Photo Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Credit Keith Bedford/Reuters Editor’s note: Marc Andreessen’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, has invested just under $50 million in Bitcoin-related start-ups. The firm is actively searching for more…

Best Travel Hacks From a Year Abroad 16 countries. 3 months. 1 suitcase. At the request of a good friend who’s planning to backpack in Europe, I’ve catalogued some tips and tricks that I used when I trekked through Europe for three months with one carry-on suitcase. It’s everything I found useful or…

James W. Porter/Fuse via Getty Images You'd think things would be different when you're in some I.M. Pei building, surrounded by educated, smart people in suits. But, it's not. Office bathrooms, and trading floor bathrooms in particular, too often look like some Hackney pub loo on a bank holiday…

7 Things You Need to Stop Doing to Be More Productive, Backed by Science BY CAMMI PHAM — First appeared on my personal blog When I was 17 years old, I used to work and study for about 20 hours a day. I went to school, did my homework during breaks and managed a not-for-profit organization at night.…

Zeloot PARIS — NOT many Ivy League professors are associated with a type of candy. But Walter Mischel, a professor of psychology at Columbia, doesn’t mind being one of them. “I’m the marshmallow man,” he says, with a modest shrug. I’m with Mr. Mischel (pronounced me-SHELL) in his tiny home office in…

How quitting my corporate job for my startup dream f*cked my life up Finally the SMS arrived: “Tomorrow morning 5am, flight number AZ610 from Rome to NewYork.” An SMS hitting my BlackBerry on Sunday evenings used to decide my destination and client for the coming week. I was working for one of the…

Why do two men from very similar socioeconomic and educational backgrounds sometimes take very different life paths? Is nature or nurture more important in determining a man’s success in his relationships and career? What physiological and psychological traits present in a man’s younger years…

If there’s been one topic that has entirely dominated the post-election landscape, it’s the fiscal cliff. Will taxes be raised? Which programs will be cut? Who will blink first in negotiations? For all the talk of the fiscal cliff, however, I believe the US is facing a much more serious problem, one…

It’s my first class of the semester at New York University. I’m discussing the evils of plagiarism and falsifying sources with 11 graduate journalism students when, without warning, my computer freezes. I fruitlessly tap on the keyboard as my laptop takes on a life of its own and reboots. Seconds…

Illustration by Mark Pernice Imagine that on Day 1 of a difficult course, before you studied a single thing, you got hold of the final exam. The motherlode itself, full text, right there in your email inbox — attached mistakenly by the teacher, perhaps, or poached by a campus hacker. No answer key,…

I Need Brain Surgery And I Feel Fine That’s my brain! Without contrast, it’s tough to spot the tumor. Can you see it? It all started about 4 years ago. I was working at insiderpages.com and one day (it was a Saturday) I woke up and couldn’t hear very well in my left ear. At first I thought maybe it…

I began work in the Operational Research Section (ORS) of the British Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command on July 25, 1943. I was 19 years old, fresh from an abbreviated two years as a student at the University of Cambridge. The headquarters of Bomber Command was a substantial set of red brick…

T his is everything I own: A MacBook Pro, an iPad, an unlocked iPhone, seven shirts, two pairs of jeans, two jackets, one coat, one sweater, two pairs of shoes, a suitcase, a backpack, some gym shorts, bathroom stuff, socks and underwear. That’s it. Everything I own can be easily packed into a small…

A Newcastle sailor's trip across the Pacific Ocean after the Japan tsunami was frighteningly similar to a nightmare. Ivan Macfadyen aboard the Funnel Web. Picture by Max Mason-Hubers IT was the silence that made this voyage different from all of those before it. Not the absence of sound, exactly.…

Jon Birdsong: Projects to process: http://t.co/7d4pTdDivb

As a kid, I was a big James Bond fan. Saw all the movies and read all the books. One thing I noticed about the book version of James Bond was that every time he took a shower, he would start off with the water nice and hot, and then turn it down to cold for the last few minutes. Perhaps this little…

You’re greeted at the pearly gates to heaven by St. Peter who asks where you’d like to spend eternity. “Well, heaven of course!” you say. Peter replies: “You have to check out hell just to see what you think before you commit.” Disappointed, you shrug but agree. And to your surprise, when the…

There are two types of people in the world today: those who create technology, and those who consume it. Only one of those groups gets to cash the check, the other has to write it.

Senior executives are one of the toughest crowds you’ll face as a presenter. They’re incredibly impatient because their schedules are jam-packed — and they have to make lots of high-stakes decisions , often with little time to weigh options. So they won’t sit still for a long presentation with a big…

Through my work as an independent advisor, and with organizations like Mass Challenge , Founder Mentors , and NEVCA’s Critical Mass , I’ve been a compensated advisor (cash and/or equity) to at least a half-dozen startups, a pro-bono advisor to a few dozen, and an occasional advisor to hundreds.…

We may now have a new “most unread best seller of all time.” Data from Amazon Kindles suggests that that honor may go to Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” which reached No. 1 on the best-seller list this year. Jordan Ellenberg, a professor of mathematics at the University of…

A year ago this week I posted At the time, I honestly had no idea what a brouhaha it would cause. I was simply sharing our own experience. The comments and reactions to that post have run the gamut, from parents applauding the decision and letting me know that post inspired them to do the same, to a…

Note: I was introduced to this idea somewhere on Hacker News a few weeks back, though I haven’t been able to find the exact discussion again [1] . I adapted the original concept to fit my own style, and it’s changed the way I approach my work. Uber Productivity – How To Knock Out More Work Than Ever…

There was a time, not so long ago, when I was busy, busy, busy. At least I thought I was. I told people I worked 60 hours a week. I claimed to sleep six hours a night. As I lamented to anyone stuck next to me at parties, I was basically too busy to breathe. Me time? Ha! Now I work 45 hours a week…

PARIS — IF all goes according to plan, I’ll turn 44 soon after this column appears. So far in my adult life, I’ve never managed to grasp a decade’s main point until long after it was over. It turns out that I wasn’t supposed to spend my 20s frantically looking for a husband; I should have been…

14 things I’ve learned about launching side projects Side projects are an alluring prospect for many developers: you can have total control over a project, try new things, and reap all of the profits. No pesky product managers or dealing with other people’s code. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.…

July 29, 2014 Why are some people so much luckier than others? James Scott Bumgarner, more famous as James Garner, film and TV star, passed away recently at the age of 86. Many people have been writing about how great a guy he was and stories about his life. A few things caught my attention. Not the…

&nbsp Productivity by | 2K Shares 2K Shares SHARES Productivity by Daniel Wallen | 2K Shares Massive success is reserved for confident people who take action swiftly and decisively. Or, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.” If…

Everything you need to know about how drones work, how to fly them and modify them. Drone. Quadcopter. Phantom. Dronie . You’ve no doubt heard about these terms with increasing gusto in recent months. They are everywhere in the news now; from seeing more dronies slide into your Twitter timeline and…