Farnam Street
Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out
If you want to make your computer programmers and engineers more effective give them “privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption.” Via …
I made it through Susan Sontag’s recently released notebooks: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980. “As Consciousness” is the second of three …
More brains don’t necessarily lead to better ideas. When it came to leading meetings, Steve Jobs had no qualms about tossing the least necessary person out of the room. An excerpt from Insanely …
Last year, literary critic Joseph Epstein wrote The best book on the art of writing that I know is F. L. Lucas’ Style: The Art of Writing Well. At the time of Epstein’s comments, the book …
“States don’t fail overnight. The seeds of of their destruction are sown deep within their political institutions.” Is it culture, weather, or Geography? What about war or some …
Ok, so you’ve seen the nine books Bill Gates is reading this summer. Gates has some pretty smart friends and they were kind enough to share what they were reading this summer too. ****** Vinod …
What happens if you take Time magazine’s list of the 100 best novels from 1923 to the present and look at some of the ‘best’ one-star reviews posted on Amazon.com? Catch-22 by Joseph …
If you study the root causes of business disasters and management missteps, you’ll often find a predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. Many companies’ decision-making …
A reddit reader posed the question “I want to read 12 history books in one year to know ‘all the things’, what should be on the list?” After much debate, the 12 below were …
Dale Carnegie is known for his practical, no-nonsense approach to advice. Interestingly, a section on 7 rules for making your home life happier was included in the original 1936 edition of How to Win …
A brief, no fluff, summary of Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you want to learn what people want and use that knowledge to build stronger relationships, this book …
Calling to mind Daniel Dennett’s advice on how to compose a successful critical commentary, Susan Sontag offers three steps to refuting any argument, from the newly released As Consciousness Is …
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 …
It’s possible to love your job and hate it at the same time: On one side of the equation, there are the elements of work that, if not done right, will cause us to be dissatisfied. These are the …
There are many good reasons to read Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. You may be frustrated by the state of your organization’s strategy. You may be interested in identifying the …
In case you’re interested, we have another article on The Filter Bubble here. Just “googling it” might not be such a great idea after all The Filter Bubble, by Eli Pariser, puts …