging boys to reject the […]

Proverbs from around the world: Don’t buy someone else’s problems. (Chinese) Strange smoke irritates the eyes. (Lithuanian) The poor lack much, but the greedy more. (Swiss) It is the mind that wins or loses. (Nepalese) The point of the needle must pass first. (Ethiopian) God did not create hurry. (Finnish) When you go, the road is rough; when you return, smooth. (Thai) If you want to marry wisely, marry your equal. (Spanish) Where is there a tree not shaken by the wind? (Armenian) Wherever you go, you can’t get rid of yourself. (Polish) Money swore an oath that nobody that...

There are some things that offer you a lifetime of service, and, more often than not, you get what you pay for. That’s why today, we’ll go over 16 items that

A little faster is a market advantage. A step change in speed changes the market entirely. Fedex was faster mail. It allowed them to grow and profit. Email, on the other hand, completely changed co…

Robot owls: "The question that remains in my mind," writes Imogen West-Knights in the latest issue of The Dial, "and in the minds of many of even its most dedicated users, is: what is Duolingo actually teaching you?" (Emphasis mine.) What indeed? Duolingo won't make you fluent in a foreign

Remember the iPod? The missing link between the Sony Walkman and the Apple iPhone that changed how we experienced music forever. Back in 2006, a viral

Learn how to organize your digital life in seconds. Stop wasting time looking for information and gain greater focus on what matters most.

5S is a workplace organization method that uses a list of five Japanese words: seiri (整理), seiton (整頓), seisō (清掃), seiketsu (清潔), and shitsuke (躾). These have been translated as 'sort', 'set in order', 'shine', 'standardize', and 'sustain'. The list describes how to organize a work space for efficiency and effectiveness by identifying and sorting the items used, maintaining the area and items, and sustaining the new organizational system. The decision-making process usually comes from a dialogue about standardization, which builds understanding among employees of how they should do the work.

Since I was born, the planet has invented 6 billion jobs. Technology is said to threaten the replacement of human labor, yet, somehow we’ve found useful activities for a rapidly growing popul…

Here’s the truth about feeling like you’re not a good enough programmer…

Forecasting is both art and science, reliant on both rigor and luck—but you can develop a mindset that anticipates and plans ahead.

For the last two weeks, my weather app has informed me that there’s a real risk (in this case, wildfires). But, after a few days, that’s not severe weather. That’s just weather. (…

As might be expected given my renewed focus on productivity, I was pretty productive this month—especially at home, which was a bit of a weakness in my old system.

How to volunteer this season without getting your ear talked off by Linda from accounting.

In my ongoing efforts to draft a book on engineering strategy, I’ve finally reached the point where I need to transition “Wardley Mapping” from a topic to consider including into a topic that I either do or do not include. The first step on that line is getting much deeper at understanding how it works. This is rather different than systems modeling, which is a technique I’ve been using off-and-on at work for 15-plus years, but I will make a solid go at it.

Switching between reading and editing modes in Obsidian with ease: a simple home-made plugin that brings intentional editing to my note-taking workflow.

My mentor is a colleague 20 years my junior. How is that possible?

Dear Ruben, When I read this question, my initial thought was that the kid who wrote this has nothing to worry about, they’re going to be...

Here in the US, when we hear “Michelin”, gold stars in haute cuisine and Michelin-Star restaurants come to mind.  But Michelin is not a food company, it’s

Insights from ten classic books on productivity, a continuing series on my year-long Foundations reading project.

This is from a new archival source—the original WikiWikiWeb.

Not all needs have a market (yet). A market is a category. A market is a place with competition. In a market, people have habits and budgets and social pressure to engage. There are buyers and sell…

It’s a way to offer connection or acknowledgment. It’s a recognition of feedback and the time it took someone to consider us. We can use it after we share something important, or someon…

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” ― Meister Eckhart (1260-1328) Most of us know the Thanksgiving story: Pilgrims,