Recently, I wrote a piece about how to commit to the things you start. In it, I argued that most people are spectacularly bad at committing to things which don’t have a culturally or socially-enforced system of accountability. This is unfortunate, because being successful in life inevitably depends on either doing things that weren’t mandatory […]
The Art of Unlearning
“It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain Most people think about learning as adding knowledge and skills. When you learn French, you learn that the word, avoir means “to have.” You now have a new fact in your mind […]
How to Commit to the Things You Start
One of the most important skills you can cultivate is the ability to plan, execute and finish your projects. Unfortunately, most people are spectacularly bad at this skill. I’ve witnessed this firsthand. Over the lifetime of this blog, I’ve ran several small-scale courses where I’ve tried to help people one-on-one. Because I usually have more […]
Book Club: Tao Te Ching (March 2018)
This month we read Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. About the book: the book is comprised of eighty-one short chapters which cover the ways of the “Way” and lay out all the main ideas of one, Taoism (also known as Daoism) of the world’s oldest philosophies. The main attraction to this way of thinking […]
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.