5 Things

Happy New Year! Here are five things that caught my eye this last week.

• Be More Productive. Take Time Off. by Jason Fried, The New York Times. "When there’s less time to work, you waste less time. When you have a compressed workweek, you tend to focus on what’s important. Constraining time encourages quality time."

• Inside Nike's Quest for the Impossible: A Two-Hour Marathon by Ed Caesar, Wired. This would be an incredible feat.

• The farmer who built her own broadband by Zoe Kleinman, BBC News. A story about communities coming together. "There is lots available if communities come together. We are really sitting here waiting to help."

• Inside Costco: The Magic in the Warehouse by Neil Gabler, Fortune. I didn't know about the company culture behind Costco. It's quite impressive.

“People will bang down a door to come to work for Costco,” says Craig Wilson, vice president of quality assurance and food safety, and an 18-year Costco veteran. And once there, just about no one leaves. The company’s retention rate for employees who have been there a year is 94%. “You couldn’t throw enough money at me to make me leave this company,” says Paul Latham, VP of membership, marketing, and Costco Services, with 37 years under his belt. “I love it.” And if nobody leaves, almost nobody gets fired either. When the recession hit and most companies were laying off employees, Costco’s brain trust didn’t let anyone go. “It wasn’t even something that we thought about,” Jelinek says. Instead, the company actually raised wages.

• How to be a Stoic by Elif Batuman, The New York Times. I'll admit that I'm intrigued about stoicism and would like to study more about it in 2017.