Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
“Few things are as important to your quality of life as your choices about how to spend the precious resource of your free time,” writes Winifred Gallagher, author of the book Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. That your …
These 11 simple rules, first presented by Dave Packard at HP’s second annual management conference in 1958 are timeless. Not only will they help you improve your ability to work with others but they are the key to leveraging the …
“You’re looking for three things, generally, in a person,” says Warren Buffett. “Intelligence, energy, and integrity. And if they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother with the first two.” Ideally, you want all three, but people …
Two examples from Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard’s book, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, demonstrating that process is more important than results. Focus on the movements, not the goal. I’ve been …
If you want to have better conversations, here are some guidelines. *** Bring out the cleverness in others. Jean de La Brùyere: The true spirit of conversation consists more in bringing out the cleverness of others than in showing a great …
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.” John Maeda is a graphic designer and computer scientist. His book, The Laws of Simplicity, proposes ten laws for simplifying complex systems in business …
Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan and Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder with 34 insights from his facebook account: The artificial gives us hangovers, the natural inverse-hangovers. The only problem with the last laugh is …
We’re good at spotting others’ faults while ignoring our own. If someone informed you of your biases do you think you’d change your response? Not likely. Even when we know about our biases and we’re asked ‘do …
Everyone wants energy independence. Everyone—from politicians and business people to academics—says that our reliance on foreign energy is bad. But have we really thought about this? Does it make sense? I’ve never really shared the …
They think that the reasons for something are immediately accessible to them, even if they have no clue. No matter how complex or difficult, no problem results in an “I don’t know.” They are the fragilista. Frequently …
Just as too much junk food can lead to obesity, too much information consumption can lead to stupidity. Clay Johnson’s book, The Information Diet, shows you how to thrive in this information glut, but you must accept that there is no …
We believe that the fMRI can help us explain everything subjective. The problem is that brain imaging cannot explain everything — at least not yet. *** No doubt you’ve seen the clickbait: this is your brain on love. This is your brain …
When I think about the world in which we live and the organizations in which we work, I can’t help but think that few people have the intellectual honesty, time, and discipline required to hold a view. Considered opinions are a lot of work, …
I love this excerpt from Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking on Warren Buffett and temperament. Buffett is known for thinking carefully when those around him are losing their heads. “Success in …
Just because you see does not mean you observe. The difference between seeing and observing is fundamental to many aspects of life. Observation is more than simply seeing something, but rather a mental process involving both visual and …
How Strategy Really Works is a book about strategy, written by A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, and Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management. The book covers the “transformation” of P&G under Lafley and the …
Can you be too conscious? In his short 1864 book, Notes From Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky tells the story of a man who is “too conscious.” The man, whose name we never learn is so aware of his own thoughts and feelings as to cause him to …
“The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning.” — Claude Shannon (1948) *** “When …
I’m a huge fan of Charlie Munger — Warren Buffett’s right-hand man at Berkshire Hathaway. For those of you unfamiliar with him, listening to his famous talk, The Psychology of Human Misjudgment will have you instantly hooked. If …
I wasn’t a huge fan of Think, Act, and Invest Like Warren Buffett: The Winning Strategy to Help You Achieve Your Financial and Life Goals but this anecdote on time management hit a cord with me. An expert in time management was …
In Why Parents Need to Let Their Children Fail, Teacher Jessica Lahey reminds parents that the educational benefits of consequences are a gift, not a dereliction of duty. The stories teachers exchange these days reveal a whole new level of …
The relationship between people and their craft is such that you can tell by the path they have followed whether they are a master or an amateur. Robert Greene, most famous for his exposure of power, The 48 Laws of Power, is out with a new …
In his new book Mastery, Robert Greene writes discusses how feeling powerless directs the narratives of our mind. We live in a world that seems increasingly beyond our control. Our livelihoods are at the whim of globalized forces. The …
The focus right now in our education system is on a certain type of knowledge: “knowing that” as opposed to “knowing how.” The difference is somewhat experiential. Matthew Crawford explains in this excerpt from Shop …