During World War II, the US was losing lives as planes were being shot down in enemy territory, so they took on an initiative to improve the armor on the planes. They started with a survey of planes that had been damaged in combat. They charted all of the bullet holes, and a clear pattern …

Some people swear by goal-setting and rigid calendars, while others insist that their success came because they took life a day at a time and were never constrained by a bigger plan. Some of the biggest authors write only after extensive market research, and they explicitly cater to their target audience. Others write in a …

There’s always something to stress about. It doesn’t matter if you’re going to school, working, maintaining a house, or doing just about anything else. If you truly care about what you’re doing, there’s always something that needs to be done. But that doesn’t mean you have to constantly stress about it. When it’s time, go …

When coaching someone or teaching something new, there are three key things to get across: What you’re teaching How your student is supposed to do it Why it’s done that way All three aspects are critical, but more often than not we tend to forget the last one. -Brandon

Despite the outward differences between people, the world doesn’t need to be hierarchical. The best executives that I’ve seen don’t want to be worshipped, they want to be able to talk with their employees and customers on a level ground so they can figure out how things actually are. Just like the best interns don’t want …

Possibly the easiest way to go through life is by avoiding deeply caring about anything. You can’t get too upset when you hit a roadblock if you think about your contributions as “just work” or “just a game.” If you avoid feeling too invested, you’ll almost certainly avoid any major letdowns. The problem is that …

A job in sales can be soul-crushing. The obvious cliche that comes to mind is a sleazy used car salesman preying on uneducated shoppers, or a ruthless businessman forcing his opponents to their rock-bottom price. On a smaller scale, you’ve probably felt or seen this if you’ve ever played Monopoly. Sometimes the lopsided deals that …

When working on a freelance basis, the feast or famine cycle can be deadly. You work hard to bring in a project, get bombarded trying to execute, and then by the time you’re done you don’t have any new work to do and no prospects for new opportunities. That’s why freelancers, or companies who work …

When making a purchase, there’s generally a trade-off between cost, timing, and quality. You can get a good quality product quickly, but it’ll cost you. You can get a good quality product cheaply, but don’t expect it to come quickly. And you can get a cheap product quickly, but don’t expect it to be durable. …

There’s a myth in the engineering community that every problem can be broken down to a single “root cause.” Overall, I agree with the mindset. Root cause analysis helps us to look past symptoms so the true problem can be identified and addressed. But in complex situations, it isn’t realistic to assume that a problem …