Betterment

A year and two months after his wife died, Ralph Waldo Emerson opened her tomb.  Emerson had been visiting Ellen’s grave daily since she’d succumbed to tuberculosis, just two years into what had been a happy, golden marriage. But on a gray day in March 1832, Emerson decided to not only talk to Ellen as […]

This email is inspired by Episode #141 of The Knowledge Project podcast, featuring serial entrepreneur and incisive business thinker Kunal Shah. Pick your

When innovation arrives, the logistics people have to scramble to keep up, because innovation always makes it hard to do things the way we used to. Over time, an innovative company thrives if it ca…

When an organization has caused harm (through error or intent), it’s tempting to be sure they learned a lesson. We want folks to take responsibility, to admit culpability and to be sure they …

Today’s post was written by our old friend, the author Ryan Holiday. Ryan has gotten famous as a popularizer of Stoicism, the Greco-Roman philosophy, and

It’s normal to feel it. It changes our careers, our dress and even the way we live our lives. The question is: is it caused by external or internal forces? More often than not, it’s sim…

“Some personal observations on the characteristics of people I know who are continuing to take as much care as possible to not get Covid (in no particular order): a short 🧵 1. High impulse control 2. Personal experience of serious illness 3. Strong internal locus of control”

Listen to one musician’s track in isolation on any record (like this one) and you might be amazed at how trivial they sound. Paul McCartney, one of the great bass players, in one the great gr…

In the world of sports, when a star player leaves his team for another franchise, hometown fans often feel disappointed and indignant.     Yet while we decry such displays of disloyalty in athletes, we tend to approach all of our own decisions — even those unrelated to business and career — with a similar free agent […]

This image was inspired by a thought from an interview with IDEO’S Founder and Former CEO, David Kelley, on the How I Built This Podcast on NPR, Episode

These images were inspired by Episode 141 of the Knowledge Project podcast (TKP), interviewing serial entrepreneur and incisive business thinker, Kunal

Experts have a word for it. If it’s important, conceptual or frequently discussed, there’s probably a domain-based word that experts understand. The precision of a special vocabulary al…

Who benefits when we hesitate to look at money clearly? When we avoid doing a P&L, thinking about pricing, or creating a budget, we’re avoiding the fear that comes with these choices. And…

Starting at the top seems like great advice. Deal with the people with power and authority. Except… Power and authority aren’t often in the same place. The real power is usually foundat…

The simplest way to run a business is to have no also. We maximize profit, period. At least you’re being honest about it. If you say, “and we also care about the environment,” or …

If you apply for something with a 99% rejection rate (which is more common than it sounds–job openings, sales pitches, fellowships, journals, etc.) that’s pretty close to 100%. Somethin…

In one of the emails Oliver Burkeman, author of Time Management for Mortals, sent out to his subscribers, he talked about how we typically treat our to-do lists like buckets that we need to empty every day.  The problem, Burkeman observes, is that the to-do list is a bucket that never entirely empties. As we […]

Our lives are populated by rituals. Baptisms. Funerals. Graduations. Singing happy birthday, chanting cheers at a sports event, saying grace before dinner. When we perform rituals, there’s no causal link between the behavior and the hoped for effect; for example, there’s no causal connection between exchanging rings at an altar and becoming wedded to another […]

Working in small chunks is one of the most impactful things we can do as developers.

That might be true, but it’s worth being clear about it. Not that good for who? If you mean to say, “I don’t like it, it doesn’t appeal to me,” then that’s what …

Ten central ideas to keep in mind whenever you need to learn anything new.

How to inject more weirdness and randomness into the stuff you read and see

To find truly interesting ideas, step away from the algorithmic feeds of Big Tech

Without a North Star, all action is equal, and anything goes. But none of us believe that. And we certainly don’t act like it. Because we know we have a

We evolved to care about things that were close by or in the near future. That makes sense. It’s a useful survival skill in a primitive world. Today, though, our instinct for the close and th…

No one cares. That happens rarely. Someone cares. That happens all the time, and it’s at the heart of our work. Everyone cares. Almost never. Someone is enough. In fact, someone is the entire…

Who gets the benefit of the doubt? Who is treated with dignity? You would think that this shouldn’t be scarce. When the pool of respect is widened, no one is harmed. And yet, cultural status …

Whenever someone says something like “____ aspect of modern society is worse than it’s ever been,” someone else will invariably jump in with: “Please. People have always wrung their hands about that. Even the ancient Greeks complained about societal decline and ‘kids today.’”   Person B offers their counter with a “case closed” finality, and it […]

In this video, engineer Jeremy Fielding drops a ton of wisdom on 26 strategies for learning a new skill, fast. Many of his tips might seem obvious (You must be motivated, mistakes will happen), but…