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Background This speech was delivered as the keynote address for the May 17, 2012 commencement ceremony at The University of the Arts. Speech Transcript I never really expected to find myself giving advice to people graduating from an establishment of higher education. I never graduated from any such establishment. I never even started at one. […]

Learn how to write a good first draft. This guide explains the process for generating writing ideas, exploring their potential, and practicing the writing process.

Learn how to practice writing and rewriting. Aim for quality of input over of quantity of output. And find authors whose work you enjoy, then reverse engineer what makes them great.

Learning to write is learning to think, because writing is thinking. They are two peas in a powerful pod. This article goes over my writing process, focused on minimizing the activation energy to get started.

Arthur Schopenhauer Schopenhauer reminds us that the existence of words is no indication of their truth and offers timeless insights on clickbait.

In this letter, Richard Feynman argues the worthwhile problems are the ones you can really contribute something meaningful to or help solve.

Charlie Munger says that “developing the habit of mastering the multiple (mental) models which underlie reality is the best thing you can do.” Here's how.

In March of 1933, Eudora Welty, then 23 and looking for writing work, sent this charming letter to the offices of The New Yorker.

I’ve been a graduate student in physics for almost three years, but I only recently figured out why. I had to tackle a simple question do so: Why does this matter? I realized that I’d never forced myself to answer this honestly. As Paul Graham has pointed out, these systematic gaps in conversation should raise suspicion — they often indicate when you’re wrong about something important. I was wrong in thinking that my work mattered to me, and I avoided asking myself this question because I knew the answer would be painful.

“Most people don’t understand what Stoic is. They think that a Stoic wants to sort of be robust, no positive nor negative emotions, get rid of [their] attachment from the world…My definition is a Stoic Sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking. Someone who […]

A leading neuroscientist who has spent decades studying creativity shares her research on where genius comes from, whether it is dependent on high IQ—and why it is so often accompanied by mental illness.

notes from the book

The smartest people in the world use mental models to make intelligent decisions, avoid stupidity, and increase productivity. Let's take a look at how ...

There are two tragedies in life, Oscar Wilde once said: not getting what you want and getting everything you want. The last, he lamented, is much worse. I wanted to be a writer. I don’t know when that dream started, but for a very long time, I craved accomplishment in this creative calling that very few are lucky enough to make a living in, let alone find success in. Of course, like most people, I also fantasized about what it would be like to have money, or more specifically, to have lots of it. It’d be cool to be a little famous too, while I was at it. To be connected with or have influen...

Most people are not strategic. They are reactive.

As a creator, you need to actively bake the marketing into your product.

The late Harold Bloom, literary critic and professor, may well have been one of the most prolific readers of all time. Given that, Bloom was uniquely well positioned to answer the question of why we should read and how we should go about it.

After more than a decade of writing life-changing advice, I know when to move on. Here’s what else I learned

1/ After 10+ years of publishing professional writing at https://t.co/ddc2F89IIV, I have a couple opinions on how to get your stuff read — Andrew Chen (@andrewchen) July 26, 2017 Building your personal bat signal I want to cross-pollinate a tweetstorm on lessons I’ve learned from a decade of professional writing. In a way, it’s a followup […]

(I wrote this essay as the Foreword to the new edition of Seymour Papert’s classic book Mindstorms.)

What made Charles Darwin a great scientific thinker? He followed a golden rule of objectivity. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett and others use the same idea.

A few months ago, while dining at Veggie Grill (one of the new breed of Chipotle-class fast-casual restaurants), a phrase popped unbidden into my head: premium mediocre. The food, I opined to my wi…

"On disbelieving atrocities." Written by Arthur Koestler. Originally published on January 9th, 1944.

If someone you're emailing with is making typos and you're not, skipping capitals and you're not, responding to your long, well-written emails with short responses... then you're their bitch.

We’d all like life to be simpler. But we also don’t want to sacrifice our options and capabilities. Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity, a rule from design, explains why we can’t have both. Here’s how the law can help us create better products and services by rethinking simplicity.

The internet is a money printer for smart people willing to share their ideas online. It's created two unprecedented opportunities...

Measuring—and delivering—what consumers really want

Dave Chappelle has a new special about his old show that includes fundamental lessons about how the Internet has changed the content business.