Fixed-schedule productivity

You know those half-days of work before you’re about to go on vacation? You show up to work, have to leave by noon, and have a lot of things to get done before you go — some of which you’ve been working on for weeks. It’s always amazed me how,...

A plea for more Paradox of Choice research

Like Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner, I found Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice very persuasive — even though one of my favorite free market commentators seems to equate Schwartz with the devil (here and here). In a recent blog post, Dubner cites...

Wikipedia’s declining volunteer base

For many people like me, Wikipedia is the most successful example of opening content creation up to the masses and empowering and motivating volunteers to contribute high quality work. So this recent front page story from the WSJ is interesting, and a little...