Betterment

The AI driven voice mail system said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.” Of course, there is no “I” and by most definitions of sorry, it’s not. But it m…

I have always been a fan of planning everything. Over the years I've come to create a methodology which I call “Rigid-Flexible Planning”. More than a methodology, it's a philosophy with guidelines. So please, take this post as food for thought more than strict rules.

I have something to confess, I am surprisingly ignorant in many topics of general knowledge. I don't know much about economics, literature, sports or world news. And I'm not ashamed nor do I regret it. But before I explain why, let me tell you who's also ignorant this way: Sherlock Holmes. Dr. Watson: His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. […] Sherlock Holmes: You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet

It's been more than a year since I started working in the open. Here's an update.

I've been a proponent of transparency and working openly for a while, but I struggled to translate this into something actionable myself. So I came up with this new methodology: Open Productivity.

All the resources you need to give yourself a world class computer science education

In medical TV dramas, losing consciousness is something that happens suddenly and dramatically. We can all tell… the body is still there, but the mind is gone, at least for now. Unfortunately…

Every coat needs better pockets. There are categories of products or services where there’s a universal area for improvement. When in doubt, make the pockets better. The interesting work is i…

If we ask a random person in the street, what's the point of language, we may expect to hear something like, “it allows us to communicate with each

How to Lead Projects as an Individual Contributor

My sister is a beekeeper, or maybe a meta-beekeper. She ends up making more money by breeding and selling new queen bees to other beekeepers than she does by selling honey, but that doesn’t mean th…

We all know at least one person. The Superfan. They aren’t just a Star Trek nerd, everybody attending their wedding came dressed as Klingons. Not just

… is almost as difficult as empathy up close. That person that’s not like you, from way over there, the one that’s on the other team–it’s hard to imagine what they&#82…

The marketing consultant told the client that they have to post three times a day on LinkedIn. “It doesn’t matter if it’s good.” The SEO consultant explained that the websit…

In 1971, Coca-Cola launched the most famous commercial in advertising history. Older folks will still remember it fondly. Younger folks might remember it

Spoiled leads to bitter. A sense of entitlement is a trap, because bitterness demands more evidence and seeks to maintain dominance over the other emotions. When we’re busy looking for more r…

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Perfect is useful. It’s an absolute measure, a north star, a chance to improve our work. But it’s also a shortcut to persistent dissatisfaction. Compared to perfect is helpful when we&#…

We need a lot more than just automatic behaviors to sustain a change. We need knowledge to guide the right actions, self-efficacy to know we are capable of taking them, rules and systems for managing decisions, courage to overcome our fears and a shift of identity to sustain it throughout the innumerable disruptions that will occur in life.

Give credit, take responsibility Get aligned on timeframes Insist on a spec, write one, improve it Agree on a budget Keep a calendar Don’t hold a grudge Speak up clearly and generously Show y…

The practices we need to thrive as human beings appear to be largely harmonious across many different goals and pursuits.

(just by leaving it) Moving into your kid’s college dorm isn’t going to make the experience better for anyone. A smart founder leaves her company in a moment when it actually does bette…

It’s that Burning Man time of the year again, when with a predictability you can set your watch to, the internet becomes flooded with the perennial

Pharmacists used to mix chemicals by hand to create prescriptions. Opticians used to grind lenses from scratch. Lawyers used to start with an empty page. Graphic designers needed to know how to dra…

One of my favourite free tools on the command line is Pandoc. Whenever you need to convert a text-focused file from one format to another, Pandoc more often than not has you covered. Have command line tools to let you do conversions like this lets you build transformative workflows as well as conveniently just change from one format to another on the fly. I am also a big user of Obsidian, the Markdown-based personal knowledge management app. While there is an Obsidian plugin for Pandoc that works well on the Mac, I found it didn’t work as well on Windows for me, and I also had issues because you can’t sync its settings and have it set up for multiple operating systems. This resulted in me putting together a specific set-up for my Windows set-ups that I can sync and extend as I like, and utilises a portable set up of Pandoc; and that’s what I’m covering in this post.

When a non-expert brings a strong point of view to a complex discussion, the words might not mean what they seem to mean. What might be being said is, “I’m worried. I’m afraid. I …

Many people born after the Millennium won’t remember much about the newspaper comic strip, “Peanuts,” featuring Good Ol’ Charlie Brown. But from its debut

Without salt, human beings don’t survive long. But it’s possible to eat for a month without tasting an herb. The food will sustain you. Herbs are an expensive non-obvious addition, whil…