Source: Richard Jacobs of Villanova "The School of Athens" by Raphael Sanzio - Fresco (1509–1511) [To] do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time,with the right motive, and in the right way,that is not for every one nor is it easy;wherefore goodness is both rare and laudable…

Buster Keaton in Speak Easily (1932). Courtesy Wikipedia God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. This is

We’ve covered What is Proactive Support? and How Proactive Support is Done Today . Now it’s time to imagine what the future of proactive support might hold. There’s a gap between when a customer exper

It’s hard advice to follow, but it’s critically important. Here’s why. I got an email last week from an entrepreneur looking for advice. “I was hoping you could help me with something I’ve been strugg

W hen you examine the lives of history’s most creative figures, you are immediately confronted with a paradox: They organize their lives around their work, but not their days. Figures as different as

Nothing will change your future trajectory like your habits. We all have goals, big or small, things we want to achieve within a certain time frame. Some people want to make a million dollars by the t

At FullStory, we use Slack for just about everything — including conducting job interviews. It wasn’t something we thought we would do when we first started using Slack. But since bringing chat into o

(Getty Images/Ringer illustration) Google tends to throw lots of ideas at the wall, and then harvest the data from what sticks. Right now the company is feasting on photos and videos being uploaded th

Artwork by Raul Soria . In design, “white space” is negative space. It’s not blank space because it has a purpose. It is balancing the rest of the design by throwing what is on the page (or the screen

“It’s time,” Alex Guerrero tells me, resting his hand on my mangled foot. “Grab your shoes and follow me.” It’s early November, and I’m lying flat on my back in the We Got This Room at the TB12 Sports

Zohar Lazar A well-regarded Hollywood insider recently suggested that sequels can represent “a sort of creative bankruptcy.” He was discussing Pixar, the legendary animation studio, and its avowed dis

A brief aside: I haven’t written a post in a while. Sorry about that! Things have been busy, and I have a lot that I want to share. I’ve gotten a new job, still at Automattic, a little role switch ins

Stop Guessing What Customers Will Buy Our web consulting business ( 320NY ) has been around since 2011 and we've been trying to create a membership business every year without success. The first idea

A few weeks ago, we launched something really big for our company: a free—forever!—plan . (More on why we decided to do this here .) As a marketing team, we were excited to see how the free plan affec

I write a weekly newsletter called the Sunday Dispatches where I share articles about working and living online with 35k subscribers: Here’s a small sampling of newsletter articles: Black Lives Matter

I’m sharing three years-worth of findings, based on data from 15,000 employees in 15+ countries through Know Your Team … When’s the last time you had a one-on-one or performance review with an employe

Brewing Buying Facts Search How to Brew Buying Guides Coffee Facts About Search Brew Coffee So Good It'll Make a Hipster Cry You don't have to wear an ironic t-shirt and grow a patchy beard to make ba

Unsplash started as a stupid little side project . Originally, it was a simple Tumblr blog that shared ten free photographs a day for anyone to download and use however they liked. Soon enough, Unspla

Samuel Hulick Apr 5, 2017 · 4 min read “Whoa, there’s a workshop for user onboarding?” Yes, there is! Ever feel like your hard-earned signups aren’t sticking around as long as they could be? Or that y

I once had a boss who would send me a series of two-word emails throughout the day, each one bearing the same message: “Call me.” Each time I received one of these emails, the hairs on the back of my

Leer en español Photo by Joshua Ness A growing number of people feel like an old carton of milk, with an expiration date stamped on their wrinkled foreheads. One paradox of our time is that Baby Boome

I write a weekly newsletter called the Sunday Dispatches where I share articles about working and living online with 35k subscribers: Here’s a small sampling of newsletter articles: Black Lives Matter

These days there’s plenty of talk going around about fake news, cickbait articles and low-quality content. People tend to get their news from social media feeds and the attention towards publications

The Sweet Setup began in the fall of 2013. Wow! I can’t believe how time has flown since we began several years ago. In the months leading up to the launch, we worked with several friends and other wr

Workshops are hopeful things. They’re sold on so much promise, but that promise is often dashed as students discover their expert instructor is far from an expert at teaching them how to learn anythin

How to build a truly intuitive experience every time Mo Mozafarian Follow Apr 6, 2017 · 7 min read At its most simple, Linear UX is a set of methods for creating user-centred, goal-oriented experience

How to convince your company to do a redesign Ed Chao Apr 4, 2017 · 6 min read With over 1,500 people working at Dropbox , getting a complete web redesign to happen isn’t easy. Redesigning each and ev

Blog Our Slack Customer Community Has Made Our Churn Rate Insanely Low Our Slack Customer Community Has Made Our Churn Rate Insanely Low April 11, 2017 Customer Success Our ProdPad community on Slack

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Photo: Harold M. Lambert/Getty Images Since the 16th-century Protestant Reformation, and the work ethic that it spawned, employment has provided an outsized source of meaning for those living in the W

Illustration by Jasu Hu The Stoic philosopher Epictetus was born a slave, around 55 A.D., in the Greco-Roman spa town of Hierapolis—present-day Pamukkale, Turkey. I first encountered his teachings in 2011, shortly after moving from San Francisco to Istanbul. I lived alone on a university campus in a…

As more cities try to improve walkability–from car-free “superblocks” in Barcelona to heat-protected walkways in Dubai–a new report outlines the reasons behind the shift, the actions that cities can t

Brick-and-mortar bookstores are closing their doors. Libraries lend out e-books. Receipts are emailed or texted. Bank statements are sent electronically. We file our taxes online, and our digital cale

The other day I was reading a book and I came across a little anecdote. It was about the great Athenian general Themistocles. Before the battle of Salamis, he was locked in a vigorous debate with a Sp

Use strong, clear language when writing your support email. Be direct about what steps the customer should take next – after all, you’re the expert! As a business, you’re probably well aware that the

This week marked a major milestone in my life: for the first time ever, I left the continent of North America. I’ve long had an interest in travelling and spent a good chunk of the last decade flying

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in February 2016 but has been updated in November 2019 to include the latest app onboarding research and examples. Let’s face it: User retention is