You’ll never understand futility like trying to donate platelets and having your donation go to waste. The whole process of donating platelets is much more intensive than the blood donation process. It can take up to two hours, and it […]
I’m far more outgoing than I was when I was younger. But even I still get a bit of nerves going into a party . What’s more, I don’t often find plain conversation interesting enough. I want to be engaged, […]
Last night at a beer garden here in Atlanta, I got to see what a healthy modern tribe could look like. I was meeting with dozens of new and old participants, alumni, and team members from Praxis, the startup apprenticeship […]
I would like to do many things in the short life ahead of me (and particularly in my 20s): work in nature, perhaps work on a ranch, start a business (or businesses), travel, etc. Some of my ambitions are closer […]
Wish your relationships with your coworkers didn’t stop at “what did you do this weekend?” There are few better ways to get to know people than to engage them in true intellectual conversation. And while that might be hard in […]
If you don’t have time to mess around, you certainly don’t have time to mess around in meetings. If you want your meetings to go somewhere (and not take forever to do it), there are some principles that have come […]
Is the 21st century a time of great moral progress? Or is it a time of decadence? Ask different people and you’ll get different answers. In my view, the answer is “both.” On one hand, humans are progressing. The internet […]
What adventurous boy or girl didn’t grow up wanting to be a knight? All of our favorite stories, video games, and histories let us imagine ourselves spending our lives as a series of adventures. Yet somehow most of us have […]
Atlanta is world-renowned for its awful traffic. Today we received a surprising receive: 9 miles of streets from Buckhead to Decatur roped off for use by pedestrians, skaters, bikers, and scooters (that’s what you call people on scooters, right?) Enter […]
When I began an independent life at 18, I wanted to create myself anew. I lost or dropped touch with a lot of folks who knew me when I was younger. Life was starting over – why would I want […]
You know what the Internet needs? Another post about how hard work and execution is more important than ideas. But it’s true, and I feel a need to repeat this from my own experience. I work in a company that […]
After a few years in a small company, I’ve been through my fair share of user complaints, issues, bugs, service failures. When I first found out about problems with our product (I was young and naive) I would be a […]
*SPOILER ALERT FOR GAME OF THRONES, OBVIOUSLY. Don’t listen to this if you haven’t watched the show!* The Night King is dead. Cersei is defeated. The new tyrant Daenerys has been stopped. And our boy Jon and his boy Tormund […]
“Leave no trace.” If you’ve spent any time hiking (or in the Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts), you know this cardinal rule of wilderness time. You want to leave no trace of your campfires, your campsites, your camp trash. You pack trash […]
What makes a story “satisfying?” To answer that, it might help to think about the kind of stories that *are* satisfying. Consider the Western where the cowboys win against the corrupt marshal and cattle barons, the ne’er do well gives […]
*SPOILER ALERT FOR GAME OF THRONES, OBVIOUSLY. Don’t listen to this if you haven’t watched the show!* Well, this is it. The last episode of Game of Thrones had many missteps as well as some glorious moments, and it gave […]
Lately I’ve become a bit of a kid in a candy shop when it comes to wanting to pick up new athletic skills. From weight-lifting to swimming, there are so many skills I never mastered in my youth. Even my […]
*SPOILER ALERT FOR GAME OF THRONES, OBVIOUSLY. Don’t listen to this if you haven’t watched the show!* The penultimate episode brought home many of the truest and most powerful themes of Game of Thrones, from the horrors of war and […]
People often talk about how important it is to gain a “30,000 foot view” of life goals. People usually only mean “30,000 foot” metaphorically. I take things a bit more literally. When I fly now, I often find myself gaining […]
Sometimes you can get the most interesting stories when you ask storytellers to talk about themselves. Today I interviewed a journalist who has been covering the blockchain industry for years and years (typically he interviews my company not the other way […]
When you need to build an app but don’t know computer science, programming can seem like a magical skill. The same is true of most skills we don’t understand or know. We elevate the practitioners to the level of magicians practicing […]
I’m in New York City for the first time and am finally testing for myself all of my assumptions and hopes about this magical place. Here are a few of my quick observations: 1. The people are friendlier than expected. People […]
When’s the last time you were truly nauseous? It’s a horrible feeling – all the worse because it’s usually a low-level, dull sense of unease and volatility. I experienced nausea today for the first time in months, and – as […]
Love running? It’s natural to start with flat surfaces – maybe in your neighborhood or a local park. But if you’re looking to add novelty and adventure to your running practice, you might want to check out trail running. […]
Why be kind, just, ethical? I’ve already spent a good amount of my time thinking about this question – and there is more than one good answer. But I’ve been fascinated lately by a new way to think about the reasons […]
*SPOILER ALERT FOR GAME OF THRONES, OBVIOUSLY. Don’t listen to this if you haven’t watched the show!* What is the right way to respond to the deaths of others? Should you be more loyal to your family or to your […]
*SPOILER ALERT FOR GAME OF THRONES, OBVIOUSLY. Don’t listen to this if you haven’t watched the show!* Do our past mistakes work out for the best? What is the right way to die? And how can reading too many /r/gameofthrones Reddit threads […]
Most people take a victory lap *after* they get to inbox zero. But what if you could use inbox clearing as a digital victory lap of its own? Yesterday I listened to a good podcast from The Voluntary Life about […]
There’s a downside to self-development: it can be very easy to start developing contempt for the people you’re passing. People who don’t go to the gym start to look like slobs. You* start to judge people who watch TV instead of doing […]
When I walk in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park these days, I get a few moments where I see at a deeper level. I see hundreds of smiling people. I see couples in love, parents with children, and happy dogs trotting ahead of them. […]