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Charles Duhigg on habits and habit formation: ’tis all about cue, routine and reward

In a way, habits are everything in your life — and Charles Duhigg is getting a bunch of attention recently for his book The Power of Habit, which talks about basic issues like “How are habits formed?” and “How can we change… Continue Reading

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What if one weekly meeting took up 300,000 hours of manpower in a year? That’s the entire year of 34 people’s lives. But this stuff happens.

Take a deep breath and say it with me: not everything needs to be a meeting. Pause, and now say it loud and say it proud: some things can be an e-mail, a quick talk in the hallway, or a trip to… Continue Reading

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Brief thought exercise: where’s the line in a job interview between being casual/funny/personable and the definition of professionalism?

Feel like this has happened to me a couple of times in the last six-seven months: I’m at a job interview, and it’s one of those situations where you meet with 3-5 people in a given day, for about 30… Continue Reading

Is the future of search engines going to be contextual search?

In other words, in the old days, if you wanted to do something—navigate to the restaurant where you’ve got a dinner reservation—you might open a web browser and search for its address. But in the post-search world of context—in which our… Continue Reading

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Let’s say you shifted your organization to people working 4 days a week, 10 hours a day. Every weekend is a three-day weekend. Could this help employee engagement?

People already do this — the video above is an example, and there are pockets of big companies (like ESPN) where people can get 4 x 10 shifts as opposed to the standard 5 x 8 shift model for office/white-collar… Continue Reading

Brief thought exercise: while the answer varies for every person, is an organization better if the jobs offer a different experience every day, or a similar experience?

A common refrain you’ll hear in networking/job interviews is someone telling you that one of the best parts of their job — “and of course, also one of the worst (laughter)” — is that every day is something different. I heard… Continue Reading

The two “next big things” for tech are the mobile space and data. As such, is Facebook about to overtake Google?

You can certainly make a case that the Internet/tech world is shifting a bit. Mobile is “the next big thing,” and that space hurts Google — phrased simply, there’s less space for ads; phrased in a more complicated way, Google does know what… Continue Reading

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Brief thought exercise: when you really think about it, isn’t the hiring process set up in a way that completely disregards the idea of learning?

I’m finishing grad school right now and have been on a series of different interviews over the past few months, so this is just something I’ve observed that’s a little curious. By no means am I an expert on any… Continue Reading