better doing

When forming a new habit, consider not starting small.

“The ‘tiny habits’ theory works by drastically reducing the amount of effort. It takes a lot of effort to do a whole strength-training routine, so that’s a high barrier. Makes sense to reduce it. The problem is that you’re often […]

better doing

On-boarding your AI intern.

“Just like any new worker, you are going to have to learn its strengths and weaknesses; you are going to have to learn to train and work with it; and you are going to have to get a sense of […]

better doing

The last 1%.

This is about software development, but I think it’s more broadly applicable. “I’ve seen (and been on) so many projects that claim success and move on to the next thing when they are 99% done and fail to complete the […]

better doing

How to do hard things.

Casey Rosengren describes Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and how it helped him to approach the stress and uncertainty of entrepreneurship in a new way. “At a high-level, ACT (pronounced “act” not “A-C-T”) looks at how our thoughts influence our […]

better doing

The carrot problem.

Instead of admitting that a new kind of radar allowed British WW2 pilots to shoot down their German adversaries at night, “they invented a propaganda campaign that claimed their pilots had developed exceptional eyesight by eating “an excess of carrots.” […]

better doing

That hit song you love was a total fluke.

“Participants were randomly assigned to different virtual rooms. In some rooms, people saw only a list of songs, while in others they could see how many times a song had been downloaded. Altogether the researchers created eight rooms — parallel […]

better doing

You suck at Excel, with Joel Spolsky.

This private presentation to an audience of engineers is now available on Youtube and its great. Joel was a program manager on the Excel team in the early ‘90s. “The way you are using Excel causes errors, creates incomprehensible spaghetti […]

better doing

Excellence is a habit, but so is failure.

“We often hear that making small incremental improvements every day can lead to great things. … But there’s another side to this story that we don’t discuss as often: how incremental neglect and small missteps can accumulate and lead to […]