Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
Legendary scientist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) was famous for his penetrating insight and clarity of thought. Famous for not only the work he did to garner a Nobel Prize, but also for the lucidity of …
“A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.” — Charles “Boss” Kettering *** The whole scientific method is built on a very simple structure: If I do this, then what will …
“The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.” *** Life is full of problems. We can moan about them, or we can solve them. Scott Peck argues in The Road Less …
(This post is the second in a two-part series on the work of Judith Rich Harris. See the first part here.) As we concluded Part 1 of our exploration of Judith Rich Harris’s work on human …
Continuing on with Commencement Season, Atul Gawande gave an address to the students of Cal Tech last Friday, delivering a message to future scientists, but one that applies equally to all of us as …
“My solution to the mystery is that three perpetrators are involved: three mental systems that go about their business in different ways. Together, these three can answer the hows, whys, whens, …
At some time or another, we’ve all sought to make big changes. And almost of all of us have, after making grand plans, discovered that changing some aspect of our lives or organizations, whether …
What is the nature of a true mass movement? In 1951, the American philosopher Eric Hoffer attempted to answer this, and published his first and most well-known work: The True Believer: Thoughts on the …
Lee Kuan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore and the one responsible for its rise from third world to first in only a generation, is a great source of wisdom. In this excerpt from, Lee Kuan …
“Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context —a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.” — Eliel Saarinen *** …
In his book, Ego is the Enemy, Ryan Holiday tells the story of Genghis Khan and how his openness to learning was the foundation of his success. The legend of Genghis Khan has echoed through history: A …
Our first President and Commander-in-Chief, George Washington, is not known as an intellectual, the way Ben Franklin, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and some of his other Revolutionary counterparts …
Nassim Taleb, the modern philosopher best known for his ideas on Randomness, The Black Swan, and Antifragility, gave his first commencement address at an American University in Beirut. Like him or …
Sol Price is a legend in the retail business. Price founded one of the first discount retailers, FedMart, in the 1950s, and then later the pioneer warehouse club Price Club, which he later sold to …
One of the most common questions we receive, unsurprisingly, is along the lines of What one piece of advice would you recommend to become a better thinker? The question is kind of cheating. There is, …
In a letter written in 1784 to his friend Benjamin Vaughan, Ben Franklin has a very interesting cogitation on the aggregate effect of the pursuit of luxuries beyond our needs. Franklin displays a …