Productivity

Don't be an ultracrepidarian

If you want a list of the smartest people in history, while not perfect, the Nobel list is a pretty good place to start. But, as Isaac Newton (who predated the prizes by a couple centuries) would instruct us, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And the dark, or at least annoying, side of this prize is mockingly known as “Nobel disease.”

October 13, 2022

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The curse of pseudo-asynchronous communications

The most terrifying sound in the world isn’t the roar of some ferocious predator or the crash of a thunderous wave. It’s a “knock brush.” What the hell is a knock brush? If you’ve worked on any team in the past five years, it will likely send a shiver up your spine. The dreaded knock brush is the default notification sound on Slack. Bum bum tsk.

October 3, 2022

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Getting your heading right: The outsized power of one degree

The flight between New York’s JFK and Los Angeles’ LAX is the second most popular route in the country. Crossing 2,475 miles across the country end-to-end, 26,286 planes make the 5-ish hour trip each year. Every one of these flights is a tiny miracle in precision.

September 28, 2022

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The curious idea of the Lindy Effect

Our time on this planet has been remarkably brief. The world as we have made it is young, and we’re still figuring things out. When even our ancient history seems recent, how should we think about time and what comes next? One model about how things come and go is called the “Lindy Effect,” named after a mid-century Manhattan diner frequented by “bald-headed, cigar-chomping know-it-alls."

September 7, 2022

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Embrace the limits of decision fatigue to make better choices

It turns out that we only have so much gas in the tank each day, and we only have room to really consider, deliberate, and make well-thought-through decisions so many times before our brains fizzle out. By some estimates we can make thousands of decisions each day, and each one takes a toll on our cognitive capacity to make the next one.

August 29, 2022

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Ben Guttmann