Booming businesses that may seem like explosive overnight success stories are often the product of careful planning and experimentation behind the scenes. Tweaking old products or introducing new ones, then assessing if they fit fast-changing markets, is essential to keeping customers and maximizing profits. Growth hacking is a core business practice for businesses today because […]
How to Clean Up at the Casino
Of all the different casino games, blackjack gives you the best odds against the house. But most players tend to overestimate their skills. Maybe they know the correct strategies in theory, but they end up relying on unreliable hunches. A quirk of human nature is that we tend to focus more on our wins than […]
Why Success = Information
You’ve heard the adage to learn from your mistakes. But it’s equally important to learn from your successes, both personally and as a leader. You can get a lot of useful information from achievements and high-performing workers—and analyzing it can be instructive and motivating, for you and others. This principle is important to remember during […]
How to Take Control of Your Mornings
Anyone can become a morning person with enough practice. While most of the world is sleeping, you’ll have the gift of time to become the person you need to be. Adopting any new habit takes a period of adjustment, so it might not be easy at first. But if you maintain a positive attitude, waking […]
How to Engage Hyperfocus Mode
Forty seconds. That’s how long most people can work on a computer before they are distracted or interrupted. That’s not enough time to get your work done, obviously, so the question becomes: how can you focus better? Productivity expert Chris Bailey says that we can engage hyperfocus, a mode in which we focus on a […]
Ghost Your Business
When you’re building a company, you’d do anything to help it thrive. But the best thing you can do for your long-term financial health is to become as inessential as possible. In short, you need to become a ghost. It’s not enough for your business to succeed. You also need to sell it someday—and that […]
New Tools Require New Tricks
Many of us shifted our work and social lives into the virtual world of Zoom for long stretches of the pandemic. The company went from being popular to essential almost overnight: from 10 million users in December 2019 to 300 million in June 2020. Now that’s growth! While our reliance on Zoom has tapered off […]
Was WeWork a Unicorn? Or a Cult?
Adam Neumann, WeWork’s co-founder, never learned to code and rarely used a computer. So how did he seemingly take over Silicon Valley? Moreover, why was he paid so much to leave? It may seem like ancient history now, but more than a decade ago, when WeWork started attracting deep-pocket investors, Neumann was described as the […]
The Outcome Mindset
The work-life struggle is real. It’s an unfortunate fact that productivity tends to decrease in relation to how busy we are. It’s hard to set priorities when everything is important. Here’s a trick you can try the next time you’re struggling at work or at home: try to focus on outcomes. Whether you’re creating a […]
Why Big Government is Bad News
Too many people see the federal government as a parent, entrusted with the responsibilities of handing out allowance and enforcing the rules. At least that was the view of Milton Friedman, the figurehead of the Chicago school of economics and the thinker who, according to the Wall Street Journal, “reshaped modern capitalism.” According to Friedman, the […]
