Category: Life
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The Ultimate Guide to the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Setting goals sounds simple. When a person sets a goal, they probably come across the SMART methodology—Specific, Measurable, Assignable (changed into “Attainable”), Realistic, and Time-related. Yet the nuance that comes with this makes goal-setting extremely complicated. For example, the terms, “Attainable,” and “Realistic,” require not only judgment of the past and the future, as well…
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Unlearning Is an Underrated Skill
Six years ago, product designer Andrei Herasimchuk wrote of an earlier time when he learned the wrong lesson during his career at Adobe. Early into his career as a designer, he had built a prototype over the weekend and a few days into his workweek. One of the product managers, who had worked at Adobe…
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How to Take Your Career to the Next Level with Notes
It was only yesterday when I needed to make a minor decision I had been stuck on for a week. The situation didn’t require a friend or advisor’s advice, precious time I’d prefer to save for something of greater gravity. Instead, I consulted a set of notes I’d taken on making decisions, which took me…
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Big Ideas, Small Papers
One of the most painful things about writing in small amounts of time is the lack of time for re-working. It feels like writing on a scrap of paper that’s way too small. I would wish that I hadn’t spent so much space on that first sentence or doodle. Upon realizing I don’t have enough…
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On Education as Investment
When I was leaving high school, I knew why I was going to college: I wanted to get a good job. In spite of Kanye West’s The College Dropout, it was an assumption consistent with the one my parents had. Their generation either worked with a college degree, or without. I hadn’t yet realized that…
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Work on the Weekends Only If You’re Learning Something Useful
You should only work on the weekends if you’re learning something that supports your future or puts you on a path to enjoying your work.
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How to Ease Brain Overload without Trying Harder
Our brains are overloaded. Roger E. Bohn and James E. Short at the Global Information Industry Center at UC San Diego suggest the average American took in around 34 gigabytes of data per day in 2009 (here’s the original estimate, via NYT). That was a year before Instagram was released. Nobody was searching “side hustle”…
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The Rise of Personal Infrastructure (Redux)
“I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!” Jay-Z famously raps on the Diamonds remix. There’s a lot of chatter at Twitter about individual people (“creators”) scaling up million dollar businesses. I thought Elaine Pofeldt did it first, but apparently micro ISVs have been around. Either way, this is a growing possibility for more people…
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The Kanye West Religion (Part 1)
Who Is This For? Artists and creative independents. Kanye West’s most recent albums sound nothing like the one before. In an age of blockbusters and calculated risk, he proclaims his strategy is no strategy. Yet he has also cultivated one of the most fervent fan bases, rivaling the Beyhive, Beliebers, and the Swifties. Rolling Stone…
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Your Success Does Not Depend on Productivity Rules
Your productivity settings should evolve to keep up with you, not the other way around Image: Helena Lopes/Unsplash Productivity advice seems to be everywhere these days, but the more you read, the more you’ll see its contradictions. For example, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen used to advise against keeping a schedule, but now he keeps a…