...Among life’s many chapters and milestones, Americans have come to see some events — like college, marriage, homeownership, child-rearing, and career success — as achievements they must fulfill in order to maintain the status quo. Because so many follow these “traditional” paths, both in real life and in Western popular culture, we learn from a young age to model and emulate these behaviors. Family and cultural traditions can dictate what is expected of us throughout life, particularly among women, which can elicit anxiety when those benchmarks aren’t reached...

...The focus and energy we lavish on events can easily distract us from the journeys we care about...

...So what’s key problem that nobody talks about? Your brain. Why the brain? Because that’s where the bad decisions come from. Some will yell it’s their genetics but the obesity epidemic didn’t start until 1978 and genetics don’t change that fast. Yes, genes are an issue but they only load the gun – behavior pulls the trigger. And wanna guess what part of the body those obesity genes affect?...

...On any particular issue, people at the bottom can usually claim the most expertise; they know their job best. And when someone at the top has to make a difficult decision, they usually prefer to justify it via reference to recommendations from below. They are just following the advice of their experts, they say. But of course they lie; people at the top often overrule subordinates. And while leaders often like to pretend that they select people for promotion on the basis of doing lower jobs well, that is also often a lie....

...We default to time and ordinal ordering when we don’t bother to imagine a taxonomy that produces a useful grid. If you want to know what’s missing, spend some time on structuring a useful grid first...

...All of this may sound a bit ridiculous. It is just coffee, after all. But while jokes about $10 lattes and millennials who will never be able to afford homes might persist, I do think there is something special about the way we are able to make little parts of our life better...

...The pursuit of knowledge is heralded as a virtue, but the attainment of understanding is far more important...

...This piece is designed to answer these questions, pulling together the ten most impactful lessons I’ve learned from studying leading companies...

...Memorization and access to information no longer mean anything. If you value these things then it’s time to change...

...It turns out that when you’re surrounded by people who care about you, when you have freedom and a chance to lead, you can become a different, more generous, happier, more powerful, more friended version of yourself...

..."I believe this is true. If there’s one trait you can attribute a person’s success to, whether that’s trading stocks or any other profession, it’s poise"...

...Stress never is truly defeated. You may conquer what was causing your stress today, but the hard truth is something else is going to pop up that will cause stress and wage war again...

...Instead of stretching yourself thin trying to keep in contact with everyone you’ve ever met or feeling pressured to make new friends, it’s worth considering the value of a few close confidants...

...Accounting is a way to turn organized books into insight...

...All of this emphasises a fundamental point about clarifying your thinking. It asks you to admit your thoughts are unclear to begin with – and thus, that certain elements within them need to be rethought, or placed upon more secure foundations. It’s as if you’re shedding layers of preconception, misconception and false consciousness. And the ultimate prize isn’t being right, gratifying though this might be. It’s being understood...

...One of the things I am doing at the beginning of this year is meditating on a handful of ideas—most from the Stoics—that will hopefully make me better. Things that will hopefully dye my life a good color...

...These invisible demands are hurting organizations’ efforts to become more agile and innovative. And they can lead to individual career derailment, burnout, and declines in physical and mental well-being...

...there is no such thing as good code in the abstract; good code can only exist if it’s producing a working product...

...The mere act of making a to-do list relieves so much itchy stress that it can, paradoxically, reduce the pressure to actually get stuff done...

...By focusing on proposals fell just below and just above the funding threshold, we compare near-miss with narrow-win applicants, and find that an early-career setback has powerful, opposing effects. On the one hand, it significantly increases attrition, predicting more than a 10% chance of disappearing permanently from the NIH system. Yet, despite an early setback, individuals with near misses systematically outperform those with narrow wins in the longer run. Moreover, this performance advantage seems to go beyond a screening mechanism, suggesting early-career setback appears to cause a performance improvement among those who persevere...