Back in 2003, right after university, I read a book that completely upleveled my productivity. The book was called Getting Things Done, by David Allen. As the image above shows, it’s full system, but I’m going to save you a ton of time and just tell you the most important takeaway. This is for things you’re worried about…

If you’re a US Citizen who flies a decent amount, there are three things you should absolutely do. 1. The Trusted Traveler Program (Global Entry) With Global Entry, you get the ability to bypass the customs line when coming into the United States. Instead, you move quickly off to the side where you scan your Passport and fingerprint…

There are myriad books and websites describing the Top N Metrics in a particular area, but very few tell you what not to do. This article will show you specific examples of metrics gone bad, what’s wrong with them, and what you can do to make them better. Economic as in economics, not financial. First, it’s important to…

Anyone who’s been in business for a while has had the conversation about measuring performance. The topic makes some people radiate with joy and gives others a case of severe narcolepsy. Here I want to talk about a few different business terms that are too-often conflated or confused, which are: Goals, Strategies, Metrics, Objective Key Results (OKRs), Key…

Over the last several years I’ve been reading extraordinary amounts about the future of artificial intelligence, and how it’ll affect human work. I’ve written about this extensively here, so feel free to explore if you’re interested. Recently a reader reached out and pointed me to a video by Moshe Vardi of Rice University. The reader was himself a…

Let me propose one potential future to you—a future where most everything is done through the gig economy. Here is roughly how that might take place. Companies get rid of many or most of their employees, and decide to go with short-term contracts instead. There is extraordinary data showing that 94% of job growth (jobs created vs. jobs…

Glassdoor just compiled a list of top companies that are dropping college degree requirements. There are a couple of different ways of looking at this. One is to say that the job market is so hot—in favor of employees—that companies are relaxing standards just to get people in. Another way to see it is that the correlation between…

I think the content creation ecosystem—especially around blogging—will be ultimately disrupted by the rise of three interlocking componets: Digital Assistants APIs Customized interfaces Google Duplex just gave us a preview of how natural it’ll soon be to interact with assistants. This is currently quite different. There is no Digital Assistant yet, and content and interface are currently merged…

Art by Dan Tepfer This is an experimental series where I attempt to put Algorithmic Learning into practice. I describe Algorithmic Learning here: It starts with having an algorithm—a methodology—for doing some task or approaching some problem. Then, when new information is acquired, instead of relying on osmosis, we modify our actual algorithm for doing that thing. Then…

I mostly use Microsoft Word for documents because Office is the platform of business, but in my more creative side projects I tend to use Apple’s Pages. One of the things that Word does really well is copying formatting from one place to another. They have a feature called Format Painter, and it can be invoked in any…

Everyone hates bad advertising, which is why the industry is in a freefall. But what does it mean to be bad advertising? Is there such a thing as good advertising? I think there is, and I think the way to tell the difference is to simply ask yourself if you consider the thing you’re being shown to be:…

People tend to confuse precision and accuracy, and many of the definitions out there aren’t entirely clear. Here’s the easiest way to see the difference. Precision is about how close attempts are to each other, and accuracy is about how close they are to the target. Precision is about taking multiple attempts—such as shots, guesses, or measurements—and having…

For some reason I get a lot of questions about how to create a resume from a LinkedIn profile. I love this functionality because I find it much easier to keep LinkedIn updated and print a resume from there, rather than updating Word docs or whatever. Here’s how you do it. Log into your LinkedIn account. Click the…

I love the psychology that goes into post-outage write-ups. Amazon just had a doozy, with S3 going down and crippling much of the internet for a day. The image above captures their approach to the narrative, which I would classify as dense and opaque. Key attributes of the write-up include: Small text Formal language Massive paragraphs No bullets…

I’m not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the American history timeline people became convinced that employers owe people jobs. They don’t. Companies have employees for one reason alone: it helps them serve their customers better. The moment this stops being true is the same moment the company will get rid of employees. This is what people…

Most companies and managers today are making a fundamental mistake in their hiring process. They are conflating two different types of filter—the positive filter and the negative filter. When most people interview they’re actually trying to do two things simultaneously. They’re trying to filter out bad candidates. They’re trying to select the very best. Whiteboards and puzzles By…

Everyone wants to get more from their employees, but there’s a simple trick that magnifies creative output that can be done in just seconds. There are two steps: Give them a significant responsibility Tell them that you trust them to do well on it That’s it. Why does this work? It works because empowerment unlocks potential. It tells…

