Betterment

Have you ever noticed that at your office or church, a small fraction of people do the lion’s share of the work? This is just one manifestation of what’s called the “80/20 rule.” Once you understand the 80/20 rule, you’ll start seeing it everywhere. And be able to use it to significantly improve your life. […]

Engineer-turned-marketing-consultant for B2B and enterprise software startups.

As a member of the Ottawa Tribe and someone who’s worked with over five hundred tribal nations, my guest has long been inspired by his Native American culture and heritage, particularly the tradition of native warriors. And he thinks those warriors have much to teach all modern people about work, life, and leadership. His name […]

“It is not the critic who counts.” If this line from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous “Man in the Arena” speech is taken to mean that the individual who takes action has far greater worth than he who merely casts stones from the sidelines, then it can be adopted as an unassailable truth. If, however, it’s taken […]

That depends. Will the spec change after we begin? Are we depending on supplies or inputs from other people? Will the budget change? Is this work that has been done by anyone before? Is this work t…

If you hand a good spec to three providers, you’ll get three variations back in return. The way you know your spec is worthwhile is that you can live with the differences between them. If it&…

Joni wrote, “Rows and floes of angel hairAnd ice cream castles in the airAnd feather canyons everywhereI’ve looked at clouds that way But now they only block the sunThey rain and snow o…

Brittle systems are weak. Short-term wins feel like a demonstration of will by those that seek to be strong. But the only run is the long run. When we embrace flexible, renewable and diverse approa…

If you’re basing your proposal on facts, the scientific method, calculations and effectiveness, please show your work. Eagerly share your reasoning, your sources and how you came to this prop…

An overtold tale among those I’d classify as corporate libertarians is the idea of “building the future” over participating in societal discourse on social media. Popular proponen

When people tell me they've learned from experience, I tell them the trick is to learn from other people's experience. – Warren Buffett When you start a company, you get three innovation tokens. You can spend them however you want – adopting a new framework, implementing a unique interview process, adding non-standard

Fearing failure leads to failure. Why? Because fearing failure leads to not trying new things, not innovating, and not taking risks. And not trying is

Rhetorical questions, some easy, some particularly difficult, all worth thinking about: If your house near the ocean has a beautiful view, should the person who buys the lot closer to the shore be …

Everyone wants advanced techniques. But it's really the basics that count.

You struggle with being productive. So you decide you need to establish a routine for yourself. You get real gung-ho about this routine — this is going to be the thing that changes everything! But then you fail to stick to it. So you flagellate yourself for that failure and decide what you need is […]

And vs Or. Leading a project is about causing the death of a million ‘ands’. There was a long line at the ice cream stand, but the person in front wasn’t budging. The customer had…

This is a distinct skill. Something can be dependable without being extraordinary, rare or even a good value. It’s also one of the easiest skills to acquire, and often quite valuable if you s…

Before beginning my tirade, a few disclaimers: I do not support sloth. I do not agree with not performing one's paid duties correctly. You shouldn't consume junk food at every meal, but it's acceptable to do so occasionally. It is acceptable to spend time on your couch doing nothing as

Working professionals develop emotional detachment. It’s the only way to thrive in the work. Emotional detachment helps us remember that we are not our work, and that feedback is useful, not …

Most of us do. The interesting challenge is that our brain doesn’t often make beliefs and tested reality feel like different things. It’s almost as if ‘true’ and ‘beli…

Likability is a weird quality. Plenty of people are fans of Aretha Franklin or Bob Dylan, but it’s not because either of them spent a lot of time mailing out Christmas cards or being particul…

GitHub Issues is a core component of how developers get things done and, as we built more project planning capabilities into GitHub, we’ve found some fun and unique ways to use the new projects experience for personal productivity.

So many political strategies are centered around “beating” the other side(s), and claiming victory over their defeat.  For evolutionary reasons, it is easy to see why these attitudes might have won out.  Yet in general those approaches are a sign of a narrow vision.  Beating the other side is a possible strategy, but it should […]

Before the written word, humankind used a different tool to spread useful information quickly and memorably through populations and generations. The tool?

Which way to head? We live in a world characterized by mistrust, ill health, economic uncertainty, inflicted racial trauma, generational shift and the existential crisis caused by carbon. Not to me…

On the West Side Highway in Manhattan, there’s currently a billboard for some sort of placebo supplement. In the corner is a QR code for more information. Unless the person in the passenger s…