40 Books that Improve your Ability to Make Decisions
Who can you ask for book recommendations on decision making? At Re:Think Decision Making, I asked a crowd that one former ivy league professor called “the best public crowd he’s ever …
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Aristotle on Time
Aristotle, in The Physics, produces “a statement of the difficulties about the attributes of time.” Next for discussion is time. The best plan will be to begin by working out the …
The Seven Books Bill Gates Thinks You Should Read This Summer
Bill Gates is out with his annual summer reading list and, while longer than last year’s, it’s a great place to kick off your summer reading. “Each of these books,” Gates writes, …
The Power of Full Engagement: The Four Energy Management Principles That Drive Performance
We’re often told to manage our time, but managing our energy can be far more effective. Managing your energy lets you fully engage with whatever you’re doing. Here, we examine the four key principles …
Carl Sagan: “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.”
Carl Sagan’s timeless and humbling Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, based on the photograph above. Here’s an excerpt: Look again at that dot. That’s here. …
Do Something Syndrome: When Movement Trumps Results
Solving problems almost always starts with ensuring you’re solving the actual problem. When the actions we should take are not obvious, or the problem is difficult, it’s easy to feel the …
The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship
“Work-life balance is a concept that has us simply lashing ourselves on the back and working too hard in each of the three commitments. In the ensuing exhaustion we ultimately give up on one or more …
Reading a Book is a Conversation Between You and the Author
Marginalia—those tiny notes in the side margins of a book—is a contentious subject. Some people view this as a necessary part of the reading process. Others view it as sacrilege. This beautiful …
A Brief History of the To-Do List
To-do lists are evil from a productivity perspective, it’s much more effective to schedule time. This is something New York Times science writer John Tierney and psychologist Roy F. Baumeister …
Marshall McLuhan: The Here And Now
“In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the …
The Inside View and Making Better Decisions
When we don’t think about the process we use to make decisions, they tend to get worse over time as we fail to learn from experience. Often, we make decisions based on the information that is easiest …
Roald Dahl’s Heartbreaking Letter About Losing his Daughter in 1962
Roald Dahl, the beloved author of my personal favorites Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and The BFG, lost his eldest daughter, Olivia, to measles in the early 60s. It wasn’t until 1988, …
Elon Musk on How to Tell if People Are Lying
Elon Musk shares a valuable insight on evaluating job applicants: asking them to explain their thinking at multiple levels helps him determine if they worked on the problem themselves or they’re …
Happiness: A Philosopher’s Guide
Happiness: A Philosopher’s Guide is worth reading. Frederic Lenoir explores what the greatest thinkers — Aristotle, Plato, Chuang Tzu, Voltaire, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Kant, and Freud — have to …
How Warren Buffett Keeps up with a Torrent of Information
A telling excerpt from an interview of Warren Buffett (below) on the value of reading. Seems like he’s taking the opposite approach to Nassim Taleb in some ways. Interviewer: How do you keep up …
Exercise as a Tool to Manage Stress
For any of you who have experienced a ‘runner’s high’ or endorphin rush while exercising you know how powerful the feeling can be. But there are many more chemicals at play than just endorphins and …