Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
The Feynman Technique is the best way to supercharge your learning. And it works no matter the subject. Devised by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, it leverages the power of teaching for better learning. Learning doesn’t …
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 …
One of the best ways to learn is a good conversation. While there are many advantages to a good conversation, perhaps the best is that you can benefit from the lessons that other people have already paid the price for. Of course, …
Directing a film involves getting an enormous group of people to work together on turning the image inside your head into a reality. In this 1970 interview, director Jean Renoir dispenses time-tested wisdom for leaders everywhere on …
Better hiring leads to better work environments, less turnover, and more innovation and productivity. When you understand the limitations and pitfalls of the job interview, you improve your chances of hiring the best possible person for …
Innovation doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Doers and thinkers from Shakespeare to Jobs, liberally “stole” inspiration from the doers and thinkers who came before. Here’s how to do it right. *** “If I have seen further,” Isaac Newton wrote in a …
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 — …
Against great odds, Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749) taught herself mathematics and became a world authority on Newtonian mathematical physics. I say against great odds because being a woman at the time meant she was ineligible for the same …
Complex outcomes in human systems are a tough nut to crack when it comes to deciding what’s really true. Any phenomena we might try to explain will have a host of competing theories, many of them seemingly plausible. So how do we know …
We’ve written quite a bit about the marvelous British naturalist Charles Darwin, who with his Origin of Species created perhaps the most intense intellectual debate in human history, one which continues up to this day. Darwin’s Origin was a …
Lee Kuan Yew, the “Father of Modern Singapore”, who took a nation from “Third World to First” in his own lifetime, has a simple idea about using theory and philosophy. Here it is: Does it work? He isn’t …
What did an 18th-century hymn writer have to contribute to the modern understanding of the world? As it turns out, a lot. Sometimes we forget how useful the old wisdom can be. *** One of the most popular and prolific Christian hymn writers …
“People who have no emotional stake in a decision can see what needs to be done sooner.” — Andy Grove *** What do you do when you wake up one day and realize that reality has changed, and you will either change with it or …
“The object of education is not to fill a man’s mind with facts; it is to teach him how to use his mind in thinking.” — Henry Ford *** In his memoir My Life and Work, written in 1934, the brilliant (but flawed) Henry Ford …
“Geniuses are dangerous.” — James March How many organizations would deny that they want more creativity, more genius, and more divergent thinking among their constituents? The great genius leaders of the world are fawned over …
“But now we are starting to show genetic influence on individual differences using DNA. DNA is a game changer; it’s a lot harder to argue with DNA than it is with a twin study or an adoption study.” — Robert Plomin *** …
At the PEN America Literary Gala & Free Expression Awards, J.K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame, received the 2016 PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award. Embedded in her acceptance speech is some timeless wisdom on tolerance and …
“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 happen? That’s the basic question …
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 thinkers: “Even more than what you …
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 Nature of Mass Movements. The True …
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 Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on …
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 were. Washington had little formal …
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 not, Taleb is a unique and uncompromising …
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 Costco, a business started by his former …