Chad Aaron Hall

This principle also holds up well outside of product development. For example, it’s why so many books start off as articles or speeches; the articles and speeches were demos for the book.

Another example: Researching my second book, I talked to the writer Maggie Nelson about her work habits, and she told me that a lot of her writing starts as intensive “reading cycles,” during which she’ll make notes with a mechanical pencil in the margins of books. When she reaches the end of a cycle, she’ll go back through the books and type up... See more

My fears were amplified by the backlash I and other school reopening advocates had faced throughout the school year, particularly on social media. There were a range of insults lobbed at us: We were bad parents who didn’t care about our own kids or teachers dying, we only wanted our babysitters back and our frustrations about school closures were... See more

I’m thinking about how many people were one or two iterations away from the right formula, but lacked the conviction to stay the course, the understanding that minor, subtle, successive changes can drastically influence outcome. I’m thinking about how self-doubt makes more people abandon a vision than competition or lack of funding ever will.

The challenges of many small towns in the US have been well documented, in some cases being nothing less than a fight for survival. Leckey commonly hears that the need for affordable housing, broadband internet, day care, and economic development, as well as the toll of the opioid crisis, are among the key struggles facing small communities. But he... See more

We do everything in our power to build patterns that indicate predictability in our lives. We set up daily routines so we can forecast our days with accuracy. We mark future dates on our calendars with the assumption that we will attend them.

This is our attempt to fight entropy, or to create order out of chaos. It’s our way of organizing the... See more

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation. The few tasks on his list will be by... See more