Betterment

There’s a hidden story hanging over all of our heads, subtly influencing everything we do, say, and think. Think about it – what brings people to their

How often do we assume that popular things are good, and that good things become popular? If your work doesn’t catch on, does that mean it wasn’t good? In almost every field, people wit…

“Ease” isn’t the same as “easy.” In fact, they’re often at odds. Easy work is hardly worth our effort. It can deaden us instead of giving us the chance to bring …

Successful software is buggy software.

Walk into an office, and the person behind the desk begins an interaction. You respond (or react). They respond (or react) in turn. Answer the phone. Caller ID tells you who it is–are you smi…

Making any new habit is not usually one habit, but many. Not a cue-response relationship, but a collection of flexible strategies that deal with most scenarios reality throws at you. When you’ve done that, you’re acquired a kind of expertise—not of a subject, but of yourself.

Intuition is simply a theory we haven’t yet put into words. Once we write down and share our intuition, it becomes more resilient, focused and useful to others.

23&Me has been dominating headlines lately, going from a $6 billion unicorn to a penny stock. It will likely be delisted from the NASDAQ soon.  The

Time alone offers unique psychological benefits, once you learn to embrace these quiet moments rather than escape them

Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education …

My new book (out today) contains more than 500 questions. Here are some to get you started: Who is this project for? Who is my smallest viable audience? What change do I seek to make with this proj…

What does it take to change your life?  Sometimes, not all that much. As our old friend, Brian Solis, writes in his new book, “Mindshift, “A better

Floundering is flopping around and making little progress. A Dutch word for getting mired and lost. Foundering is what we call it when the ship goes down. It’s an ancient French word based on…

Collaborating on documents and projects has never been easier, which is why we screw it up so often. Sharing and interacting with intent will save you heartache and wasted time. Some things to cons…

The human mind is designed to predict, but uncertainty helps us thrive.

This rarely comes up in focus group data. It doesn’t come up when a school talks to students, or a conductor asks the orchestra. It doesn’t come up when the gym owner surveys potential …

Culture is: “People like us do things like this.” We might even have a chance to choose our group. Hipsters do this, hippies do that. People in this town wear this outfit, students at t…

It's really happening! I mean, I even updated Hack Education with the news. Here'a little bit of what my book-writing process looks like: I read. A lot. I read stuff online, sure, sure. I already lament not having access to academic journal articles. So for now, I'm reading books – books

From the creation of the Soviet Union in 1917 until its dissolution in 1991, Pravda, its largest newspaper, was the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist

Do you see the defaults? The question, “What are things like around here?” has two possible answers. When a new idea or opportunity arrives, your organization says yes, unless there&#82…

But not all costs are the same. There are three kinds of costs that people get confused about, but understanding them, really understanding them–in your bones–unlocks opportunity. Oppor…

What’s the most memorable line from the Harris-Trump debate?  “They’re eating the dogs.” This bizarre claim born from a single regretted social media

Habitats of the mind: Your Zettelkasten is a thinking environment.

The first step in building a successful and elegant strategy is to see the systems that are part of our lives. October is a fine month to take a moment to look closely at one: the system that bring…

When the person you could have been meets the person you are becoming, is it going to be a cause for celebration or heartbreak? This is something we must work on right now, and tomorrow, and every …

Fifteenth in the News Commons series. This semester’s Beyond the Web salon series for the Ostrom Workshop and Hamilton Lugar School at Indiana University is themed Think Globally, Eat Here—Sm…

This is the story of every new software innovation, and in fact, just about everything engineers have ever created. The first Wright Bros. plane just barely flew. The first version of VisiCalc was …

Deciding to fix a big dent in a car isn’t perplexing. It’s an easy choice. There’s a huge dent, get it fixed. It’s the little dents that are a dilemma. But not fixing little…