Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
When we can’t trust each other, nothing works. As we participate in our communities less and less, we find it harder to feel other people are trustworthy. But if we can bring back a sense of trust in the people around us, the rewards are …
Memory is an intrinsic part of our life experience. It is critical for learning, and without memories we would have no sense of self. Understanding why some memories stick better than others, as well as accepting their fluidity, helps us …
We tend to measure performance by what happens when things are going well. Yet how people, organizations, companies, leaders, and other things do on their best day isn’t all that instructive. To find the truth, we need to look at what …
One big challenge we all face in life is knowing when to explore new opportunities, and when to double down on existing ones. Explore vs exploit algorithms – and poetry – teach us that it’s vital to consider how much time we …
In the search for happiness, we often confuse how something looks with how it’s likely to make us feel. This is especially true when it comes to our homes. If we want to maximize happiness, we need to prioritize experiences over …
Our devotion to our values gets tested in the face of a true crisis. But it’s also an opportunity to reconnect, recommit, and sometimes, bake some bread. *** The recent outbreak of the coronavirus is impacting people all over the world — …
*** “Beautiful people do not just happen.” In her bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert told her story of self-discovery in which she spent a year journeying through Italy, India, and Indonesia. On how people can go on a …
Your ability to get things done and be productive is not always a function of hours. Working more doesn’t always mean you’re working better or harder. It doesn’t mean you’re doing your best. And it certainly …
What do you want to be when you grow up? Well, if you’re not sure you want to do just one thing for the rest of your life, you’re not alone. In this illuminating talk, writer and artist Emilie Wapnick describes the kind of …
This comes courtesy of Mindfulness in Plain English, one of the best books on meditation and mindfulness that I’ve ever come across. *** The very process of observation changes what we observe. For example, an electron is an extremely …
Hunter S. Thompson’s letter to Hume Logan on finding your purpose and living a meaningful life is one of the most popular posts to ever appear on Farnam Street. One reader found it so valuable he dug into Thompson’s work in …
Meditation isn’t easy. It takes time and energy. Some people wonder why they should bother with meditation at all. Here is an inversion of meditation. This is what Meditation isn’t. There are a number of common misconceptions …
Our resistance to thinking about failure is especially curious in light of the fact that failure is so ubiquitous. ‘Failure is the distinguishing feature of corporate life,’ writes the economist Paul Ormerod, at the start of his book Why …
“The American dream is no longer just to get rich quick, but also to enjoy doing it, the new captains of industry offer various best-selling decalogue for achieving this goal. Their tips range from philosophical (learn from your failures) …
A passage from Happiness: A Philosopher’s Guide explaining, in part, why it’s easier to describe what makes us happy than answer the question what is happiness. I can say that I’m happy when I find myself in the company of the …
“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 of them to gain an easier life.” *** Few …
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 add to the ongoing conversation on …
“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 is a persuasively argued case for the …
“The mental construction of our daily activities, more than the activity itself, defines our reality.” What if the formula for success is backwards. We’re told that if we work hard, we’ll be successful. And of …
Think you had a bad day? Dan Harris had a panic attack on live TV in front of millions of people. Something had to change. He knew it. Almost immediately after the panic attack on the air he was assigned to cover religion, which introduced …
I’ve been putting this off for years. Now is a perfect time. Meditation offers a path toward increased happiness, creativity and mindfulness. Steve Jobs was a lifelong practitioner, reading deeply on the subject and taking meditation …
If I were to ask you if you wanted to be happy, 100% of you would say yes. But how many us live our lives in a way that makes us happy? “The days are long, but the years are short. Time is passing, and I’m not focusing enough on …
“Think Positive.” That’s what magazines and friends advise us to do in order to cope with the stress of the holiday season. That’s the same advice that Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking, …