There is a particular kind of pride people take in being busy. Not productive. Not effective. Just busy. The kind of busy where you stay late at the office not because the work demands it, but because leaving on time feels like a confession of laziness. The kind of busy where you wear your exhaustion […]
Why We Value “Hard Work” (Even When It Is Pointless) Read More »
There is a man from the early 1800s who would find your savings account hilarious. Not because of the amount in it. Because of what you think it is doing. His name was Jean-Baptiste Say. French economist. Cotton manufacturer. One of the first people to seriously think about what money does when nobody is looking
You have probably been told, at some point, that you just need to “stay motivated.” Maybe a podcast host said it. Maybe a LinkedIn post with a sunrise background said it. Maybe you said it to yourself at 6 AM while staring at running shoes you had no intention of putting on. Here is the
Forget Motivation: Use Sun Tzu’s Concept of “Moral Force” Instead Read More »
There is a moment in every remote team’s life when someone types “sounds good” in Slack and absolutely nobody knows what it refers to. Three people assume it means the deadline moved. Two others think the project got approved. One person missed the message entirely because they were in a different time zone, asleep, as
Is Your Team a Mob or an Army? Sun Tzu’s Test for Remote Work Cohesion Read More »
There is something deeply uncomfortable about the idea of putting a price tag on belonging. Citizenship feels sacred, like love or loyalty. It is not supposed to be for sale. And yet, the Nobel laureate economist Gary Becker looked at the global refugee crisis and asked a question that makes most people squirm: what if
Why We Should Sell Citizenship: Using Markets to Solve the Refugee Crisis Read More »
There is a certain irony in the fact that the most quoted strategist in the history of warfare wrote a book that is, at its core, about avoiding warfare altogether. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War sits on the bookshelves of CEOs, coaches, military generals, and that one guy at every dinner party who thinks
Stop Fighting Fire with Fire: The Counterintuitive Path to Conflict Resolution Read More »
You are probably smarter than you think. You are also probably dumber than you think. And if that sentence made you want to keep reading, you just proved the point of this entire article. Every day, millions of highly educated, analytically sharp, professionally accomplished people click on headlines they know are garbage. “You Will Not
Most people assume the opposite of revolution is doing nothing. Sitting on the couch. Scrolling through your phone while the world burns. Apathy. Complacency. The classic image of the citizen who just does not care enough to act. But Michel Foucault, the French philosopher who spent his career studying how power actually works, would have
Why the Opposite of Revolution Is Not Complacency, It Is Normalization Read More »
There was a time when the self made individual was the protagonist of Western civilization. The person who started with nothing, built something, and refused to apologize for it. That person was celebrated in novels, held up in political speeches, and Christ-like in the American imagination. Somewhere along the way, the script flipped. The self
From Heroes to Villains: The Cultural War Against the “Self Made” Read More »
Most people think of ethics in terms of what you should not do. Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not harm. The entire moral framework we inherit from childhood is built around restraint. Be good by avoiding bad. Stay in your lane. Keep your hands to yourself. But there is a French economist from
The Moral Duty to Innovate: Why Stagnation is Actually Unethical Read More »