Building 111 on the Xerox engineering campus, near Rochester, New York, is vast and labyrinthine. On the social-media site Foursquare, one visitor writes that it’s “like Hotel California.” Conference
Credit... Kim Ryu Doctors Moral Distress in Neurosurgery Is it in the patient’s best interest to go through surgery if the chance of meaningful recovery is vanishingly small? Credit... Kim Ryu By Aug.
I think I’ve spent my whole career trying out the next cool productivity software or system. It almost always fails. I tried as many of these things as I could but it just falls by the wayside. Basecamp, Reminders, Todoist, Trello, Bullet Journal, Post-It Notes… Jira. I’m joking on that last one;…
The following is an adaptation from Adam Minter’s, “ Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale .” In it, he tracks multi-billion dollar international business of secondhand goods. The manufacturers of child car seats aren’t shy about promoting the idea that older seats are a hazard that…
Helpful kids are happy kids: Pitching in with household jobs builds confidence and gives children a sense of belonging, psychologists say. Sisters Angela, 12, Gelmy, 9, and Alexa Natali, 4, know this well. Since they were toddlers, their mom has encouraged them to help around their home in a village…
I’ve heard a lot of ridiculous statements: “I’m sure we’ll find parking.” “I’ll just check Facebook for five minutes.” “I’ll skip dessert.” But perhaps the most absurd is the adage: “If you’re a renter, you’re throwing money away.” Bulls**t. You’ve heard those statements, right? “I’m sick of…
To drive or to be driven. Is that the question? Geoff Nesnow Feb 9, 2018 I originally wrote and published a version of this article in September 2016. Since then, quite a bit has happened, further cementing my view that these changes are coming and that the implications will be even more…
Copyright (C) 2010 by Michal Zalewski There are quite a few primers on electronics on the Internet; sadly, almost all of the top hits resort to gross oversimplifications (e.g., hydraulic analogies ), or convenient omission, when covering subtle butincredibly important topics such as the real-world…
Lately, I’ve been talking to many of my friends about getting their books published. Not that they have big, fat manuscripts lying around just waiting to be published. No, no — most of these people aren’t even thinking about writing a book. I’m the one who says they have a book in them that’s…
When it comes to work, everyone has their own methods for getting tasks done. But it turns out that the most successful people tend to have similar habits. Or, so says Laura Vanderkam , author of a new mini e-book, " What the Most Successful People Do at Work ." (The e-book is the third in a series,…
What is “GTD”? GTD—or “Getting things done”—is a framework for organizing and tracking your tasks and projects. Its aim is a bit higher than just “getting things done”, though. (It should have been called “Getting things done in a much better way than just letting things happen, which often turns…
Back in 2006, when the iPhone was a mere rumor, Palm CEO Ed Colligan was asked if he was worried: “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.” What if Steve…
A Stroke of Genius: Striving for Greatness in All You Do by R. W. Hamming Little has been written on managing your own research (and very little on avoiding other people managing your research); however, your research is much more under your control than you may realize. We are concerned with great…
The worst PhD productivity advice is to work long hours. This advice is shared by successful people in Academia, so it should be good advice, shouldn’t it? They think they became successful thanks to hard work. I say they became successful despite their hard work. These people propose a brute force…
Getting Things Done is a time management technique that took the world by storm when it was first published in 2001. It was created by David Allen after years of research and practice in the field of productivity methods. (As some of you already know, Zenkit founder and CEO, Martin Welker had the…
Maya Angelou suggests there are four questions that we’re all unconsciously asking each other all the time. We ask the people we love, we ask the people who matter to us professionally, and on a broader level, we ask the people we encounter as we go about our everyday lives: the cashier who takes…
Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those…
It’s well known that you get an advantage by making the first move in a price negotiation: If you’re the seller, for example, and you offer a price before the buyer does, a higher quote from you will lead to a significantly higher agreement price. But you can increase that advantage by stating your…
Jun Cen A friend of mine once had a curious experience with a job interview. Excited about the possible position, she arrived five minutes early and was
I have been working on an upcoming post about megatrends and how they drive tech. I had included the end of Moore’s Law to illustrate how the end of a megatrend
By Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board and Angus McCrone, Chief Editor Bloomberg New Energy Finance One of the key characteristics of complex systems, such as the world’s energy and transport sectors, is that when they change it tends not to be a linear process. They flip from one…
Happy 2017! As a kid, I just sort of took for granted that stuff got better every year—TVs got bigger and then thinner, cars got a little faster, and computers got unbelievably better on an exponential curve. As an adult, I realized that the future is not guaranteed to be better. The default is that…
Normal Aside from severe jaundice, Bertrand was normal at birth. For two months, he developed normally. At three months, his development had slowed, but it was "within normal variations." By six months, he had little to no motor control. He seemed, as we described it, "jiggly." Something was wrong.…
I discuss melatonin’s effects on sleep & its safety with research up to 2015; I segue into the general benefits of sleep and the severely disrupted sleep of the
By Tom Streithorst Imagine Beyonce’s stylist’s hairdresser’s cousin tells you exactly what happened in that elevator between Solange and Jay Z. The story is compelling, explains obscure lyrics in Lemonade , makes intuitive sense. You can’t wait to tell your friends. Everybody chatters excitedly…
Zeke Gabrielse Reformed bondservant of Christ. Rubyist. Hacker. Entrepreneur. Dec 20, 2016 About two months ago, I wanted to go on a vacation. I had the hotel
R obert Lustig is a paediatric endocrinologist at the University of California who specialises in the treatment of childhood obesity. A 90-minute talk he gave
On Digital Minimalism December 18th, 2016 · 46 comments The Curmudgeonly Optimist People are sometimes confused about my personal relationship with digital
Every few months someone comes out with a new article on how to defeat email overload, and like the most recent diet fad, it gets some love and then goes away. Only, the volume of email continues to grow and the death of it is greatly exaggerated. I have a few friends that prefer texting and/or…
version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"? Flickr/Eneas de Troya Ever feel like you’re just not getting enough done? Know how many days a week you’re actually productive? People work an average of 45 hours a week; they consider about 17 of those hours to be unproductive (U.S.: 45 hours a week; 16 hours are…
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Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc. in 2013. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
also: see the lists from 2012, 2011 and 2010
Join in on the Hacker News discussion.
My favorite Erlang program — When Joe Armstrong blogs…
Let me tell you the story of an “unskilled” worker in America who lived better than most of today’s college graduates. In the winter of 1965, Rob Stanley graduated from Chicago Vocational High School, on the city’s Far South Side. Pay rent, his father told him, or get out of the house. So Stanley…
Sometimes, life seems upside-down. I originally wrote this post months ago, but I’ve been too self-conscious to publish it until now. This quote convinced me to put on my big girl pants: “The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your…
As a follow-up to my recent piece, Tips for Summer Interns of 2013, I have been asked to provide pearls of wisdom on surviving a sporting event with your boss.
As an international bon vivant, hopefully I have put something in here for everyone – well almost everyone. If you’re going to a hockey…
The End is a series about end-of-life issues. When my husband died from cancer last March at age 37, I was so grief-stricken I could barely sleep. One afternoon, I visited his grave — in a field high in the Santa Cruz Mountains, overlooking the Pacific Ocean — and lay on top of it. I slept more…
Success at Work, Failure at Home One of the differences between being a CEO and a venture capitalist is that I obviously meet with many more CEOs now than I did then. As such, it has become more apparent that many of my struggles as a CEO are surprisingly common. One observation that stands out,…