Betterment

Every one of the pings, dings and clicks on this page gives me the hives. Run them in a quick sequence and I need to leave the room. They are our Pavlovian bells, designed to trigger us into action…

If someone hands you a deck, you can be sure there are 52 cards covering four suits. The universe is finite. The cards are the cards, and games work precisely for that reason. Every deck is the sam…

If you’ve been living in Europe for a while, one of the first things you notice when you get to the US is how much more processed the food is. The bread.

Back in 2012, as a young assistant professor, I traveled to Berkeley to attend a wedding. On the first morning after we arrived, my wife ... Read more

After World War II, a German officer reportedly said, the American Army succeeds in war because "war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a

I’m not sure this is the right word for it, but we certainly need one. Not ‘entrepreneurship’ which is a distinct skill. That term is usually reserved for people who start at zero…

There is a certain point in a programmer’s life where you realize the real enemy is not complexity, not deadlines. It is drift

The World Was Built To Make You Dependent

This is a bonus post about a couple of my hobbies. We will return to our regular scheduled post tomorrow. Wonder is the feeling we have when our experience extends beyond our expectations. It&#8217…

Ideas open doors, lead to connections and make things better. But not all good ideas are good businesses. Crop rotation is a good idea. So is sous vide cooking and the sport of juggling. But these …

The three-cueing approach is common in early reading instruction but it is not in keeping with evidence on how children learn to read The three-cueing system for reading is based on the psycholinguistic theories of Ken Goodman & Frank Smith, first published in the 1960s. The three-cueing model says that skilled reading involves gaining meaning […]

If the answer is over there, then we’re off the hook. If it comes from the future, comes from away, comes from someone else, then our job is to simply wait for it to arrive. But it could be t…

It might be your website, your brochure, the inside of your store… This is a fine thing to do, but it’s not particularly effective. The secret isn’t to optimize the landing page. …

Seth Seiders, (Al Capone’s accountant) wrote a book about the “pivot man.” This is a key function in industrial organizations, bureaucracies and any organization with more than th…

Today we take a look at 7 personal finance goals for your 30s, including saving for an emergency fund, retirement, and your kids' college.

A few months ago, psychologist Jean Twenge released 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. Twenge has spent decades studying generational shifts in behavior (check out the podcast we did with her about differences between generations), and her message with this book is simple: today’s kids are growing up in a world of […]

As humans, we tend to consider our emotional states as a direct response to the experiences of our lives. Traffic may make us frustrated, betrayal may make us angry, or the ever-grinding wear of mo…

We can’t change the past. But the future might be up to us. It might be best to daydream about what might be, not what already happened.

After a long innings in the technology industry and as an avid student of history, I have formed a simple personal thesis about technology that doesn’t change much, no matter the technology or era.…

by Marie Snyder

In 1918, Eugene Debs stood before a judge about to sentence him to ten years in prison for speaking against the war. His final words to the court: "I can

Long before the advent of barbells, dumbbells, and hi-tech fitness gadgets, there was the medicine ball. This simple piece of exercise equipment has been around for over 2,000 years. Ancient Greek physicians used weighted animal bladders to rehabilitate injured warriors. Hippocrates — the father of medicine himself — was said to have his patients toss […]

Each task brings three options. But first, let’s be clear what we mean by “delegate.” If I can hire someone to do a task so well that my customer can’t tell, I can choose to…

When the persimmon trees bear fruit, Li Weilin Hi hi, I’m going to be super honest: I can’t remember when I started counting editions of this newsletter. I...

I haven’t made anything new in awhile and it doesn’t feel good. I’ve been looking after a family member who had surgery, so most of my time has been spent...

We make our world better and easier with systems.

Landlords collect rent, tenants pay it. Landlords own an asset that increases in value over time. Tenants have the freedom to move on. If you’re building a business, it pays to own an asset. …

The second time you install vacuum tubes into a handmade 2A3 stereo amplifier, you’ll know that two of the four pins are slightly larger than the other two. And you’ll know that the tub…

Bud Smith built a desk for his truck so he could write during breaks in his work as a mechanic and welder. “Now that I had my Truck Desk, that vehicle was my very own rolling cubicle.”

Which skills and careers are still going to pay off in a world of ever-present AI? Some preliminary thoughts...