Benjamin Knight

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How Online Retailers Can Avoid Costly Out-of-Stock Issues

Oct 3, 2024 | hbr.org | Yoon Kim |Benjamin Knight |Dmitry Mitrofanov

Stockouts — when a customer wants to buy a product that’s not available — are the quintessential failure of supply to meet demand. According to one estimate, stockouts cost retailers nearly $1 trillion worldwide annually. Stockouts result in more than lost sales; they also drive negative customer experiences. This can discourage customers from returning to the retailer in the future, harm a brand’s reputation and customer loyalty, and even lead to higher operational costs.
Covariate Adjustment

Jun 17, 2024 | medium.com | Benjamin Knight

Tim Hesterberg and Benjamin KnightWe describe how to calculate standard errors for A/B tests that include clustered data, ratio metrics, and/or covariate adjustment. We may do this for power analysis/sample size calculations prior to running an experiment using historical data, or after an experiment for hypothesis testing and confidence intervals. The different applications have a common framework, using the sample variance of certain residuals.
You Need To Stop Procrastinating Now: How One Small Pizza Got Me Kicked Out Of University

May 2, 2024 | medium.com | Benjamin Knight

It was a peaceful evening at the dormitory. Me and my friends were enjoying cheap pizza, video games, and beer. Yet something wasn’t right. The next day I had the last corrective term from physics. If I didn’t pass this exam, I wouldn’t just fail the class — I’d be kicked out of the university. But here I was. Enjoying a peace with the plan. The plan was to store the whole textbook in my short-term memory by studying during the night. It was 10 pm when I got back to my room and finally started.
Work Smarter, Not Harder: The Counterintuitive Power of Taking a Step Back

Apr 25, 2024 | medium.com | Benjamin Knight

A year ago, we landed a dream client — a big name with big money. The problem? They were an absolute nightmare. Endless revisions, loose scope, midnight demands…My team was burning out trying to please them. It felt like 90% of the company resources were getting sucked into this black hole. The first reaction was to set up a better system. To leverage our resources more efficiently to make them happy. No matter what we did, the client had more demands. Finally, we had a moment of clarity.
Is Productivity Obsession Ruining Your Life?

Mar 28, 2024 | medium.com | Benjamin Knight

We’re told that productivity is the path to success. Check off tasks, get more done faster, and you’ll magically achieve your wildest dreams. But here’s the ugly truth: this fixation on efficiency is keeping you trapped in mediocrity. Efficiency is about optimization — it’s streamlining what you’re already doing. It’s squeezing every possible ounce of output out of the path you’ve chosen. This is short-term thinking, a dangerous distraction from what really matters: strategy.
Feeling Overwhelmed, Behind, and Out of Control?

Mar 21, 2024 | medium.com | Benjamin Knight

Did you ever feel like you’re running on a treadmill that’s just a tad too fast? The to-do list seems endless, and no matter how fast you run, you can’t catch up. This is a story I hear often, and truth be told, it was my own narrative for a long time…Feeling overwhelmed and behind isn’t just stressful. It’s a significant barrier to living a fulfilling and balanced life. This constant negative state leads to burnout, decreased productivity, and, most importantly, affects our happiness.
Stop Reading, Start Learning: The Secret to Unlocking True Knowledge

Mar 14, 2024 | medium.com | Benjamin Knight

I used to think that there was only one way to read a book. Cover to cover. Reading started with the first page and ended with the last. Every book was like a physical progress bar. Satisfaction was only possible when it touched the end. That was the goal. Great for fiction. Not so great for non-fiction. I’ve finished more than 100 non-fiction books. Years later I could barely remember titles. What a waste of time. The self-help industry wants us to believe that reading more books equals success.
This One Thing Made Me Quit YouTube

Feb 21, 2024 | medium.com | Benjamin Knight

Let me tell you something embarrassing: I wasted FIVE YEARS of my life on YouTube. It wasn’t even mindless entertainment. I convinced myself I was “learning” while binging tutorials. Shockingly, I remembered almost nothing. But I did master one thing. The art of procrastination. Deadlines flew by, and projects remained unfinished… all under the excuse of “just one more video.”It’s not just about the lost hours. Constant distractions like YouTube and social media can actually rewire our brains.
Ancient Wisdom: 5 Key Stoic Quotes That Will Make You Instantly Productive.

Feb 12, 2024 | medium.com | Benjamin Knight

The world has changed dramatically since the age of Marcus Aurelius. Yet the fundamental workings of the human mind have not. Stoics were brilliant observers of human nature. They wrote long before smartphones and social media even were a thing. Yet, they anticipated our struggle with endless external distractions. Their insights into the sources and techniques to overcome procrastination, distraction, and anxiety are still remarkably relevant today.
Breaking Free from Hustle Culture: The Path to Sustainable Success.

Jan 22, 2024 | medium.com | Benjamin Knight

For years, I was a prisoner of hustle culture. I prided myself on my ability to push through exhaustion. My life was a blur of meetings, deadlines, and endless to-do lists. One day, the inevitable happened. I found myself lying in a hospital bed. It was a wake-up call and the beginning of my quest to become productive, healthy, and happy simultaneously. Before I get into details, let’s start from the beginning. Hustle culture is the belief that success comes from the individual’s relentless work ethic.