Last fall, I finished the MIT Challenge. While the challenge was exciting and educational, the tight deadline didn’t give me any time for extracurricular projects. When I finished, I wanted to work on a small and fun project that would test some of the things I learned. The result was WordSmith, a program that lets […]
Two Types of Growth
Anything you try to improve will have a growth curve. Imagine you ran everyday and you tracked your speed to finish a 5-mile course. Smoothing out the noise, over enough time you’d probably get a graph like this: Here, improvement works on a logarithmic scale. As you get better, it gets harder and harder to […]
Flow Doesn’t Maximize Improvement
Flow is the mental state of complete engagement. It happens when you are fully immersed in an activity that is neither too difficult to be frustrating, but not so easy as to be boring. First described by Dr. Mihály CsÃkszentmihályi, the concept became popular because it was seen as a key to both performance and […]
The Interview Method: Why Our Assumptions About Success Are Often Wrong
I love people who say they “know” what they need to do, they just don’t do it. These are the same people who claim that without credentials, connections or whatever they happen to lack, success is impossible. The truth is, most people put almost zero effort into figuring out how success actually works in their […]
I'm a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, podcast host, computer programmer and an avid reader. Since 2006, I've published weekly essays on this website to help people like you learn and think better. My work has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, TEDx, Pocket, Business Insider and more. I don't promise I have all the answers, just a place to start.