When I ask people to name the most revolutionary technology, the most common answers are the Internet and the mobile phone. Both have certainly fundamentally changed our lives and it is difficult to imagine living without either of them. But a case can be made that the telegraph was just as impactful. The telegraph, for…
I’ve been doing some spring cleaning and stumbled upon one of my favorite University textbooks: Tversky and Kahneman’s “Judgement Under Uncertainty”. This book taught me the basics of probability, a ridiculously useful skill which I’ve relied on far more frequently than I ever would have imagined. A better understanding of probability can help us overcome…
Many people complain that they get too many emails and there’s even a phenomenon called Inbox Zero. But do we really get that many emails? And do we really want fewer emails? In the book The Tyranny of Email, John Freeman claims the average office worker “sends and receives two hundred emails a day.” According…
I recently took part in an event which the organizers described as happening under the Chatham House Rule. After talking to many of the participants, I realized we were uncertain exactly what this meant. We assumed the rule implied confidentiality – but we disagreed on how much. Most of us were wrong. Founded in 1920,…
Do you know someone you think is a narcissist? A narcissistic personality is characterized by inflated views of the self, extreme vanity, and obsessive self-importance. The term comes from the mythical Greek character, Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Entranced by his own beauty, Narcissus stared…
Welcome to the future. It is a common complaint that we were promised jetpacks and flying cars but all we got was… something less cool. But the complaints are mostly unwarranted. Things that seemed like science fiction not long ago are now commonplace (or soon will be): under-the-skin GPS, 3D printing, hoverboards, lab-grown leather, self-heating…
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. This commonly-used phrase reminds us that, no matter how far away a deadline is, we always seem to be rushed to complete the task. Some even cite it as evidence that setting impossibly short deadlines is good for efficiency. While most of us are…
If writing were illegal I’d be in prison. I can’t not write. It’s a compulsion. — David Baldacci For most, writing isn’t a lucrative profession; it’s a passion. According to Meredith Maran, “one million manuscripts are currently searching for a U.S. publisher. One percent of these will get the nod.” But publishing a book isn’t…
I travel often enough that when people ask me where I’m based, I sometimes joke “Seat 4F.” I’ve been able to observe a lot of passengers boarding planes. Based on what I’ve seen, how we board airplanes doesn’t work very well. And based on what I’ve read, it doesn’t make sense either. All U.S. airlines…
Recently a colleague sent me an email which said “since you’re a lexiphile, you might like these phrases and use them in a future blog”. He included a list of 10 punny sentences like this one: Police were called to the daycare center, where a three-year-old was resisting a rest. He was right – I…