Johanna

In 2012, the University of Maryland sociologist John P. Robinson reviewed more than 40 years of happiness and time-use surveys that asked Americans how often they felt they either were “rushed” or had “excess time.” Perhaps predictably, he concluded that the happiest people were the “never-never” group—those who said they very rarely felt hurried... See more

Among many memorable events, I saw a talk by David Allison about his efforts to correct simple statistical mistakes in the published literature. He would notice a clear and obvious error, like a claimed interaction that wasn’t actually tested properly. He would then send a polite email to the authors to explain the situation so it could be... See more

Thus, I will assert again that a meeting is nothing less than the medium through which managerial work is performed. That means we should not be fighting their very existence, but rather using the time spent in them as efficiently as possible.

One trend to keep an eye on is that we’re likely nearing the end of requiring repetitive, unchanging movements for efficient production processes.Nonrepetitive movements are fundamentally an information problem - they require some method of telling a machine the state of the surrounding environment, and what to do depending on what that state is.

Any skill or attribute you claim makes you unique—”I’m really funny”, “I’m good at shining shoes”, “I’m an attentive lover”—you can always find someone else better than you on that dimension. They’re funnier, fitter, richer, sexier, smarter, or better at shining shoes than you are. We can’t help but desperately compete in this unwinnable game of... See more

OK, I didn’t tell you the most important part—how do you know whether to hire someone? In principle, it’s simple. You’re looking for people who are Smart, and Get things done.

Say you’re a car manufacturer. Every year, you must decide between investing in future innovations, such as self-driving software, and finding ways to squeeze new revenue out of existing technologies and materials. Too much fanciful R&D spending, and this year’s profit plummets. Too much emphasis on tweaking existing product lines, and you get... See more