mindsets

About two years ago, I went to an advertising conference in New York City. I was the youngest person in the room by far. The only one who wasn’t in a suit, wasn’t talking about vacation houses, about cars, wasn’t hoping to hook up with some other gross lonely person while away from home. I remember thinking very vividly at the time: this is the track I am on. Right now I am young but soon, soon I will be one of these assholes. I can’t express how much this shook me. I felt a kind of creeping dread that I would be absorbed into this crowd. That the things that were important to them would be...

Background This speech was originally delivered as the baccalaureate remarks to graduates from Princeton University on May 30, 2010. Speech Transcript As a kid, I spent my summers with my grandparents on their ranch in Texas. I helped fix windmills, vaccinate cattle, and do other chores. We also watched soap operas every afternoon, especially “Days of […]

Whether you’re a student, a teacher, or a parent, I think you’ll appreciate this story of how one teacher can completely and permanently change someone’s life in only a few lessons.

Five landmarks to unlock your potential

Chris Dixon's blog.

By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here . Reading time: 7 mins Summary IMO you don’t choose where you start life, but IMO you can have a strong say in where you end up.  You have biological set points and your environment matters a lot… but IMO these two don’t determi

We might not be able to be good right now, but we can be good enough.

The mathematician and philosopher Gian-Carlo Rota spent much of his career at MIT, where students adored him for his engaging, passionate lectures. In 1996, Rota gave a talk entitled “Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Been Taught,” which contains valuable advice for making people pay attention to your ideas.

What can you do to lift someone up?

By: Stephen Hanselman [1] If You Want a Smooth Flow of Life, Live According to Nature At the core of Stoic teaching is the founder Zeno’s idea that a smooth flow of life (euroia biou) comes from “living in agreement with nature.” It was the second leader of the Stoics, Zeno’s student Cleanthes, who added the last part, “with nature” (te phusei; or […]

Don't control the spike. Control the duration of the long tail.

Don’t reserve your best business thinking for your career.

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.

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

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.

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.

If you don’t give money its purpose, it will end up defining yours.

Our choices reflect and determine who we are.

I’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up...