Cognitive Exhaustion: Resting Your Mental Muscle
In the go-go-go world of today, we need to be sure we’re giving our mind ample opportunity to rest and relax — recognizing when we need a mental break. I usually take a walk. Or go to a yoga …
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Ben Horowitz: The Struggle
In The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, Ben Horowitz describes the struggle. Every entrepreneur starts her company with a clear vision for success. You …
Vincent van Gogh on Why Never Learning How to Paint Helped
In a letter to his brother Theo, dated September 1882, found in Ever Yours: The Essential Letters, Vincent van Gogh describes the advantages of never learning to paint. While making it I said to …
Fooled By Randomness: My Notes
I loved Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Taleb. This is the first popular book he wrote, the book that helped propel him into an intellectual …
A Plunge and Squish View of the Mind
How can we bring our knowledge to bear on a problem? Does this resemble how we accumulate knowledge in the first place? A thoughtful passage by David Gelernter in Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software …
Albert Einstein on Education and the Secret to Learning
In 1915 Einstein, who was then 36, was living in wartime Berlin with his cousin Elsa, who would eventually become his second wife. His two sons, Hans Albert Einstein and Eduard “Tete” Einstein were …
The Art of Stillness
“Sitting still,” writes Pico Iyer in The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere, is “a way of falling in love with the world and everything in it.” The Art of Stillness …
Lan Leav’s Beautiful Poem: Soul Mates
This could be the most beautiful thing I’ve read so far this year. From Lang Leav’s amazing Love and Misadventure: Soul Mates I don’t know how you are so familiar to me—or why it feels …
Vincent van Gogh Writes a Letter on the Three Stages of Love
In a letter to his brother Theo, dated Thursday, 3 November 1881, found in Ever Yours: The Essential Letters, Vincent van Gogh describes an unreciprocated love and in so doing alludes to three stages …
A Simple Way to Improve the Pro-Con List to Make Better Decisions
The first chapter in Seymour Schulich‘s book, Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons, offers a decision tool that adds to the simple pro-and-con list that many of us have used to make decisions. …
The Peter Principle and the Law of Crappy People
If you’ve ever worked in an organization, you’ve no doubt come across someone in senior management and asked yourself how they ever got promoted. The Peter Principle, coined by Dr. …
The Nine Primary Tactics Used to Influence Others
We all face situations where we need to persuade others to change their minds. Often, we forget the need to understand the other person’s thinking before we can truly convince them. These nine tactics …
Atul Gawande: The Building Industry’s Strategy for Getting Things Right in Complexity
Checklists establish a higher level of baseline performance. *** A helpful reminder from Atul Gawande in The Checklist Manifesto: In a complex environment, experts are up against two main …
Marcus Aurelius: You Have One Life To Live
The excerpt is from this version online, although if you’re going to read it, get the Hayes translation. Our mental powers should enable us to perceive the swiftness with which all things vanish …
Andy Warhol on Love and Sex
“People should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don’t look.” *** Pop art luminary Andy Warhol had a lot to say about love and sex. As found in the wonderful …
Real vs. Simulated Memories
Software memory is increasingly doing more and more for us. Yet it lacks one important element of human memory: emotion. This thought-provoking excerpt comes from Mirror Worlds: or the Day Software …