articles

The “cook vs chef” dynamic is one that I’ve been thinking about more and more. WBW gives the best start to finish overview of the difference between reasoning from first principles and following the crowd.

Industrial visionaries tend to have chaotic and disruptive personalities. Their goals don't neatly fit the social ladder. But societies that make room for them reap immense rewards.

The long read: The phrase ‘adult beginner’ can sound patronising. It implies you are learning something you should have mastered as a child. But learning is not just for the young

After the response to this recent LifeHacker piece, I thought I would explain the system I use to take notes, research books and keep track of anecdotes, stories and info I come across in my work. This isn’t the perfect system. It might not work for you. All I can say is that since learning it about 7 years ago, it has totally transformed my process and drastically increased my creative output. It’s responsible for helping me publish three books in three years, (along with other books I’ve had the privilege of contributing to), write countless articles published in newspapers and websites, ...

MBAs love to talk about “optionality” and how they want more of it. But you don’t need an MBA to explain yourself by saying you’re…

In his AMA on reddit, Elon Musk talks about how to build knowledge.

How to efficiently get what you need out of reading, multiple books at a time

What skill do hunter-gatherers value most? Research on the Agta hunterer-gather tribe reveals that it wasn't hunting or gathering.

The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking offers easily learnable habits of mind that improve your ability to think clearly and rationally.

If you’re after a way to supercharge your learning and become smarter, the Feynman Technique might just be the best way to learn absolutely anything. Devised by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, it leverages the power of teaching for better learning.

If you’re after a way to supercharge your learning and become smarter, the Feynman Technique might just be the best way to learn absolutely anything. Devised by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, it leverages the power of teaching for better learning.

One day in your early school years, a teacher probably told you to “take notes” for the first time. Looking around at your fellow classmates, this seemed to involve writing down what the teacher said, word for word, on lined pieces of paper. For most of us, this is how our experience of note-taking started: ... Read more

The full story about why procrastinators routinely ruin their own lives.

How personal productivity transformed work—and failed to.

This interview was recorded earlier this year and originally appeared on The Observer Effect; it has only been lightly edited for formatting here. TABLE OF CONTENTS On productivity Let’s get into it. Over a decade ago, you wrote a …

Marc Andreessen on how he spends his time, learns, the 'build' essay and much more.

Read this article to discover the strategy Warren Buffett uses to simplify his priorities and focus on the right things.

What I've learned about how to be productive and make the most of my time.

I started fasting more frequently, using the Zero App (intermittent, typically the 16/18 hours). Our bodies don't need to constantly be fed. It can slow us down when it's overdone: Here's a good primer thread: This sluggishness I was unconscious about when I was younger. As a teen, and into college I would eat whatever, whenever, thinking that it was normal and not paying any attention to the feeling of being full, the energy drain, and the other side effects like brain fog.

Health, happiness, connection, community, the most important things in life do not happen behind a laptop.

We do all sorts of activities at our desks that affect our ability to produce our best work.

We all make decisions. Some of them are large and many of them are small. Few of us understand that the process we use to make those decisions is more important than the analysis we put into the decision.

Understanding your circle of competence allows you avoid problems. As we can learn from Warren Buffett, avoiding problems is easier than solving them.

Good news: if you have $17.9 million available, John Steinbeck’s 1.8 acre waterfront retreat is now for sale. It’s tucked onto a grassy peninsula in Upper Sag Harbor Cove, and features a pool, a long pier, and two cozy guest cottages. Arguably most important is the hexagonal, 100-square-foot “writer’s house” overlooking the water. Encountering this […]

The demand for forecasts grows after a surprise. It’s quite an irony. Surprises make you feel like you’re not in control, which is when it feels best to grab the wheel with both hands, listening to those who tell you what happens next despite being blindsided by what just happened. That’s where we are with Covid and the economy. Ten months after the surprise of our lifetimes, everyone wants a clear map of the future. Who wins? Who loses? When will travel recover? Will work be the same? Have we learned our lesson? But the most important economic stories don’t require forecasts; they’ve alrea...

The Kelly Criterion is a relatively simple math equation to determine the percentage of your bankroll you should bet on any given circumstance, assuming you have an advantage. The goal of the equation is this: don’t go broke. The equation tells you exactly how much to bet on each “hand” so that you

When you experience someone else’s genius work, a little part of you feels, “That’s what I could have, would have, and should have done!”