Over the years, I've heard good advice from others; I wish they had told me sooner. Probably they did, but I didn't listen. What I'm about to say is what I constantly urge myself to do. I offer these comments to save us time, to help us strip off some ankle weights of language. The difference between second place and first place in the high jump, between the silver and the gold, is only about an inch. Ah, but "How glorious that inch / And that split-second longer in the air before the fall" (Robert Francis, "Excellence").
The best writing advice I’ve ever read comes from Robert Frost.
I write prose, not poetry, but the most helpful piece of advice I’ve ever read was written by a poet: Robert Frost, who was born 147 years ago today. In the second, expanded edition of his Co…
Works in Progress: The Long Journey to Doing Good Better
The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know. — Albert Einstein
Opinion | What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness (Published 2019)
Lesson No. 1: It’s not about how fast you can go.
Everything is In-Between — Douglas Rushkoff
I’ve begun this piece maybe twenty times in the past three weeks. By the time I’ve finished the first paragraph, some new thing happens that obsolesces whatever event I’m writing about. And I’m not even writing about the news, so much as using one shared moment as a “peg” for a piece about some larger phenomenon or strategy.
How I made my first million dollars (in pro bono code)
By Michael D. Johnson I gaze down at the Potomac River from a glass-walled conference room. It’s my third week of interviews with the same firm. I’m moments away from securing the kind of prestigious consulting gig that most fresh grads from New Engl...
Just You Wait, by Chris Shiflett
On turning 50: a personal story about luck, curiosity, disillusionment, and hope.
Ditch the elevator pitch
If there’s true interest, there’s no rush — take your time to listen first and explain second There’s no shortage of lore about the importance of the elevator pitch. There’s the 1850s version, in w…
Quote Origin: The Optimist Invents the Airplane and the Pessimist the Parachute – Quote Investigator®
George Bernard Shaw? Gladys Bronwyn Stern? W. H. H. MacKellar? Gil Stern? Mack McGinnis?
All the best engineering advice I stole from non-technical people
As I focus on becoming a better manager of engineers, I have been reflecting more and more on the advice that produced a 10X boost in my…
The Toolbox Strategy: How To Become Uniquely Valuable
After having just dropped out of university, at 19-years-old; I received a line of advice that changed how I made every decision in my career…
Michael Baym on Twitter / X
Remember that you, by definition, cannot distinguish between a good idea and a failure of your own knowledge, judgement, or taste. This is why external (ideally expert) feedback is crucial— Michael Baym (@baym) March 25, 2026
Overcoming Bias : Tiptoe Or Dash To Future?
To test who should TA elite classes, new physics grad students at U Chicago in ’81 were asked to pick a physics problem and explain its solution to the group. I did well by picking the question: should you walk fast or slow if you want to get the least water on your front while moving a certain distance in the rain. The answer is: move as fast as you can.
This entire grift relies on convincing people that they don't know how to do the things they have always known how to do, and ironically, if it works, we will, in a very short amount of time, forget how to do all the things we have always known how to do.
More Perfect Union
Jimmy Fallon: "And do you use ChatGPT when raising your baby?" Sam Altman: "I cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT."