Amazon Go is a new kind of store with no checkout required. We created the world’s most advanced shopping technology so you never have to wait in line. With our Just Walk Out Shopping experience, simply use the Amazon Go app to enter the store, take the products you want, and go! No lines, no checkout.Source: Amazon.com: :…

Design Thinking, regardless of arena, has one or few people at the top dispensing special knowledge that could not possibly be created by the masses. The underlying concept is that the special one or few know better than everyone else, and that it’s best if the group simply adopts the wisdom, for their own good. Evolution Thinking takes…

The way online content creators currently make money is through ads. The value workflow goes like this: Viewer Pays With Attention –> Attention Translates to Business –> Ad Company Pays Content Creator –> Business Pays Ad Company First of all, this isn’t working anymore. The model is failing. But even if it weren’t there are all sorts of…

One of the best things that came out of Uber was that it made cab drivers nicer. Before Uber you could almost count on being nearly cussed at by cab drivers, almost just for getting in the car. They were evil mean. Angry. Some of them bit people. They don’t look at you. They don’t speak to you.…

For the last few years I’ve been working on a system that can abstractly model long-term goals, give you ratings on how well you’re doing in pursuing those goals, and then give you practical recommendations for improvement. I’m tentatively calling the system: Desired Outcome Management (DOM). I’ve designed several systems that are essentially instantiations of this system, but…

I’ve been courting an idea lately, but have not been able to capture it completely. Hopefully this post will help me do that. The idea goes something like this: At the top of any organization, there is a mission, and the goal of every group within it should be to support that mission. Unfortunately, large organizations tend to…

But Gerber faced the internal pressure of its organization, the need to operate efficiently, to deliver billion-dollar growth businesses every year, to satisfy existing customers — and to do all this without threatening existing net income levels. The problem wasn’t the idea; the problem emerged from the relentless pursuit of incremental profit within mature organizations. Source: Why Big…

I don’t think anyone at Netflix expects people to actually pay £8.99 for a house full of people glued to their screens. But the £8.99 price makes the £7.49 price seem more credible. With 70m subscribers, it’s worth trying. Source: The first rule of pricing is: you do not talk about pricing — Fluxx Studio Notes — Medium…

When I was in my 20’s and early 30’s I wasn’t nearly as smart as I am now. Not even close. It’s as if every five years I’ve added an exponent to my ability to understand things. This is so pronounced that if I were to evaluate myself 15 or even 10 years ago, I wouldn’t recognize myself…

There are many theories and conspiracies for why oil prices continue to to drop. After reading several articles on this, I’ve come up with the following summary. — First, it’s not a conspiracy. Big oil companies are not doing a Mr. Burns pose and planning a world takeover. The main reason this isn’t true is that there is…

But how do you figure out the culture of a company you’ve never worked for? As Nicole tried to evaluate company cultures, she kept asking the Passover question: “How is this organization different from all other organizations?” And, as with Passover, I told Nicole, the answer should come in the form of a story. Ask people to tell…

Where do your ideas come from?I like to be around creative people. That’s a way that I ideate. I like to be in locations that I kind of feel are very creative, that stimulate me in a creative process. I also get a lot of stimulation being around my customers. The next stage of my creative process is…

Apple has always had a poor reputation among hardcore Android and other high-choice users. Their main narrative goes something like this: I don’t need someone to tell me what’s best for me. I’m quite capable of thinking for myself, thank you. Just give me the maximum number of options, and I’ll build my own optimal experience. It’s a…

I’m somewhat obsessed with how to find good people to do things. I’ve been deeply involved in hiring in information security over the last six years, and loosely involved in it for nearly two decades. The number of theories and systems and templates are legion. But I think I’m closing in on the answer. Anyway, if you can…

This is a powerful presentation by Andreessen Horowitz about how much mobile is changing technology. Here are my takeaways and analysis. By 2020, 80% of humans on earth will have a smartphone On iPhone 6 launch weekend, Apple sold 25x the CPU transistors that existed on earth in 1995 The poorer a group is, the more important mobile…

With 43,945 sandwich shops in 110 countries, Subway has become the world’s most ubiquitous restaurant chain, posting armies of “sandwich artists” in more U.S. outposts than McDonald’s and Starbucks combined.Yet at the dawn of its 50th birthday, all is not well in the land of Jared and jingles about $5 footlongs. Subway’s U.S. sales last year declined 3…