There are many ways for students to annoy their professors: “Did I miss anything important?” (No, nothing like that happens in our class.) “Will this test affect my grade?” (No, not at all.) “What are your office hours?” (They’re the first thing on the syllabus.) Most professors understand that such questions are harmless; few, if…

People who think about hacking their lives and their work often speak of “granularity.” It’s a curious word. The online Oxford English Dictionary offers only “granular condition or quality” as a definition. A more helpful definition comes from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications: “The extent to which a larger entity is subdivided…

According to a survey developed by OfficeTeam, 84% of executives polled consider one or two typos in a résumé sufficient to remove a job-candidate from consideration. One or two typos! Translated into academic terms, one or two typos in a paper would equal a failing grade. I’m not sure how much I want to trust…

[T]he Post-it Note was more than just a practical tool — it was also a psychological one. Compared to the clunky machines of the 1980s that generated all those documents, it was a vision of high-tech minimalism. Its edges were sharp and square, with no ugly binding, no perforations, no metal rings. Its color, a…