Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
I had no idea how much thought actually went into the programming of Sesame Street before reading Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. Willpower is important to life success and that’s why Cookie Monster knows more about it than …
Angela Duckworth has advanced our understanding of how self-control and grit impact success more than most. When she applied to the PhD program at Penn, she wrote that her experiences working in schools left her with an unconventional view …
In 1996 a disaster of historic proportions happened at the peak of Mount Everest. In the entire climbing season of 1996, fifteen climbers died. Eight of those deaths took place on a single day. Journalist and mountain climber Jon Krakauer …
“Love requires you to be physically and emotionally present. It also requires that you slow down.” *** What better day is there than today to explore love? In Love 2.0, psychologist Barbara Fredrickson looks under the hood to …
Bruce Feiler’s book — The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play, and Much More — explores the hidden secrets of improving your family life. Despite all of the recent …
I’m not sure how I came across Robin Dreeke’s It’s Not All About Me: Ten Techniques for Building Quick Rapport With Anyone, but I’m glad I did. Robin is the former lead instructor at the FBI’s Counterintelligence …
William James offers three maxims to aid the successful formation of new habits. *** In his book, Daily Rituals, Mason Currey explores William James’s thoughts on Habit. “Recollect,” (James) wrote, “that only when …
Imagine you’re in a meeting with a lot of important people. The boss comes in, takes a seat, and starts talking “strategic market knowledge” this and “leveraging competitive advantages” that. It all sounds like …
Here’s a great example of how our minds are wired in a way that can have some interesting impacts. In Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work Matthew Crawford writes: Back in the 1950s, when the focal practice of …
A great animation describing the fundamental principles of persuasion based on the research of Dr. Robert Cialdini, Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. Dr. Cialdini, if you’re not familiar, is …
Can we do several things at once? You can do several things at once, but only if they are easy and undemanding. What happens when we’re trying to do things that are not so simple? It is the mark of effortful activities that they …
Research shows that nearly everyone cheats a little if given the opportunity. Dan Ariely, author of the new book, “The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty,” explains why. Over the past decade or so, my colleagues and I have taken a …
When is the last time someone told you a fact that caused you to change your mind? It’s likely you can’t think of a verifiable example. And yet, when it comes to trying to persuade others, we often employ facts in an argument …
Why do experts seem to have better intuition than the rest of us when operating within their Circle of Competence? Are they doing something the rest of us are not? Or is there another explanation that unlocks the keys of intuition. In …
In 64 B.C Marcus Tullius Cicero was running for the post of Roman consul. Cicero, a political outsider, was a brilliant man and gifted speaker with a burning desire to gain the highest office in the ancient republic. As the campaign …
A great short video of psychology and marketing professor Robert Cialdini introducing the universal principles of influence. Cialdini has dedicated most of his life to figuring out why it was so easy for others to influence him. Humans, …
In response to But Wait … There’s More, a kind reader passed along a link to a wonderful interview between Andrew Warner and Tim Hawthorne (a producer of infomercials). On how to orchestrate an immediate response: ..In order to …
In the highly anticipated Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more …
The size of dinnerware influences how much people serve and consume. When plates and bowls are large enough that capacity is not a constraint, we consistently serve more onto relatively larger than relatively smaller dinnerware. But why? …
David Books, author of The Social Animal, with an excellent column on the planning fallacy: In his forthcoming book (now released), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman calls this the planning fallacy. Most people overrate their own abilities …
In this short lecture, Kurt Vonnegut explains the different shapes that stories can take using a chalkboard. Now let me give you a marketing tip. The people who can afford to buy books and magazines and go to the movies don’t like to hear …
We often think we can rely on common sense. But in a complex world, common sense is not always sufficient. *** Duncan Watts new book Everything is Obvious: Once You Know The Answer explores the limit of common sense. Watts writes that …
Ben Franklin discovered that a person who has done someone a favor is more likely to do that person another favor than they would be had they received a favor. Or, as Franklin put it: “He that has once done you a Kindness will be more …
In the Guinness Book of World Records, you’ll discover that a car salesman named Joe Girard is one of the most successful salespeople ever. Wait, a car salesman? In fact, Girard has sold more big-ticket items one-at-a-time than any …