Betterment

There’s a cornerstone of Western thought, calledThe Golden Rule. Basically, it says (as it says in the Bible), “Do unto others as you would want done to

An interview with Tiago Forte, author of the ultimate guide to getting your ideas organized: Building a Second Brain.

Who’s it for? What’s it for? What change do you seek to make? What’s the hard part? If you could learn one skill that would help your project, what would it be? How can you tell i…

People always address now problems before they work on later problems. Every time. On one night in 2004, you might have had two choices. You could go out for a fancy dinner with friends, or you cou…

There are still pockets of our culture where a single individual can create and share a body of work that’s resonant and unique. I’ve become hooked on a podcast called A History of Rock Music…

Amidst all the preparation required to leave for a trip — all the ticket purchasing, itinerary planning, suitcase packing, and checklist reviewing — you sometimes start to wonder: “Man, is dealing with all this stress even worth it?” We’re taught to think that stress = bad. And stress certainly can be detrimental when it isn’t […]

Most of "what everyone knows" is true. Most of our knowledge as modern human beings is shared with many others. Everyone knows the capital of France is Paris, and it is true. Everyone knows how many letters in the alphabet,

A lot of young men today struggle in finding their footing in adulthood. They feel lost, directionless, and unsure of who they are and how to confidently and competently navigate the world. Part of the reason for this is that most young men today lack something which was once a part of nearly every culture […]

IF you feel like the mess has gotten away from you in your home, starting the decluttering process can be overwhelming. But speaking to the US Sun, pro organizer Siân Pelleschi has shared her simpl…

Can't remember that book you read ages ago? Your mind isn't broken. Forgetfulness is actually a powerful feature of the brain.

Smart is no longer memorization. It’s not worth much. Smart is no longer access to information. Everyone has that. Smart is: • Situational awareness • Filtering information • Troubleshooting …

How to future: A good futurist focuses on the 3 time phases: past, present, future. The best futurists I know are really keen historians and study the past to see the future. They look carefully at the past because most

We seek personal growth. But when we say "personal growth" we don't imagine us getting bigger, say gaining weight, or our ego enlarging, our head ballooning, or somehow we becoming giant in some way. Instead when we invoke "personal growth" we

People often use the words to mean the same thing, but they’re different. If an exterminator puts signs and banners in front of a fancy house when they’re inside killing rats, that&#821…

Have you ever wondered why it is that being called a coward is considered such a grave insult? It’s because courage is the lynchpin of character — that which makes possible every single one of its other dimensions; as Samuel Johnson once said (and Winston Churchill later paraphrased): “courage is reckoned the greatest of all […]

The culture of always being ON and hustling. Every hobby needs to be a "side hustle", and every moment of your time needs to be productive The world has gone crazy with the cult of the constant grind.

Cordovan leather is known for its durability, beauty, and high price tag. Today, we answer just why it's so expensive!

Skepticism is a virtue. It requires a willingness to question conventional wisdom, and the guts to accept something after you discover that it’s actually true. Denialism, on the other hand, i…

Fork this template! At Uma Chingunde’s suggestion, the learning circle I’m part of is doing a short detour on career trajectory, and I’ve written up a short template to use. This is similar to a career narrative, but with more focus on self-diagnosis than something presentable to others. I’ve been experimenting with reusable templates over on Infrastructure Engineering, and decided to try something similar here. (That experiment is itself inspired by Brie Wolfson’s use of templates in The Kool-Aid Factory.

The Silicon Valley narrative centers on entrepreneurial protagonists who are poised one predestined step away from changing the world. A decade ago they were heroes, and more recently they’ve become villains, but either way they are absolutely the protagonists. Working within the industry, I’ve worked with quite a few non-protagonists who experience their time in technology differently: a period of obligatory toil required to pry open the gate to the American Dream.

It’s not a luxury, it’s a choice. We can build slack into our lives. We can create cycles so that we don’t need to dance with a crisis around time on a regular basis. If there&#82…

Of course you’re interesting. There’s something about what you’ve done, what you say, how you show up in the world that’s worthy of interest. But that doesn’t mean tha…

Why would we want to wait until someone is perfect before we give them a chance to make things better? Each of us is part of a system, cogs in a process that rewards us for certain actions based on…

There’s a time gap. Marketers raise expectations in order to get someone to sign up and try a product and service. And (hopefully) there’s satisfaction, delight and remarkability once t…

I was on the edge of a burnout and here’s my story.

It’s complicated. Because we made it complicated. Our culture is built on the principle that people are responsible for what they do. And then we spend time and effort diffusing the responsib…

In an episode of a podcast I really respect, three of the experts quoted used words that I was familiar with: Debunk, gaslighting and cult. These are powerful words, words with specific and evocati…

Growing up, did you ever do one of those puzzles where you were shown a hyper-zoomed-in photo of some object or animal and had to guess what it was? It could be hard to recognize what you were looking at until you flipped to the zoomed-out answer. “Oh, it’s a butterfly.” Those ultra-close-up photos represent […]

Sometimes we’re not that good with time. If people got a hacking cough and a chronic disease an hour after smoking their first cigarette, it’s unlikely many people would smoke. If earth…