Betterment

Have you ever glanced across a restaurant and seen a couple sitting together in silence? They stared at each other, at their meal, or, most likely, at their phones. This is a sad sight, for staying engaged throughout a dinner date indicates the health of a long-term relationship in two ways. First, it shows that […]

In the late 1990s, Havas, the large marketing multinational bought the independent ad agency, Jordan McGrath in New York. The CEO, Bob Schmetterer gave an

How can you run more effective meetings? One way is to study folks who are masters at running effective meetings, and get paid for it — professional facilitators. Roger Schwarz is one of the world’s leading experts on facilitation. He has a set of what he calls ground rules for

There are people who get paid to play the flute or bassoon. There are far more people who volunteer to participate in a community orchestra. For many, rehearsals or performances are the high points…

Not all tech is new tech. The ballpoint pen was a revelation, and a bit controversial. Now, it’s disposable and obvious. Different industries go through tech spurts. My desk is covered with i…

In Book IX of Homer’s Iliad, Western Civilization’s first great epic, the hero of the book, Achilles has to make a choice. He can choose either (1) to

Deny the problem. Minimize it, make up data, distract from the conversation, make people feel like hypocrites, and emphasize the convenient and persistent elements of what is in place. Acknowledge …

Does it seem like people are more tired and less motivated and ambitious these days? They do less hosting and attending of events. It’s harder to get them to volunteer to run the school carnival or participate in a church service project.  Hustle culture is out; self-care is in. People seem just to want to […]

Everyone knows what it is to be conscious, and we imagine that other people are also aware. That we have a voice in our heads, apparent agency and free will, a little person inside who is commentin…

I got an Oura ring a couple of years ago and have been working on improving my sleep and sleep habits ever since. For much of my adult life, I have been a poor sleeper. I have always been able to fall asleep quickly, but I have been plagued by two sleep issues. The first […]

You’ll need two 8-foot boards and six five-gallon buckets. Each board is a standard 2 x 4, about two inches by four inches in size. And the bucket is about two feet deep. The first lesson is …

Crafting the earliest planes and nurturing remarkable cultures have more in common than you might think. In the “air-race,” the Wright Brothers had a lot

New approaches will never be embraced by everyone at first. If you need unanimous consent, you’re not going to move forward. And it’s not convenient. If it were, someone would have done…

To win a Nobel prize a hundred years ago, you might only need a legal pad and a few pencils. Today, it takes millions of dollars, scores of people and many years of effort. That’s because the…

Their big promise has fizzled out.

And those are the two challenges of anyone seeking to make an impact. First, we get distracted by the inclination to make the group as big as we can imagine. After all, the change is essential, the…

In many creative industries, there’s a similar pattern. When the stakes are very low, most creators produce things that are fairly banal and ordinary. Part of that is the law of large numbers…

There’s been a lot of big stuff happening in the news recently, most of it bad. And it is all a big deal. However, one of the biggest stories of all, the

It’s classic linkbait. Headlines that explain why something is happening. Questions to AI about why something happens. Even kids, asking their parents. Why is easy to sell. Why is hard to del…

This past year I published my first book. While it was a rewarding experience, there were many challenges and obstacles along the way. But one thing I did in the beginning was figure out tooling so that writing and reviewing the book wasn’t a painpoint. I’m a Linux user and it was on Linux that I wrote this book, but the tooling should work on MacOS or Windows as well.

Kindergarten teachers matter more than you think. Chess isn’t a talent, it’s a learned practice. We’re sorting for head starts, not growth. And that’s just the first chapter…

Forty years ago, Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote about emotional labor. The work that frontline employees had to do (especially women) in managing and expressing emotions as part of their job. She t…

Water flows downhill, and tech solves the easy problems first. After the launch of Amazon and Google, when smartphones reached critical mass, an easy problem to solve involved bridging information …

Complicated problems have a solution, and the solution can often be found by breaking the complicated portions into smaller pieces. And complicated problems often have an emotional component, becau…

A recent article from the New York Times highlights a growing trend in corporate team building: extreme activities. Some companies spend up to $100K on

How do we know if we’re doing a good job? In some fields, it’s always been pretty easy to tell. Either the building falls down or it doesn’t. Either the car starts after you charg…

There I was, standing in the middle of a buzzing tech event that our company organized, feeling like a fish out of water. The room was filled with

Obsidian, the indie darling of notetaking apps, rejects everything you know about modern software. And it's working.