Employees happier, healthier and higher-performing? The four-day workweek is trending again, and this time it comes with charts. A new six-month, six-country study says that shaving off a day (without reducing pay) leads to less burnout, better mental health, and happier employees. Sounds like a win all around. But before we start mandating three-day weekends…
AI and the Real Productivity Problem This Is Something Interesting When it comes to AI, most of the public conversation seems to center around one big question: Will it replace us? But that’s the wrong question. And it implies the wrong approach to using AI today for probable several more years. What we should be…
How Older Adults Are Rewriting the Script on Aging Forget the stereotypes. The golden years aren’t all early bird dinners and endless television reruns. Across the world, older adults are pushing back against isolation not by retreating into passive routines, but by creating, connecting, and contributing. When I was born, the average life expectancy in…
Adventures in Peeing After 70 I never thought I’d write publicly about peeing. But here we are. And if you’re over a certain age—and honest with yourself—you’ve probably thought about it a lot more than you used to. Getting up two or more times each night is something that you have to get used to…
The Musk Model Under Stress In business school and boardrooms alike, we learn that vision is the spark. There have been a lot of sparks over the years that have not resulted in thriving businesses. That’s because it takes systems, structure, and sustained attention to turn that spark into a thriving enterprise. And while few…
This Is Something Interesting We’ve all heard debates about gentrification—who gains, who loses, and what it means for communities. Most of the time, it gets framed as a cultural conflict or an economic inevitability. But this Substack article takes a different tack: it treats gentrification as a housing supply issue more than anything else. Instead…
Baby Back Ribs Made Simple I realize it’s after the Fourth of July, the biggest barbecue event of the summer. But let’s be honest—grilled ribs are a treat any time. They don’t need a holiday, just a little time, a bit of heat, and a good rub. This article isn’t about smoking ribs for 24…
How Jazz (and a Few Others) Shaped My Ears Two things happened in high school that shaped my music taste forever. The first was getting tickets to Jazz at the Philharmonic, where I was introduced to the explosive brilliance of Dizzy Gillespie and the pure vocal magic of Ella Fitzgerald. The second was listening to…
Factory-Scale Automation for Small Businesses For decades, industrial automation has conjured images of massive machines sealed behind safety cages—powerful, fast, and too dangerous to work alongside humans. But a quieter revolution is underway, led by a new kind of robotic coworker: the cobot. Cobots—or collaborative robots—are designed not to replace humans, but to work with…
Why Our National Blind Spot Could Rewrite the Future There are a lot of things I don’t worry about anymore. Getting promoted. Buying the latest phone. Finding the right tie. But one thing I still worry about—probably more than I should—is the national debt. Not because I think it’s going to collapse the country tomorrow….
New Gemini AI Could Change Everything If you’ve ever watched a video of a robot struggle to pick up a banana or fold a towel, you’ve seen the frustrating gap between what AI can think and what robots can do. Google DeepMind may have just taken a major step toward closing that gap. (see my…
(And Why It Wouldn’t Drive Me Crazy) I bought my laptop a little over 15 years ago when I was still doing some consulting and business development. It has many features I’ve never figured out how to use effectively—and some are still total mysteries. So much for being a technology geek. Over time, I’ve tried…
