Betterment

Even though he’s as rich and famous as a movie star, and never has to work ever again, the standup comedian and podcaster, Joe Rogan still likes to play

If you’re a writer, it probably doesn’t pay to chop down trees and make your own paper, or even to set up a little machine shop to make your own pens. That’s pretty obvious. Shoul…

When organizations reach scale, digital interactions belie our expectation that someone in charge actually gives a damn. Once there’s math to do, the CFO does the math. It quickly reveals tha…

Systemic and existential problems dance their way through three circles: If it’s not solvable, we’ll pretend it’s not a problem. If the cultural cost of solving the problem is too high, we’ll…

Nothing happens until someone feels something. In the critically acclaimed show Mad Men, Jon Hamm plays Don Draper, a creative director on 1960s Madison

Observations of Samuel Johnson: “We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know, because they have never deceived us.” “I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.” “Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.” “To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.” “In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.” “He who makes...

On a effort versus payoff matrix, getting good at Markdown is the greatest investment you can make as someone interested in development. I decided to read through the entire Markdown specification and here are the essentials.

Happy Friday! What’s good? My training, I will say, has been very good lately; I’m balancing the preparations for my spring half marathon with my powerlifting — something that, in the past, I’ve found quite hard to do. When I ramp up the running, my ability to add

An Instagram ad got me thinking about what it means to grow old with style.

Community resources are easy to take for granted. Unevenly distributed, they’re the sort of thing we miss only when they’re gone. Invisible things are easy to ignore. I was stunned to s…

We all know about notes and note-taking systems. But some lessons from gardening can really bring our notes to life and sustain our creativity. The answer is compostable knowledge

In North America, tipping is an unfair system built into the status quo by law. Restaurants aren’t allowed to easily spread tips around, and as a result, they tend to to exacerbate many of th…

Burnout can be understood as a mismatch between six different elements of the work environment: workload, control, reward, community, fairness and values.

The first group cares about the policy. They benefit from it. They’ve organized themselves around it. The second group cares about stability. They have limited bandwidth, and they’re no…

Sooner or later, we benefit from being well-published. Publishing has nothing to do with printing. It’s the act of taking risks to bring a new idea to people who want to embrace it. It’…

There are, of course, hundreds of apps that you can use to track your exercises. Perhaps your coach uses one of these to assign you your workouts. Perhaps you use an app that generates workouts for you. Perhaps you use an app that’s linked to your fitness tracker, and

How to use your previous, superior, experience to accidentally bully everyone

… said the collector to the painter Jasper Johns. “Neither have I.” Watching is different than doing. Trying to do both at the same time is a challenge.

There’s an old story of a father who wanted to help his son understand the importance of getting his temper under control. He gave his son a bag of nails and told him to hammer a nail into their wooden fence whenever he got angry.  At first, the boy had to drive in many nails […]

There is a common phenomenon among people starting their own business to overplan. People will spend months crafting the perfect integrated marketing

They’re risky (unknown territory leads to unforeseen outcomes) and a very recent phenomenon. A kid dropped off at pre-school, a new boss, a food you’re not familiar with. None of this w…

A cup of coffee costs far more than a glass of water. That’s true even though we can’t live without water. (Most) people can live without coffee. It’s true even though creating th…

Remember Sweethearts, those popular heart-shaped fruit flavored candies that appear every year around Valentine's Day, with those corny wee messages

The waters of Buck Lake are cool and clear and restorative. All summer, it’s tempting to go for a swim. But it’s also a hassle. You need to change your clothes, find someone to guard, b…

There are two modes of learning, two paths to improvement. One is to relentlessly, deliberately improve what you can do already, by trying to perfect your process. Focus on optimizing what works. The other way is to create new areas … Continue reading →

Advice sent by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773), to his son Philip on how to attain success in the world: Be wiser than other people if you can; but do not tell them so. An injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. Without some dissimulation no business can be carried on at all. I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh. The manner is often as important as the matter, sometimes more so. Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry....

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