“The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing.” — Peter Drucker Peter Drucker, one of the most respected management thinkers in history, stated these words at the close of the…

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Futurists from the 20th century predicted that labor saving devices would make leisure abundant. According to the great economist John Maynard Keynes, the big challenge would be that… “For the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his…

Author’s Note: This article is part of a series on productivity that was researched and written over hundreds of hours (yeah, I know, I’m fun at parties) using the blockbuster philosophy. Below are the three other articles in the series: In 1911, a genius revealed a forgotten science of how…

Author’s Note: This article was researched and written over 50 hours using the blockbuster philosophy. It took a single chance event for one of history’s most profound shifts to happen. Working from home was possible in the early 2000s. It could’ve changed everything starting 20 years ago. Yet, it wasn’t…

“The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing.” — Peter Drucker I spent over 500 hours researching and writing this article. Those 500 hours were spent reading through dozens of…

Seven years ago, I swallowed a bitter pill. Up to that point I had read hundreds of books. Yet, when asked about specific ones, I often realized I had forgotten almost everything. The brutal reality was I had wasted thousands of hours. You know what I’m talking about. Right? It’s…

The year is 1976. Anders Ericsson is an unknown, newly minted PhD. Little does he know that he is on the verge of what would be “the most surprising two years” of his career. …

In 1994, a 30-year-old Jeff Bezos was a vice president at a prestigious hedge fund in New York City. One day, as he was researching markets, he came across a fascinating fact. This fringe thing that people called the Internet was growing at an incredible 2,300% per year. Immediately, the…

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people (over a broad subject matter area) who didn’t read all the time — none. Zero.” — Charlie Munger, Self-made billionaire & Warren Buffett’s longtime business partner Why did the busiest person in the world, former president Barack Obama, read an…