Betterment

Questions people ask themselves when looking at a web page aimed at businesses (B2B). They are rhetorical, but should give you a place to begin: Is it my job to deal with this? Who sent me here? Wi…

I appreciate Mr. Zakharchenko’s extensive critique of TDD even as I have some reservations regarding his language. He tried TDD. He thought about it. He put his thoughts out there. He knew he was going to get a reaction & he did—300K views, 160 comments, 190 reposts, 1000 likes.

If we’re going to come together and invest the time in conversation, in research or in analysis, we should begin by understanding what would be required for you or I to change our minds. If y…

Belonging at scale is an age-old problem. When your company is just a wee startup with a few people renting desks in a coworking space, it's easier to

I've written, prescriptively, that money shouldn't buy anything that matters: not healthcare or education, for example. Anything we can do, we can afford But at the top level money can't buy anything you couldn't do anyway. Anything we can't do, we can only buy from others. The Britian of the thirties was still, despite all…

The idea of self-explanations took off and became a studying meme that has since gone far beyond my own audience. Here are 5 ideas you must keep in mind to get the most out of it.

Michael Lopp helped coin an important term. When you’re a skilled craftsperson with high market value, there may be recruiters knocking on your door. An employee who has ‘shields up&#82…

“Household management” has become something of an interest and a watchword for me this year, due to the coincidental confluence of two books coming into my life at the same time. The first is Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. Several months ago, two friends, one male and one […]

As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed by the taste of the founders moves toward the mean. Over time, things get more average. That’s b…

As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed by the taste of the founders moves toward the mean. Over time, things get more average. That&#82…

The only reason we need to go into detail about our resume, the details of our new idea or the features of a product is to cause action to happen. And action is the result of tension, status or aff…

Humans have a strong impulse to see things that are arbitrary or conventional as natural and essential – especially language

The art of project management includes the dance between velocity and possibility. If you describe the outcome with specificity and remove as many variables as possible, you’ll get the work d…

There was a lovely trick that Gary Trudeau often used in his early Doonesbury cartoons.He would have the characters (Mike Doonesbury, BD, the Yale

Who are you to make things better? How dare you raise your hand to help, offer an idea, take responsibility… Perhaps it might be helpful to reframe that feeling as the generosity of improveme…

When you’re first learning to ride a bike, it can be frightening to get up some speed. But this is exactly what will make the ride a success. Take it too slow, and down you go. A similar principle is at work in mountain biking. When you spot an obstacle up ahead — a rock, […]

Interaction Jury Captain Stephanie Aaron shares her thoughts on how to quickly make a difference

There is a gigantic pool of talented engineers that nobody has figured how to tap into. They’re the people who don’t apply to jobs. If you can find these people, you can build an incredible team. It’s a pretty obvious statement to say that you only get candidates who apply, but that belies a major truth: A lot of people really really really hate applications. They will do anything to avoid filling a form.

Over on Instagram, fellow culture nerd, Nick Smoot, made an interesting comment about organizational culture. “Recently, I listened to a @nytimes podcast

Forty years ago, the royalty of rock spent the night in a studio to record one of the fastest-selling singles of all time. The documentary of the event is just okay, but it’s fascinating in h…

All purchases involve a decision. Yes or no, this or that, now or later… But it’s helpful to realize that all decisions involve a purchase. When we decide to spend time or take a risk o…

If, like Boeing, you’ve had a recent series of PR disasters due to internal oversights, what do you do? You decide to tweak your incentives policy. In the

A common shortcut to cultural divisiveness is to find the single worst person in a different group and highlight and attack their behavior. By making it clear and obvious that this is what THEY (th…

I’ve been dipping in and out of Kevin Kelly’s Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier for t

The realisation that linked notes are more useful than unlinked notes should be the start of your journey into the depths.

It’s negative when we say that someone is out of control. They’ve lost their self-restraint, and they’re doing things that they’ll regret later. And it’s honest when w…

Discover the 5BX HIIT workout - a quick and effective exercise program developed by the Royal Canadian Air Force in the 1950s. Get fit in just 11 minutes a day.

When we feel like doing something selfish, indulgent, hurtful or short-term, we can simply decide to do it later. And when it occurs to us that we might be able to make a useful contribution or do …

In 1840, at the dawn of the information age, the king of Sardinia asked Charles Babbage what nearly instant messaging like the telegraph could possibly be good for. Twenty years later, it was obvio…

Learning is about becoming incompetent on our way to getting better. If you’re not open to the tension that is caused by knowing you could do better, it’s unlikely you’re willing …