Betterment

Strategies for Thriving on Your Own

How to build developer tools for happiness and productivity.

There’s a French postmodern philosopher, Jean Baudrillard, who made a big splash in the late 20th Century with his two big ideas about how information

Bernard Arnault didn’t just build LVMH, he created new rules for luxury.  Most stories are about the deals – how he acquired Christian Dior, Moet &

Pete Warden is the kind of fellow you would run into at the old eTech conference or at Foo Camp—an old-school engineer who is equally at home hacking hardware and writing code in the latest languag…

Who is “I” and how does that “I” have the power to change the mind in question? What actually happens is this: A person cares enough to have experiences Those experiences ch…

Our culture is filled with man-made traps, situations worth avoiding. They have three elements: They’re seductive. Traps offer a benefit and they make it easy to walk in. They are hard to get…

Emotions are often tied to events and events feel absolute. But events are rarely absolute. They’re almost always relative. How does this compare to what I was expecting? How does it compare …

Sprints and marathons are both foot races, but they have very little in common. The training is different, and so is the technique. Which one are you signing up for? What about the thing you sell? …

In our work to make things better, it’s easy to overlook two things: Improvements, connection and possibility rarely come down in a lightning bolt from Mt. Olympus. Instead, they’re the…

Ever get home, tired after work, sit down on a couch, and spend an hour or two sitting down without even managing to change into your home clothes? It’s a seriously unpleasant in-between stat…

Ever feel like you can’t say no? Like you’re constantly doing things you don’t want to to avoid letting others down or having them think less of you? You’re not alone. Saying no to people’s requests is something I’ve had to work on throughout my adult life. I know a lot of other people who […]

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It’s a typical Monday morning. You wake up, reach for your phone, and within seconds, you’re scrolling through an endless stream of updates. Your college roommate has a new puppy. Your aunt’s dog just died. Your coworker made homemade sourdough bread. Your second cousin just broke up

Master time management with simple tips for developers. Boost productivity, reduce stress, and create work-life balance using proven strategies for coders.

There are lots of cultural lotteries around us. The next pop song, the book that everyone is talking about, the blog post or video that goes viral… it even applies to who gets into a famous c…

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” It’s called Goodhart’s Law, and it explains why good intentions can lead to unintended

It’s not just for little kids, and it might not be a bug in our culture. Whining might be a feature, something that all humans have a desire to do, regardless of our age or position. Let&#821…

Optimization and automation can be useless and reckless, outmatched by systemic pressures and their trade-offs. Localized friction, hidden by optimizations, can hold the key to larger scale impact.

If you’re overworked, skipping gym and drinking too much – fret not. People had the same concerns some 2000 years ago.

Facts are important, but facts don’t create learning. Stories do. A story fits into (and changes) our understanding of the world. Good teachers are storytellers, and storytellers are teachers…

One of the big things I’ve learned over the last decade or so as a product manager and leader is that principles eat process for breakfas...

There's nothing you can do to make people trust you. Except saying only what you mean. Except doing exactly what you say you're going to do. Except

A friend found a knobby growth near his knee. After a few doctor visits, it was diagnosed as cancer. A cancer diagnosis is a self-sufficient catastrophe–few people need more than that to star…

Jason Rodriguez is a slightly jaded—but ultimately hopeful—tech worker. Working at GitHub.

In one corner of the parking garage near my office, there’s no reception for a car’s satellite radio. This is clearly broken, but it’s also not a problem. Certainly not a problem …

Doing the work you love is hard when teams don't hire for it.

In hospitality and customer service, perfect is elusive. Someone is going to miss a shift, have a bad day, or fail to understand a situation. But there’s a second kind of error, the one that&…

"The ability to influence others can set you up for success" at work, says Melody Wilding, so that you can advance more easily and have more of an impact.

We’ve forgotten how often society had an answer for that question. Perhaps our shift away from a dictated answer not only gives us freedom, it also creates ennui and fear. The culture of a ge…