Archive

Because we are not omniscient creatures, we have to feel our way through life in the dark. One way to bring light to our surroundings is through language. Unfortunately, language is complex. On top of that, our limited nature is really good at overcomplicating things, and language is one of

Well, contrary to my own estimates, robots are in fact pretty good with language. If you don’t know, I’m a content strategist at a marketing agency by day. Unfortunately for me, an artificial intelligence program at JPMorgan Chase has created marketing copy that outperformed human copywriters. Here’s

In the shadow of work is rest. While we were created to work, we were also created to rest. The problem is that American culture isn’t very good at it. That’s because, as The Atlantic pointed out a few years ago, being busy is a status symbol. A

One of the things I love most about business is how tangible the world becomes. “What’s your budget for the project? What’s the timeline? What are our next steps?” Breaking down your tasks into the simplest components, quantifying the next steps, and creating clear paths forward—that’s

Last week a Harvard economist named Carmen Reinhart argued that the political turmoil in Hong Kong could trigger a global economic recession. “These are not segmented regional effects,” Reinhart said, referring to the US–China trade war and the unrest in Hong Kong. “These have really global consequences. So [the

Yesterday, shortly after I sent out “The Business of Belief,” I read a newsletter from Alan Murray, the president and CEO of Fortune, on the same topic. My former colleagues at the Wall Street Journal editorial page launched a broadside against the Business Roundtable’s “stakeholder” policy yesterday. (See my

Most of the time when you ask leaders of a business what their business “believes,” you’ll get something like “We believe in integrity,” or “We believe in excellence.” These are great virtues to believe in, but they don’t go far enough. Statements like these comprise what organizations call

In the September issue of The Atlantic, Daniel Markovits, professor of law at Yale, makes the case that our meritocratic culture was supposed to be a cure for nepotism and economic inequality. Alumni had long believed that their sons had a birthright to follow them to Yale; now prospective students

One word has been more influential in Western philosophy than most others. It’s called eudaimonia, the Greek word for flourishing. For thousands of years we have been searching for the ideal state of affairs through which society can bring about well-being for all, bringing the true, the beautiful, and

Within your own neighborhood people are living in completely different worlds. People living just across the street or on the other side of the elementary school have vastly different trajectories. This is the argument made by Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist who some say is reinventing the field. The argument