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Six problem-solving mindsets for very uncertain times Be ever-curious Natural human biases in decision making, including confirmation, availability, and anchoring biases, often cause us to shut down the range of solutions too early. Tolerate ambiguity—and stay humble! Recent research shows that we are better at solving problems when we think in terms of odds rather…

Freelance Forward 2020: The U.S. Independent Workforce Report Key Insights: COVID-19 pandemic drives influx of young, highly-skilled, first-time freelancers seeking alternate career opportunities   Freelancers are increasingly high-skilled: 50% of freelancers provide skilled services such as computer programming, marketing, IT, and business consulting, up from 45% in 2019. More professionals are freelancing full-time: The share of independent…

If Zuckerberg ran your economy, it would look a lot like this In Bangladesh, there is no Amazon. There is no eBay. If you want to buy a dress or a crested finch from the comfort of your home, you have to use Facebook. From discovery to delivery, this whole process happened on Facebook. In…

How China’s Expanding Fishing Fleet Is Depleting the World’s Oceans Notes: By some calculations, China has anywhere from 200,000 to 800,000 fishing boats, By comparison, the United States’ distant water fishing fleet has fewer than 300 vessels. China is not only the world’s biggest seafood exporter, the country’s population also accounts for more than a…

How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users – Issue 25 You’ll find first-hand accounts of how essentially every major consumer app acquired their earliest users, including lessons from Tinder, Uber, Superhuman, TikTok, Product Hunt, Netflix, and many more. Enjoy! “The very first iteration of DoorDash was a website called paloaltodelivery.com with PDF’d…

What’s the secret behind the world’s stickiest brands? Notes: Siebert explains that “It’s not at all about creating consistently good customer experiences, but about creating intentionally chaotic, maddening, and unpredictable ones.” The first step is providing customers with “rapid entry.” Lindridge adds, “It’s also not about making services convenient, easy, or satisfying, but instead about making them…

A Bankruptcy History of Manias & Panics (in 70 pages) This is really long but just take a look at the table of contents and you’ll see why it’s worth the read. Check out: Appendix Exhibit 3: Business Failures (1857-1998) in the PDF. The history of bankruptcy law is intertwined with that of crises and…

From war elephants to cheap electronics: modern globalisation has its roots in ancient trade networks But globalisation isn’t new. Archaeological research shows it began in antiquity. A global economy, with luxury consumerism and global interconnectivity, linked Europe, Africa and Asia at least 5,000 years ago and was widespread 2,000 years ago. The Roman and Han…

The grandmaster diet: How to lose weight while barely moving Robert Sapolsky, who studies stress in primates at Stanford University, says a chess player can burn up to 6,000 calories a day while playing in a tournament, three times what an average person consumes in a day. Based on breathing rates (which triple during competition),…

The Crash of the $8.5 Billion Global Flower Trade As people everywhere cancel events and big cut-flower orders, the ripples reach into Dutch auction halls and Kenyan rose fields. The Influencer Economy Hurtles Toward Its First Recession Faced with a pandemic on the one hand and slashed budgets on the other, some industry insiders say…