Johanna

For most of us, what we do with our lives isn’t cosmically significant. But if you can delude yourself a little bit that your Important Projects are going to Change the World, this will probably make you better at what you do, and ultimately help you collect more grubby resources and status and so on.

he research suggests something fundamentally hopeful: that periods of failure can be periods of growth, but only if we understand when to shift our work from exploration to exploitation. If you look around you at this very moment, you will see people in your field who seem wayward and unfocused, and you might assume they’ll always be that way. You... See more

The optimal time to make a decision about the candidate is about three minutes after the end of the interview. (...) I ask interviewers to write immediate feedback after the interview, either a “hire” or “no hire”, followed by a one or two paragraph justification. It’s due 15 minutes after the interview ends.

There are always specifics of what you need in a particular role, but smart and effective have got to be table stakes.(...) Remember that in a startup, anyone you hire is likely to be doing a new job in three to six months. Smart and effective people are adaptable.

Choose a threshold of radiation deemed safe; enforce that limit and nothing more. Further, these limits should balance risk vs. benefit, recognizing that nuclear is an alternative to other modes of power, including fossil fuels, that have their own health impacts.

Small sample sizes. We also need to know that the study was big enough to justify the claims made. For example, it’s pretty obvious that men are on average taller than women. But to have a good chance of detecting this difference in an experiment, you’d need at least 20 people to find a statistically significant result. Unfortunately, such huge... See more

The picture this survey paints is bleak: Over the past century, we’ve vastly increased the time and money invested in science, but in scientists’ own judgement, we’re producing the most important breakthroughs at a near-constant rate. On a per-dollar or per-person basis, this suggests that science is becoming far less efficient.

The best way to be good at sales is to genuinely believe in what you’re selling. Selling what you truly believe in feels great, and trying to sell snake oil feels awful.